
I'm not too happy about Sublime Text 3 - czottmann
http://sloblog.io/~hmans/ia10kunCMjc/i-m-not-too-happy-about-sublime-text-3
======
tptacek
I can't imagine a less rewarding product to build than a text editor for
programmers. Selling programming tools is an ice-cubes-to-Inuits proposition
to begin with. But new text editors demographically appeal to the most
entitled, pickiest segment of the programmer market.

~~~
angrycoder
Software development has to be one of the only professions where we expect all
our tools to be free. And on the off chance we do pay for something, we better
get lifetime, monthly updates for free as well.

Seriously, imagine if our clients had the same expectations of the software we
wrote.

~~~
snarfy
I don't expect my tools to be free, but I do expect that if I pay for them,
they do a better job than the free competition.

There are a plethora of free editors available. What does $70 get me for
Sublime? Now compare to Vim,Emacs,textadept,notepad++,etc. Heck even Visual
Studio 2012 Express is free to use all the editors.

~~~
jonhohle

      > I don't expect my tools to be free,
      > but I do expect that if I pay for
      > them, they do a better job than the
      > free competition.
    

That's an odd expectation. Does IIS better job than Apache or Nginx? Does VS
do a better job than a standard Unix toolset, (or insert your favorite free
developer platform). Does Cold Fusion do a better job than PHP, RoR, etc.? Did
Visual Source Safe ever do anything better than anything else? Is Windows
better than Linux/Unix?

History is full of commercial software that is not up to the bar set by free
alternatives. You're not wxpected to buy any of it, but if you do, you should
do some due diligence.

~~~
Shish2k
> Does IIS better job than Apache or Nginx?

Depends on the definition of the software's job. Nginx is better at serving
web pages, IIS with an expensive support contract is better at shifting the
blame away from me when it goes wrong :)

~~~
taproot
Put it in the cloud? Redhat? If thats the real reason youre using iis i'll eat
my hat.

------
eli
Sublime Text 2 doesn't seem any more buggy or any less finished than other
software I use. I don't feel like I'm "owed" any updates to it.

EDIT: I haven't followed this ST3 drama at all. If ST3 is better than ST2 then
I will upgrade. If it doesn't appear to offer me anything of value, I'll
probably stick to ST2 for now. It works quite well for me and since I'm not
waiting on any bugfixes or feature requests, I don't really care how often
it's updated.

~~~
czottmann
That's hardly the point of the post.

~~~
statictype
Seems to me like that's entirely the point of the post.

 _I bought a piece of software that I expected to at least receive bug fixes,
maybe even some minor improvements here and there, and it is now becoming
clear that this isn’t going to happen._

If ST2 is stable and feature complete (and honestly, I use it and believe that
it is) then there's nothing to complain about. The author's complaint is that
it's being abandoned for version 3 too early.

------
gue5t
OP doesn't understand that when you buy software (read: "pay to download a
stripped binary") without signing a support contract, you're entitled to
nothing. If you don't have source, the only thing you can expect is that the
binary you have will continue to behave as it did previously, which is "in a
manner you don't fully understand" since you haven't read the source code.

I don't understand why people who insist on using non-gratis software think
they magically dodged the bullet of the problems inherent in non-libre/non-
open-source software, just because some money left their pocket.
Accountability doesn't come from some misguided mechanism of "sponsoring
development guarantees me fair treatment"; it comes from a community
commitment to helping users, or from business contracts which legally require
such treatment.

HN has a tendency (related to some cognitive dissonance in the startup scene
perhaps?) toward a Randian "good people make money by doing good things"
mindset, but what must be understood is that capitalism is a completely amoral
system. Buying someone's product does not make you their friend, their ally,
or their responsibility. It makes you their customer, and places you in a
strictly economic relationship, not one of "trust" or implicit "entitlement".
Libre software takes the stance that users should not be screwed over like
this and empowers them to avoid such mishaps by giving them the tools to
modify the software itself.

~~~
ricardobeat
So in your opinion open-source is based on a completely cynic view of society
and work relationships? I think you hopped on the wrong train of thought.

