HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ nickelcitymario

There are text editors and there are IDEs, and each has its place. Sublime Text is, to me, the best GUI text editor around.

(For those with the patience to master them, Vim or Emacs may be both objectively and subjectively better. But I've never had that patience. Emacs has a hell of a steep learning curve.)

You can't knock Sublime for not having the features of an IDE, because that's not what it is. If we keep pushing for Sublime to be as "full featured" as an IDE, we're gonna kill what makes it great.

VSC seems to be trying to be both, and by all appearances, those who like it, like it a lot. I'm not in that group, but I admit that there may be something(s) outstanding about it that I just haven't yet appreciated.

⬐ PragmaticPulp

I was an avid Sublime Text user for versions 2 and 3. The speed and responsiveness kept me coming back.

Then over time computers for faster, VSCode got more efficient, and plug-in developers started paying less attention to Sublime Text because we all assumed development had stopped.

I started using VSCode because I needed a specific plugin that wasn’t available in Sublime Text. From there I got comfortable with VSCode and slowly stopped using Sublime Text. I think an active plug-in ecosystem and IDE-like features are necessary for text editors to stay relevant in 2021. Sublime Text’s long development hiatus may have stalled that process. Hopefully they can spring back.

⬐ caminocorner

Sublime Text has never crashed on me (or been slow) and that's why I use it as my primary tool. VSCode is still slow for me, last I checked.

⬐ blacksmith_tb

I use them the other way around - I do almost all my dev work in VSC these days, but I bought ST3 years ago (ST2 originally I think) and I still prefer it for opening huge log files, XML, etc. which bog down VSC.

⬐ folkrav

For some languages, VSC plays in IDE territory. Compared to other IDEs in the same space, it's pretty similar, if not lighter.

⬐ whalesalad

The performance and reliability of subl is unmatched in my experience as well.

⬐ Shorel

Except... it all was a marketing issue.

Development continues, and having a stable API for plugins can be considered a feature.

Let's see what will they do in the future. Both ST developers and plugin developers.

⬐ nickelcitymario

This may sound weird, but I genuinely hope they don't "spring back".

IF we consider Sublime to be a text editor and not an IDE, then all I really want from the Sublime dev team is to fix problems if/when they arise. If there are no problems, then push feature development into the plugin ecosystem, but leave out-of-the-box Sublime mostly alone.

When I look at that preview video, I see a team that shares my values in a text editor. They've made updates to keep with changes to operating systems, a few features that would be universally useful in a text editor, but not much else.

For me and my idea of a text editor, that's perfect. It's stable. It's dependable. It's fast. I never have to worry whether the dev team is about to destroy the editor that I love, nor do I have to worry about it becoming obsolete.

Some people may feel it's already obsolete, but every complaint seems to be for IDE-like features, not for a better text editor. If that's what you want, then by all appearances, VS Code is the way to go.

That being said, I hear what you're saying about the plugin ecosystem. If plugin developers have interpreted the relatively quiet and deliberate release cycle of Sublime as "this is no longer being actively developed", then of course they won't develop their plugins for it. But if that's anyone's interpretation, I think they're wrong.

To put it another way, I think of Sublime's approach like Google's approach to their homepage (at least when Marissa Mayer was running things): Job #1 is to say no to scope creep. Keep it simple. Keep it focused. If you can make it better at the focused list of things it's meant to do, then great, do that. But don't add, don't clutter.

⬐ Zelphyr

I started out with vi and then Vim. When TextMate came out, I became an avid user. I liked how easily I could customize it but then it seemed kind-of abandonware (could be just my own perception) so I moved on to Sublime Text. I played around with others during that time including Visual Studio Code.

All of the editors I've used are great and I don't knock them at all. About two years ago, however, I realized how much I love Vim. It is also easily customizable but most importantly, I just plain feel really productive with it.

⬐ nickelcitymario

I loved TextMate.

But I think the facts speak for themselves now...

- their site is now little more than a vanilla bootstrap theme

- their News section hasn't been updated since 2014

- the blog appears to be miscellaneous developer notes that may or may not even be related to TextMate

...I'd agree with the sentiment that development appears to be dead.

That said, I think Sublime is as worthy a spiritual successor as any. (It also may be the biggest reason for TextMate's demise.)

⬐ levifig

FWIW, Textmate itself gets pretty frequent updates (latest one was on Feb 25th). It has also been open-sourced[1].

[1] https://github.com/textmate/textmate

⬐ nickelcitymario

I had no idea... I was basing my conclusion on the TextMate site, and both of these facts are kinda buried.

Gonna have to give TM another go sometime soon.

⬐ w4rh4wk5

I've been a Vim user for a long time and still use it today occasionally. VSCode has replaced most applications of Vim for me because of the good out-of-the-box experience for different programming languages.

In VSCode all it typically takes to get started with a new language is to install one or two extensions, click one to three buttons, followed by a restart. Now you got syntax highlighting, auto-completion, go to definition, find all references, build system integration, test runners, debugging support, etc.

You can also get these features in Vim or Emacs, but from my experience it takes a lot longer to setup and integrate properly.

⬐ mstipetic

I would pay a lot of money for a curated vim distribution that works out of the box. I've used vim heavily for years, and still nothing compares to it when things are working well, but every time I want to change something I get so frustrated. Every extension uses it's own set of principles, the learning curve is steep, error messages super vague.

If anyone is looking for a side-hustle, I'd be your first customer

⬐ ctas

I'm building something like that. Feel free to reach out, would love to chat.

⬐ stnmtn

VSCode + vim plugins are this for me. Best of both worlds

⬐ w4rh4wk5

Honestly, there is not a lot of Vim I really miss. Yeah, macros with motion commands are cool, but in many cases VSCode's multi-cursor is sufficient.

Editing code in Vim is probably faster, but that speedup is neglectable if you are missing precise go-to-definition or auto-completion instead.

⬐ mstipetic

When it's set up nicely it works great, but any modifications are a pain. Also i can't put in words how much i hate using the mouse, after having tmux+vim+tiling wm set up

⬐ globular-toast

Emacs is an IDE, though. It's greatest strength is that "I" part, not necessarily the text editor. Vim is more of a direct competitor.

For me, to complete as best text editor, disk-based editing is a must. For that reason alone, Ultraedit remains the best text editor and has done for many, many years.

⬐ nickelcitymario

You're an honest-to-god hex editor? I thought that was just something people said to sound bad ass, knowing they'd almost never get called on it. Most impressive.

(In case any of that sounded sarcastic, it's not. I'm in genuine awe.)

⬐ baby

I’m wondering why you’re not putting ST and VSC in the same basket. They’re the same type of text editor: light, extensible with community plugins. Hell, the design and the shortcuts are the same as well!

I think it’s going to be hard for ST to compete with VSC, their major offering seems to be native over electron, which is great but will it be enough?

⬐ musingsole

VS Code has never been sold to me as a lightweight text editor and I've only ever seen it coupled with atrocities of plugins for "developer productivity" that equates to do it the way the wizard in the corner created their environment to enforce or else feel their impotent wrath on your PRs.

⬐ nickelcitymario

Fair comment. I struggle to categorize VSC in the Editor-IDE spectrum, and it may simply be a matter of market positioning. But let me take a stab at it.

The way I've seen VSC used in the wild is as a highly customizable IDE. Yes, it can be used as a minimal text editor. But it seems to want to be more than that. I've yet to see anyone using it that weren't also using it as a terminal and a bug checker and git manager and and and...

By contrast, most ST users (again, based on personal experience, I could be statistically way off) use it as a pure text/code editor, with plugins to help with code completion and such. ST can be extended, but it doesn't much care whether you choose to extend it or not. Using VSC without plugins just feels... weird, somehow? Like I'm missing the point of it?

As for whether ST can compete with VSC, I don't think it should compete. They're each appropriate for different situations. They do overlap more than any other ST "competitor", granted, but I think there are situations where VSC is the better choice, some where ST is better, and some where a full-blown IDE is the best way to go.

When the situation calls for a really great text editor, ST is, in my experience, the fastest and most productive way to go.

I think the shift from ST to VSC is due to the fact that many (most?) developers actually want an IDE, but just don't like the other ones on the market.

⬐ rvanmil

Exactly! Very happy with both; VSCode for... code :) and Sublime for everything else. As far as I’m concerned these two are not competitors.

⬐ whalesalad

I was an avid user of Textmate then jumped to Sublime ages ago and have never looked back. I have all the key commands down with muscle memory and have never found another editor with better rendering quality and latency.

my 4k setup: https://i.imgur.com/yRShjn9.png

While doing a lot of Clojure at Farmlogs I genuinely tried to become an Emacs user, but I have always struggled with the sheer number of key commands. That being said, I love ctrl-e, ctrl-a etc... for day to day on macOS and admire that from Emacs.

Vim is my goto for every cli based editing interaction.

One thing I have never loved about vim/emacs is the fact that there are so many different ways to deal with plugins and configuration that I have never known 'the right way' to do things.

Full blown IDEs have always felt brutal and cumbersome, plus I tend to obsess over the details and prefer applications who use native rendering tools versus things like Java/GTK/Qt/etc...

Sublime has hardly any chrome, so I like that element as well. It has always felt the fastest, too. It will open massive files and scroll them no problem where other editors will struggle.

⬐ richeyryan

I've been trying out Doom Emacs recently. I'll admit that I have used Vim and Emacs for reasonable periods of time previously so I am somewhat used to their way of doing things but Doom is nicely prescriptive and gives a great vim first experience. There is a bit of getting used to it but it might be something interesting for you.

⬐ whalesalad

> Doom is a configuration framework for GNU Emacs tailored for Emacs bankruptcy veterans who want less framework in their frameworks, a modicum of stability (and reproducibility) from their package manager, and the performance of a hand rolled config (or better).

