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General Discussion

Sublime Text vs Textmate, and Brackets

Hi, I am trying to choose between buying Sublime Text 2 or TextMate 2. I've been trying both to compare them. I was leaning towards TextMate because I could select paragraphs and quickly wrap them in a tag. But then I learned about Emmet which enables me to do that easily in ST2. I also though I might like TextMate more because it is designed for the mac, but after trying ST2 it seems mac friendly enough, and I'm guessing the shortcuts can probably be altered anyway. I was still leaning towards TextMate when I saw how easy it is to change the background and text colors-an important feature to me because I find certain themes strain the eyes. And then I saw it looked complicated to do in ST2, and I'm still not sure how to do it.

But then the turning point was when I tried TextMate's search feature, and saw it brings up this dialogue and instead of highlighting every instance like ST2 does, you press enter and the dialog goes away and only one instance is selected, which to me seems much less efficient than Sublime's search feature without the dialogue box.

I've only been learning to code for two months and so when people talk about advanced features of text editors I don't have enough experience to know how important each thing is, i.e how much I would use it. It seems everybody uses ST2, but I wonder if that's because TextMate is only for the mac, and not everybody has a mac. Can anybody inform me please on what the advantages and disadvantages of each one are, and if I've missed anything in my observations, like for example if TextMate's search feature is better than what I've experienced, or if I should choose TextMate given I have a mac, and basically why someone would choose one over the other?

Oh, and I also tried Brackets and I really like the feature of being able to select something in the html to bring up its corresponding css. And I also like the thought of maybe one day being able to contribute to it because it's open source. But after trying Brackets for a bit it felt like it wasn't as well developed as the others, meaning, I would try things and they wouldn't work like I thought they were supposed to. But then it's free, and things not working how they are supposed to is something I'm experiencing a lot of in coding, haha, but eventually things work, so I wonder if it's worth persevering with Brackets. There are just so many apps out there and I don't want to spend my whole life trying apps, haha. Any thoughts/suggestions/experiences please?

2 Answers

I gradually switched to emacs, but I have to admit it is a bit of a learning curve, and is an overkill in the beginning for sure. Before that I used Sublime Text extensively (on a Mac too). I love its customisability, the sheer amount of plugins and its general feel. I think it takes a few days of learning the shortcuts and customising to get really into it. I highly recommend it. Here are some useful links:

http://www.henriquebarroso.com/my-top-10sublime-2-plugins/

https://tutsplus.com/course/improve-workflow-in-sublime-text-2/

Hope this helps in your decision and good luck with your work :-)

Hi Boyan, it's really nice to get your feedback. Thank you, and also for the links!

You're welcome :)