If I buy an orange from a street vendor, there is implicit trust (it's not
bad/poisoned, hasn't been rubbed onto his hairy ass) and entitlement (it must
taste good and keep for few couple days); money exchange _is_ the contract.

~~~
gue5t
If it's "based" on anything, the idea behind releasing the source code for
software is that you can _avoid_ screwing over your users with binary
releases. In the worst case they'll be able to maintain the software
themselves if you keel over or cop out.

Money exchange is not a support contract, and street vendors are not legally
required to give refunds if you aren't satisfied, as long as they did
accurately advertise the product they're selling (an edible orange, or a
runnable binary). Many do, since it's arguably in their best interest to have
a good reputation, but it isn't out of the goodness of their hearts. That's
simply not how a for-profit business works. And if the street vendor decides
(like this article's focus) to not provide long-term support for his oranges,
that's well within his rights and you'd be a fool to depend on such support if
the oranges mean a lot to you.

~~~
ricardobeat
I was only pointing out the cynism in that last paragraph, not making
analogies to the OP/ST. Capitalism in practice is not amoral, it is a system
completely intertwined with society. The justice system routinely intervenes
in economic transactions and disputes based solely on ethics, morality and
intent.

------
jscheel
It seems like the author's beef is with the fact that ST2 hasn't really seen
any incremental updates, not that ST3 will be a paid upgrade. Honestly, I
haven't really had anything to complain about with ST2, but I do understand
those hoping for some small updates over time. The biggest concern I have with
ST3 is the breaking api changes. These changes will lead to one or more of the
following:

1\. packages won't be upgraded and will go stale

2\. packages will be upgraded and users will be forced to buy ST3

3\. package devs will have to maintain separate versions for ST2 and ST3

None of these are very attractive results of the breaking changes coming.

~~~
kstrauser
I share your concerns. I'm glad to see ST3 is making the leap to Python 3,
though, and that's probably as good a time as any to make other backward-
incompatible API changes. I would hope that it should be more stable afterward
and that the jump to a hypothetical ST4 would be incremental.

------
calinet6
Whew, I thought there was something bad about the product itself.

Licensing? Legacy support? Backward compatibility? You're arguing over the
color of the grapes in the desert. Who cares? As long as ST2 keeps working,
and ST3 keeps getting better, pay up and stop complaining.

~~~
taproot
Agreed i recently paid the full 70 (100 own currency). Was happy to see this
post was just an empty whinge. Has st2 for 6+ months and complains he has to
pay for an upgrade to st3yet is happy to pay a yearly fee. I dont understand
at all.

------
gizmo
Text editors are complex projects, especially when they're very extensible. As
a result code cruft builds up and minor design mistakes become increasingly
more painful to work around. So once the creators realize they want to take
the editor in a specific direction (e.g. better syntax highlighting, better
API hooks, better code completion, whatever) the only realistic route is to
make a clean break from the previous version, refactor the architecture as
needed and go from there.

This seems to be exactly what's happening with Sublime Text 3. So I'm sticking
to ST2 until 3 reaches the point where all my packages work reliably. If that
means I have to wait half a year or so that's fine with me. And if this clean
break with ST2 paves the road for great versions 4, 5, 6 down the road then
all the better.

For me the bottom line is that switching editors really sucks, so I'm far more
concerned with the long term future of ST than I am with any individual
release or package.

------
losvedir
Sheesh, you'd think ST2 was a clunky, worthless mess from all these comments.
Amazing how after the announcement of ST3 the previous version is
retroactively seen as broken and needing all these updates. I remember when
ST2 was HN's golden child. I honestly don't remember any comments along the
lines of "well, it _will_ be good someday" but rather "multicursors, minimap,
it's awesome you should use it now!"

I've had a license to ST2 for a long time and was impressed with the constant
updates. I remember thinking at one point, "Huh, just realized haven't seen an
update for a while", but it was more idle curiosity than anything since the
editor worked fine for me.

I'm trying out ST3 and am happy enough with it. Not sure if I'll upgrade when
it comes time to pay, but I don't feel like a bait and switch was pulled on
me.

I use OS X, so maybe the Windows or Linux versions are buggy? I can't just
chalk up all the complaints to entitlement, but at the same time my experience
with the editor has been so smooth I don't understand the issues others have
been having.