This looks pretty neat.

⬐ richeyryan

I'd say the things to look out for are:

- Keybindings aren't comprehensively listed anywhere (that I know of)

- You have to go to the individual packages that are loaded and figure out how to use them

- There is some discoverability where if you type C-w you'll start to see all the window related keybindings, so you can at least get into the habit of checking there when you forget something

- I'm used to using C-c to return to normal mode in Vim which doesn't work here so my suggestion is to use C-[, jk or ESC I guess

- Autosave is disabled by default due to a preference of the maintainer, so you'll want to install a package or tweak the config to enable that

- I find window management difficult right now compared to something more conventional like VSCode or even compared to something like i3, it just doesn't seem to do what I want

Overall I'd say its like good guard rails but you'll probably need to dive into Emacs stuff to accomplish certain tasks. With that said, the vim emulation is miles better than what's available in VSCode.

There is also Spacemacs which aims to be much more comprehensive but I haven't tried that.

⬐ lostmsu

Hm, for a 4k screen, it has surprisingly little on the screen. Is the monitor pretty small (<32")?

⬐ whalesalad

I run scaled down slightly, it appears to me as 2560x1440 but still having the benefits of better pixel density.

FWIW I have an HP Z27 display which I adore. It uses a single usb-c umbilical cord to deliver power to my Macbook Pro ('18 touchbar model) and simultaneously video to the display.

The light that indicates whether the display is on or not is also incredibly small, the same size and intensity of the green 'webcam active' light on a Macbook, but in a white color.

⬐ alexaholic

[off topic] I apologise in advance for the unsolicited review - I couldn't help it.

First, in service.api.api:43-49 you do:

    filename = (file.filename if file else None) or request.form.get("filename")
    [...]
    try:
        stored_metadata = storage.store(filename, file)

My understanding is you're receiving some file then storing it somewhere with the name provided by the client. That to me looks like a potential security issue. It looks like this function (what is this, Flask?) is both a view and a validator, yet it looks like the file name is not sanitised in any way. I would not accept all characters here. There are two problems: first is the name you use to save the file on disk. Think about e.g. slashes, dots, spaces and the non-printable characters. The other one is about access: if e.g. the file name contains "#" or other special URL character, the file might not be accessible at all.

Second, in service.api.api:54-55 you have:

    except storage.FileTooBigException as e:
        raise FileTooBig(str(e))

This masks the original exception. In order to avoid that, you have to tell the engine the new exception you're raising is the direct cause of some other exception:

    except storage.FileTooBigException as e:
        raise FileTooBig(str(e)) from e

It might not be that important with a client error like this, though. At worst it helps with debugging. [/off topic]

⬐ stickyricky

    raise FileTooBig(str(e)) from e

I did not know this was possible. Thanks!

⬐ alyandon

I, too, learned something new today even though I don't even pretend to be a Python developer!

⬐ whalesalad

Hah, thanks for the review! Great feedback. This was a coding challenge from a few years ago when I applied for a gig at Zapier. It was time capped so I didn't spend any extra time making it perfect.

Note that in the screenshot there are yellow boxes around the `raise` keyword - this is a complaint from the linter to do exactly as you suggest.

⬐ keb_

I switched from Sublime to VSCode around 2017, and then switched back to Sublime in 2019. My return to Sublime was triggered by a funfunfunction video[1] wherein Mattias recounts an anecdote where he spent an enormous amount of time learning and configuring his IDE, editors, and tools.

I realized this is what I was doing with VSCode -- adding more and more extensions, and spending an increasing amount of time configuring them or troubleshooting them when they broke. I realized I was happier and more productive using a "dumber" tool like Sublime Text. I still use plugins with ST, but try to keep them to an absolute minimum. If there is a CLI for what I want to do, I prefer to just use that instead of an extension that obfuscates it. Also, ST is significantly snappier than VSCode, an Electron app.

I've been using ST4 for over a week now, and it's been a breath of fresh air.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIjKJjzRX_E

⬐ johnfn

What a fun video. I do think that "no configuration at all" is probably a little too extreme, and the real answer lies somewhere in the middle. But I think we should all be aware of metawork - it's far too easy to go down that rabbit-hole while feeling like we're being productive! I’ve literally spent a year working on a vscode plugin... sigh.

⬐ musingsole

I've seen far too many developers spend far too much time configuring literally everything but especially their IDEs. I've gotten so very tired of hearing that nonsense as an excuse in a scrum for no progress yesterday. I don't care. I don't need their tools to do my job; maybe they quite literally do and couldn't make any progress with out them...but I'm more convinced these types have little appreciation for work ethic.

All the configuration knobs on an IDE don't make a lick of sense if your goal is being useful to those paying for your services. Each and every one (with the exceptions of autocomplete, goto and syntax highlighting) are better implemented as separate tools. But that mentality got lost long, long ago.

⬐ damagednoob

I keep relearning this lesson:

First it was with competitive gaming. In tournaments, competition machines have their configs reset after each match. You have a limited amount of time to setup before game time because admins also have to check your config. I learned to have a fairly simple config (i.e. close to defaults) so I wouldn't run out of time.

Second time round it was with vim and Ruby. I spent nearly 2 months trying to get the right combination of plugins to get something close to a decent IDE experience. I ended up packing it in for RubyMine which gave me what I wanted right out the box.

⬐ threatofrain

Like for many Sublime used to be the go-to editor for a slick editing experience. Easiness for people who didn't want Vim but found JetBrains too heavy. But today I'm afraid Sublime is far behind VSC as a tool to empower developer productivity, and it reminds me of Nova at this point (too late).

Also no mention of the feature that changed the face of the ecosystem — Intellisense or the language server protocol.

⬐ wbond

This is a little teaser of some of the more easily demonstrated visual changes in ST4, but we've got a huge collection of new features, tweaks and bug fixes coming.

The community is actively maintaining an LSP package, and we've added a number of features in ST4 that the protocol requires, such as UTF-16 diffs.

⬐ kamranjon

I'm really excited about the new release, thanks for building one of the fastest text editors in the game. I use it every day and couldn't develop without it.

⬐ hn8788

I love sublime text, but I really wish you'd reconsider relying on a community LSP package. There was an issue a year or two ago where the LSP package couldn't be installed due to a dependency issue in the package, and since it's a community package, they could only fix it when they had enough spare time. I think it was a 1-2 month timeframe where there was no way for new installs to have LSP functionality since it required a third-party plugin.

⬐ wbond

We looked into the protocol, but unfortunately it made a number of poor architectural choices that leads to many language servers not implementing the protocol properly. This effectively requires custom integrations for most language servers. That wouldn't make sense to do in the core of the editor, since we'll never be primary users on the vast majority of servers.

The open source model makes sense since it will need to have tweaks and fixes to support various language servers. That combined with a very small development team (six engineers across our two products), would probably lead to slower development, and it would be tied to the release cadence of the main product.

⬐ hn8788

That makes sense, I didn't know how small the team was. Thanks for the response, looking forward to ST4.

⬐ modeless

That's unfortunate, but I still think it would be best if you could at least add support for one or two servers in the core, with extensibility for others. Or officially adopt and support the community LSP plugin. My experience with the community LSP plugin has not been good, and it almost led met to switch to vscode. (That and debugging which is a whole other can of worms.) I really think working on LSP would be a better use of your time than continuing to improve the current fuzzy indexing engine.

⬐ ben-schaaf

The problems you're likely had with the community LSP plugin were due to a lack of APIs provided by ST. For ST4 we've worked together with the community LSP plugin authors to properly support it.

⬐ patjenk

I use sublime.txt everyday. The main purpose is reading, editing, searching a “scratch.txt” file I have been prepending to for the last 11 years. Sublime loads, saves, and searches it better than any other text editor. I have found it’s a helpful way to save random lists, notes, links, and common chunks of code.

It’s also my go to for wrangling weird txt.

⬐ thefz

I have a similar use case, although I am not a power user.

I use it to open often giant .csv and .txt very very fast. I use it to quickly edit SQL because the select-lines command (ctrl+alt+up/down) makes batch edits of indented code a breeze. I use it to sometimes format and arrange weirdly formatted C#. I use it often for its lightning fast search and replace function.

It has grown on me over NP++ which is still a very very nice text editor.

⬐ warmwaffles

I still use sublime text everyday. By far the boot speed, zero lag between file changes and other slight annoyances are not there. Plus the integration of Sublime Merge has been fantastic.

⬐ kamranjon

I also love sublime merge, any time im screensharing with someone pairing on some code and we finish up i pop it open straight from sublime to review our changes and they always want to know what tool it is. They just produce really great software.

⬐ laddershoe

Me too -- I live in Sublime Text most days. Hard to argue that VSCode wins on dev features, and most of my fellow developers use it for that reason. But I can't get past the speed; Sublime Text does everything instantly, while in VS Code, everything is just slightly laggy.

To each their own, I guess, but given how much of my day editing text, it's hard to want to use a text editor that has noticeable lag. (Cue the usual rants about latency in 2021 on multi-GHz machines)

⬐ warmwaffles

I've also got most of the shortcuts committed to muscle memory and configured just the way I like it. Sunken cost fallacy is where I am headed. But I've always loved this editor and will continue to support it as long as they continue to support it.

⬐ tehbeard

Sublime still holds king for ad-hoc grepping around large files.

For dev work though, my daily driver is VSC at this point.

I still use Sublime for notes as well, but that's more so I don't have to think about how closing/opening half a dozen workspaces in VSC affects which notes are open.

⬐ ericcholis

I basically use Sublime in place of notepad on Windows at this point. If I need anything beyond advanced text editing; I'm using an IDE.

