I never really liked editors on linux. vi was my nemesis when it came to editing on command line. I would never voluntarily work with it. Thats a promise I made to myself and abide by it. The cumbersomeness of vi was taken away by nano. I have come to like its features. Its comfortable to work with and doesnt make file editing a daunting task for me atleast.
With the need for better sophisticated editors, more applications started making their presence felt on the linux platform. Of these Sublime Text has really caught my attention. It is a powerful editor with built in support for several languages, which makes it very easy to use as a programming editor on linux. It isnt a fullblown IDE, but salient features like language syntax support, managing folders as projects and defining build systems as per the language you are working with makes it easy to use. It also has a mini map feature on the right side which is a birds eye view of the document that you are working with. Quick mouse clicks can take you to the relevant section that you want to edit, making it easy to handle lengthy config files, huge code etc.
I played around with language support for Python and Java for a while. I could open my earlier maven project with Sublime and work with the files as a regular IDE. The java syntax coloring helps. It also has code assist features which helps add template code for java classes, functions, loops etc making editing a breeze. It can also compile classes for you using the build option.
I could also run some sample Python code using the build defined in the menu options. Pressing Ctrl + B to invoke the build, immediately executes the code in current file and the output is shown in the pane below. It makes it easy to identify code errors, fix them and see how your code behaves.
With things I have seen so far, I think I am hooked to Sublime. Not to mention great degree of customization thanks to the themes developed by people for Sublime Text. Color Sublime has a huge list of themes, which change the appearance of Sublime and make work more fun.
And just to demonstrate use of Sublime, this blog was written in it. Gives a nice minimal interface to work with and focus on only the editing work at hand. It also has a full screen mode which takes away all unnecessary distractions from your sight. So you work only on what matters. Sublime is really gem of an editor.
It is not free though, continued use of Sublime will require you to purchase a license. It occasioanlly nags about it and asks user to buy. But there is currently no limit to evaluating the editor and you can ignore the warning for a while. Though it would make sense to buy if you plan to use Sublime for all the editing needs.
Leisure Linux 