------
loxs
I am not an opensource zealot, but there are several kinds of non-opensource
software that I try to avoid using for my work (for entertainment is
different):

1\. My production OS. 2\. My language of choice (runtime environment, compiler
etc.) 3\. My development environment - editor, debugger etc.

Not sticking to this rule is asking for trouble. Anyone ever seen a whole team
switch from Visual Studio 2008 to 2010? Enjoy the show and don't forget to
bring beer and popcorn...

~~~
kaolinite
Good rules to live by, though it is possible to be overly cautious. You may
(or may not) find that the improvements that Sublime Text brings to your
productivity are worth handing over a little bit of control.

In reality though, whether it's closed-source or not tends to be irrelevant -
the Gnome (3) project is a good example of what can happen when an entire
project changes its mind on how things can be done, to the dismay of its
users.

~~~
loxs
Yeah, but the source of GNOME 2 is there, and the people who are not happy
with ver.3 created several forks. They may or may not be of better quality,
but they are there and if on wants to continue living in GNOME 2, (s)he can do
so. The situation is not exactly the same with Sublime Text... it is
completely at the mercy of its creator...

------
jamesaguilar
I was unpleasantly surprised by this news as well. I had noticed the relative
inactivity of updates on st2 for a while. I probably won't buy 3 because I
have zero confidence that the same thing won't happen in a year with st3.
Maybe if the plugin ecosystem was close to parity with either a full featured
ide or emacs. But neither of those are true :(

------
huhtenberg
> _Just give us incremental updates and charge a yearly fee._

Hahahahaha... why do I get a feeling that this guy would've called this a
"dick move" too if ST dev did in fact do as he suggested? After all, he _paid_
for the damn software, why should he be paying again some ridiculous annual
fee to have this PoS collection of bits fixed over and over again. By the way,
isn't it suspicious that fixes never stop. It must be to keep everyone hooked
up on the maintenance licensing. Just give us _our_ incremental updates,
period.

You get the picture. Once a whiner, always a whiner.

~~~
omni
Have you ever heard the term "straw man argument?"

~~~
huhtenberg
Have you heard of any non-enterprise software that charges annual fee for an
access to the updates?

~~~
kevinh
All of the JetBrains products.

~~~
huhtenberg
Right. Any others?

Point being that this is an unconventional fee model with very little real-
world adoption, _except_ for the enterprise market, where it's a norm. So
trying to use it outside of that niche is risky. For every person who says
that they would pay for the maintenance, there will be a dozen who will be
completely pissed by it and won't hesitate to trash the product.

------
wbond
The big changes in ST3 aren't primarily user facing. Yes, there are some
useful new features, but the reason that this is ST3 versus ST2.1 is because
of the API changes.

Sublime Text X, which became ST2, started almost 3 years ago. Back then the
API used Python 2.6, I imagine largely because that was the stable 2.x branch.
3.x was still bleeding edge, and not built into OS X.

Over time as more developers learned about Sublime Text, the plugin community
exploded. Now there were some warts from the very beginning. On Windows,
Python 2.x can't import from paths that contain non-ASCII characters. To get
around this, Jon had to implement some hacks to get it all to work
consistently.

As the plugin community has grown so much, we've found lots of edge cases and
run into issues with developing against an aging version of Python. At this
point, Python 2.6 is EOL in 7 months. It strikes me that it is a hard, but
important choice to break backwards compatibility to fix a number of core
issues in ST, but also to jump to a modern version of Python.

Python 3.3 came out just 5 months ago. Jon has rewritten the python bindings
and restructured the way packages are imported to allow for importing across
plugins. Luckily it isn't that hard to write Python that runs on 2.6 and 3.3,
especially with 3.3 adding back in support for u"" strings.

So yes, it is going to continue to be a little while before the plugin
community has finished all of the work porting plugins to ST3. There is a list
of what already works at
[https://github.com/wbond/sublime_package_control/wiki/Sublim...](https://github.com/wbond/sublime_package_control/wiki/Sublime-
Text-3-Compatible-Packages). Also, Package Control is fully functional with
ST3 now. The last remaining piece before the PC 2.0 release is taking this
opportunity to fix some issues with the channel/repo/package structure of
Package Control.

