
Sublime Text 3 Build 3132 released - izietto
https://www.sublimetext.com/3dev
======
sbuttgereit
I love the editor, it's still better than its competitors.

But in terms of management I think they're making two mistakes:

1) I bet almost everyone that uses Sublime Text for production work are using
the "Beta" version (3) and not the release version (2). However, version 3 is
suppose to be a paid upgrade from version 2. How long can you leave money on
the table like this and still have a business, especially when the "beta"
status probably doesn't have much meaning with your customer base? Maybe these
guys have day jobs and this is just funny money anyway...

2) By remaining in beta so long and now that many people are using it... when
they do pull the release trigger on version 3, that will be a very sudden
expense for people that maybe have grown to depend on it without having paid
for the upgrade. While everyone on version 3 should know that the day will
come when that's a new license to pay for, if it rolls out as a standard
update and doesn't obviously leave room to stay on the last beta version while
people digest the upgrade fee... you might see a lot of people upgrade to the
alternative editors instead. (OK, OK... that's a potential management mistake,
not a concrete one as yet...)

~~~
wbond
1) Yes, well over 90% of Package Control users are running Sublime Text 3. We
haven't brought it out of beta yet because there were still a number of rough
edges and improvements we wanted to make before then. Jon mentioned in the
last beta blog post ([https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-
text-3-bui...](https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-
text-3-build-3124)) that this dev cycle is leading up to the 3.0 launch. And
no, we don't have day jobs. Sublime Text is _my_ day job. :-)

2) In terms of the expense, the only people who will be required to pay an
upgrade fee are users who purchased a license before the Sublime Text 3 beta
was announced. So effectively users who have been using ST2 (or ST3) for more
than four years will be paying. Everyone who has purchased since the ST3 beta
announcement have an ST3 license already
([http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/upgrades](http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/upgrades)).

~~~
rgbrenner
_We haven 't brought it out of beta yet because there were still a number of
rough edges and improvements we wanted to make before then._

Let me compare this to how I decide if something should be released: Is it
stable (ie: it doesnt crash frequently)? Did I add some features so I can tell
users its better than the last version? If you answered yes to those
questions, then fix any major bugs and ship the thing as stable.

You would have been on 3.0 stable a long time ago.

I also would package each of these fairly minor releases as 3.x.. so this
release would probably be 3.25 or something.

Why? You mark it as stable so new users (who aren't aware of your process)
know they can use this (and you can close the sale). You want people to feel
like the project is active, and they're getting a good deal for the license..
which feels like a better deal to you? \- I bought ST2 and will get ST3 \- I
bought ST 3.0, and received over 30 releases from 3.0 to 3.30.

 _Yes, well over 90% of Package Control users are running Sublime Text 3._

This is a warning sign. You were so conservative with marking it stable, that
the users have made the decision for you. The beta is now your product, and if
you break it, that will be your reputation. You no longer have a real beta.

~~~
apocalyptic0n3
I would agree, but I would also say that they should err on the side of
caution. Don't see all of these posts and just call the next release 3.0. Do
an absolute thorough round of testing. Be sure that it is stable. Then bring
it out of "beta".

As bad as breaking the beta would be, releasing a product after such a long
beta period that isn't completely stable would be worse.

All that said, Sublime is easily the most stable piece of software I use on a
daily basis. I prefer JetBrains IDEs for daily coding, but still do plenty of
work in ST3 and have customized the heck out of it to fit my needs almost
perfectly. I'd be very much surprised if it wasn't ready to exit beta today

~~~
rgbrenner
ST is quite likely the most cautious product I've ever seen. Most products
have a development cycle like this:

[beta][stable release][active development][extended support][eol]

ST seems to call the entire period through active development "beta".. and
then when they've finished developing the entire thing and hit what would
normally be the extended support period (bug fixes only), they call it stable.

It's certainly costing them money. And reducing the value of licenses (since
its "stable" for a shorter period of time)

If I were them, I would wait a couple of weeks (so that they get the entire
benefit from their announcement today of this new build), and then re-release
their software as stable -- even if no changes were made to it during that
period.

This thing has been in beta since 2013. It's been tested enough. It's ready.

(And to ST: if you want free advice on your release process, you're more than
welcome to email me. Or at least talk/consult with someone with product
management experience.. your software is great, but this release process needs
to be fixed.)

------
staticelf
There was a time I couldn't live without Sublime text but with both Atom and
Visual Studio Code I have no longer any use for it.

