
Will Bond (Package Control) Joins Sublime HQ - dmart
https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-3-build-3103
======
ggreer
This is _very_ good news, but I worry that it's too little, too late. For
years, Sublime Text had no serious competitors. Then Atom came along. Don't
get me wrong, Atom has significant drawbacks. But it also has advantages: it's
open source, costs nothing, and has a couple dozen developers working on it.
Sublime Text is closed source, costs $70 (totally worth it, IMO), and has two
developers working on it.

The difference in staffing is the main reason I worry. I use Sublime Text far
more than Atom, but the trend is unmistakable: Atom is improving faster than
Sublime. The most recent stable release of Sublime Text is from 30 months ago.
Atom was announced 22 months ago, and v1.0 was released 9 months ago. In those
same 22 months, there have been zero updates to Sublime Text 2 and only four
updates to Sublime Text 3 beta. That's some abysmally slow development. If
these trends continue, there's simply no way that Sublime Text can stay in the
lead.

~~~
lobster_johnson
The plugin ecology for Atom is also great. Sublime has an extremely limited
API; I remember trying to implement a simple autocomplete-based window
switcher, back in the day, and had to give up because was no way to
programmatically switch to a new window.

With Atom, packages can manipulate the editor. For example, the Atom linter
shows errors on the line where it occurs. It can do this because packages are
allowed to hijack the editor's rendering, something Sublime packages can't do.
(The only thing you can do in Sublime is to mark areas for colorization, and
there are some things you can do with the gutter.)

There's also a neat package that turns Git's textual conflict markers into
live markers [1] allowing you pick which side to use. It also displays a list
of pending project-wide conflicts while you're working — also not something
Sublime plugins can do.

The Markdown Preview package is also very nice [2]. It displays a preview
window inside Atom. Not possible with Sublime's API.

With Atom, I can have the sidebar colorized based on Git status, for example
(it's a built-in package), and the icons can be themed [2]. Sublime plugins
can't modify the file sidebar other than add context menus.

In short, Sublime really needs to up its API game in order to compete with
Atom.

[1] [https://github.com/smashwilson/merge-
conflicts](https://github.com/smashwilson/merge-conflicts)

[2] [https://github.com/wyze/seti-icons](https://github.com/wyze/seti-icons)

~~~
ggreer
Full disclosure: I'm the CEO & co-founder of Floobits, which makes pair
programming plugins for lots of editors.

I completely agree with you about the plugin APIs. Writing a collaborative
editing plugin for Sublime Text was a slog. Not only were we limited by the
plugin API, but we ran into show-stopper bugs.[1] SSL didn't work on some
platforms.[2] ST2 shipped with a broken select() module broke on Windows. In
contrast, Atom provided almost everything we wanted. And while we ran into
more bugs, they were annoyances, not show-stoppers.[3]

1\. [https://news.floobits.com/2015/08/17/sublime-text-plugin-
api...](https://news.floobits.com/2015/08/17/sublime-text-plugin-api-its-
python-sort-of/)

2\.
[https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/177](https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/177)

3\. [https://news.floobits.com/2015/10/14/developing-atom-
plugins...](https://news.floobits.com/2015/10/14/developing-atom-plugins-so-
much-potential-so-many-bugs/)

------
garyclarke27
Good news I love Sublime it's so fast and slick - I haven't used Atom because
consensus seems to be that it's not as fast with multiple large files open.
Why is everyone obsessed about open source, yes nice to have but at the end of
the day this is just a (very sharp) tool - what's your priority tinkering with
your tools or getting the job done? 70$ is peanuts, speed and productivity
gains way outweigh this. ST is multi-talented, brilliant for SQL, runs huge
Postgres queries directly and lightning fast with full feed back ( error
messages line numbers etc) even multi million row result sets don't phase it ,
any other editor would just gind to a spluttering halt.

~~~
JohnDoe365
But you understand that Postgres also went a long way and is Open Source?

~~~
garyclarke27
I agree - I'm building a huge application on Postgres because of it has
amazing capability and yes because it's Open Source. Doing the same on ms sql
server or oracle in my case would be madness - because of their insane per
core licensing costs for enterprise features which I need. However for my
tools, I'm not bothered so long as a reasonable price or free MIT - in fact
I'd rather pay for a commercial license than use a risky GPL license. I do
feel sorry for Architects (my wife) though, they have to pay outrageous prices
for design tools, literally thousands yet developers who earn far more than
architects, bleat about trivial amounts such as $70 for ST.

~~~
oblio
> However for my tools, I'm not bothered so long as a reasonable price or free
> MIT - in fact I'd rather pay for a commercial license than use a risky GPL
> license

Why do you consider GPL tools risky? I'm guessing you're using GNU utils
constantly? :)

> I do feel sorry for Architects (my wife) though, they have to pay outrageous
> prices for design tools, literally thousands yet developers who earn far
> more than architects, bleat about trivial amounts such as $70 for ST.

Architects probably don't have other options. Free development tools abound.

------
wbond
Wow, thanks everyone! I'm thrilled to be working with Jon and Kari and to be
helping with Sublime Text.

