Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Emacs vs Sublime Text vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?
# Introduction
### Key Differences Between Emacs, Sublime Text, and Visual Studio Code
1. **Customization**: Emacs is highly customizable through Lisp programming, allowing users to tailor the editor to their specific needs. Sublime Text provides a wide range of customization options through settings and plugins, but it's not as flexible as Emacs. Visual Studio Code also offers extensive customization through extensions, making it more user-friendly for those who prefer a GUI-based approach.
2. **Performance**: Emacs tends to be lighter on system resources compared to Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code, making it a preferred choice for users looking for a fast and efficient text editor. Sublime Text is known for its fast performance and responsiveness, making it suitable for large projects. Visual Studio Code, while resource-intensive, provides a smooth and stable performance, especially when working on web development projects.
3. **Community Support**: Emacs has a dedicated community of users who contribute to its development, providing a wide range of resources and support. Sublime Text also has an active community that creates plugins and themes, but it may not be as extensive as Emacs. Visual Studio Code has a large and vibrant community that constantly releases new extensions, updates, and helpful tips for users.
4. **Features**: Emacs is known for its powerful text-editing features, such as macros, keyboard shortcuts, and integration with other tools. Sublime Text offers a rich set of features like multiple cursors, distraction-free mode, and a command palette for quick access to functionality. Visual Studio Code excels in language support, debugging tools, and IntelliSense, making it a versatile choice for developers working on various programming languages.
5. **Cost**: Emacs is free and open-source, making it accessible to all users without any cost barriers. Sublime Text offers a free version with limited functionality, but a license must be purchased for full access. Visual Studio Code is free to use and offers a range of features for developers at no cost, making it a popular choice among programmers.
6. **Cross-Platform Compatibility**: Emacs, Sublime Text, and Visual Studio Code are all available on multiple operating systems, such as Windows, macOS, and Linux, ensuring that users can seamlessly transition between different platforms without any compatibility issues.
In Summary, the key differences between Emacs, Sublime Text, and Visual Studio Code lie in customization, performance, community support, features, cost, and cross-platform compatibility, offering users a variety of options based on their specific needs and preferences.
Decisions about Emacs, Sublime Text, and Visual Studio Code
Samriddhi Sinha
Machine Learning Engineer at Chefling · | 6 upvotes · 974.8K views
Lightweight and versatile. Huge library of extensions that enable you to integrate a host of services to your development environment. VS Code's biggest strength is its library of extensions which enables it to directly compete with every single major IDE for almost all major programming languages.
Kamaleshwar BN
Senior Software Engineer at Pulley · | 12 upvotes · 1.3M views
Visual Studio Code became famous over the past 3+ years I believe. The clean UI, easy to use UX and the plethora of integrations made it a very easy decision for us. Our gripe with Sublime was probably only the UX side. VSCode has not failed us till now, and still is able to support our development env without any significant effort.
Goland being paid, as well as built only for Go seemed like a significant limitation to not consider it.
Andrey Ginger
Managing Partner at WhiteLabelDevelopers · | 3 upvotes · 495.2K views
Since communication with Github is not necessary, the Atom is less convenient in working with text and code. Sublim's support and understanding of projects is best for us. Notepad for us is a completely outdated solution with an unacceptable interface. We use a good theme for Sublim ayu-dark
Simon Ibssa
Student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo · | 2 upvotes · 1.2M views
I decided to choose VSCode over Sublime text for my Systems Programming class in C. What I love about VSCode is its awesome ability to add extensions. Intellisense is a beautiful debugger, and Remote SSH allows me to login and make real-time changes in VSCode to files on my university server. This is an awesome alternative to going back and forth on pushing/pulling code and logging into servers in the terminal. Great choice for anyone interested in C programming!
Get Advice from developers at your company using StackShare Enterprise. Sign up for StackShare Enterprise.
