Go to You can use any web browser on Mac or Windows to download Sublime. Click the appropriate link. If you're using a Windows computer, click the Windows download link (the file downloads. Open the downloaded file. Windows users will follow the. Sublime Text 3 is the current version of Sublime Text. Mac: Added Notarization. Context menus no longer cause the editor control to be focused when closed.

You’ll already be familiar with a text editor if you’ve taken any Codecademy courses. Below is the Codecademy text editor in full screen at the end of the first module of the HTML course.

While Codecademy’s learning environment provides an intuitive and user-friending coding experience, sometimes you’ll need to use your own text editor. For example, if you decide to attend a Meetup or in-person coding course, they will use a downloadable text editor, and you’ll need to install this to work on projects both in class and at home.

I’ve dabbled with a few text editors to get a better feel for what suits my needs best. This is crucial as there is no “best” text editor out there, only the one that you allows you to create your best work.

In this article, I'll provide an in-depth comparison of two of the most popular text editors: Visual Studio and Sublime Text.

Visual Studio

Visual Studio (the text editor is known as Visual Studio Code so we’ll refer to that from now on) is Microsoft’s free text editor that runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. It’s a recent entrant to the market; Microsoft released the product as a public preview at the end of 2015, posting the open source code to Github, before making it available as a general release in April 2016.

Despite its newbie status, Visual Studio Code has rapidly gained popularity among developers, ranking as the most popular development environment overall in Stack Overflow’s 2018 Developer Survey.

The basics

This is what Visual Studio Code’s home screen looks like when you write your first line of code or open a file that you have already created:

In the top left panel, you can see the different variations of code you are editing. In this case, I’m editing a file called “style.css.'

The middle panel is where you edit the code you have written or need to fix; you can open and edit several different files side-by-side.

The Visual Studio layout bears a similarity to Codecademy’s own text editor layout in its simplicity and ease of use. Take a look at Codecademy’s text editor below for a comparison.

You can, of course, edit the layout as well. Zen Mode is one of my favorites, especially because it sounds so relaxing. In reality, this is a full screen mode that allows you to edit code with no distractions.

More Features

Visual Studio Code allows you to edit code in a wide variety of programming languages. The example I used above is CSS (yes, I am classifying CSS as a coding language!). CSS is one of the built in programming languages, but you can install and configure other languages, such as Python and C#, via the Extension Marketplace.

Debugging

One of the classic exercises you’ll do when learning to program is to “break” some code and then try to fix it again. In my early days of programming, I spent ages staring at lines of code until my eyes went blurry, trying to work out why what I’d written wasn’t reflected in the final product.

Thankfully, Visual Studio Code includes debugging functionality to help detect those errors before you reach the blurry-eye stage. To start debugging your code, all you need to do is either press F5 to run it in your current window, or go to the “Debug” menu.

You can also create “breakpoints”, which are points where the debugging process will automatically stop.

On a more basic debugging level, Visual Studio Code automatically detects minor problems in your code, and takes you directly there so you can solve the problem easily.

Intellisense

When I was learning to code, one of the tips the teacher gave us when we don’t know how to do something was to Google it. Microsoft has built a feature in Visual Studio Code called Intellisense, which is an alternative to Googling the problem (or “Bing-ing” it, in Microsoft’s case).

IntelliSense analyzes the semantics (letters) of what you are inputting, as well as the rest of the code you have created, and then provides suggestions on how to finish what you are writing. You can access a whole host of different completions through Intellisense, including language server suggestions, snippets, and word-based textual completions.

IntelliSense is available for the most common programming languages, including HTML, CSS, and Javascript, but for other languages, you’ll need to install an extension.

And the rest

Free Sublime Text Editor

Visual Studio Code has a number of other useful features that will help you through your coding journey by helping you better visualize your code and speed up your programming. This includes:

Support for snippets: This allows you to create a catalog of small parts of reusable code, which you can insert into larger bodies of code
“Go to” functionality: This allows you to quickly find and go to symbols, files, lines, and definitions
Syntax highlighting: This displays code in different colors and fonts in accordance with the kind of coding language being used.

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Overall impression

Confession time: I’m a long-time Windows/Microsoft Office user. Part of the reason for this (uncool) decision is that I find Microsoft products familiar and easy to navigate. The same goes for Visual Studio Code.

Even if you’re new to text editors, VS Code is easy to pick up and get using straightaway. It has a Microsoft look and feel to it, and it has two layers to it that make it ideal for any type of user.

If you’re a novice coder, it’s easy to work out the basic commands (plus Microsoft has written loads of documentation for it), but if you’re an expert user looking to do some serious programming, there are plenty of advanced features options there too.

Sublime Text (Version 3)

Sublime Text, which was developed by a former Google engineer, has been around since 2007. The first major difference between it and Visual Studio Code (VSC) is that it has a license fee of $80, although it does have a free trial version. Just like VSC, it runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and is the fourth most popular development environment in 2018 according to StackOverflow.

The latest version of Sublime Text—Version 3—was in beta for more than four years, from January 2013 until it was released to the public in September 2017.

The basics

When you open Sublime Text for the first time, you get a stripped back text editor. There is no sidebar, no options to search, no option to take you directly to the extension sidebar. It provides a more focused layout to help you concentrate on coding. There is a small minimap in the top right corner to give you an at-a-glance view of your code.

It opened pretty quickly compared to Visual Studio Code and, if you’re ready to get down to editing code, it provides the perfect start point. However, if you’re new to text editors, the other features and functionality are harder to find. Most of what you need is in the menus at the top, but you’ll also want to call up the Command Palette (more on that below) from the Tools menu to more quickly get to what you need.

Sublime Text Features

If you want to get the most out of Sublime Text, you’ll want to install extra plugins to give you the extra functionality. To do that, you need to install Package Control, which we’ll walk you through below.

Package Control

Package Control is similar to Visual Studio’s extension marketplace, but it isn’t available out-of-the-box. There are a lot of packages (or plugins) available for people who are new to programming, such as a starter package for C++, a package that will help with Python completions (a bit like Intellisense in Visual Studio), and Emmet, which helps you write HTML and CSS faster by allowing you to use abbreviations, which it automatically expands.

Command Palette

When you use the Command Palette feature, you’ll be able to find and navigate your way to any command much quicker than if you have to go searching through menus for it. You can access pretty much anything, and the Command Palette will also autofill for you, so if you’re not sure what you’re looking for exactly, it’ll suggest some options.

For example, if you are working on a project and you need to quickly add a new folder, or s

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