1. The configuration time for stuff like this in ST2 is comparable with IntelliJ.

2. IntelliJ costs more.

3. IntelliJ is simply better for Java than ST2 (more significant time-saving professional features), but not necessarily so for other languages (it becomes less clear cut with languages like ruby).

4. ST2 replaces your standard text editor, IntelliJ doesn't.

It is hard to pin down the author's bias, or yours, without understanding what kind of development the author has done. I look at this as more of a Text Mate 2 vs Sublime Text 2 post.

Thanks for explaining this, b/c editors I use (albeit inside IDEs) all do what the OP is drooling about. I figured he had to be comparing Sub 2 with some other editor that he doesn't specify.

Ignoring what other users have said (bloat, speed, noise, etc), I find that my code in an editor like ST2/TextMate/VIM ends up being substantially better and more maintainable than code written in a full-blow IDE. The full-blow IDE may mask code smell by making it easy to push on when things get ugly.

For a trivial example, if you can't remember the name of some function you wrote in another module, it may be the case that the function was poorly named or the code you are currently writing is trying to do too many things. In an full-blown IDE, it doesn't feel wrong; in a simple text editor, it actually hurts. (Yes, ST2 has autocomplete, but IIRC, it's based on a tokenizer, not a parser. In either case, I operate with it disabled.)

IMHO, it's a trade-off. It requires marginally more mental effort to compose code without the features of a full-blown IDE. This marginal increase in effort may slow me down considerably in the beginning to middle parts of a project compared to someone using a full-blown IDE; however, by the time I "catch up," my code will probably be more conducive to safe expansion and maintenance, and for all but trivial projects, that's the majority of development time.

I find that with a good IDE I can regard every name as a temporary name till I feel I clearly know what the best name would be.

A bit like a sketcher could draw a few lines and see where that leads.

That's less a property of IDEs than a side-effect of working with extremely static languages that are amenable to that kind of global-rename analysis.

I tried switching from vim to PyCharm about a year ago. I found it incredibly slow.

With vim or ST2, I do my work and don't think about the editor keeping up. With PyCharm, my typing could briefly outrun the editor. The editor would catchup, but it was just distracting.

I don't think the IDE gave me any features that justified this distraction.

Not everyone is coding Java. Not to mention, we're talking about a general-use text editor for all sorts of text files.

I never really used IDE like IntelliJ or RubyMine. But I always feel they are too bloated. Maybe just different use case.

I can use IntelliJ for anything from Python to Ruby to Java to Go to Haskell.

Sure it takes a little longer to start up than a no-plugin Emacs or Sublime Text, but it also does a lot more and I don't have to fiddle with it to make it work.

The Go and Haskell support is better in ST2 than in IntelliJ. For Python and Ruby, it depends. IntelliJ is unquestionably better for Java, though.

Also, consider that ST2 is in its infancy and how developed its language support already is (see SublimeClang, for example). As ST2 becomes more popular, it might compete with the most developed IDEs.

And it will also become slow and bloated and people will move on to the next fast, lean editor that only needs feature x & y.

Wash & repeat ad infinitum.

I think that's unlikely. ST2 is already exceptionally fast and complete as an editor. As an IDE, ST2 requires plugins. These plugins are written in Python (which can use libs written in C) as opposed to vimscript or elisp. Moreover, these plugins aren't required for editing text files (or having SublimeClang isn't going to significantly slow down editing python files).

Vim and Emacs kill that argument. Neither is slow, and both are older than dirt in computer years. Sublime Text may continue the march without becoming super slow as well. I'm sure a Java-focused IDE could be fast and excellent, but that's not their focus.

I'm only using ST2 because TM2 took forever to release and even the the alpha wasn't compelling.

So I'm much more worried about developer fatigue than bloat in my editor choice.

Yes, but I think many wouldn’t want to have all the other features a full-blown IDE offers.

While ST2 requires configuration to add the bare-necessities people would take for granted from an IDE, if you went with the latter you still have to do configuration to pair things down to the most minimal-environment you’re comfortable with.

I liked using IntelliJ IDEA for Java development. However the reasons I now use Komodo Edit and ST2 over PyCharm/IDEA for Python are: IntelliJ has slower startup times, does certain things slower, takes up a lot of memory, does not look as nice. I do not need most of the functionality it provides and prefer having something snappier.

Sublime is wicked fast. IntelliJ, Eclipse and NetBeans are all incredibly slow and bloated.

Also, it has a modern architecture with useful, up-to-date plugins, not plugins written in 2004.

>I read feature lists of editors like this and wonder why people just don't use a good IDE like IntelliJ. It does everything in this list and a lot more with minimal configuration.

Because we don't want a slow, Java based IDE, that goes over the uncanny valley in all platforms.

I do use Eclipse, which is not much better than IntelliJ, for Java editing. But I wouldn't bother with it for JS/PHP/Python/Ruby etc...

And to those of us that use it, it's obvious that you never have. Not trying to be dismissive, but I stand by that comment.

Ugh, it's painful to read this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4247386 So much ignorant bias. Just try it. You don't know what you're talking about.

I've used ST2 quite a bit. It's a nice editor but I really don't see the point.