Less Is More

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Switch From Sublime Text to Atom

I was using Sublime Text 3 for all the coding stuff for a long time. There was a time that Atom started to get more and more attention, and I hesitated for a while whether I should give it a shot.

After I googled a lot what other people say, I decided to stick to Sublime Text simply because it’s much faster to open.

Recently, when I was trying to write a new post which was in Chinese, I found I couldn’t call up Chinese IME. Although there is a way to get over it (by editing the specific font config file), I was still got frustrated.

Recalling other unpleasant moment that I have with Sublime Text, I thought it’s time to make a move.

Comparison

Since I’m using Ubuntu 16, it was smooth to get Atom loaded and running. After I tested for a while, here’s what I found superior to Sublime Text:

  • It’s open source and free compared to Sublime’s trial version with constant prompt to purchase a license
  • Software is under active development and up-to-date compared to Sublime’s out-of-date version
  • GUI settings page offers detailed params and intuitive interface together with config file compared to Sbulime’s all manual config file
  • Most of the same packages I use work better on Atom than on Sublime
  • Most of the default settings are close to my preference compared to Sublime’s default settings
  • Default interface is more comfortable and fine tuned compared to Sublime’s unshaped outlook

There is one drawback of Atom that everyone mentioned: it’s slow (whether cold/warm starup or running). Since it’s built on web development technologies html/css/javascript to make it crossplatform, it’s still acceptable that it’s not real native.