⬐ systems

then why not use notepad++ its free and open source, unlike sublime text

⬐ tored

I use Sublime Text as excellent grep/search tool. Superfast, easy to write filters for include or exclude, can quickly open the matching file and you can see it with proper syntax highlighting.

⬐ tored

Wasn't one problem that Sublime Text's plugin API was somewhat lacking, you couldn't do any advanced GUI in it?

⬐ bogwog

This is a big one. Being able to create a tab/window to view custom data would be awesome, like a live HTML preview, OpenGL surface, graph rendered from an open data file, custom image format, etc.

I wouldn't mind the core ST app being so bare bones if the plugin API was more powerful, but unfortunately it is pretty limited in what you can do.

⬐ wbond

We've got quite a number of API enhancements in the next version, including HTML sheets for non-text content.

That said, we are definitely focused on being first and foremost a really fast text editor that makes it easy to read, navigate and write code. Trying to implement a browser or be an IDE are outside of our area of focus.

⬐ psychometry

Jetbrains is extremely fast for me these days because the indexing is good. The fact that the IDE and Java are using 1-2 GBs RAM isn't really a problem when any dev machine is going to have at least 8 GBs.

⬐ benbristow

8GB is low for a dev machine nowadays. Your browser uses 1/2GB, IDE using 1/2GB+ (JetBrains Rider often uses like 4GB for me), then the OS itself, database servers, virtualization overhead (e.g. Docker) and other tools. Easily used up.

16GB is the bare minimum for a dev machine in 2021 IMO. Anything higher than that is 'nice to have' unless you're doing heavy stuff like data analysis, machine learning/AI, games development etc.

⬐ fauigerzigerk

That's surprising. I used IntelliJ today after a pause and found it unbearably slow. For instance, scrolling a ~6 page source file lags so much it's extremely irritating.

It's also fantastically bloated. There's so much stuff I have to disable to make it barely usable. And most of the supposedly helpful lightbulbs suggest changes that make absolutely no sense.

I can absolutely believe that IntelliJ has its fans because it has a ton of features, but for me it's just unusable.

⬐ klibertp

> Intellisense

Could we please call it "autocompletion" instead? The feature did not originate from Microsoft IDEs, and while they are free to call it whatever when talking about their editors, the rest of the world (well, that 2m^2 part centered on me, at least) would appreciate if we used more general terminology.

⬐ dgellow

I always understood "intellisense" as a way to say "contextual autocompletion based on structured information". So it is a form of autocompletion, but one that adapts gracefully to the context (like an IDE autocompletion experience). Autocompletion could just mean that you have some string matching (more like basic shell completion).

It's good to have a way to specify when you're talking about the former meaning and I do not know another term for this than "intellisense".

⬐ bogwog

In my experience, "Intellisense" is shorthand for "broken autocompletion"

I don't use Microsoft IDEs often, but have had experience with them many times over the past 15 years. And every single time, intellisense would freeze, get confused, or just stop working completely. Not once in 15 years have I had a passable experience with it, so nowadays when I'm in Microsoft land I always immediately disable intellisense before I start working.

⬐ threatofrain

One reason why VSC became popular among front-end devs was its integration of type-based information provided by the community or library authors, so that even people not using TS would receive type hints.

Auto-completion does not adequately cover consumption and display of information from libraries, nor grammatical awareness in correction.

As a lot of metadata would be from the library authors or the community, that depends on whatever your stack is.

⬐ dgellow

I completely understand your feelings. I also always faced quite a lot of issues with Visual Studio (not vscode) autocompletion when trying to write C++. But when it decides to work the experience is great.

Visual Studio Code on the other hand is just fantastic. I was a hardcore emacs user until I switched to VSCode as my main editor a few years ago due to the crazy good auto-completion experience.

⬐ kstrauser

I could’ve written this comment. I made myself use VSCode for about a week, and that was about the last time I seriously used Emacs.

I had the privilege of chatting with the VSCode booth people at PyCon a couple years ago. I was waxing enthusiastic about some feature or another and one of the other people at the booth spun around — “I wrote that!”, and then I got to tell him how much I loved his work. That felt great.

⬐ yunohn

+1 to this. A lot of basic text editors have basic string-based autocompletion. Intellisense is way more than that. IntelliJ (atleast PyCharm) excels at this too.

⬐ paxys

Intellisense is a collection of dozens of IDE features and is far more than just autocomplete

⬐ threatofrain

It's a matter of framing: VSC was a sluggish editor that wasn't particularly optimized for the editing. It also had autocompletion, which was a very generic feature.

I suppose if one had a table of comparisons, it'd be correct to say that VSC and Sublime generally matched on features, except Sublime does it way faster and more efficiently.

⬐ threatofrain

It looks like "intelligent code completion" or just code intelligence may be a good choice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_code_completion#In...

⬐ tehbeard

I think at this point it's safe to assume Intellisense is fairly genericized and refers more to an "autocompletion" that takes additional information/context into account than a specific $company's implementation.

⬐ hnbad

I think the generic term for this feature is "code intelligence". Autocompletion often just means that the editor provides suggestions of other symbols in the same file, which is a far call from the language-aware and context-aware suggestions, auto imports and refactoring features IDEs provide.

The distinction seems important as I personally wouldn't go back from VSCode to an editor that merely provides autocompletion but can't reason about the language beyond basic syntax highlighting.

I caught myself using "Google" as a verb when talking about searching on Amazon the other day and "Xerox" has become synonymous with "copying" for an entire generation, so I wouldn't judge too harshly on people using "Intellisense" as a generic phrase even if it can harm communication ("But does this editor have Intellisense?").

⬐ klibertp

I'm ok with "code intelligence", or even more precisely "autocomplete based on code intelligence". All good. Just not "intellisense", please ;)

> I personally wouldn't go back from VSCode to an editor that merely provides autocompletion

Autocompletion can draw from multiple sources. By default, before LSP hooks have a chance to add themselseves to the list, I have following sources configured:

      '(ac-source-symbols
        ac-source-variables
        ac-source-functions
        ac-source-features
        ac-source-filename
        ac-source-abbrev
        ac-source-dictionary
        ac-source-words-in-same-mode-buffers
        ac-source-semantic
        ac-source-yasnippet
        ac-source-files-in-current-dir) 

Maybe that's why I don't think changing the name of the feature based on just the source it uses makes sense.

⬐ RBerenguel

GTAGS/CTAGS/"any other family of tag processors/generators" could be used for autocompletion in Emacs/Vim way before, and they were just "part" of autocompletion.

⬐ PascLeRasc

Sublime is so, so good, no qualifications or buts about it. Startup is instant and the typing latency feels incredibly fast. Very thankful that it’s still being developed.

⬐ jonemi

This is the most valuable feature for me. I love how lightweight and responsive it feels.

⬐ bogwog

So after all this time the only thing they have to show is a handful of features that could've probably been implemented as plugins for ST3? I'm hoping there's a lot more, and that this video was just a rush job.

I've been using ST3 as my exclusive development tool for the past ~5 years, and I've been very happy with it. It's extremely fast, stable, and customizable. I even have a bunch of custom plugins I've written to integrate with custom tools and workflows on different projects.

But my biggest complaint is that the pace of development is glacial. The chances of them adding a feature you want/need is basically zero, so you shouldn't even bother asking.

IMO, they should consider releasing it as open source software (at least partially), and accepting donations via a Patreon page or something similar.

⬐ nickelcitymario

Your position is totally reasonable, but I would argue that ST is better off with a smaller feature set and a robust plugin ecosystem. The last thing I would want to see is for ST to become the Microsoft Word of text editors, i.e. a million built-in features, of which you might only use 5%.

Addendum: It dawns on me that building the Microsoft Word of anything is probably not a bad goal, considering it's the dominant word processor. It's not what I would want in a text editor, but it may very well be what most people want most of the time.

⬐ jpalomaki

For more casual user (me) a large plugin ecosystem makes things complicated. It means you need to invest time to understand which ones to pick and this might be changing all the time as projects are abandoned and forked.

For Eclipse there was (is?) something called MyEclipse which was paid software and contained a curated set of plugins.

⬐ nickelcitymario

An excellent point. My solution to this would be (ironically) to add one feature to Sublime: Grouped Packages.

Simply put, the idea would be to define a set of plugins needed (or recommended) for certain types of development. So you'd install Sublime, and then have a handy popup asking if you want to install any of the suggested Grouped Packages. There might be a dozen or so that are commonly useful for a Rails developer, another group that's useful for C, or for Wordpress, or whatever.

That would allow for a minimal text editor, the infinite possibilities of plugins, and also easy onboarding for new users. It would also be useful for advanced users who are getting started in a new field.

⬐ hn8788

I think some features that are currently plugins could stand to be integrated into the main editor. For example, language server functionality is only available through a third-party plugin, and a year or two ago there was a couple month period where the plugin install was broken due to a dependency issue. Anyone who installed ST during that time would have been out of luck if they wanted to use progamming language plugins that required a language server.

⬐ nickelcitymario

I'm not entirely familiar with "language server functionality", but it sounds like something that isn't needed for most text editing situations. So it's a perfect candidate for a plugin.

I'm not knocking this functionality. It's probably super helpful, useful, or downright required in the work you do. It sucks that the plugin was broken.

However, the fact that the plugin was broken tells me there's a problem with the plugin ecosystem, not with the editor.

⬐ Shorel

True, but at the same time it has evolved into something required for modern development.

So: new features -> plugins. Required features -> converted from plugins to native.

⬐ nickelcitymario

> new features -> plugins. Required features -> converted from plugins to native.

I like that framing. What counts as required will always be up for debate, but I like that framing.

> at the same time it has evolved into something required for modern development.