That said, this break is positioning Jon and the community to continue to
build great stuff that is really useful. So yeah, it kinda sucks, but I have a
strong sense users of ST will be much better off in the near future.

------
edanm
Been developing Sublime Text (1 through 2) for about 4, 5 years. In all the
time, free updates. After 5 years, switches to a paid upgrade. Is met with
this sentiment.

Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy?

By the way, most people are saying that he didn't add all that much
functionality to ST3 (and complained about it), now the OP is complaining
because he "disappeared for half a year to work on the new version". So some
people are angry that he didn't add functionality and charged money, some that
he added functionality, but charged for it, but everyone is sure to point out
that it's not about the money.

------
zenocon
I looked at the 3 feature set, and concluded I don't need it. I'm very happy
with ST2 and all the plugins that work with it today.

I have to get s$&#t done every day. I don't need to be upgrading alpha/beta
stuff and then waste all day trying to fix broken stuff that used to work. I'm
not sure why upgrading to ST3 makes any sense today, unless you a) don't have
to get s#*%t done b) are a plugin developer and want to port over to the new
editor

~~~
calinet6
Sysadmins get this. You want a service to remain exactly the same for your 4
year deployment and work the whole time. You don't want updates.

I feel the same for my day-to-day work. It better work, it better not change
much, and I better like it. ST2 fulfills all those needs, and I expect no
updates. The OP may not understand that philosophy, but he should respect it.

~~~
nsmartt
It's interesting that this is the same mindset as non-technical consumers.
They don't want anything to change, ever, because it breaks their workflow.

I suppose there's a tendency for some to be on the bleeding edge. I suspect
everyone has to find their own middle ground. There are areas where we prefer
the latest and greatest, and then there are areas where we want stability.

I find that I'm fond of the bleeding edge until it starts to interfere with my
work-- though it could probably be argued that it interferes with my work all
the time and that I fail to notice because it's routine somehow.

~~~
bdunbar
> They don't want anything to change, ever, because it breaks their workflow.

I'm like that. I'm willing to change, but there needs to be a compelling
reason.

I think of 'my computer' the same way I do my work area.

If my phone is over -there- one day and the next day it's over _here_ .. it's
distracting. I spend all day reaching out with the wrong hand when the phone
rings.

------
tristan_juricek
Has anyone actually encountered an issue with version 2 that would really piss
them off that it's not fixed? I rarely encounter problems, and when I do, a
quick restart get's everything back to normal. I find myself doing this far
less than with other systems (vim, TextMate). Maybe I'm just not a massive
plugin user.

My sense is that this writer is just really picky, and somehow equates
constant updates with quality.

------
benth
ST2's first public alpha release was in January 2011 and there was an update
about every two weeks.

Six months later, July 2011, the first Beta was released and Jon Skinner said
there would be monthly updates now that ST2 was in beta.

True to his word, there's been about an update a month and then in June 2012
the Beta label was dropped. After that, there were a few ST2 updates, mostly
fixes, until September 2012. So by no means is ST2 an "unfinished" piece of
software. And while I'm sure it has many bugs, that's practically a truism for
any piece of complicated software. I personally have not actually noticed any.
I wonder if the author has.

My takeaway from all this is that Jon Skinner delivers.

If you want a yearly subscription, well, that's really no different than what
Jon Skinner is providing, except that instead of paying once a year, you're
paying once every TWO years, if the past is any indication of the future.

Finally, complaining about plugins breaking is like complaining about the
Lightning connector on new iPhones. There's a strong list of good reasons to
make backward-incompatible changes to the plugin system.

------
danabramov
I was expecting to read a criticism of the new version. (I haven't used it
myself yet, and I haven't bought ST2 either—I keep using the trial version.)

Instead what I got from this post is that the bugs are being rapidly fixed,
and it is a major update for a reason, because of the breaking changes. Well,
that's cool.

It reminds me of people bitching that iOS 6 runs slow on iPhone 3Gs. I don't
see how abandoning an old version to make something awesome and charge for it
is a “dick move”. You paid for it, and you decide whether to pay for the
update.

I wouldn't be suprised to learn it was hard to backport some fixes because of
the breaking changes, and I don't see anything immoral in deciding it just
isn't worth the effort.