~~~
s9w
Hey wbond, I'm glad that you're now part of the team. Can you say anything
about what you'll work on? Only package-stuff or other things too?

And does this mean there are now more planned features and a more stable
future for sublime? You know the burning questions of the community.

~~~
wbond
I‘ll be working on everything related to Sublime Text.

I was part of the dev releases building up to 3103, moving the forum and
merging in pull requests from
[https://github.com/sublimehq/Packages](https://github.com/sublimehq/Packages).

We are definitely working on improving all the different aspects of Sublime,
so you can expect to continue seeing new builds!

------
hbhakhra
This is very nice to see. Just last week Sublime started releasing new dev
builds after close to a year of silence. Sublime is my favorite text editor
and it seemed like it was going to drift off into obscurity but this will
definitely inject new life into it. Sublime didn't just make a hire, they
hired the guy responsible for an arguably large part of sublime's success.

------
nodesocket
Love Sublime, and honestly feel like if there was more financial support from
developers it would have even more marketshare.

Congratulations Will, check out his super useful sftp package as well:
[https://wbond.net/sublime_packages/sftp](https://wbond.net/sublime_packages/sftp).

~~~
hbhakhra
I don't think money was an issue. Wes Bos gave some numbers on his Sublime
Text learning course and extrapolated that the Sublime team had made a few
million easily for what was a one developer operation.

He based his numbers on assuming that the people that paid for his course to
learn sublime would only be a fraction of those that paid to actually use
sublime, so I think that sounds reasonable.

~~~
bdcravens
Aside from an occasional dialog, there's pretty much zero cost to never paying
for Sublime. (I'm a licensed user, but when I put it on other machines I use,
I usually don't enter my license key, and I almost never notice)

------
fredleblanc
Woo! I worked with Will for a couple years and this is going to be a great
pick up for Sublime. Nice guy, great developer.

------
lobster_johnson
They also replaced their awful old forums with Discourse (which Atom also
uses): [https://forum.sublimetext.com](https://forum.sublimetext.com).

~~~
danielsamuels
Implying Discource isn't terrible. I've never found it intuitive to use.

~~~
lobster_johnson
It isn't terrible. And compared to Sublime's old forums (some kind of phpBB
monstrosity) it's superb.

~~~
batat
While phpBB-ish forums looks pretty outdated nowadays, they're at least
usable.

    
    
      Search Help
      Options
      order:views	order:latest	order:likes		
      status:open	status:closed	status:archived	status:noreplies	status:single_user
      category:foo	user:foo	group:foo	badge:foo	
      in:likes	in:posted	in:watching	in:tracking	in:private
      in:bookmarks	in:first	
      posts_count:num	min_age:days	max_age:days
    

Oh thanks, why not to simply embed DB REPL there?

~~~
lobster_johnson
The fact that those search options are available is fantastic.

I find phpBB-type forums almost completely unusable. Pagination made for 1998;
large, intrusive signatures; confusing timestamps (person's last location and
login time more prominent than the timestamp of the comment), etc.

------
moonlighter
Sublime Text user here, who switched to Atom a year ago and never looked back.
Never had any of the issues others described having with Atom such as
slowness, etc. What I love about Atom is that it's under active, fast-paced
development, that it's super-easy to customize (first thing was to increase
the font-size of the left-hand folder pane), and the available plugins are
fantastic. It probably also helps that extending Atom is much more
approachable given that it's all Javascript, rather than Python with ST.
Furthermore, as others commented, the plugins have much more reach into the
editor and can do a lot more.

For example, the new block decorations coming in 1.6 are going to be an
awesome API for plugin authors! [http://blog.atom.io/2016/02/03/introducing-
block-decorations...](http://blog.atom.io/2016/02/03/introducing-block-
decorations.html)

~~~
modulus1
> It probably also helps that extending Atom is much more approachable given
> that it's all Javascript...

