Sublime Text

Sublime Text is a commonly-used text editor used to write Python code. Sublime Text's slick user interface along with its numerous extensions for syntax highlighting, source file finding and analyzing code metrics make the editor more accessible to new programmers than some other applications like Vim and Emacs.

What makes Sublime Text awesome?

Sublime Text is often the first editor that newer programmers pick up because it works on all operating systems and it is far more approachable than Emacs, Vim or even PyCharm.

It is easy to get started in Sublime because the menus and options are accessible by using a mouse. There are no different modes to learn like Vim's normal and insert modes. The keyboard shortcuts can be learned over time rather than all at once in the case of Vim or Emacs.

Sublime Text works well for beginners as soon as they install it and then can be extended with many of the features provided by an IDE like PyCharm as a developer's skill level ramps up.

An additional bonus of using Sublime Text as a Python developer is that plugins are written in Python. Python developers can extend Sublime Text with their own programming language rather than learn a new language like Emacs' Elisp or Vim's Vimscript.

Why use any other editor if Sublime is so great?

Picking a text editor or IDE to use tends to be a weirdly personal decision for each developer. Yet it makes sense when you realize that you are going to spend hours upon hours every day in your chosen environment so why not make sure it is one that is enjoyable and highly productive?

For some folks they prefer Vim's keyboard-driven style, PyCharm's Swiss Army Knife set of Python tools or one of the many other editors with its own strengths and weaknesses.

The only "best" editor choice is to pick one that works really well for you and stick to it. Master your tool so it gets out of your way and enables as much time in programming flow as possible.

Python-specific Sublime Text resources

There are many Python-specific Sublime Text tutorials and resources because the editor is so frequently used to create Python applications. The following links should get your editor customized with linters, code metrics, syntax checking and many other integrated development environment features.

• Setting Up Sublime Text 3 for Full Stack Python Development is a spectacular tutorial that covers installing Sublime Text and configuring a multitude of helpful Python programming plugins.

• Sublime Tutor is an interactive in-editor keyboard shortcuts tutorial that plugs into Sublime so you can learn and become more productive as you use the editor.

• Using Generators for Fun and Profit - Utility for developers is not about setting up your Sublime Text environment but instead how to create your own plugins using Python. The tutorial is written by the author of a Sublime Text plugin who uses generators to implement features with Sublime's API.

• Turning Sublime Text Into a Lightweight Python IDE shows the basic settings and configuration specific to using Sublime with Python as more than just a text editor.

• Setting up Sublime Text 3 for Python Type Checking shows one way of setting up support for Python 3.6 static type checking in Sublime.

• Three steps to lint Python 3.6 in Sublime Text walks through setting up Flake8 to enforce code style guidelines and show you the errors and warnings in Sublime as you are working.

• Text editing techniques every front-end developer should know gives examples in Sublime Text of time-saving text manipulation you may not have known existed such as line bubbling, ragged line selection, AceJump and transpose. While the techniques can be used in most editors the provided video clips show how to perform each of these shortcuts in Sublime.

General Sublime Text resources

Sublime Text can be used for much more than Python development and there are many useful tutorials that are not targeted at a specific programming language which are still useful.

• Super charge your Sublime Text 3 to increase your productivity provides many shortcuts and tricks for using the editor.

• Disassembling Sublime Text uses a binary disassembler to dive into the reverse engineered source code of Sublime Text because it is not open source software.

• Sync your sublime text 3 configurations safely and easy explains how to mitigate configuration conflicts that can arise when trying to use copied files from one computer to another.

• 7 shortcuts of a highly effective Sublime Text user shows keyboard shortcuts for opening any file, going to any specific block of text, handling multiple cursors and more.

Sublime Plugin resources

Sublime Text plugins are written in Python which makes it convenient for our ecosystem to customize the editor. The following resources provide information on writing your own plugins as well as great community plugins you will want to take a look at adding to your installation.

• Sublime's documentation covers plugin basics, the API for plugins and gives a "Hello, world!"-level example that you can extend.

• Sublime Text plugin development basics has some good advice and further resources.

• The 25 Best Sublime Text Plugins for Front End Developers is not specific to Python development but there is a bunch of overlap between plugins useful for general front-end development and any Python web development project.

• 5 Awesome Sublime Plugins you Won’t Find in Top Plugin Posts covers some lesser-known plugins and how you can find your own via Package Control's trending plugins section.

What do you want to code using Sublime Text?