Writing a blog post is hard, because you need to prevent the gravity of laziness. This time I want to talk about why I move to SublimeText 2?
OK, the simple reason is everyone move to SublimeText 2. You will see almost every developer at Backbone.js conference using SublimeText 2 to do live coding demo. That’s cool, just because those speaker is cool. OK, cooler thing is half of developers at that conference is using SublimeText 2 (BTW: there is a developer using Windows). I was using TextMate 2 alpha when I was at that conference.
Why I’m not moving? Since I’m not a hipster, I ask reason for a move. The de-facto editor of choice is TextMate if you develop on a Mac. Used to be. But the developer abandon users, and it’s a typical vapoware. That’s sad. So smart people go to try alternatives, and smart people change their muscle memory quickly. But I’m a slow guy, I was hijacked by the bundles and themes and all muscle memory. But I do ask my colleague and developer friends which alternative editor they are using. But unforturnately there are no reason move my mind (gravity of laziness).
So, why I need a reason? Since the most dangrous thing is lost your introspect abbility. We call something science. But the sarcasm aspect is there is theory said there is no truth but only explanation. An explanation is a saying (theory) describing what’s beneath the truth, and we will using our sensation to test (or set a lab to prove it, test it) it. If that explanation match the fact we sensated, then we call it science. So this is a process of proving a explanation is close to fact or truth. This process is all about asking why on something even you know how or what (a defination, or explanation). Forget asking why means lost mind. Zen has some practice on observing the detail of feeling and thinking, for me that is keep asking why, know why on details. So sounds like this approach is close to science.
Until my colleague point this on that conference. He said “SublimeText is blazing fast, see how smooth it is to open and preview source codes…”. Then I realize I got a reason in that moment. TextMate is slow now. Actually TextMate 2 got slower than TextMate I feel. Since TextMate 2 solve the Chinese character display issue, so I found it’s better than TextMate 1.5, that missing feature is the worst one I had. So feature shouldn’t be reason for moving SublimeText 2. I don’t use split panes regularly, use json as preference is not attractive …
But let’s back to a perquisite question on editor war. Why we want to use editor over IDE? Since IDE is fat, bloated, vendor locked, slow. Since IDE is not (simple, small, flexible), but every developer love (simple, small, flexible). Jeremy Ashkanas said (simple, small, flexible) are traits of Backbone.js library. So, text editor is (simple, small, flexible), that’s a reason I’ll buy. So when my colleague told me how fast is SublimeText 2, I was moved.
The main reason of writing this post is not tell some hipster I was allied. I’m asking myself why, and ask you to ask yourself why. Recently I read a book called The Shape of Design, that’s a good book indeed. It use a metaphor of mockingbird, so that bird learn some sounds and song, but it never know why mocking like that. Only know how and what is dangrous, keep searching why is vital. That’s a why of being interest driven, or at least make sure you are driving by something you know. So you know why of each details, you know how to explain to other people. And you knwo why you are wrong, since every piece of change will notify you do a full introspection again. This helps, let you thinking independently, since you know why. Hope you always know why, I know that’s totally impossible, we never know the truth.