I've heard this said before, I've had the opposite experience. ST offers a
small api and it was easy for me to make something work with a single .py
file. I gave up trying the same thing in Atom; the api is larger and lower-
level. Admission: I don't know coffeescript.

ST of course isn't nearly as flexible, there are many things you just can't
do.

~~~
ivanca
What are the things you can't do with ST? You can actually use the C bindings
of python and do anything C can do... which is pretty much anything.

~~~
moonlighter
It's not about the limits of the language but the limits of the ST API itself.
However, given Will Bond's background, this might just change for the better
now that he's officially working for ST, so this is good news for all ST users
obviously.

------
sbaum
This and the fact that they just released a new version is very good news!
I've tried several other editors over the last 2 years or so, but I keep
coming back to Sublime. I love many things about Atom, but janky scrolling on
a 2 year old MacBook Pro is just unacceptable. Another big advantage that
isn't mentioned a lot is that Sublime is a lot lighter on CPU. Just for all
the folks that are developing on battery power.

------
provemewrong
The title is somewhat like a garden path sentence [1], when I started reading
this I thought it was a question about the future of a package manager called
Bond. The title case doesn't make it any easier.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence)

------
dvcrn
Very amazing news! I loved sublime text and kept holding onto it while
everyone else was switching.

At some point I got really frustrated with the plugin API. Stuff like only 1
thing can write into the gutter at a time and that relative line numbers is
close to impossible to implement (the package that exists is garbage) is just
ridiculous.

That was the moment when I switched to atom and ported my sublimious plugin to
atom (proton). I've since been using atom and am quite happy with it but now
and then look back at the ST3 days and the incredible performance that ST3
offers.

I hope with Will on board, development will finally pick up again. ST3 needs
excited developers that want to push it further and Will seems like that kind
of person. I'd love to grab my old license out of the cellar and give it
another spin.

------
muhic
FYI Build 3103 was just released [1]

[1] [https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-
text-3-bui...](https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-
text-3-build-3103)

------
zzleeper
As others mention, these are amazing news. The last months were void of
communication from Jon and the forums were in a constant state of
spam+complains, so hopefully this (and the recent updates) signals something
is changing :)

------
Nicksil
This is fantastic news!

Very glad to hear such a staunch supporter of Sublime Text joining their team.
Congrats and good luck, Will!

------
cpfohl
Congrats Will! :)

Or more like, Congrats Sublime HQ.

------
wkirby
There's a single feature that made me an Atom user over Sublime — and that's
support for excluding files and folders in gitignore from the quick open.

~~~
JustinAiken
..and you can also have a different set of files/folders ignored than those in
.gitignore, AND it's customizable per project with Project Manager. Huge plus
for me too!

------
danharaj
i really like Sublime. i've used it personally and professionally for years.
but it's also the only piece of software that i use, the source code of which
i don't have access to. i definitely would prefer something i can hack on for
my own pleasure and profit, and my appreciation for FLOSS software has only
grown and grown throughout my career.

how's atom doing these days? can Sublime HQ really compete in the long run?

~~~
profmonocle
> how's atom doing these days?

Fairly well, IMO. The editor itself has caught up with Sublime for at least
everything I care about, the community is very active, and they release
updates pretty regularly.

Unfortunately, although performance has gotten noticeably better, it's still
way behind Sublime. Opening a new editor window takes about three seconds on
my MacBook Air, vs. less than a second for Sublime. I find myself opening new
windows pretty often as part of my workflow, so I really, really hope they can
cut that down. Also, Atom still struggles with large (>2MB) files, but I don't
work with those often enough for it to be a big deal.

~~~
softinio
Been using atom for 4 weeks now in place of Sublime. The slowness has not
affected me at all. Especially as I rarely close my windows :-)

The benefits it provides far out ways its flaws. Atom is great.

------
agentgt
I'm curious if any one remembers SlickEdit. Circa 2000 I had an internship and
SlickEdit was the Sublime Text at that time.

SlickEdit for some reason went into complete obscurity though and I can't
recall why. I'm not saying this will happen to Sublime (as I'm not even sure
what happend to Slick) but I do wonder if it will as TextMate seems to be
going down the path of long term obscurity.

------
demarq
but no SSL... :(

Anyway I love sublime, and really hope the API keeps growing! It's also nice
to see Will Bond becoming "official" :) congratulations!

------
jamesfzhang
Congrats to Will and Sublime, great everyone involved!

------
jbrooksuk
Congrats Will! I'm really excited to see what you'll be bringing to Sublime!

I wish you all the best!

------
brandonblack
== slow clap ==

Great hire.

