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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Code Collaboration
  4. Text Editor
  5. Kakoune vs Sublime Text

Kakoune vs Sublime Text

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Sublime Text
Sublime Text
Stacks33.8K
Followers27.8K
Votes4.0K
Kakoune
Kakoune
Stacks19
Followers36
Votes30
GitHub Stars10.6K
Forks751

Kakoune vs Sublime Text: What are the differences?

What is Kakoune? Vim inspired — Faster as in less keystrokes — Multiple selections — Orthogonal design. Kakoune is a code editor heavily inspired by Vim, as such most of its commands are similar to vi’s ones Kakoune can operate in two modes, normal and insertion. In insertion mode, keys are directly inserted into the current buffer. In normal mode, keys are used to manipulate the current selection and to enter insertion mode..

What is Sublime Text? A sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose. 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..

Kakoune and Sublime Text can be primarily classified as "Text Editor" tools.

Some of the features offered by Kakoune are:

  • Multiple selections as a central way of interacting
  • Powerful selection manipulation primitives
  • Powerful text manipulation primitives

On the other hand, Sublime Text provides the following key features:

  • Goto Anything
  • Multiple Selections
  • Command Palette

"Fast editing" is the top reason why over 6 developers like Kakoune, while over 698 developers mention "Lightweight" as the leading cause for choosing Sublime Text.

Kakoune is an open source tool with 4.85K GitHub stars and 354 GitHub forks. Here's a link to Kakoune's open source repository on GitHub.

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Advice on Sublime Text, Kakoune

Kamaleshwar
Kamaleshwar

Software Engineer at Dibiz Pte. Ltd.

Jul 8, 2020

Decided

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.

1.36M views1.36M
Comments
410-Ventures
410-Ventures

Nov 18, 2020

Review

PyCharm (pro)

  • great editor designed specifically for Python and python apps
  • complex (good for configurability, bad for simplicity)
  • expensive ($200 first year, $120 third year)

PyCharm (free)

  • same as above but without a REST client or support for other web development tools (which you will likely end up using)
  • ok to get your feet wet (you can always upgrade later) Full comparison: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/features/editions_comparison_matrix.html

VS Code (free)

  • Configurable "IDE" with support for most modern languages
  • TONS of simple-to-install extensions that add functionality
  • Great docs and UI

Sublime Text (free)

  • one of the most minimal editors out there
  • it just works

It's really down to personal preference. But I would recommend downloading all of the FREE editors, getting setup in each, and keeping only the ones you like.

My personal choice for web development is VS Code but I started with Pycharm (free), and use Sublime text on occasion.

Just focus on learning and developing and you will find what features you're looking for.

12.1k views12.1k
Comments
Andrey
Andrey

Managing Partner at WhiteLabelDevelopers

May 18, 2020

Decided

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

539k views539k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Sublime Text
Sublime Text
Kakoune
Kakoune

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.

Kakoune is a code editor heavily inspired by Vim, as such most of its commands are similar to vi’s ones. Kakoune can operate in two modes, normal and insertion. In insertion mode, keys are directly inserted into the current buffer. In normal mode, keys are used to manipulate the current selection and to enter insertion mode.

Goto Anything;Multiple Selections;Command Palette;Distraction Free Mode;Split Editing;Instant Project Switch;Plugin API;Customize Anything;Cross Platform
Multiple selections as a central way of interacting;Powerful selection manipulation primitives;Powerful text manipulation primitives;Client-Server architecture;Simple interaction with external programs
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
10.6K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
751
Stacks
33.8K
Stacks
19
Followers
27.8K
Followers
36
Votes
4.0K
Votes
30
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 720
    Lightweight
  • 652
    Plugins
  • 641
    Super fast
  • 468
    Great code editor
  • 442
    Cross platform
Cons
  • 8
    Steep learning curve
  • 7
    Everything
  • 4
    Number of plugins doing the same thing
  • 4
    Doesn't act like a Mac app
  • 4
    Flexibility to move file
Pros
  • 7
    Multiple selections
  • 7
    Fast editing
  • 5
    Interactivity
  • 4
    UNIX citizen
  • 4
    Consistency of the underlying language
Integrations
Linux
Linux
macOS
macOS
Windows
Windows
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Sublime Text, Kakoune?

Atom

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.

Vim

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.

Visual Studio Code

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.

Notepad++

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

Emacs

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.

Brackets

Brackets

With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, it is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser.

Neovim

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.

VSCodium

VSCodium

It is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VSCode.

TextMate

TextMate

TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.

gedit

gedit

gedit is the GNOME text editor. While aiming at simplicity and ease of use, gedit is a powerful general purpose text editor.

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