Has it? Is the implication that any development done without it is somehow not modern? Or that most modern development tend to eventually bump into this requirement? Assuming you mean the second one, I'm not sure that's true... it certainly hasn't been true for me, but maybe I'm in the minority and don't realize it.

Edit: I'm an idiot. Leaving this comment as-is, so as to not hide my shame. I see now why this feature in particular should probably be baked in.

⬐ bogwog

See language server protocol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol

If you have a programming language, you can write a "language server" for it that is compatible with the standard language server protocol. Once you have that, you can use your programming language in any text editor that implements an LSP client, and get full IDE-like features for free.

Whether code intelligence/intellisense style features are important to you is another story, but it is an incredibly useful thing to have in a general purpose tool for editing code (and I believe most ST users are programmers). IMO, it makes much more sense to have that built in to ST as a first class feature, than to have it only available as a community plugin.

> However, the fact that the plugin was broken tells me there's a problem with the plugin ecosystem, not with the editor.

That's exactly why it should be built in to the editor. For many people, LSP support is a deal breaker.

⬐ nickelcitymario

Now that I understand this functionality better, you may be right. I'm on the fence about whether it really should be built-in, but I can appreciate why you'd want it to be.

In effect, you're asking for the ability to extend the list of supported languages by specifying them on an ad hoc basis, and I can definitely see why that's an absolute must-have if you're working in a language that isn't built into the editor. (I really hope I'm capturing the functionality correctly.)

That being said, I suspect most developers rarely work in languages that aren't supported, so even IF this should be built-in, it seems like something that most users would never use. While I think that's perfectly reasonable in an IDE, I think a text editor should be limited to features that are used by a majority of its users for the majority of the time.

It's not that I'm saying this isn't crucial functionality. It's that if we start requiring text editors to have every bit of crucial functionality that anyone might have, you end up with an IDE.

I still think the problem is the plugin ecosystem. What would stop the Sublime team from saying, in effect: "This is functionality that should always and reliably be available for those who need it, so we're going to take responsibility for maintaining this as a plugin"?

⬐ crooked-v

> I suspect most developers rarely work in languages that aren't supported

Well, obviously, developers who work in language A aren't going to use an editor that doesn't support language A. They might want to use that editor, though.

⬐ nickelcitymario

No argument there. But Sublime does support those languages. You just need to install the right plugin.

The question is whether this should be baked in, or whether it should be managed with plugins.

There are lots of features people might want. Including them all creates a bloated text editor at worse, and a mediocre (IMHO) IDE at worst. I maintain that Sublime isn't and shouldn't be an IDE.

So they're better off only including the features that are very widely needed for a text editor, and then supporting the rest as plugins.

After all, isn't the ability to extend Sublime with plugins one of the biggest selling points? By being lean, it wastes as little computing power as possible on stuff you don't need, while giving you the ability to include virtually any functionality you do need.

I get that sometimes plugins fall out of active development or are broken for unacceptably long periods of time. But if the feature is something that the Sublime dev team wanted to support, there's no reason they couldn't support it as a plugin. Baking it in doesn't solve this problem, but it does create bloat.

I guess what I'm saying is: Why does language server support deserve to be baked-in more than any other feature? I have plenty of mission-critical needs that are supported by plugins. I don't expect them to be baked in just because they're important to me. I accept that the plugin ecosystem is the solution for my needs.

What makes language server support -- or any other beloved functionality -- so special?

⬐ Shorel

Language server support can be considered as another plugin API.

This is what makes it special.

⬐ crooked-v

> What makes language server support ... so special?

It allows creating plugins across multiple editors that all use a single language server project, rather of making plugin authors reimplement functionality from scratch based on a particular editor's quirks.

⬐ nickelcitymario

> It allows creating plugins across multiple editors that all use a single language server project

Ahhhh. Lightbulb moment. I can see now why this feature in particular should perhaps be baked in.

I thought it was just about adding additional language support, but I see now that it's about developing once for many editors.

If I could still edit my previous comments about language server, I'd update them all to say "I'm an idiot, don't know what I'm talking about."

⬐ kstrauser

I had that reaction when I first learned about LSP. “It sounds like you’re reinventing the wheel by, say, coming up with another way to autocomplete Python in addition to what was already there. Oh wait, what do you mean that you’re planning on implementing LSP once for each language and once for each editor and then we’re in programming heaven? Ohh….”

⬐ nickelcitymario

100%, definitely a slap-my-forehead moment.

⬐ lsllc

I think there's some stuff that needs to be built in, for example I like to keep tabs and indents separate e.g. indent is 2, TAB is 8. There's a smartindent-sublime package, but it doesn't work quite right and I've had it conflict with other packages. I think it'd work better if it was built in.

⬐ hnlmorg

People have been asking for ST to be open sourced for as long as the project has been active.

⬐ wbond

This video was not a rush job, but purposefully shows off a couple of visually-focused changes as a teaser for our upcoming major release.

None of these changes could actually be implemented as plugins - they all are much deeper architecturally than you may be aware, and the implementations open up a number of features for packages along the way.

In terms of our development pace, we did large releases in 2017, 2018, 2019 and have put out over 50 builds in the past year leading up to ST4. We have addressed over 600 issues on the GitHub tracker during the current dev cycle.

We do work differently than open source software, but we've got some upcoming changes with ST4 that will shorten our release cycles moving forward.

Open sourcing Sublime Text isn't a rational thing, as there is no massive tech company who would be donating the primary engineering resources for the project.

⬐ bogwog

Good to know, and I'll be looking forward to seeing the full changes.

> Open sourcing Sublime Text isn't a rational thing, as there is no massive tech company who would be donating the primary engineering resources for the project.

Just sayin, there are porn video games making $20,000 per month on Patreon. I think something as popular and beloved as ST could make a lot more than that. I'd personally pay at least $5/mo to support a full-time development staff for my most important development tool (by far), and that's way more than the $80 I paid once for ST3 back in ~2016.

⬐ bachmeier

> Just sayin, there are porn video games making $20,000 per month on Patreon.

Is that $20,000/month rolling in from businesses? I don't know anything about ST's financials, but I'd expect that to be the source of most of their revenue. Businesses have a habit of not paying for things unless they have to.

⬐ therealdrag0

I find the opposite. Most places I've worked have offered to expense dev tools.

⬐ bachmeier

Probably only dev tools that were not otherwise available for free. It's hard to imagine a business agreeing to make a recurring donation to an open source project for a text editor.

⬐ breck

This isn't a bad idea. Maybe there's a way ST could hedge their risk ("if we hit a certain threshold, we'll publish the source").

I also would back it and spend more than the ~$200 or so I paid for ST2, ST3 and Sublime Merge 2. They are 2 of my absolute favorite tools.

I wonder how much SQLite makes. Could be a model to emulate.

That being said, definitely not something to rush into. If this is only a little risky for them now, I expect it won't be risky at all in a year or two, given trends in new business models for creators.

⬐ geodel

> Just sayin, there are porn video games making $20,000 per month on Patreon.

I can see porn fans paying for their goods. But as a developer I found them remarkably ungenerous about paying for their tools. It is good that you like to pay but you are in very small minority of devs who pay for good tool when free alternatives exist.

⬐ baby

I’d pay.

⬐ dralley

I shelled out money for a license the day they announced that they would be providing RPM repositories for active license holders to use. Sublime Text was and is my favorite editor, but it used to be a real pain in the ass to install.

⬐ fprog

I used Sublime Text 3 through college and drifted between tools the past few years of my professional life, variously trying JetBrains' IDEs, VSCode, and some others. For Go, GoLand was nice, if heavyweight; for Python, VSCode had a fantastic plug-and-play experience, though it was hard to shake the feeling of using a web app, albeit a snappy one.

The Sublime Text 4 dev builds pulled me enthusiastically back to Sublime full-time, and I'm excited that it's close to release. It's been carefully modernized and is a joy to use. In particular, writing Go in Sublime with LSP (gopls) and Sublime's Go Build System plugin essentially makes it an IDE for me, but still as snappy as, well, Sublime. That's a hard combination to beat. I suspect Sublime's approach of "do one thing well" (text editing) is especially well-suited for a language like Go, which has such an excellent selection of first-party tools. Sublime's approach lets those tools shine rather than hiding them away.

It's hard to name all of the features that feel fast. Some are little, like scrolling; many are bigger, like starting up the editor, switching projects, and searching for symbols, all of which are instantaneous. Even the dev builds have been remarkably stable; the result of the care taken is that the whole application feels crafted. It's a quality that HN (rightly!) laments is lacking in much modern software.

There are caveats; in particular, to get gopls to work, I recall having to search around a plugin's GitHub issues to find a solution for some problem with my $PATH. Not everyone will want this upfront learning investment. For me, the tradeoff was worth it. Having gotten familiar with the Sublime console and just a bit of how its plugin system works, there are no longer any parts of my editor I'm scared of and consider a black box.

Finally, I am happy that I paid for Sublime; I own my copy. The VSCode community seems vibrant and sustainable, but when trying it, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was living in Microsoft's world. They've shepherded it well so far, and it would seem they have incentive to continue. But despite being OSS, I never felt it was mine. One modicum of validation to that feeling: Microsoft recently (last year?) switched to a closed-source model for the Python language server that made the VSCode python experience so great for me. So overall, the transaction with Sublime HQ felt clearer to me. I paid them money for a great editor, rather than using an editor for free in exchange for goodwill or developer mindshare. That is a transaction I'd make again.

⬐ breck

This is a really fantastic review, thanks! I've been waiting for M1 support, and now am extremely excited to try ST4.

⬐ memco

I love Sublime, but like many others have not used it nearly as much in recent years due to how much more powerful VSC is for Python development: do you still do work in Python and if so, does ST4 have a somewhat comparable experience to VSC? Last I tried (which was two or three years ago) I couldn't get code navigation, completion and debugging to work on nearly the same level and remote editing in VSC was also much easier to set up.