I understand people who need/want it because it's snappier and handles large
files great. I am however not really one of those people. But I am happy to
see development on it.

~~~
pmarreck
Can you go over the benefits of Atom over Sublime (and any drawbacks)?

And perhaps Visual Studio Code, although I would consider that an IDE (not a
big fan of IDE's)

~~~
jchw
I'd say Visual Studio Code is not only not an IDE, it's also lighter weight
than Atom, though obviously both are Electron. VS Code lacks even basic
project management, having less tooling than even Sublime for project
layout/folder structure - there's no equivalent for .sublime-project or
.sublime-workspace.

For the most part, the Electron UIs use a ton more RAM and are much laggier.
They do not tend to handle large files well. However, in exchange for that,
they offer rich features. Plugins are way better - since obviously they have
HTML/CSS at their disposal.

Also, VS Code's community is very active - same for Atom - and it leads to
quite high quality plugins. The plugin for Go, for example, is quite great.
I've been hoping for first-class Go support in Sublime just so I'd have a
direct comparison, but in comparison to the VS Code plugins for Go, Sublime
feels outright clunky and hard to configure.

I'd say give it a shot. If you can get past the fact that it's undoutably
slower, and some of the semantics are different, it's really nice having full
code intelligence and rich plugins.

~~~
christogreeff
Also the feedback from the Microsoft team (they genuinely _seem_ to put effort
into VSCode), the frequent updates and new features. I love(d) ST and it was
always one of the first tools I installed after a fresh OS install. My latest
install does not include ST, only VSCode (Windows and Linux). I do not notice
the speed in the type of work I do.

Still glad that there's an alternative available to VSCode also. :)

------
wbond
Here is a direct link to the docs for using the repos:
[https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/linux_repositories.html](https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/linux_repositories.html).

As usual, drop by the forum to provide feedback:
[https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/dev-
build-3132/28529](https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/dev-build-3132/28529)

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Many thanks for this.!

I've been previously using someone's script to install Sublime on Fedora:
[https://gist.github.com/simonewebdesign/8507139](https://gist.github.com/simonewebdesign/8507139)

An official DNF repo is much appreciated.

------
Philipp__
Sublime is perfect example of extremely well (almost perfectly, for me
personally it is) executed native desktop multi-platform app! I payed even if
I use it today mostly for reading the code, since Vim and Emacs took over
writing code.

~~~
Skunkleton
That is interesting. What makes Vim better for writing, but not reading in
your workflow?

~~~
haspok
1\. Open source code

2\. See definition of a function - copy name of function

3\. Open new folder -> say 2 folders above the current file

4\. Right click -> Find in Folder, paste name of function, enter

5\. Get an overview with:

\- a list of files where the function name is found

\- for each line the surrounding code is also shown

\- double clicking on a filename opens said file in a new tab

I have yet to find any vim/emacs tool that can do this so easily and
effortlessly. Even with Emacs Projectile, you have to define a "project"? And
then grep in that (but the user interface is just subpar).

Maybe I'm missing something, but for me, this is effectively stopping me using
Vim/Emacs most of the time. I use Vim for editing individual files, but
anything more than that, it is either IDEA (ok, I do Java dev a lot, so that's
a must), or any Commander clone (which has a Find functionality).

~~~
Skunkleton
So I don't want to tell you to change your workflow. Like most things that
evolve over time, they are the way they are for good reason. No one way is
better than another. That said, here is how I do what you described above in
Vim.

There are a few components: 1) Some fancy keybindings, 2) A plugin, and 3) an
optional wrapper script for launching commands inside a git project.

First, keybindings. You know about '#' and '*' in vim that search for the next
occurrence of token under your carat? I have an additional binding that does
the same, but doesnt move the carat. I bind it to <CR> (Enter), but you could
bind it to whatever. If you bind it to <CR>, it will interfere with the
minibuffer, which requires some shenanigans to work around (see the vimrc)

    
    
      nnoremap <silent><CR> :let @/='\<<C-R>=expand("<cword>")<CR>\>'<CR>:set hls<CR>
    

This is nice for a few use cases. One, it is nice to see where a token is used
in the current file, and two, it puts the highlighted word into a register,
that you can later paste.

I use mhinz/vim-grepper to execute searches, with my vimrc I can move the
carat to the word I am interested in, press "enter", then type :Gr<TAB><ENTER>
which will put me into grepper. Then I can press ^R/ (that is ctrl-r then /)
which pastes the content of the '/' register. Grepper will then launch the
selected search tool (ag, grep, git grep) and create a mini buffer of matches
that you can click on, or highlight and press enter. Here is my vimrc if you
want to give it a go. BE WARNED the first line of the vimrc calls git clone,
if this is bad on your setup for some reason, dont use my vimrc.