~~~
trilobyte
I think the point is that the bugs are being fixed in a new paid release, and
not in the release many people paid for.

The only thing, imo, that this does is harm the relationship between people
developing software who would like to be paid for it and their customers. If
you charge people money for something it behooves you to keep releasing fixes
and point releases for it regularly, not to disappear and release a paid
upgrade with the things fixed that should be part of the current release. I
don't know of any legal or moral obligation to do it, but it certainly is a
good business move for the ecosystem.

------
dman
if the economics of building tools for developers improves, we will see better
tools - that means some way of coming up with recurring revenues that is fair
to both the developer and the users. Some previous discussion about this here
- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5266034>

------
czottmann
100% ACK. Software costs money, I have no problems with that, but the "switch"
from ST2 to ST3 was less than graceful.

~~~
quarterto
Did you expect Sublime Text X to work perfectly when it was first released,
too?

~~~
czottmann
No, and again, that's not the point the author made.

> I’m more than happy to pay good money for good tools. For something as
> important as my code editor, I’d even pay a yearly subscription fee if it
> means the developer can keep churning out updates.

and

> I can totally live with an unfinished and slightly buggy piece of software
> being labelled as “final” and released as Sublime Text 2.0, but going off
> the grid for almost half a year and then completely abandoning that version
> branch, putting all efforts into 3.0 – a paid update – instead, is simply a
> dick move.

Key points here: "I’d even pay a yearly subscription fee", "going off the
grid".

------
dtjohnnymonkey
I totally agree with this:

> _Seriously – I don’t care about “2.0” or “3.0”. Just give us incremental
> updates and charge a yearly fee. Everybody wins._

I've built a web-based text editor which I sell for a yearly subscription.
What I like about this pricing is that the contract is clear:

1\. The user pays a fee and expects 1 year of support

2\. Developer gets paid and must support the software for 1 year

If I get bored, I can stop taking orders and shut down after 1 year.

------
wildster
I'm happy with Sublime Text 2.

~~~
csmattryder
Totally. Works without breaking, packages do all I need to.

I see no reason to upgrade to ST3 for the time being, 2 seems to do all I
need, and I've never been an early adopter, mainly to avoid compatibility
issues.

------
joesb
I felt the same way with the author.

When Sublime Text 2 was in development, the developer gets to keep working on
then somewhat buggy editor because of early adopters. It was the first editor
I bought because I truly believe its potential. At the time the developer made
update and bug fix almost every month.

Then once it was released, only one bug fix released was made and then no
update or news were made until Sublime Text 3 was announced. And don't tell me
there's absolutely nothing that can be updated/fixed in Sublime Text 2.

Basically the developer of Sublime Text is telling me I'm a sucker for
supporting him during development, the time others software developer would
still have to eat on their own budget.

May be I'll buy Sublime Text 3 in the future if it still has all the key
feature I love. But this time I'm not gonna be an early adopter because that's
how the developer has shown me how I should treat him.

------
swah
The only thing that bothers me about ST development is that Jon doesn't give
much feedback to the community about his plans for ST, or about "ST
philosophy", etc. In that sense I miss feeling "he hears" us.

But that works for him: he probably wants to avoid making any promises.

------
nicholassmith
I get that once you buy a product you have to have a reasonable expectation of
use out of it, but what you're paying for is _that_ tool on _that_ day. You're
not paying for ensured long term updates, and we don't own the developers
time. If he wants to move his focus onto a new major release with an upgrade
cost then so be it, if you've gotten a year of use out of Sublime for $50 or
however much it is you've had an exceedingly good product for exceedingly
cheap. ST3 is in ridiculously early beta, if it's not working right _right
now_ then don't use it, it's not like ST2 has died or has had features
removed.

~~~
joesb
> but what you're paying for is that tool on that day.

Well, not exactly with Kick Starter project. And, I believe, most people
bought Sublime Text 2 when it was in beta, giving funds to develop the tool to
what it was today.