⬐ krut-patel

I'm someone who always tries to use the "right tool for the job", CLion for C/C++ (large projects), VSC for Rust (the inline type hints from Rust Analyzer are to die for), and ST for Python. I tried out the python experience in VSC but have found it to be _inferior_ to the speed of ST when coupled with the Anaconda (not the venv stack) plugin [0]. It supports venvs, build systems (even remote jobs, but I haven't messed around with those), and all the basic things like go to definition (instant! Even works inside libraries) and find usages work quite well. When paired with the SublimeREPL plugin, I get the venv repl inside ST _with_ autocomplete. That is just a step below full blown (slower) Jupyter notebook experience. The Python exception tracebacks in the output panel have their file paths clickable, so I can immediately jump to the source line. This is adequate for me in terms of debugging experience, but ST obviously doesn't bundle a full-fledged debugger like VSC. The quality of autocomplete is pretty much the same as VSC since both Anaconda and the LSP server use Jedi internally for all the core stuff. There are definitely some rough edges, like having to set the python interpreter path for a new project using venvs, instead of the auto-setup we see in VSC. Another thing is the development of Anaconda has mostly gone into maintenance mode, and is much slower with bug fixes than VSC in that regard, but this hasn't affected me by a lot since most of the core functionality is pretty stable. I really recommend giving Anaconda+ST a try for your Python dev needs.

[0]: http://damnwidget.github.io/anaconda/

⬐ fprog

Unfortunately I haven't worked with Python in some time, so I can't say. If my Go experience translates, then the basics (code navigation, completions, definitions...) have gotten much better, both in form and function. Those could be worth another try. I'm less sure about debugging, and as far as I know, there's no equivalent to VSC's remote editing. I've heard great things about that VSC feature and been meaning to try it out.

⬐ jcolella

I used to be a big supporter and user of Sublime, using it for my day to day. Unfortunately, even though it still has faster boot time than VSC, the community around VSC is so much richer that it becomes a case of too little too late.

⬐ zzzeek

sublime text ignores huge issues like https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/2994 in favor of "just go buy our secret, not available for free evaluation sublime text 4 thing", which led me to try out vscode, which revealed I've been living in the stone ages all this time with sublime.

⬐ modeless

I just upgraded to 4 last week and discovered that the Goto Anything (Control/Command-P) feature is significantly faster when a project has millions of files (all of Chromium in my case). That was actually my main complaint with Sublime before so I'm pretty happy. I still prefer Sublime over any other editor.

My biggest feature request now is color support in the build output window. And maybe some quality of life stuff around adding/editing build systems and iterating on build output regexes which is clunky right now and could be much easier.

I'm not a huge fan of the code indexing stuff. It bogs down on large projects, and fuzzy search is never good enough for me. I want precise completions that can only come from LSP. Built in LSP support would be better. Actually, with good LSP support the build output window becomes less important because you can fix all your errors before building, so maybe do that instead of working on build systems.

⬐ ultim8k

Sublime may lack the feature richness of VSC and while I switched to the second a while ago for my day to day coding needs, it's still my editor of choice when I need to edit huge files or paste content coming from a website and I always have a sublime window open just in case I need to quickly type something.

⬐ gremlinsinc

I only use sublime for sudo editing, cause it's easier to just install some nginx syntax highlighter, and ini/config into the sudo profile, and run sudo subl /etc than it is to use vscode, I mean vscode does ask "would you like to use sudo" but I'm not sure how good it is to use vscode for sudo editing or viewing of files... and I don't want to have to okay it on EVER file when I'm doing a lot of system edits for a new linux package I'm trying out and testing - like when I tried to get a system-wide proxy tool installed.

⬐ adenozine

Shipping an editor in 2021 without a terminal, I just don't get it.

Do y'all really tab back and forth between the code and a shell? Maybe I'm just lazy.

⬐ kstrauser

I definitely do, as iTerm is a much better terminal than the shell window of any terminal I’ve ever used.

⬐ kstrauser

- shell window of any editor I’ve ever used, sorry.

⬐ bogwog

I actually used to do this, but got so tired of it that I made a custom plugin that sends my most common commands to an open terminal window on a second monitor via a keyboard shortcut. So now I can press F5 to 1) compile arm64 target and create an APK, 2) install the APK on an Android device, 3) run the newly installed application, and 4) execute logcat to view logs

That's a hacky solution since it requires a server app running in the terminal listening for commands from ST3. There's also some logic in there to make sure nothing happens unless all files have been saved, to avoid some impossible to debug situations. As far as I know there's no better way to accomplish something like this in ST. I've seen some plugins that use a text buffer/tab as a command line output, but that's terrible.

On the bright side, this does allow me to use whichever terminal app I want instead of being forced to use whichever built-in terminal the ST devs might include.

⬐ dsego

https://packagecontrol.io/search/terminal

⬐ robenkleene

How is moving between an editor and terminal splits any less effort than moving between separate editor and terminal apps? They both require either one keyboard shortcut or one click to go between? What’s the difference?

⬐ adenozine

I lose my focus moving between two windows, and I'm always moving around, so I only ever have a laptop screen and not double monitors.

I use VSCode very happily after using Gedit for many years, and it's just the layout I'm attached to, I suppose.

⬐ markogresak

I solve that with multiple desktops feature on macOS. You also get that on Linux and newer versions of Windows. I use either trackpad swipe or ctrl+[left/right] to navigate.

The important thing is to set the desktops to be static (disable the “smart” rearranging) and set the windows to always open in the same desktop.

This makes my experience on a 16” screen so great that I have a hard time adjusting to using two monitors.

⬐ lenkite

In neovim, you can see your terminal at the same time that you are editing code, thanks to window splits. Pretty convenient actually. You can split that terminal into another terminal window too. Good when you are editing the program, running the program and tailing the log of the program - all simultaneously.

⬐ ziml77

Sublime Text isn't my main editor anymore but I still reach for it in certain cases. If I need to check a file out quickly it's nice to have a program that opens fast and yet still provides syntax highlighting.

The other thing I use it for is multi-file search (and replace). As far as I know the only way to get VS Code to do this is to open the directory as a project. With Sublime I can enter any path I want. It's more ergonomic than grep and sed for this. When I search I can just pick a result from the list to jump to that location in a file. And when I replace I have the option to check over the modifications before saving (though usually I just make sure the number of replacements and files seems about right).

⬐ alert0

I've been using Sublime since 2013 or 2014. I absolutely love it and feel a little guilty getting so many years of usage out of it on a single license. My only request is ARM builds so I can run it on a Pi.

⬐ doubleunplussed

They've got a 64 bit ARM build for Sublime Text 4. Are raspberry pis 64 bit?

https://download.sublimetext.com/sublime_text_build_4409_arm...

⬐ alert0

Rad, I was looking at ST3 last time I was doing it.

⬐ dopu

I struggle to think of a piece of software I've been as happy with paying for as ST. It's just a reliable and snappy text editor that _feels good to use_. Sure, it doesn't have all the fancy new things Atom and VSCode often do, but that doesn't really matter to me. I work on fairly small codebases (scientific data analysis, mostly) and ST is more than good enough for it. Whenever I feel the need for something more advanced, I'll switch to neovim. But ST + neovintageous usually get the job done. I'll happily continue to support ST!

⬐ pytlicek

I was a big fan of Sublime Text, but during those years of inactivity I got used to VScode. This I think surpassed the Sublime Text in all respects. In my opinion, ST4 is no longer up-to-date and uninteresting.

⬐ gremlinsinc

I bounced back and forth for the longest time... ST3 was way more performant on my 2 core, 8MB desktop.

Then I upgraded to 16 core 3700 amd with 64MB Ram...

Electron apps don't leave a dent in my performance anymore, so it's a non-issue and vscode has a lot bigger community, support, plugins, etc...

Really, I don't think any other thing out there can compare except maybe vim/emacs but the learning curve to make it useful takes awhile and I keep giving up on that.

⬐ Thev00d00

The world would be a better place if you could run Electron apps on 64MB of RAM!

⬐ agambrahma

fwiw, I used to use ST2/3 a long time back and stopped completely. I recently discovered their Discord (should _really_ be communicated better!) and downloaded ST4 to try it out, and ... there is nothing as SNAPPY as ST4.

The LSP integration rocks, basically "just works".

Now, a decade is a long time and there will be inevitably be comparisons to VSCode and Jetbrains, and ST4 is _not_ an IDE, so it's not clear how it will fare, but it's definitely still the fastest :-)

⬐ andrewmcwatters

The only thing that bothers me about literally every text editor out there today besides Atom is that because plugins are almost necessary these days and none of them cloud sync, it's really hard for me to move off Atom. I want that speed of Sublime Text back. I really do. VSCode's slight differences compared to Atom make it hard for me to move over.

New system? `apm stars --install` done. I can't do that out of the box with VSCode. I can't do it out of the box with Sublime Text and Package Control. But I have to get off Atom, it's just a disgrace. I can't multiline find and replace all project-wide on it. Can you believe that? Incredible.

And no, I don't want to put my config in a gist or put it on Dropbox. It's 2021. Please, for the love of editors, put these configurations in places where iCloud and OneDrive can pick them up automatically or give us a cli to pull down packages from our accounts.

Am I missing something? Is there an editor out there that takes care of automatically syncing packages for me besides Atom? No, I don't want a package to sync my packages.

I can't go to vim or neovim. I don't have all day to get my plugins and configurations just right. I want to be productive, now.

⬐ markogresak

Given your goal, I’m surprised you haven’t found a solution to this already.

I had a similar goal, and with Atom, I’ve solved it with a hacked-together script that automatically backed up the installed packages and replayed the apm install when I called the script.

