Lab 3 - Mastering your Code Editor: Sublime Text 3 and Atom

Note to reader: For this lab we were tasked with working with 2 different editors. I chose Sublime Text 3 as something that I have but don't use too often and Atom, an editor I never used before. Feel free to download both as they are great editors, and feel free to take them for a spin if what you are about to read interests you!

Test Driving


I began by downloading the source to the Best Resume Ever. After quickly unzipping what I had downloaded, I saw these folders and files:


We were tasked with trying out two editors and performing common tasks among them, to ultimately decide which one we prefer. Below you can see the project opened in Sublime (something done very easily, by simply going to File > Open Folder):



I did the same in Atom (File > Open Folder):


After performing some of the common tasks outlined in the lab (splitting the screen, finding strings, etc) I decided to pick Atom, since as I mentioned earlier, this editor was new to me. I quite liked its look and feel as well. You can find the downloadable link to it up below.


Atom as soon as you open it provides a welcoming guide on its landing page, which allows you to do many of the things you'd want right from the get-go. Such as integrating your Git/Github, installing a package, choosing a theme, editing your preferences, amongst others.

Atom comes packed with a plethora of keybindings, which one can search and edit:


And the same can be said about the packages. These can be installed, and customized as needed. Very helpful is also the fact that each package includes a readme section, which allows you to read more on what this particular package does:


Cool Extensions/Add-ons

This is of course where things get fun. Atom is very versatile and allows you to customize it however you want. A lot of the things asked by the professor for this lab are actually already installed by default in Atom! Take a look:



 However here's some more extensions I picked:

Themes

Making the editor your own means changing how it looks. You can see below how one quick click in the settings after downloading the package can change the whole outlook of this editor:



TODO-show

Very useful for someone like me, who leaves comments everywhere. This allows you to write specific "to do" comments that will then be picked up by this extension. You can see bellow I added a few comments to the code, which I don't need to Ctrl-f to find, TODO-show does it for me.



Minimap

Also pretty useful, provides you a preview of your full source code on the right hand side of your view:



Highlight Selected

This one is simple but can be pretty useful, since it highlights keywords in your view at a doublle click much like Sublime. Much better than having to look for the keyword you want :



Atom-beautify

Pretty self explanatory. This tool "beautifies" your code making it more readable:




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