[https://gist.github.com/SeamusConnor/d7ebb747c91845055e069f0...](https://gist.github.com/SeamusConnor/d7ebb747c91845055e069f0c62d0e713)

The last piece is executing the search from the correct directory, to do that,
I use two methods. First, vim has a built in way to change its working
directory (:chdir), so you could do a :chdir ../../. Second, if you are using
git it is nice to run commands at the top level of the git directory
sometimes. For that I have a script that translates commands from the CWD to
the git top level. Some things you can do with it:

Rebuild cmake style project:

    
    
      g make -C build && g ./build/my_program # you can execute this from anywhere inside the repo
    

Open a file inside vim:

    
    
      cd src/my/nested/folder/
      g vim my_source_code.cpp  # open vim at git top level directory, and translates the file to src/my/nested/folder/my_source_code.cpp
    

[https://gist.github.com/SeamusConnor/645b66faff12ad5dbe3747f...](https://gist.github.com/SeamusConnor/645b66faff12ad5dbe3747fe2fcf63ef)

Anyway, hope that helps you or someone else.

~~~
haspok
Thanks for the efforts for describing this workflow, but please note my point
above about being "effortless" ;)

To be a bit more specific: I need to see the structure of what I'm searching
in, so at minimum, that means neotree/nerdtree. I don't have photographic
memory, or alphabetic memory, I always forget the names of folders, files,
everything. I just couldn't care less. "../.." means nothing to me. What is
that directory? Show me, and I will point to what I want.

Also, I don't want to search in a project. I want to search in a project OR in
multiple projects OR in a subdirectory within a project, ad hoc. OR just
select some files and search in them.

And in my opinion, for this specific use-case there is nothing wrong with
using the mouse. When I'm searching for something in the way I described above
I am usually browsing the code, reading it, trying to understand what is going
on. This is different to when I'm actually coding something, then vi/emacs
suddenly gets much more attractive, depending on the language used :)

~~~
Skunkleton
This is why I prefaced my response :) every one places different importance on
different things. Glad you have something that works for you. Vim does show
the age of its design from time to time. The worst has got to be Java, where
you end up having to run eclipse in the background to make it work. Talk about
a hack...

------
danellis
How does such an insignificant release (new themes, some bugfixes) of a
product become the top story on HN?

~~~
skandl
IMHO: Sublime was once leading the way as a light weight, easily customizable
editor. Since then, a slow release cycle and various compelling alternatives
like Atom and VS Code, has led many users away. So in this thread you see
people not discussing this release so much as the present day dynamic of
Sublime and its place among these (arguably faster, better, more customizable)
editors.

~~~
cpburns2009
In what way are Atom or VS Code, both based on Electron, light weight or fast
by any stretch of the imagination?

------
pestkranker
I would like to know where Sublime Text would be with the same resources as
VSCode.

~~~
praveenster
I love sublime text and bought the ST3 license a couple years ago. For the
last couple of months I've been holding off using VSCode as I felt the same
way that it was an unfair comparison between the work of one or few developers
vs a big team at Microsoft. But just last week I finally caved in and started
using VSCode on a regular basis and I seem to like it a lot more than ST3
despite the issues about large files. I am just worried though if more people
switch over and ST development stops because of funding and if Microsoft
abandons VSCode development, then what are we left with? At least VSCode is on
GitHub so the community might take over but I feel bad for indie developers
who have to compete with large teams from big companies that have no direct
revenue from the product.

~~~
Mahn
> if Microsoft abandons VSCode development, then what are we left with?

Certainly more than if ST were to be abandoned. In fact the main reason why
VSCode and Atom exist is probably Sublime being closed source.

------
sanbor
Glad to hear that sublime is still alive as I find it very intuitive (I grew
up using Windows shortcuts). The thing that makes me still search for
alternatives is the closed source condition. If I can find another editor with
similar speed and capabilities (but software libre) I'd switch without
thinking. Atom it's great but as a front end developer dealing with large code
bases in a text editor that can't handle large files, fast search, and keep
many files open it's a no-go.

I have donated to organizations such as Wikipedia, FSF, EFF, etc. so in my
case software libre it's not about saving money. I acknowledge that making
money with a software libre project it's still a challenge.

------
alberth
Does anyone still use UltradEdit [1] like me?

It's been around for 20 years and works on Windows/MacOS/Linux.

[1] [https://www.ultraedit.com/](https://www.ultraedit.com/)

~~~
TsomArp
I use UltraEdit and find it much better than ST. I have genuinely asked to
users of both what all the fuzz about ST is, in comparison to UE, but have
never gotten any response.

------
iwebdevfromhome
I love sublime text! It's still my favorite from all the current GUI editors.
But recently I've been leaning more to Atom because:

1) It's not as slow as it used to be.

2) The vim binding plugins are superior.

