Ctrl + K

General Discussion

Ctrl + K

MattKC (phpBB)

(@phpbb_2:legoisland.org)

6/16/2026, 7:27:17 AM
I should preface this by saying in many ways I feel like I shouldn't be using the IDEs that I use lol, but I haven't really found any suitable or compelling alternatives yet.

For C++, which is most of what I write, I use Qt Creator. I like it's C++ specific features, like its code completion, built-in CMake/Ninja integration, and the ability to autogenerate classes, functions, etc. It can be a little buggy at times though, and it seems like every update either slows something down or introduces a new bug/crash (though usually only temporarily, to be fair).

For everything else I use Sublime Text, whether it's web development, writing simple scripts, or just editing text files. I like how fast and light it is, seems like every other modern code editor is written in Electron and takes ages to open, which is annoying when I may just want to open a text file. As a code editor, I think Sublime's usability is generally superior to Qt Creator, however it doesn't really fulfill the purpose of an IDE, at least not without a lot of extensions. To get building/running working it seems I have to set up the steps manually because there's no built-in CMake integration. There are some Clang-based extensions that add some nice things like code completion, but I haven't found a great extension for auto-generating classes/functions. If I did, I might consider switching to Sublime for everything.

That being said, I'm not a huge fan of how Sublime isn't FOSS. I know that FOSS is a lot harder to monetize (and I do believe developers should get paid for their work), but I feel a lot more comfortable using software that isn't closed source when I can (especially on Linux, I don't like how you have to add a whole additional package manager repository just for Sublime because only they can distribute their proprietary binaries). There was briefly an open source clone of Sublime being written called Lime, but it's so dead it's official website is now a scam page packed with ads.

So that's what I use now, but I'm very much open to finding alternatives lol
I should preface this by saying in many ways I feel like I shouldn't be using the IDEs that I use lol, but I haven't really found any suitable or compelling alternatives yet.