> ST3 is in ridiculously early beta, if it's not working right right now then
> don't use it

Yep, I was a sucker once for buying ST2 when it was in beta, helping the
developer to make a living developing it full-time. This time I'll just treat
him how he wanted to be treated, like other software product, let him deal
with his financial problem himself until he release the software.

~~~
nicholassmith
Actually you weren't, you were actively supporting the development and helping
ST2 get to where it is. Kudos to you. However, it's beta software and if it
doesn't work it's _beta_ software, you've got the opportunity to say things
aren't working or features aren't right. You're not only investing in the
development of the product, you're also getting the chance to be involved in
making it the product you want.

Needing money to pay bills is a financial problem we _all_ have as well. He's
not doing this to be the popular guy, he's doing it to make a product he loves
and keep the lights on.

------
TallboyOne
I came in here to say just use Vim, the fact that the author thinks it might
not be productive shows he didn't really put too much effort into learning it.

Then I read the footer about the note to vim suggesters, and I'm just saying
this anyway.

------
awjr
Very few editors have impressed me as much as ST2 has. I have no issue in him
bringing out a new version and as far as I can tell ST2 has been feature
complete, never causing me any issues. I don't begrudge the guy wanting hold
off fixing non-critical 'bugs' that are not present in the next version of a
product due to the new implementation. There just is no point.

The only issue I have had is with a certain plugins, but most of the plugins
can be forked, fixed and pulled.

My only concern is the move to Python 3.3 which will break a lot of plugins.
Again fork and fix if you can or stick with ST2 until the plugin is fixed.

------
nnq
> Just give us incremental updates

Incremental change tends to suck all the joy of developing when you know
something could be done better by a refactor but you still have to work
incrementally to not have any breaks and delays and keep the customers
satisfied. If you really do something because you love doing it and not just
for the money, you must say "fuck the customers" once in a while - I'd prefer
such a guy working on the software I use because in the end it just means he
_cares_ about that piece of software, so regardless of the bumpy ride, things
will be for the better further on...

------
aidos
Curious, so now it's Sublime's turn to take a battering over version
development?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3045269>

------
ivanstojic
Eh, it's the old "I paid for your product X and I implicitly expected to get Y
as well" problem again.

We've had those before, you see, and the point is - unless something's
explicitly promised, calling it a dick move when you don't get it is funny.
I've been funny like that myself a few times before, but in the end I learned
the lesson:

You only get what you are explicitly promised, and if you don't want to be
treated like that, then don't pay for the product and use free alternatives.

Also, stop disparaging tools you don't use.

------
hartator
Interesting post. ST2 has a lot of good ideas but need to be a lot more
polished. When you compare ST2 to Textmate, you really feel the difference in
features but also unfortunately in global feeling about the app. The devil is
in the details.

I agree ST3 breaking retro compatibility won't help. It seems more a personal
development preference than real features/stability improvement. The only
major diff is the shift to python 3 and it's still controversial in the python
community.

------
harveyr
Why is this front page news? And what is the "stunt," exactly?

I am truly enjoying ST3. I have been using ST2 or ST3 for about 60-70 hours
per week for eight-ish months. I find ST3 significantly faster than ST2, and I
have been surprised at how few bugs I've encountered. The new features, such
as the global symbol and definition finders, work very well.

The program is not that expensive. The upgrade is not that expensive. And no
one can expect endless support for a particular version of a product.

------
dubcanada
I've used ST2 for a year now and have never experienced a single bug. He's
fixed any major bugs within a few days and the initial release he was pretty
much working 24/7 to get minor fixes out the door (just look at the release
log for 2.x).

This post just sounds like someone is cranky they are being forced to pay for
the newest and greatest software. Just look at VS, every single new release
costs more money.

And when did he say he wasn't supporting ST2 anymore? lol

------
schabernakk
What about Textmate? I really havent heard a lot about it after releasing the
source. Looking at the repository it seems there is active development but I
kind of expected a bit more. The last blog post for example is from october.
Its a very good foundation for building one of the most important tools for
developers yet no big and active community gathered around it.

------
pstadler
Come on, not everything is for free.

A lot of you prefer ST over all the free or cheaper alternatives out there. At
least I do, and that's why I can live with the fact of paying somebody 30
bucks to continue the development (for another year, or two?) of an awesome
piece of software that I use daily.

------
corydominguez
I always thought plugin incompatibility was really more about moving from
python 2.7.x to 3.x. This is a fairly huge problem that the python community
is just starting to get traction on and I am glad to see ST taking the more
difficult but ultimately correct upgrade path.

------
mikec3k
I've never been a fan of Sublime Text because it doesn't feel like a native
Mac app. They lost me when they made the preferences command open a window to
edit a settings file. Both BBEdit (still my favorite) and TextMate feel much
more native & user friendly.

------
bengillies
> (Dear “just use vim lol” trolls – and I know you’re reading this: I’ll
> switch to vim the very second I truly believe it will make me more
> productive. Promise!)

I'd be interested in why he believes this isn't currently the case.

