
Sublime Text Development Status  - davidbarker
http://sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16517
======
Derbasti
There have always been three text editors: Vim, Emacs, and the closed source
Mac editor de jour. I used to think that if only that closed source editor
would go open source, it could enter that timeless transcendance of Emacs and
Vim.

But now Textmate _is_ open source, and now there is Atom, I am not so sure any
more. Neither Textmate nor Sublime Text, nor Atom seem to be able to stand up
to the two old ones in term of development community and community
involvement.

Maybe it is a question of novelty. Vim still has unmatched key bindings. Emacs
atill has unmatched total flexibility. Textmate had snippets (which now
everyone has), Sublime Text has multiple cursors (which is maybe not a big
enough improvements over macros to matter). Light Table seemed interesting,
but probably too narrow in scope. My hope is that Atom's openness will finally
allow it to transcend its brethren. But I don't see a compelling reason for
that yet.

~~~
epsylon
The true killer feature of Sublime Text is the fact that it runs _flawlessly_
on the 3 major platforms (Windows, OS X, Linux).

I know people will scream that Emacs (and vim) have windows ports, but they
are utter crap compared to running them under a Unix. I can tell that from
experience. Emacs on Windows is unbearably slow: it took 10 times as much to
start as on the same host, same SSD, when it is run under a Linux VM! It also
relies heavily on standard Unix tools (wget, grep, ...), whose ports for
Windows are extremely outdated to the point that they are unusable (Emacs 24's
find in file relies on features not provided by the standard non-CYGWIN grep).
There only solution is to use CYGWIN, which is a mess: it's extremely slow,
behaves weirdly (wrt path names, notably), and it doesn't play well if you
already have a standard MSYSGit installation for your git needs. (I have tried
using Emacs at least 4 times already, and I have never managed to stick to it,
for these kind of reasons.)

I love ST. It boots fast, is gorgeous, modern (unlike Emacs, you can have your
cursor outside the region you are viewing!), trivial to configure (with auto-
reload of config files), has sane defaults and great support for most
languages out of the box, it has a great community, and a nice language choice
for moddability. It might have been born has an OS X _éditeur du jour_ , but
I'd say it's more of a blessing for Windows developers where good, modern
editors are rare.

~~~
Corrado
This is one of the many things I love about ST. I create in both Linux & OS X
and ST just works wonderfully. I've never worked with a cross platform program
that works as well as ST; everything from the keyboard shortcuts, to the look
and feel of the GUI is a thing of beauty.

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ben336
Better title: Sublime Text is still alive.

The synopsis seems to be that development is continuing, there are long term
plans, but that development is slow and will probably continue that way at
least until 3 is released (which there is no date given for).

So basically nothing has changed :)

[Edit: Title fixed to be less link-baity. Thanks!]

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bsimpson
"in the works" is a bit premature. Isn't 3 still a beta?

The race for 2020 President of the US is in the works too, if your bar is
"someone is thinking about it what it might be like."

[original title was "Sublime Text 4 In The Works"]

~~~
sickmate
To be fair, ST3 is pretty stable for everyday use.

~~~
Dolimiter
It is, I've used it since release on a permanent basis with no problems.

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politician
As a paying customer of ST2, "meh". ST3 was not a compelling upgrade, and,
IMHO it's about time Jon open-sources this editor. A significant amount of its
value is in the extensibility system and package discovery is basically owned
by Package Control.

This is a community project, stop being a bottleneck.

~~~
jamesaguilar
What's in it for him? Likely loss of his primary revenue stream and control
over the project's destiny? It doesn't seem like a compelling move.

~~~
rolandnsharp
I'd like to see a Kickstarter for it to be released to open source.

~~~
jiggy2011
Trading a continual long term revenue source for a single one off payment,
probably isn't very compelling.

~~~
nikatwork
The risk being that a slow development pace will allow Atom to eat ST's lunch.
Then any future revenue falls off a cliff.

Use Kickstarter to open source it and you both cash in and do the community a
favour.

~~~
jiggy2011
Last I tried Atom it's quite a long way from offering any significant
advantage over ST and has it's own risks due to not having a clear revenue
model. If the ST devs believe that they can sell 100K licenses over say 5-10
years at $60 each then that sets the kickstarter goal in the region of $6M
without offering any rewards for backers which seems like a pretty unrealistic
target.

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thejosh
Hang on, they have a single developer who is also the director? Yet they sell
the IDE for a hefty sum with a healthy amount of "known" users
[https://sublime.wbond.net/stats](https://sublime.wbond.net/stats) \- if they
even have 10% of these are paying customers they should be able to afford more
staff.

Sublime must be the most mismanaged profitable company.

~~~
ben336
They don't enforce paying for the editor. Those users may or may not be
actually paying. You're right that it does seem like they could afford more
staff. But its also pretty clear the guy who created it wants to write code
and not deal with the other parts of being a "company" (see lack of public
responses/updates). He created it, so he can market it/develop it as he sees
fit.

I admire what he's done, and respect his choice if he's really not expanding
because he likes to code and doesn't want to deal with running a business. But
I also now use Vim because I didn't trust Sublime's future.

~~~
codexon
I tried it and there was a pop up box every few minutes.

It is unusable without a license.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I use it full-time without a license and only get it twice or thrice a day at
best (and the esc key is quickly hit); 'unusable' is a bit harsh.

~~~
codexon
Well I saw it pop up twice within a matter of minutes.

Popups cause a huge break in my concentration especially when I am coding so
it is unusable to me.

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dj-wonk
Is it just me, or did the title cause anyone else to wonder if this was real
or a parody of TextMate 2?

~~~
holyjaw
Just you.

~~~
dj-wonk
The previous title was changed, mercifully.

