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Comment by steverandy | Hacker News Reader

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

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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).

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.

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.

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