When switching to VSCode more than 2 years ago, there was a popular plugin to sync (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Shan.cod...). And as a sibling comment mentions, there’s now a built-in sync.

I’ve used it since the beginning and it works flawlessly. I’ve even used it between macOS (primary device), Windows and Linux (popOS) machines and it works great. VSCode does a great job in keeping platform-specific settings so you don’t break it for the other device.

It’s much better than the approach I’ve used with Atom because I do not have to think about it, it just happens in the background. The only thing you need to do is to enable the sync and then let it do its job.

⬐ dsego

https://packagecontrol.io/packages/PackageSync

⬐ horsawlarway

It's built into vscode...

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/settings-sync

⬐ jokoon

Yeah well, it's still impossible to fold blocks of code based on syntax and not on indentation. They decided they would not fix this, which is quite a shame.

https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/101

⬐ Narretz

The last comment by a dev is from 2019 and indicates that this isn't ruled out. But if it's not in version 4 it's fair to assume that it's not gonna happen in the near future.

https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/101#issueco...

⬐ throwawaysea

Interesting that this is uploaded on Vimeo. I haven't heard much about them in many years, and I'm curious what their business model is like. It seems they're no longer in the running to provide an alternative to YouTube.

One thing I found annoying about this page is the pop-up at the bottom of the screen that says "Upload, livestream, and create your own videos, all in HD" actually hides the video player controls. I initially thought Vimeo got rid of them until I dismissed the pop-up. Seems like a poorly thought out design.

⬐ balls187

Big fan of sublime text. It's my default scratch pad/note pad.

Several years ago I switched development to Cloud9 and haven't looked back, but for text manipulation, I still rely on sublime text.

⬐ smasher164

I used Sublime as my only editor for many years on end. But I could never quite get a handle on the plugins and editor configuration, experimenting with options that didn't exist or affect the editor in any way. With the introduction of LSP, like many non-VSCode editors, integration lagged behind, and older language-specific plugins were no longer seeing much maintenance.

I do still prefer Sublime for the specific use-case of opening a random text file. Its startup time is far faster than any other editor.

⬐ young_unixer

I still prefer Sublime Text over VS Code for the simple reason that it has much less visual clutter.

VS Code is cognitively stressful for me to use, there is too much stuff going on in the interface.

⬐ ggregoire

There is a Zen Mode that displays nothing else than your current file.

(View > Appearance > Zen Mode, or shortcut Cmd+K Z)

⬐ PufPufPuf

Too much stuff going on in VSCode? I like VSCode for the very reason that the interface offers comparable functionality to IDEs while not flooding you with tiny buttons and tabs on each side of the screen...

⬐ baby

That is definitely one downside of VSC.

⬐ damsta

The interface is customizable, if you want you can hide everything except the code editor with those preferences:

  {
    "workbench.editor.showTabs": false,
    "workbench.statusBar.visible": false,
    "workbench.activityBar.visible": false,
    "editor.minimap.enabled": false,
    "breadcrumbs.enabled": false
  }

⬐ tgsovlerkhgsel

The 2->3 switch had similar issues as the Python 2 -> 3 switch: Half of your plugins were incompatible with the old version, the other half incompatible with the new version, so you were stuck between a rock and a hard place for a long time.

That seriously put me off Sublime (and anything that follows a similar strategy). I really don't like tools that intentionally become barely usable for years at a time, repeatedly.

I really hope they'll keep plugins compatible across this version jump.

⬐ ben-schaaf

We've learnt a lot from that. A lot of effort has been put into keeping ST4 fully backwards compatible with ST3.

⬐ xattt

Sublime has a sweet spot for LaTeX editing with Latextools.

⬐ gekkonier

I love Sublime. I use it for ruby coding, and I think I will buy an upgrade to version 4, just to support this great editor. I don't know how long I have my license.... Must been 5 or 6 years now I guess.

I hope there will sometimes a feature to load the actual selection into irb (and irb should be inside Sublime). That would be great! Dr. Racket is very cool for this, well for Racket. Repls for the win!

⬐ pkorzeniewski

I've been using ST almost everyday for the past few years and hopefully I'll continue to use it as long as possible, so I'm happy a new version is coming. I've tried to switch to VSC but it just feels sluggish, unintuitive and bloated compared to ST - I know it's an IDE, but ST just doesn't stand between me and the code, it's fast, stable and handy.

⬐ johnmc408

Any "virtual cursor" fans, know if it is supported in this release? (long requested feature, but not that common anymore...)

⬐ systems

quick editing : Notepad++

coding : vscode , jetbrains

pim : emacs org-mode

I think sublime text is somewhere between quick editing and coding, but there are better options for both

⬐ generalEvie

I personally love Sublimetext for quick editing. Things like multiline selection on single documents.

For anything else, vscode or jetbrains

⬐ kuroguro

All coding: Notepad2 (one of the more updated forks)

Need to find some reference or search whole folder: Sublime

IDEs are too fat, the only time I pull one out is when I need to design a WPF desktop app or sth.

⬐ spiralx

Replacing the built-in Notepad app with Notepad2 with code folding is one of the first things I do when setting up a new Windows box. It's a tiny app that starts instantly and for viewing text/code files and small- to medium-sized edits it has almost everything - multi-cursor editing is the one thing I'm so used to now that I notice its lack, truly a first-world developer problem ;)

F12 opens a file in Notepad2 in Directory Opus and `e FILE` does the same from Bash or PS, can't think of a time where I'd need someone more than Notepad2 but less than Sublime Text, or VS Code today. I've installed Notepad++ several times over the years and just never wanted to have to use it.

⬐ Shorel

Sublime Text is so superior to Notepad++ I can't agree with you at all.

⬐ mjhagen

The best editor is the one you have with you.

⬐ spupy

There's one killer feature of Sublime that I can't find anywhere else (on Linux at least) and it's the reason I still use it:

Upon closing it persist even unsaved tabs, and those tabs are named after the first line of text. I find this incredibly helpful when juggling multiple snippets of code/logs, without having to think about saving or worrying about accidentally closing the window. Intellij Idea and Zim offer something similar, but they are clunky in comparison.

Anyone know another text editor that offers this functionality and run on Linux?

⬐ philliphaydon

I get this in Notepad++ and VSCode?

I've had 2 unsaved tabs in VSCode for like 6 months. Close VSCode / Open again, they show up...

⬐ JeanSebTr

OH yes. Don't know why, but I've developed an habit of putting important stuff in unsaved files from my use of Sublime a few years ago. I've been bitten by this in VSC a few times but I still do it...

⬐ strzibny

I love Sublime and how fast it is. I currently write all my code and my book[0] in it. I wish their focus is in plugins for some main languages to be more on par with Code. I don't really need anything else.

[0] https://deploymentfromscratch.com/

⬐ 11235813213455

Nice, it seems text drag-n-drop will finally work on linux https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/1361#issuec...

⬐ dingdingdang

Honestly like the philosophy of a lightweight editor for programming with a focus on basic functionality and speed. However, feel so well serviced by Geany that I can't justify the expense in terms of time and energy that would need to go into buying a commercial piece of software.

⬐ faitswulff

Adding to all the other comments about communication: it would be nice to have a progress report a la the Dolphin emulator or This Week in Rust. I honestly think it would be worth hiring someone to do. The added press would make up for itself in costs.

⬐ happyrock

I very much like Sublime and have used it on and off for years. But it has one annoying issue... if you do a text search across a project and the search returns too many results, it will beach-ball and you'll have to Force Quit! Drives me crazy.

⬐ nepthar

Probably worth a bug report!

⬐ happy_pancake

im going to start using word beach-ball now. never thought of it that way. thanks!

⬐ macrael

Any plans to improve Find In Project? I constantly have to add -node_modules/ to my search paths and it's irritating.

I switched back to ST3 once I could get Language Server to work. Go and Typescript work great there, and are so fast fast fast.

⬐ wbond

Find in Files has had a number of improvements in ST4, including defaulting to ignoring files in .gitignore, defaulting to ignoring files excluded from the project when right-clicking a folder, along with some other tweaks and fixes.

⬐ macrael

yay!

⬐ faitswulff

Ignoring files in .gitignore has my attention!

⬐ tomcooks

One of the best software I've used, a multiplier of speed and editing powers.

Pity it's not free software (as in freedom), and that it would lose all its superpowers in a CLI environment.

If only I could replicate its functions in vanilla vim

⬐ eu

Please release BSD binaries..

⬐ tkuraku

I really like Sublime Text, but I have mostly moved on to VScode. I will probably buy a license just to support their software, especially Sublime Merge. For me the Sublime Merge git client is an essential.

⬐ ggregoire

Curious why you would need Sublime Merge if you already use VSCode? The git integration is pretty good. What features are you missing?

⬐ tkuraku

Sublime Merge is just much easier to use than VSCode git integration. Yes VSCode can do everything, but Sublime Merge is just a much better experience.

⬐ philliphaydon

I tried using it but the one built into JetBrains IDE's to me is just better.

/personal preference.

⬐ vardaro

Love the native TS and JSX support. Will my Subl license carry over to Subl 4 or will I need to repurchase a new license to use this?

⬐ didip

The Go related plugins for Sublime is a pain point of mine.

How do you guys use ST for Go development?

⬐ deliveryboyman

Is the editor still written in C++ and assembly, or is the front end now based on something like Electron? The front end shown in the video looks similar to something like VS Code or Atom.

⬐ lukaszkups

cool video, what VSCode theme is that? ;>

⬐ edm0nd

Still cant print from Sublime QQ :C

⬐ ben-schaaf

ST4 comes with some support for printing.

⬐ oweiler

VS Code has killed Sublime.

