
Sublime Text 3 builds picking up steam again - coldtea
http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev
======
jonstewart
I'm a co-owner of a small software business, so in a very similar situation to
the Sublime Text developer (with the exception that my product is much less
successful). I went and looked at the linked-to list of builds. There's a bit
of a gap from December 2013 to May 2014. But then there's a release every
couple of months.

I know that in the past the builds have been fast and furious, but, honestly,
I don't see any reason to have a new build more than every couple of months.
More than that and it wastes my time; I suspect the ST developer has learned
that more frequent builds waste his time as well.

Sublime Text is fast, powerful, intuitive, and--the killer feature for me--
cross-platform. It's well worth the money to me now, regardless of its long-
term future (in the long run, we're all dead). While development has been
sporadic, at least it seems like the developer has not succumbed to the Moby
Dick/Second System effect, so that's a plus. It would be great in the long run
(i.e., when the developer tires of full-time work) if it were open source, but
it's nigh-impossible to support oneself with open source applications, so it
seems healthier now for it to be a proprietary app.

~~~
yoodenvranx
The problem with Sublime in 2014 was not the number of releases but the fact
that the developer more or less just disappeared for a year.

I am totally fine if he does not release something new for half a year, but at
least he could've written a short blog post that he will take some time off.
Even a short "Hey guys, I am still working on it but things are very slow
right now" every 8 weeks would've been totally fine.

~~~
coldtea
> _I am totally fine if he does not release something new for half a year, but
> at least he could 've written a short blog post that he will take some time
> off._

He did write a short post of that effect.

> _Even a short "Hey guys, I am still working on it but things are very slow
> right now" every 8 weeks would've been totally fine._

The TextMate guy posted frequent updates just like that -- and it got nowhere.

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drapper
Given the discussion here, it seems there's a clear need for a text-editor
that's cross-platform, fast (like ST, unlike Atom), open-source (like Atom,
unlike ST), very configurable (like Atom and ST), easily extensible (like
Atom) and easy to use/grasp for an user accustomed to typical windows
applications (like Atom and ST, unlike vim and emacs).

Seems to be something like this could be done using QScintilla. Qt would give
it an excellent cross-platform support, Scintilla a good editor with a speed
of C++, and the ease of development and extensibility would be possible thanks
to either PyQt (Python) or QtQuick (JavaScript). Just a thought...

~~~
peatmoss
My feeling is that your point about vim and emacs applies more to vim than
emacs. The caveat here is that I had ~15 years of vi/vim usage going on before
switching to emacs ~5 years ago. I can plainly see where modal editing is
foreign to new users from the start. However, I'm not sure emacs, which ships
with "normal" keyboard shortcuts by default in most packagings, is the same.
Emacs has a relatively smooth path from, "I'm going to use this like
Notepad++" to "Emacs is my god / lover / email client now."

At least that's my impression, and perhaps the warped impression of someone
incapable of recognizing weirdness.

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jafingi
It's great. SB3 beta has been completely stable for me the past year, so
looking forward to testing the new builds.

~~~
swah
The plugin system dies for me regularly. I wish I didn't have to quit ST3 to
fix that.

~~~
wbond
That sounds like a bum package, or a corrupted install. If you are using
Package Control you can copy the Packages/User/ folder to a fresh install and
install Package Control to try fixing it. PC will do a fresh reinstall of
missing packages.

~~~
pionar
I'd venture to guess that the grandparent poster is on Windows. On Windows,
after resuming from sleeping, it's known that sometimes the plugin_host.exe
will crash.

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gendoikari
Too late for me. Atom replaces sublime in my workflow.

~~~
sigzero
Just tried opening a file larger than 2MB....nope. End of Atom tryout.

~~~
gendoikari
I'm using Atom to code. If you have a source file bigger than 2mb, trust me,
the Atom limit is the last of your problems. :)

~~~
jbrooksuk
I have to open CSV files all the time that can easily be hundreds of MB. I'm
not doing anything wrong, it's a dataset.

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dman
One thing that blows me away about Sublime is its grep performance on Windows.
I am an emacs user but use Sublime on Windows since I havent been able to find
a way to make emacs match the speed of a recursive grep search on Windows.

Another place where Sublime text is noticeably faster is in syntax
highlighting large files.

