
Ask HN: Is Sublime Text dead? - hbbio
The latest beta (3) build dates from 2013.
The latest stable is almost one year old.
Several features are missing, mainly a proper go to definition mechanism.
Is the project dead?
======
purephase
This was posted in the ST forum on Mar. 18, 2014 [1]:

"From the Sublime office: We are not selling to Github, we are not stopping
development of Sublime. As noted by another poster, this is effectively a one
man band (I'm here to answer sales questions, process your refunds and get the
mail so Jon doesn't have to). The past few months of silence on the
development front have been a combination of boring back end work (taxes, new
payment platform) as well as a break for the man driving this whole operation.
No, we don't currently have a loud internet presence, which is can be an
understandable cause for concern-something we intend to address once we move
into the production version of 3. There is a vision for continued growth and
development, there is momentum behind Sublime Text; it is not dead, just slow.

I'm happy to field any specific questions you might have about the Sublime's
future: sales@sublimetext.com."

[1]
[https://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15477&...](https://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15477&start=50#p58951)

~~~
moot
I know this feeling. One-man bands are especially prone to "Valve time." On
4chan, "soon" basically means "anywhere between an hour from now and never."

~~~
atwebb
It can also be a problem with micro-managing and fear of delegation. Speaking
more from personal experience than to this project. As a one man outfit it can
be difficult to let go of something you're so attached to.

~~~
purephase
I hear you, but Jon should take heed from his predecessor, Textmate.

Textmate was a prime example of what happens when an incredibly popular
project is run by a single individual. The fact that TM 2 has flourished (IMO)
since being open-sourced, is a good indication that additional eyes are a good
thing.

I'm not suggesting that Jon open-sources ST, just saying that reaching out for
help is not a bad thing in these one-man-band projects.

~~~
EGreg
I've open sourced [http://github.com/EGreg/Q](http://github.com/EGreg/Q)

Docs: [http://platform.qbix.com](http://platform.qbix.com)

So far my company are still the only ones working on it

~~~
myers
May I suggest adding a link to the
[http://platform.qbix.com](http://platform.qbix.com) in your README.md

~~~
EGreg
Yep - we haven't completed it yet so even though the platform is already
opensourced under GPL and we are committing to it bazaar-style and not
cathedral-style, it's not yet been properly marketed.

I just wanted to illustrate how just opensourcing things isn't enough. You
need marketing, PR or organic notoriety. And often that takes resources. Once,
I met Eben Moglen and he yelled at me for half an hour simply for taking
investors for my company. I explained to him that "free software" doesn't
solve the economics for entrepreneurs who start new projects. You still need
to use resources. Later when I sent him the link to github he said he was
wrong but stopped short of an apology. Quite a strange guy.

------
bowlofpetunias
I don't understand what people are doing that they need editors to have rapid
development cycles.

Hell, the only reason I tend to drop editors (which happens rarely) is exactly
because there's so much development that it has become bloated with bells and
whistles I don't need.

It's an editor, not a fashion item.

~~~
FooBarWidget
Because there is still lots of room for improvement. I'm still waiting for the
ability to set a bookmark on a line by clicking on a line number. The key
bindings for booksmarks are a bit awkward, I don't always want to remember key
bindings, and using the menus take too much time.

------
huskyr
Weird how a product that's used by thousands of developers all around the
world every day is still basically a one-man-show.

~~~
Bahamut
I can't imagine that the product hasn't made enough money that it wouldn't be
viable to hire a developer, or to take on investment to expand the operation.
ST seems to be the most popular code text editor amongst developers.

~~~
sigzero
Textmate had that mind share for a while. That one man shop pretty much
stoppped. I see no reason why Sublime won't go that way if other developers
(somehow) aren't brought in.

~~~
aristidesfl
Developers do get tired and burn out.

------
FooBarWidget
I hope Sublime Text isn't going the way of Textmate: after making lots of
profits during a short period of hype, the product enters a period of
complacency.

~~~
orkoden
I've been using TextMate 2 "alpha" for a while now. It's pretty usable.

~~~
hellweaver666
I would go as far as to say it's VERY usable. I and many of my colleagues use
it every single day. I can't recall it ever crashing on me.

------
Narretz
I cannot say anything about the status, but saying "a proper go to defintion
mechanism" is missing, is misleading. First, ST3 has a Go To definition
feature, and second ST has always been a Text Editor first, IDE second. I am
more frustrated that long standing bugs and inconistencies do not get fixed.