⬐ nikolay

Ewww, ugly tabs with no space/delimiter between them.

⬐ zerubeus

no thanks

⬐ JediPig

I have a ST license since day 5 when I saw it in the #macromates irc chat room. ANY man willing to make a cross platform editor, that was fast and decent, is my hero.

C++... with a python enabled extensions.. is why it will prove itself better than vscode.

⬐ voceboy521

i use vscode AND sublime. even on the same files sometimes. sublime is just way better at editing text. don't know why vscode won't just copy their ideas. like, ctrl+f in vscode is busted

⬐ voceboy521

everyone talking about irrelevant boot times. how many times a day do you boot your editor? for me like 0.2

⬐ fireeyed

How many of you have paid for Sublime ?

⬐ niahmiah

Yawn. VSCode.

⬐ cyberlab

Does anyone know if this is a valid point:

If you can't code without a feature-rich text-editor, you might then ask: how good are you really at coding, and how much skill are you off-loading to the editor? Because if you can't code with Windows' notepad.exe you need to re-evaluate your perceived skill and your /reliance/ on an editor.

⬐ b3kart

Doubt there's anyone who literally can't code without a full-fledged IDE. There's just people who are used to certain conveniences, and it would take them longer to write code without them. I don't see anything particularly wrong with that. Most professionals use tools that make their job easier, and might get worse at doing the job without these tools -- but so what?

⬐ _benj

I don't think that that's a fair statement. I remember when I was learning Linux and in KDE there was this huge "Developer Tools" section... IDEs, UI designers, documentations tools, etc.

I opened each one of those tools and had absolutely no clue how to use that! Looking at them now, they seems quite easy and similar, but that is only because I know how to program now.

Think about MS Access. It could be said that you don't know how to use relational DBs is you can't write perfect SQL on a napkin, but MS Access is certainly a skill and just because it can make it easier to view/manipulate data doesn't invalidate the need of skill to use the tool.

⬐ romanovcode

You could argue that plumber only needs adjustable spanner, otherwise he is a bad plumber. Sure, technically it would be possible to do most of the job. But it's stupid and ineffective.

⬐ the_bigfatpanda

In my opinion, I don't think its a valid point. The main skill of a developer is problem solving, whether its business logic or code related problems like structure, integrations of different layers etc.

If you can code in a notepad, good for you, but if an IDE or something like VSC or Sublime increase your productivity then that's more valuable then remembering the exact names of methods or imports

⬐ bdcravens

The features that make a difference are the ones that aren't text editing. Bare minimum is file management, but things like integrated git, terminal, linters, are good productivity improvements.

⬐ JustSomeNobody

I don't think it is valid. Everyone has their own preferences. Some coding tasks are straight boilerplate and some are more general. When I'm banging out boilerplate I like to have and IDE that completes for me, but usually I don't like that when I'm coding up a difficult problem. I'm not wrong, I'm just different. Other people have other preferences and that's just fine.

⬐ kstrauser

“If you can’t build a house with a hammer, you might then ask: how good are you really at building?”

If I hired a carpenter and they showed up with a pair of pliers and nothing else, I wouldn’t let them start. Even if they were competent and motivated, I’d know they were going to get sucked into completely avoidable problems and they’d be way less time-efficient than a less competent peer who actually uses the appropriate tools.

If I were interviewing a software engineer and they didn’t use at least some programming editor (I don’t really care which: Sublime, Emacs, VS Code, PyCharm, anything), I’d assume they were either not very good at this or that they’re so idiosyncratic their coworkers would wish harm on them.

It’s not my job to tell a carpenter which hammer to use. But if they see a nail and reach for a spirit level, I’m sending them home.

⬐ danpalmer

Sublime Text has the strangest development cycle I can think of.

It does big-bang releases with lots of features, followed by frequent bug fix releases that quickly resolve issues, followed then by years of silence even though there are still issues... until there's a major version bump and the cycle starts again.

This then means that the plugin ecosystem is fairly under developed and inactive because there's little incentive to actively develop plugins for software that appears to be dead.

I used Sublime for many years and it was hard to let it go, the speed was great and the SublimeGit plugin was the best Git client I've used, but multi-project development was a pain because the Python/JS/etc plugins didn't have good support for virtualenvs/per-project config/etc, and it was clear that they were out of active development.

I switched to another editor and it's slower, but fast enough. It's not quite as nice in many ways but it's nice enough. Critically though it's got a great plugin for most things.

⬐ whywhywhywhy

This seems an increasingly common dev cycle on software that hasn't adopted subscription pricing. See it a lot in the Mac ecosystem, big numbered release that you need to pay again for, fast follow with about 4 bug fix releases then silence for 3-5 years and repeat.

⬐ apozem

Absolutely. If a developer can only cash in on a big-number new version, that incentivizes holding back features to sell the new version. It just does.

I understand the frustration with subscription pricing, but it's a business model that actually aligns my incentives with the developer's. I want an up-to-date product and they want ongoing revenue for their ongoing work.

⬐ ric2b

I agree, but with the option to keep whatever version you had when you stop paying the subscription.

Maybe applying only after a N consecutive months with an active subscription, to prevent paying for a single month behaving as a lifetime purchase.

⬐ aembleton

This is what JetBrains does. They give you a perpetual fall back licence to where you were 12 months ago. More info: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What...

⬐ azornathogron

God no. Subscription has the opposite problem that the publisher is incentivised to keep changing the damn software underneath me. It means I can't decide "this version works fine for me, I'll just keep using this for the next decade", which is something I totally can do with Sublime.

⬐ wbond

Just to clarify, we’ve done major releases in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and now early 2021. We also released a second product (Sublime Merge) in 2018 and did a major release of that in 2020.

There haven’t been any significant gaps in our release cadence since before I joined the company in 2016.

That said, the current dev cycle has been a little longer because people do expect more from major version releases. We’ve got a large collection of new features, improvements and bug fixes coming with this release.

We’ve addressed over 600 issues on GitHub in the current release, added some pretty significant changes, and laid the foundation for more to come. IMO, it is by far the most significant release we’ve ever done.

We’ve also got some changes planned to help shorten our release cycles moving forward!

⬐ signal11

Maybe a Twitter account that focuses on what's new and what's coming down the pipe? Most people don't really follow forums. The current Twitter account last tweeted about Sublime Text in March 2019, I think -- exactly 2 years ago.

I guess the blog could also work, especially if it auto-publishes to social media, but of late that too, like the Twitter feed, has been mostly about Sublime Merge -- whereas I care a lot more about Sublime Text.

I think Sublime is really good and has lots of value even in a world with VS Code, but it's important to ensure people inclined to giving it a go sense that the project is ticking along well.

⬐ imdsm

I know you have your reasons and I won't question your capacity or vision, but I'd definitely be more interested in an active 'Sublime Text' that is maintained on an ongoing basis than the current major release model you have.

Back when ST started to get popular, you were up against Notepad++, TextEdit2, Visual Studio perhaps, and others. Now there's Atom and VSCode that are actively maintained and have active communities. I doubt I'll use ST4, but I wish you all the best, but I do think the model is wrong.

⬐ wbond

The “active” version of Sublime Text are our development builds.

We’ve just been releasing those discreetly during this current dev cycle since we’ve got a huge user base and wanted a smaller group to test some of our bigger changes on.

For our future dev cycles, our dev builds will be returning to our site.

⬐ danpalmer

Instead of taking 2 years to close 600 issues, why not ship a release each month with just a handful addressed? I think plugin developers are more likely to keep their plugins maintained if it looks like Sublime Text is alive.

I'd much rather pay $50 a year for ~monthly releases than $70 every 2-3 years for one release and a few bug fixes.

⬐ NDizzle

Am I in the minority that I don't want to see updates monthly for a desktop application? It seems like every time I launch paint.net, for example, it wants to update. I don't want to update! I want to edit an image.

⬐ fomine3

BTW paint.net has the best integrated auto updater I've ever used. It notifies at startup but has "Install When I Exit" button on update notification dialog. Of course auto update by package manager is still better. (paint.net also available on Windows Store)

⬐ Fnoord

Discord, an application used by ST community, suffers from exactly that as well.

"Release early, release often" -- but not too often. I'm not a beta tester, I want stable software.

⬐ wedowhatwedo

I completely agree.

⬐ ggregoire

If I used paint.net 8 hours a day on daily basis as I do with VSCode, yeah I'd would probably want to keep it updated as much as possible. Also I rarely "launch" VSCode, it's always open. Which means the updates are downloaded in background and it just shows a small icon at the bottom right when it's ready to be restarted. It's almost invisible and doesn't bother me at all, and I can wait as much as I want before restarting it.

⬐ wbond

Part of our development pace is that we are a small team (six engineers), bootstrapped, maintaining multiple products, and looking to do things in a way that fits with our vision for the products. We want to build products that are around for the long haul – Sublime Text has been around for 15 years. We'd rather focus on quality and performance than adding lots of features.

We are doing a big release because our current licensing scheme requires a "major version" release for paid updates. If we did a release once a month, they would all be trivial features, and wouldn't justify a major version bump.

For license holders, we've actually been shipping new dev builds every one to two weeks. However, since this is a major release, it has some very significant changes that need testing, refining and polishing. I don't think anyone in their right mind would ship a half-finished product and call it a major release, so we've been doing the work that shows it is a major release. The downside of bigger releases is that sometimes they end up dragging on a little longer than you want, and we'd rather uphold our vision for the product than have a release done a few months earlier.

As I mentioned in my post above, we've got some changes coming that will help address the "major version" issue and allow us to take on a faster release cycle. That said, I'm not sure I agree that new releases once a month are a good fit for the majority of users. We do, however, provide dev builds for users who do like seeing changes quickly.