~~~
zerr
Interesting, do you grep for e.g. finding symbol references? i.e. doesn't
emacs have a feature of finding symbols semantically?

~~~
dman
Often I am working with files that are not code.

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rafaqueque
I've used ST in the past, but due to slow release cycle, I switched to Vim.
What really bugs me in ST is the fact that the guy doesn't have time to work,
but still, it's not open source for the community to work together to achieve
a decent release cycle.

~~~
reubenmorais
> due to slow release cycle, I switched to

I've read this argument multiple times and I just don't get it. Is it because
you were waiting for a feature that hasn't been implemented? What's a decent
release cycle? How does a indecent release cycle affect your daily usage of
the text editor?

~~~
tutuca
Because there are many annoying small bugs that prevent the editor from being
completely useful.

~~~
coldtea
Like what? Haven't found any in the 2+ years I'm using it for Python, PHP, JS
and Go.

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teajay
I've been a long time ST user, but when I out of curiosity started playing
with Vim and slowly get used to it, I now prefer it over ST most of the time.
But I'm glad that Sublime Text is alive again.

~~~
savanaly
Same experience for me. I started using vim about one year ago, and I have
been very happy with it. Having to take my fingers off the keyboard to move
around a document or highlight things-- it's just unthinkable now. But I'm
glad sublime is there, cross platform and easy to use, just in case I'm on
some foreign machine and I don't have time to set up my vimrc and vim plugins.
I also recommend Sublime to people who are just starting on programming in a
language like Ruby or Javascript as it works just like Word out of the box.

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JonnieCache
I get `unable to apply patch` from the builtin updater. Happened for 3067 last
week too. Some kind of permissions problem? I've never installed it in any
kind of unusual way...

~~~
jbrooksuk
Are you on Windows? I did see a post about elevated privileges here:
[http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17470&p...](http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17470&p=65365&hilit=elevated#p65365)

~~~
JonnieCache
On OSX 10.9.5

~~~
jbrooksuk
You may want to leave a reply on the Dev build post for Jon to look at then.

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roflchoppa
Meh, I'm trying to just switch over to emacs, so far its been a blast, even
with implementations of AC, speedbar,yasnippit, and other packages,i dont feel
that ST is going to cut it for me anymore.... ill keep it installed still its
a very beautiful application. :)

I'm starting to get called neckbeard at work for being a emacs advocate.....
:\

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toxican
As someone who finally shelled out the money for it and a few paid plugins,
I'm really glad to hear this!

~~~
jbish
+1 I'd like to know what plugins people have found worth paying for.

~~~
daviross
Most notably for myself: Sublime SFTP, SublimeGit, and Sublimerge.

I'd pay for Anaconda or SublimeLinter beyond donations in a heartbeat if it
did have a paid option, as well.

[http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/sftp](http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/sftp)
[https://sublimegit.net/](https://sublimegit.net/)
[http://www.sublimerge.com/](http://www.sublimerge.com/)

[http://damnwidget.github.io/anaconda/](http://damnwidget.github.io/anaconda/)
[http://www.sublimelinter.com/en/latest/](http://www.sublimelinter.com/en/latest/)

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dmacvicar
BTW nobody mentioned Limetext, which attempts to implement a SublimeText clone
in golang (and other features like a terminal frontend).

[http://limetext.org/](http://limetext.org/)

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kolev
Picked up, but no match with Atom. I'm disappointed as I've invested over $200
in its ecosystem (including a paid license for it).

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benbristow
I don't really see much point in Sublime Text now that GitHub's Atom is a
pretty much a one->one replica but free, open-source and has a rather nice
package manager for plugins.

~~~
pgz
I don't really like Atom because of the webkit usage, but I strongly agree
that using a closed source text editor is a terrible idea for a programmer...
when that editor stops being maintained all the time investment learning all
it's time saving tricks is lost.

Luckily I've been burned really early in my programming career by TextMate to
know better: all my tools must be OSS and cross-platform.

~~~
PlzSnow
I don't understand this line of thinking.

For me a closed-source text editor such as Sublime Text makes me much more
productive than it's open-source equivelent. The accumulated productivity
gains far outweigh the timecost to learn a new tool, if Sublime Text
disappeared (a couple of days at most?).

~~~
pgz
Well, in some time you will lose all your productivity when you have to
switch. With a proprietary tool it's not a matter of 'if' but 'when' (unless
it's provided by a huge corporation, but then they try to lock you in their
ecosystem).

OTOH I will be able to use vim (or a fork of it) 20-30 years from now and
become more and more productive with it during the timeframe.