~~~
chillee
I personally also think that the VSCode vim plugin is even better than the
atom one, and it's currently in a very active state of development. We
recently added neovim integration for Ex-commands, which means that
practically every Ex-command is now supported.

Check out our changelog:
[https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/releases/tag/v0.8.0](https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/releases/tag/v0.8.0)

Disclosure: I am one of the developers for VSCodeVim, but I am legitimately
excited about all the features we've been adding recently.

------
bitsoda
The guilt of never paying for Sublime Text finally overtook my conscience so I
ended up switching to Atom. Atom would chug memory on Windows 10 so now I
curiously find myself using Caret[1] which is much lighter on resources
despite using the same web technologies in the background.

[1]
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/caret/fljalecfjcio...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/caret/fljalecfjciodhpcledpamjachpmelml?hl=en)

~~~
8draco8
After years of using Sublime without licence I've looked at my paycheck and I
realised that probably 80% of it was earned while being in Sublime Text. I
don't understand why developers earning tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands
of dollars refuse to pay $70 for life time licence for an application that
helps them earn those money.

~~~
bitsoda
I totally agree with you. I code as a hobby in my spare time making no money
off it so I'd rather use a free option.

------
xaedes
I would be so happy for an ARM build.

------
pfarnsworth
I paid for ST a while ago and love it. But I'm finding more and more that the
specialized IDEs make me so much more productive.

For example, I just started using Gogland and it is much better than ST with
whatever plugins I could find. And it's unfortunate because I really like the
convenience of using ST for all my different languages I use at work, but I'm
just so much more productive with Gogland that I'm going to make a hard
switch.

------
s_chaudhary
One IntelliJ Ultimate rules them all...

Once you use intelliJ IDEA, it's very hard to switch again, because there's so
much that you feel missing...

~~~
arjie
Even with IntelliJ and IdeaVim, if you ever need Sublime Text, you can easily
switch to it temporarily using IntelliJ's External Editors feature. This will
let you edit the file neatly in the external editor and return easily to the
IntelliJ window.

Go to Preferences > Tools > External Editors

Add a new entry called Sublime Text

Turn off ‘Open Console’

Set program to /Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl

Set Parameters to $FilePath$

------
dsego
The only major flaw this editor has is that sometimes by mistake I enter only
one character (or even just a space) into the 'Find in Files' input and run
search. And it just grinds to a halt, so I have to force quit or wait 10
minutes for the search to end. All the while the UI is unresponsive,
beachballing. Still my go-to editor.

------
hota_mazi
I really want to like ST but its search/replace UI has always been completely
counter intuitive to me.

I'm used to a lot of different ways of doing search/replace (IDEA, emacs, vim
to name a few) but somehow, my brain doesn't seem to be able to become fluent
with ST's approach.

~~~
naiyt
What is it that confuses you? There's a "Find" box, a "Replace" box, and then
a "Replace" button.

~~~
hota_mazi
It goes across multiple files by default in a confusing manner and the flow to
automatically replace or do it one by one doesn't make sense to me.

~~~
naiyt
Gotcha, I could see how that could be confusing. I typically just use multi
cursors to find/replace when in a single file.

------
bsimpson
I'm still hoping for ligature support, especially with how common arrow
functions have become:

[https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig](https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig)

The lack of them is one of the reasons I'm considering switching to VS Code.

------
hartator
> OSX: Added basic Touch Bar support

Can someone post how it look like? I am curious.

~~~
strange_quark
It gives you up/down arrows that only work in search (i.e. F4, Shift + F4),
but you can enable recent files via settings. It looks like this.

[http://imgur.com/a/6NOBG](http://imgur.com/a/6NOBG)

~~~
hartator
Doesn't look like that useful. You like it?

------
shorsher
Is there any info on when the new dev builds will be released as beta?

------
noway421
>Fix multi-cursor pasting when clipboard contains one or more full lines

This is great. Didn't feel right at all to see <NUL> in the code after doing
multi line pasting.

------
jchw
Well, this is neat. Time to put my license to use again I guess.

~~~
eterm
I almost didn't buy an ST2 license because ST3 was already in beta and while I
was happy ST3 beta was available to ST2 licensees I was worried I might have
to re-buy fairly soon after.

Looking back 4 years later I'm certainly glad I didn't hold off until St3 was
officially out.

~~~
simplehuman
There is a name for this syndrome where a future shinier product kills your
current product sales. Can someone help me with name?

~~~
mstade
I think it's called the Osborne effect:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect)

~~~
simplehuman
That's the one, thanks :)

------
mishurov
vim