------
colinbartlett
There were 3 years between vim 7.3 and 7.4 releases, but nobody has ever
thought vim was dead.

~~~
mathrawka
And 1314 patch versions between 7.3.0 and 7.4.0. Not a good comparison.

Edit: Downvotes for factual information on HN?

------
kidh0
I guess that people begin to talk about the dead of sublime text with the
launch of github Atom. Since there are basically the same features and with a
beautiful interface to manage the extensions, everyone started to look back to
ST and ask: "Ok, what's your move now?".

I have almost nothing to complaint about ST, I've been using the version 3
regularly for a few months. Off course, I want new features (and a few
bugfixes, damn you single quotes bug), but I'm pretty happy.

~~~
platinumdragon
Until Atom does something for other than Mac, it's just an experiment and not
a real tool.

~~~
archagon
I've been a Windows user for about two decades, and I've never heard anyone
complain about software being Windows-exclusive — it was just the norm. But
now that the Mac's become a little more popular, I see lots of tech-savvy
people suddenly getting offended whenever a cool new piece of software comes
out for OSX first. It's really annoying.

~~~
CmonDev
Linux people complain about Windows all the time.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Linux people complain all the time.

~~~
BigTuna
People complain all the time.

------
KJBweb
Atom really annoyed me to be honest, I wouldn't have bothered requesting a
beta invite if I knew it was Mac only at the moment.

Furthermore, why is Windows and Linux only an afterthought here? That suggests
to me that further down the road, new updates and bug fixes will be released
for the Mac version, with the Windows and Linux versions left to suffer.

I'll stick with Sublime and VIM for the foreseeable, thanks.

~~~
dubcanada
It was done because using WebKit on Mac is ten times easier then
Windows/Linux. It makes for a faster/easier mvp.

While Windows/Linux are also fairly easy to implement using CEF, they didn't
do that. And instead opted for using the Mac built in WebKit libraries.

------
ditoax
It isn't as pretty as Sublime Text but I am a long time (~15 years I think
now) user of UltraEdit. I have never used the Linux or OS X versions just
Windows but it is a pretty solid editor with loads of features and very, very
fast. Kind of pricy these days though, I bought it a long time ago with a
lifetime upgrade license and it has been well worth the money IMHO.

~~~
jasallen
I always like UltraEdit and paid the premium for many years. Two things
happened though (1) it competed by getting bloated rather than better --
honestly the 2000/1 version may have been favorite. and (2) The world (or my
subsection of it) coalesced around ST -- well, other than the VIMs and EMACS
faithful.

So I adapted, and I really do like ST. Got the features I want, and a clean
interface.

~~~
ditoax
Yeah I know what you mean about the bloat added in the 00s that was crap. They
did seem to listen a lot to their users though as things got better. It isn't
as quick to load as Sublime Text 3 (which is lightening fast!) but it can open
big (like several hundred MB or more) files in and instant whereas Sublime
Text is a lot slower.

My biggest gripe with UltraEdit is that it basically has zero ways to extend
it. It has no plugin system and their macro system is horrible. This is where
Sublime Text is really great.

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TheRealDunkirk
Sure, it'd be great if the author open sourced it if he's no longer interested
in doing it, but whatever. My license is still valid, and it still does
everything I paid for it to do. If someone wants to take up the charge and
make a better version, it looks like there's a market for that.

------
tdsamardzhiev
No, it isn't. Move on.

How do this kind of threads get to 1st page at HN?!

------
jtokoph
There seems to be a bit of a discussion on the forum:

[http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15775](http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15775)

------
mattwritescode
Shame its not opensource then people could contribute more than just plugins!

------
forgotAgain
I hope it's not dead. I just moved a few months ago from Eclipse to Sublime
Text for Go and Javascript programming. I'm loving not having a slow IDE to
deal with.

~~~
wilsonfiifi
You should give Komodo edit a try. For go you can use this plugin
[https://github.com/trentm/komodo-go](https://github.com/trentm/komodo-go) and
it already has JavaScript support.

~~~
bluedino
I tried and tried to like Komodo but it feels laggy

------
cheshire137
If it dies, at least there's Atom now. I just bought my Sublime Text 2
license, though, and I'm happy to stay with it because it gives me all I need.

------
UweSchmidt
A while ago Sublime Text 2 announced that the current version was now
outdated, fair enough. However it didn't let me use the program any more,
suggesting I go and update.

Roughing it with Notepad++ now.

~~~
purephase
Is Notepad++ that bad? I used it heavily in my Windows days and loved it at
the time. There were features in it that I loved that I have yet to see other
editors tackle natively (the diff view was awesome).

~~~
UweSchmidt
No, I like it, sorry first time use of the phrase "to rough it" :)

Sublime though looked and felt really super polished, something to fall in
love with. I guess I put that comment out to see if I was mistaken, and it
could move back in...

------
pantalaimon
Still works for me

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jheriko
Now I know about it at all... Thanks. :)

------
ncr100
Dead Sexy.

------
hmans
He's getting ready for a Sublime Text 4 alpha release. It's supposed to ship
any day now.