~~~
damoncali
I'm not the author, but for me, I don't like keyboard shortcuts outside of the
obvious (cut, paste, and the like - the stuff that's the same on every app).
And I do like to use a mouse (I know - the horror), so I find vim's UI
distracting.

------
zoowar
Or, a good argument for FLOSS
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software>

~~~
nsmartt
This is my main issue with ST2. It's missing various features that I consider
to be almost key for my workflow.

I'm stuck running code from the terminal because of the limitations of build
systems in ST2. There's a nasty and supposedly un-fixable bug on Linux where
the menu bar is always visible. When I install on any distro that isn't using
a popular desktop environment, anything meant to open in browser doesn't work
until I make some changes. The folder names in config are all uppercase and
include spaces.

I'd love to fix these things. I can't, so I expect to find myself on vim in
the near future.

------
tuananh
Jetbrains is doing the yearly fee model. It works pretty well.

------
adamors
I've started a migration to vim and although I still use ST2 for work, it's
just a matter of weeks before I completely switch over.

------
eknkc
ST2 works just fine. I have not hit any major bugs since latest betas. It's
worth the money, still functional. What is the problem?

------
blissofbeing
I have switched to ST3 from ST2 and all of the plugins that I use work fine.

------
keymone
this blog post feels contradicting to me. if you paid for sublime 2 - you get
your incremental updates as sublime 3. if you haven't paid for sublime 2 you
don't have any right to demand updates for it.

------
ihsw
Blog posts like these are interesting but do they really belong on Hacker
News? The author's complaints are half-hearted and even contradictory (beta
software doesn't have proper upgrade path for prior stable versions? how is
that surprising?).

Furthermore the sense of entitlement is a little obscene, especially since
it's clear the author knows that he paid for a license but he doesn't
acknowledge that there is no SLA or any guarantee of software maintenance.

~~~
JohnBooty
"Furthermore the sense of entitlement is a little obscene"

Really? The author's criticism is constructive says he's perfectly willing to
pay a yearly subscription fee as opposed to Sublime Text's current revenue
model, which is to whack you over the head for money at arbitrary intervals if
you wish to stay current.

In fact, since Sublime Text's major point releases have been more than 12
months apart, he's actually stating that he's willing to give Sublime Text's
author money more frequently than he does today. If that's "entitlement" then
I need some more "entitled" clients.

"especially since it's clear the author knows that he paid for a license but
he doesn't acknowledge that there is no SLA or any guarantee of software
updates whatsoever."

This is awfully disingenuous, especially on a tech-oriented site like HN.

When programmers choose a development tool (particularly a text editor)
they're investing time and/or money in not just the editor itself but the
ecosystem around the editor - the plugin community, frequency of updates to
the editor itself, etc.

~~~
corresation
_says he's perfectly willing to pay a yearly subscription fee_

I don't know the author at all, but such claims generally deserve skepticism:
It's easy to proclaim how grandly generous one would be _if only another party
did x, y and z._. We see that here, just as the same dubious claim appears in
every single piracy discussion.

~~~
JohnBooty
I don't know him and he doesn't explicitly say so in his post, but it sure
sounds like he paid for ST2, which costs $70.

Rings a little truer to me than some kid in a college dorm with a cell phone
full of pirated mp3s.

