Sublime Text

Sublime Text is a commonly-used text editor used to write Python code. Sublime Text's slick user interface along with its numerous extensions for syntax highlighting, source file finding and analyzing code metrics make the editor more accessible to new programmers than some other applications like Vim and Emacs.

Sublime Text logo.

Sublime Text is an implementation of the text editors and IDEs concept. Learn how these parts fit together in the development environments chapter or view all topics.

What makes Sublime Text awesome?

Sublime Text is often the first editor that newer programmers pick up because it works on all operating systems and it is far more approachable than Emacs, Vim or even PyCharm.

It is easy to get started in Sublime because the menus and options are accessible by using a mouse. There are no different modes to learn like Vim's normal and insert modes. The keyboard shortcuts can be learned over time rather than all at once in the case of Vim or Emacs.

Sublime Text works well for beginners as soon as they install it and then can be extended with many of the features provided by an IDE like PyCharm as a developer's skill level ramps up.

An additional bonus of using Sublime Text as a Python developer is that plugins are written in Python. Python developers can extend Sublime Text with their own programming language rather than learn a new language like Emacs' Elisp or Vim's Vimscript.

Why use any other editor if Sublime is so great?

Picking a text editor or IDE to use tends to be a weirdly personal decision for each developer. Yet it makes sense when you realize that you are going to spend hours upon hours every day in your chosen environment so why not make sure it is one that is enjoyable and highly productive?

For some folks they prefer Vim's keyboard-driven style, PyCharm's Swiss Army Knife set of Python tools or one of the many other editors with its own strengths and weaknesses.

The only "best" editor choice is to pick one that works really well for you and stick to it. Master your tool so it gets out of your way and enables as much time in programming flow as possible.

Python-specific Sublime Text resources

There are many Python-specific Sublime Text tutorials and resources because the editor is so frequently used to create Python applications. The following links should get your editor customized with linters, code metrics, syntax checking and many other integrated development environment features.

General Sublime Text resources

Sublime Text can be used for much more than Python development and there are many useful tutorials that are not targeted at a specific programming language which are still useful.

Sublime Plugin resources

Sublime Text plugins are written in Python which makes it convenient for our ecosystem to customize the editor. The following resources provide information on writing your own plugins as well as great community plugins you will want to take a look at adding to your installation.

What do you want to code using Sublime Text?

I want to know about working with data in Python.

I want to learn how to code a Python web application using a framework.

I've built a Python web app, now how do I deploy it?


Matt Makai 2012-2022