So glad to see this. I have been down a long road of text editors:
- Sublime
- Vim
- Emacs
- Atom
- VSCode
- Jetbrains IDE
- Neovim
- Zed
- Cursor
And these aren’t just little flings. I’ve spent months if not years in most of these editors. However, at the end of the day I always come back to one: Sublime.
It is a beautiful piece of software. It feels like writing with one’s “good pen and good paper”, that high quality stationary sort of thing. It is just me and the code. There is something that just feels different or even tactile about Sublime. That actually leads me to ask as this is outside of my expertise: why does Sublime feel more tactile/real than other editors? When I look at the code in other editors it feels like I’m looking at a projector on a wall. When I look at the code in Sublime it feels like I’m looking at something painted on the wall. Anybody else have the same experience? What’s the psychological/software reason for that?
> That actually leads me to ask as this is outside of my expertise: why does Sublime feel more tactile/real than other editors?
Performance is a big part of that.
Even a few millisecond delay changes the user experience from "I am physically interacting with an object" to "I am requesting this service do a thing on my behalf". Sublime is consistently fast enough to feel like the former. Most other IDEs feel like the latter.
(Another example of this effect is the difference between driving a manual transmission and an automatic. When I drive a manual, it feels like I'm in control of the engine. When I drive an automatic, it feels like I'm executive sending messages to my engineer who then applies changes to the engine... eventually.)
Thanks for the info! I was wondering if it was something more than speed, but what you said makes a lot sense. Love the "I am interacting" vs "I am requesting" way of putting it as it highlights just how dramatically different of an experience it is.
Sublime is really snappy and responsive. But it also doesn't have as many fancy automation like jetbrains. Maybe that keeps the code "real", rather than some artifact that you have the computer manipulate for you.
This is the main reason I've ever found myself using it if not vscode or now cursor. If I have some massive file that needs messing with nothing handles it as well as sublime does.
That’s definitely part of it. Though even before I start typing and am just looking at the characters on the screen, they seem more dense, tactile, and real. Is there a categorical difference for how Sublime renders text vs other editors out there?
I don't use or actually even like Sublime, but I have the exact same experience of it. Quick loads and lack of "extras" that cause even portions of lag in the experience; there's an immediacy to Sublime.
But those things that introduce clunkiness are often very useful. They take away from the aesthetic feel of writing code, but give advantages that are too useful to give up, imho.
I wonder how much of it is simply that Sublime has a very pleasant default color theme (Monokai) in my opinion. It feels warmer than other IDEs. I actually use it in VScode too now.
- Sublime - Vim - Emacs - Atom - VSCode - Jetbrains IDE - Neovim - Zed - Cursor
And these aren’t just little flings. I’ve spent months if not years in most of these editors. However, at the end of the day I always come back to one: Sublime.
It is a beautiful piece of software. It feels like writing with one’s “good pen and good paper”, that high quality stationary sort of thing. It is just me and the code. There is something that just feels different or even tactile about Sublime. That actually leads me to ask as this is outside of my expertise: why does Sublime feel more tactile/real than other editors? When I look at the code in other editors it feels like I’m looking at a projector on a wall. When I look at the code in Sublime it feels like I’m looking at something painted on the wall. Anybody else have the same experience? What’s the psychological/software reason for that?