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jbergstroem
I think the biggest problem with information from the Sublime office is that
it's "just words". My take on this situation is that perceived activity were
driven by software updates and presence in the forums. Both stopped a fair
while ago (well, one release the last 6 months:
[http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev](http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev)).

The forums unfortunately also deteriorated to bickering between the "you're
paying for future promises" and "you payed for a working editor up to date".
Why people bicker at all is beyond me, but I guess both camps has enough
opinion to engage.

All in all, Sublime Text is excellent software – just as TextMate was (is, if
you prefer) – before the business of "one man bands" most likely removed fun
from the equation.

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farawayea
Sublime Text's support is horrible and so is the developer's policy regarding
updates.

They're not going to get any more money from me.

~~~
Dolimiter
It baffles me why the ST company don't communicate better. I'm a huge
supporter of Sublime Text because it enables me to be hugely more productive.
Everyone I know who uses it can never go back.

BUT! It's run as if it was a hobby project coded in mom's basement. He surely
must be earning enough money to get more people on board.

~~~
farawayea
They haven't responded to emails sent more than one year ago.

I don't think it will survive after Atom becomes popular and stable.

He had a lot of customers at some point. That's when he should have brought in
more people to do things right. He chose to do it all on his own, get himself
burnt out and completely stop communicating.

I don't see a future for this project if it doesn't get open sourced. The main
problem is there's absolutely no support once he releases a stable ST version.
You never have anything stable they support.

------
desireco42
I use to mock textmate users over the very same thing. Yet I never felt
Sublime is as closed and distant as TM. So I like it and use it, paid for it,
totally worth it, however it seems it is going the way of TextMate.

Which makes me worry I will have to continue to use Vim for next decade. Vim
is great, but we need to find something better.

I think, if I were author, I would try to find a way to incorporate what makes
editors like Vim awesome, what makes Emacs awesome is already implemented
several times. This other part is still elusive and could benefit innovation.

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zyxley
Honestly, at this point the only things actually keeping me using ST over Atom
are (1) the SFTP plugin, (2) per-project settings, and (3) click-and-drag
multiple cursors... and Atom plugins have already started making headway on 1
and 2.

~~~
Dolimiter
Atom is too slow to be useable in real world projects. It's fine for hobby
coding a few files. But try opening anything larger: it's painfully horribly
slow. This is not something that can be fixed; it's because they are using a
browser to render the code. Therefore Atom has no chance of replacing Sublime
Text. Sorry.

~~~
gomesnayagam
Are you not trolling? I dont think so is allowed in HN

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joesb
Already planned for Sublime text 4? Probably another rewrite? I assumed the
same faith of Sublime Text 2 is happening with Sublime Text 3 after its
release, then. Dead project after people paid to make it released.

Really, how many version does he need to reimplement the same features again
and again?

I'm all for him getting my money more than once for Sublime Text. But is it
really that hard to at least evolve the Same editor instead of rewriting it
over and over just so he can get another round of money?

~~~
Cthulhu_
> Already planned for Sublime text 4? Probably another rewrite? I assumed the
> same faith of Sublime Text 2 is happening with Sublime Text 3 after its
> release, then.

Which is exactly why I'm still running the evaluation license of ST 3; I paid
for ST 2, but shortly after it got out of beta it was pretty much abandoned in
favor of another years-long beta period for ST 3. I'm not falling for that one
again.

Likewise I fell into the 'early access' trap for Steam games, where a
developer gets rich without any obligation to deliver. It worked (and was
successful) for Minecraft, but other games have yet to deliver.

~~~
joesb
> Which is exactly why I'm still running the evaluation license of ST 3; I
> paid for ST 2

I do the exact same thing. I might pay for ST3 if the developer can convince
me that he is going to put some update in ST3 after it is released.

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altyus
Isn't Sublime text 3 still in beta?

~~~
elithrar
[http://www.sublimetext.com/3](http://www.sublimetext.com/3)

> Sublime Text 3 is currently in beta. The latest build is 3059.

Yep. Which makes this announcement extremely odd.

~~~
georgemcbay
Coincidentally, 3059 is also the projected release date year for Sublime Text
3.

------
jbrooksuk
I'm confident in Jon's ability here. They previously hired another developer,
but it seems that didn't work out.

ST4 hasn't been announced yet, just that it's something they want to do -
which is great! I look forward to the August releases.

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aeturnum
Oh, Sublime Text 4 announced. How nice. I'm glad I didn't waste money on
Sublime Text 3 (given how little it changes over 2).

Don't see much of a reason to buy 4 either - 6-8 seems like the sweet spot. /s

~~~
joesb
After paying for Sublime Text 2 and saw how it is abandon almost right after
the released, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm just going to keep using Sublime
Text 3,4,5,...N in trial version mode. I love it, but I'm not going to pay for
beta App. And if I paid for promised of released app, you'd better makes me
feel like you are abandoning me right away.

I'll gladly pay when I see that they updates some minor version for a while
after release.

------
chdir
The finesse of Sublime Text is admirable (considering it's mostly 1 guy's
work). However the ratio of open/closed bugs on Github isn't too comforting. I
hope they expand the team soon.

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clark-kent
It's worth saying, I admire how they run the company.

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nobotty
Don't companies usually need to pay ycombinator to place ads on HN? Please
stop suggesting anyone is interested in closed source software.

~~~
bsg75
Plenty of HN users are:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sublimetext#!/all/sort_by_date/0/s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sublimetext#!/all/sort_by_date/0/sublimetext)

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gomesnayagam
stick to eclipse for hassle free development

~~~
Dolimiter
Are you trolling? I didn't think that was allowed on HN.

~~~
gomesnayagam
No, if you cant pay for worthfull feature provide by sublime text then use any
open source, that was my personal opinion

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darrenf15e