Learn MorePros of Emacs
Pros of Sublime Text
Pros of Visual Studio Code
Pros of Emacs
- Vast array of extensions65
- Have all you can imagine44
- Everything i need in one place40
- Portability39
- Customer config32
- Your config works on any platform16
- Low memory consumption13
- Perfect for monsters11
- All life inside one program10
- Extendable, portable, fast - all at your fingertips8
- Enables extremely rapid keyboard-only navigation6
- Widely-used keybindings (e.g. by bash)5
- Extensible in Lisp5
- Runs everywhere important5
- FOSS Software4
- Powerful multilanguage IDE4
- Git integration4
- May be old but always reliable4
- Asynchronous3
- Powerful UI3
- Huge ecosystem1
Pros of Sublime Text
- Lightweight720
- Plugins652
- Super fast641
- Great code editor468
- Cross platform442
- Nice UI280
- Unlimited trial260
- Cmd + d is the best command ever153
- Great community92
- Package control, modules46
- Mac OS X support26
- Easy to get started with23
- Monokai22
- Everything you need without the bloat21
- Built in Python21
- Easy18
- Speed14
- Session & edit resuming12
- Package Control10
- Well Designed9
- Multiple selections8
- ALT + CMD + DOWN is the best command ever7
- Nice7
- Fast, simple and lightweight7
- It's easy to use, beautiful, simple, and plugins rule5
- So futuristic and convenient5
- ALT + F3 the best command ever5
- Great5
- Find anything fast within entire project4
- Easy to use4
- Free4
- Simple and clean design4
- Hackable3
- Pretty3
- UI + plugins3
- Sublime Merge (Git Integration)3
- Totally customizable2
- Color schemes and cmd+d2
- Material theme best theme forever2
- Const0
Pros of Visual Studio Code
- Powerful multilanguage IDE340
- Fast308
- Front-end develop out of the box193
- Support TypeScript IntelliSense158
- Very basic but free142
- Git integration126
- Intellisense106
- Faster than Atom78
- Better ui, easy plugins, and nice git integration53
- Great Refactoring Tools45
- Good Plugins44
- Terminal42
- Superb markdown support38
- Open Source36
- Extensions34
- Large & up-to-date extension community26
- Awesome UI26
- Powerful and fast24
- Portable22
- Best editor18
- Best code editor18
- Easy to get started with17
- Lots of extensions15
- Built on Electron15
- Crossplatform15
- Good for begginers15
- Extensions for everything14
- Open, cross-platform, fast, monthly updates14
- All Languages Support14
- Easy to use and learn13
- Extensible12
- "fast, stable & easy to use"12
- Totally customizable11
- Git out of the box11
- Faster edit for slow computer11
- Ui design is great11
- Useful for begginer11
- Great community10
- SSH support10
- Fast Startup10
- It has terminal and there are lots of shortcuts in it9
- Powerful Debugger9
- Great language support9
- Works With Almost EveryThing You Need9
- Python extension is fast8
- Can compile and run .py files8
- Great document formater7
- Features rich7
- He is not Michael6
- Awesome multi cursor support6
- Extension Echosystem6
- She is not Rachel6
- Language server client5
- Easy azure5
- SFTP Workspace5
- VSCode.pro Course makes it easy to learn5
- Very proffesional5
- Supports lots of operating systems4
- Has better support and more extentions for debugging4
- Excellent as git difftool and mergetool4
- Virtualenv integration4
- Has more than enough languages for any developer3
- Better autocompletes than Atom3
- Emmet preinstalled3
- 'batteries included'3
- More tools to integrate with vs3
- VS Code Server: Browser version of VS Code2
- Big extension marketplace2
- Customizable2
- Microsoft2
- Light2
- Fast and ruby is built right in2
- CMake support with autocomplete2
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Emacs
Cons of Sublime Text
Cons of Visual Studio Code
Cons of Emacs
- So good and extensible, that one can get sidetracked4
- Hard to learn for beginners4
- Not default preinstalled in GNU/linux1
Cons of Sublime Text
- Steep learning curve8
- Everything6
- Flexibility to move file4
- Number of plugins doing the same thing4
- Doesn't act like a Mac app4
- Not open sourced3
- Don't have flutter integration2
- Forces you to buy license2
Cons of Visual Studio Code
- Slow startup46
- Resource hog at times29
- Poor refactoring20
- Poor UI Designer13
- Weak Ui design tools11
- Poor autocomplete10
- Super Slow8
- Huge cpu usage with few installed extension8
- Microsoft sends telemetry data8
- Poor in PHP7
- It's MicroSoft6
- Poor in Python3
- No Built in Browser Preview3
- No color Intergrator3
- Very basic for java development and buggy at times3
- No built in live Preview3
- Electron3
- Bad Plugin Architecture2
- Powered by Electron2
- Terminal does not identify path vars sometimes1
- Slow C++ Language Server1
Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions
- No public GitHub repository available -
- No public GitHub repository available -
What is Emacs?
GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.
What is Sublime Text?
Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses.
Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.
What is Visual Studio Code?
Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.
Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
What companies use Emacs?
What companies use Sublime Text?
What companies use Visual Studio Code?
What companies use Visual Studio Code?
Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions
What tools integrate with Emacs?
What tools integrate with Sublime Text?
What tools integrate with Visual Studio Code?
What tools integrate with Emacs?
Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions
What are some alternatives to Emacs, Sublime Text, and Visual Studio Code?
Atom
At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.
Eclipse
Standard Eclipse package suited for Java and plug-in development plus adding new plugins; already includes Git, Marketplace Client, source code and developer documentation.
Click here to file a bug against Eclipse Platform.
Vim
Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.
Spacemacs
Since version 0.101.0 and later Spacemacs totally abolishes the frontiers between Vim and Emacs. The user can now choose his/her preferred editing style and enjoy all the Spacemacs features.
Even better, it is possible to dynamically switch between the two styles seamlessly which makes it possible for programmers with different styles to do seat pair programming using the same editor.
Neovim
Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: simplify maintenance and encourage contributions, split the work between multiple developers, enable the implementation of new/modern user interfaces without any modifications to the core source, and improve extensibility with a new plugin architecture.