We've got a super active group of some of the more prolific plugin developers that we interact with on a daily basis on our public Discord server. They definitely provide a lot of feedback and we make a point of listening to what the have to say.

The reality of it is that most open source developers wax and wane in their development work. The ones who stick with projects for years and years tend to either do open source work related to their day job, or are at least partially employed to work on the open source work. Others will get an itch, scratch it, share it, improve it and then be satisfied.

⬐ danpalmer

> For license holders, we've actually been shipping new dev builds every one to two weeks.

I'm a licence holder and I haven't seen an update since October 2019. Despite reading most of this thread I haven't managed to figure out where any more recent releases are. Can you point me towards them?

⬐ kemayo

You need to join their Discord to find the Sublime Text 4 dev channel. It's not marketed anywhere, you just have to have searched their forum for it. https://discord.gg/D43Pecu

Sublime Text 3, as you say, has gone without dev updates since 2019 with no announcements about why or pointers to the new version.

Yes, they're very bad at some of these communications issues. :D

⬐ wbond

We intentionally decided to have the dev builds for ST4 go to a smaller group of people, paired with a low-friction communication medium.

Clearly you disagree with that decision, but we do communicate with our users pretty much every day. We simply decided trying to communicate and gather feedback from tens of thousands of users was less productive for a team of six than hundreds of engaged power users.

⬐ kemayo

My only disagreement with your chosen course was the lack of update on the ST3 dev builds page. As-is, it gives the impression to users like the ones I replied to that there's no progress being made.

Sticking a note at the top of the ST3 dev build page akin to the one on the ST2 dev builds page, even without a link to the discord or new builds, would have changed their perception of things.

Or even just a post on your news blog that you're moving active development to an upcoming version? A pinned post on your forum? There really was no communication to users who're not actively involved in the community, that I could find.

⬐ bbbbbr

Yes, this ^^^

While posting new builds in a not easily discoverable location is technically compatible with the statement of:

> For license holders, we've actually been shipping new dev builds every one to two weeks.

In practice the result is that (by stated design) the majority of sublime text license holders will not be aware of new builds for several years at a time until they are announced in the easily discoverable public location again.

I think it's good for them to pursue whatever development and community engagement model feels most sustainable, but it is disingenuous to claim that both users have access to the current dev builds while also trying to hide those builds from most users.

(edit: grammar)

⬐ danpalmer

I've now managed to get the update.

Respectfully, ST devs, I think you might need to have a hard look at how you do customer communication. I stopped using ST essentially because of stagnation that hadn't actually happened!

⬐ musingsole

> Respectfully, ST devs, I think you might need to have a hard look at how you do customer communication

You have really odd expectations of a small team making a targeted tool and for which you have expounded at length about how it doesn't work for you. Cool beans, my dude.

I love Sublime. The devs have earned a good portion of my trust to keep on rocking; they'll get my license fee whenever they ask for it (the benefit of trust).

⬐ pizza234

> You have really odd expectations of a small team making a targeted tool and for which you have expounded at length about how it doesn't work for you

I actually agree with the parent.

I've been a long time ST, and I've found significant limitations and bugs; since they haven't been fixed/improved for a while, and there were no news, I switched, and I'm not going back again.

While the parent's post may have been better phrased, I think that it's correct that with a better communication, they could have retained more customers.

⬐ danpalmer

I just find it odd that they'd lose customers over lack of communication. I'm not the only person in this thread who didn't realise it was under active development.

I'm all for small dev teams doing things that let them stay small, but we're not talking about substantial changes here, we're talking about a sentence on their website saying "ST4 is in active development, you can follow progress on the forums", or other small changes like that.

⬐ kstrauser

I’m saying this because I like Sublime Text and want you to succeed:

As an end user: that model doesn’t work for me at all. Most other apps I use get regular feature and bugfix updates and I admit that I’m spoiled by those regular updates. That ST2 went so very long between releases made it feel like a dead project. Even if behind the scenes it was still active and healthy, I didn’t see that and couldn’t tell the difference between “actively developed, thriving project that just doesn’t release often” and “developer woke up one month and thought ‘hey, I should close a feature request or two this quarter’”.

Again, I’m definitely not arguing that you’re not hard at work on it. I mean this in the spirit of feedback: as an end user who wasn’t active in the plugin developer forums, I didn’t realize anyone was still working on it full-time. And because of that, I stopped using ST because it felt like it was a dead end and I wanted to put my mental resources toward learning and using something still alive and thriving.

⬐ dralley

I don't necessarily agree.

I like VSCode, and I use it for a lot of IDE-like stuff. But for normal reading and writing code? I use Sublime Text. Sublime Text is so much faster and more fluid, and able to handle much larger files, and has a better set of text editing tricks in my opinion. And that is worth enough to me that I wouldn't trade it for being able to do everything in one editor.

Sublime + plugins has "enough" features that I only switch when I really need to. And while I can't put my finger on exactly why I feel this way, text just seems to look more pleasant than on other editors, even when using the same fonts and similar color schemes.

⬐ kstrauser

I didn’t mention VSCode in that comment, and I don’t think it’s really relevant to what I was saying. I switched from ST to a different editor (and not directly to VSCode) because I was under the impression that ST was no longer being actively developed. I don’t have anything bad to say about ST other than I didn’t like how it didn’t handle Python project environments well, and if I had believed it was still being actively worked on, I might have stuck with it.

⬐ doubleunplussed

Just to provide push from the other side, I'm completely fine with this model. I don't get the need for churn.

Who cares if it "feels" like a dead project? I know it's not dead, I don't care what it feels like.

I don't use software for the feeling of being up to date on the cutting edge, I use it because it suits my needs.

⬐ jostyee

Plugin developers do care, there are so many active maintained plugins now dead, for me the 2 Go official plugins had been abandoned for years, they didn’t even bother to merge bugfixes.

⬐ spurgu

+1, I've used ST for ~6 years now and never had any issues. To me it just feels solid to not get updates every damn week but instead every couple of months where I browse through the changelog and then go back to using an awesome editor.

Really excited about ST4, looks like a major upgrade!

⬐ kstrauser

By “feels” I meant “as far as I can tell without investing a ton of research”. Dead projects don’t get bugfixes, or builds for new versions of the OS. They’re ticking time bombs. I would not voluntarily use an abandoned product, and would much prefer investing my time getting good at a maintained one.

Turns out ST wasn’t actually a dead project, although it seemed like it. The ST team probably lost more users than just me from not communicating.

⬐ abenga

It is a text editor. A really good one. It could edit files really well last year, and continues to do so really well now. Which possible bugs can be surfaced day to day, or week to week that need fixes?

I am glad to pay for software that doesn't keep me on the run like a treadmill. It is possible for software as simple as a text editor to be "finished".

⬐ placidpanda

Since there were a lot of people clamoring for more updates, subscription licensing, etc. I just wanted to add some volume to the opposing viewpoint.

I registered my copy of sublime text maybe 8 years ago. Before that I had used Notepad++ for years as well. I love that sublime is a thing that I paid for once and I can trust that it will always fundamentally work without problems for my basic use cases. I never have to think about "oh well I'm not doing so much text editing at the moment, maybe I'll turn it off for now..." like I do with some other subscriptions. I'm not worried it won't work or will degrade because it seems stable as a rock. I primarily used Windows when I bought it, and I've been Mac only for 4 years, and it's still with me.

Sublime text is special and I love what you guys have done! And I appreciate that for my $80 or whatever it was, I can use this thing the way I use it right now and never worry about it again.

Honestly, I think people are being reactionary from how common abandonware is in the open source community (obviously sublime is closed source, but people who use sublime use a lot of open source), as well as the long delay between ST2 and ST3. I remember plugins with docs that said "I have abandoned this project because Sublime Text is dead" when ST3 was still in beta. It is... probably not great that when I check the About window on my copy of SublimeText, it says Copyright 2019 and the changelog on your website says October 2019. It is useful for a customer facing product to not look dead, but this is completely possible without being forced to ship updates or features on a regular basis. Just be mindful of customer perceptions and what the touch points are and be patient and consistent within your bandwidth.

⬐ Mawr

I've wanted to buy Sublime Text for a long time, but I couldn't justify it due to:

> A license is valid for Sublime Text 3 [...]. Future major versions, such as Sublime Text 4, will be a paid upgrade.

> [...] an upgrade fee will be required for Sublime Text 4.

I'd feel pretty bad if I bought ST3 and the next day you'd decide to release ST4 and now I'd have to pay for an upgrade. Why not just stick to the terms on the buy page:

> Personal licenses are a once off purchase, and come with 3 years of updates. After 3 years, an upgrade will be required to receive further updates.

Why not:

> [...] come with 3 years of updates *regardless of version*.

Then I wouldn't have to worry about a new release being right around the corner.

As it's now I can only feel comfortable buying ST when a new major version comes out, which sucks. I could have bought it years ago.

I understand that providing release dates of future major versions can be hard but could you at least show the cost of the upgrade?

Sublime is great btw, I'll definitely make a purchase once ST4 comes out <3

⬐ tester89

I think that’s a clarity issue on the page. They stated several times in the discord that buying an ST3 licence now covers ST4 as well.

⬐ hnrodey

Do you have any options for a reduced cost license? Ideally I get enough value from the tool that I'd like to contribute financially but the current cost is (for me) too high. Perhaps I should just continue with the occasional nag popup.

I really enjoy using Sublime Text for some parts my daily workflow yet that equates for me using like 5% of the actual functionality. I don't actively write code within ST but use it for stuff surrounding my coding workflow.

Nonetheless, thanks for the product. I really enjoy it.

edit: lol downvotes because I'm trying to give someone money

⬐ wedowhatwedo

No, the downvotes are because you aren't willing to pay a very fair price for the product and have admitted you depend on it and use it without paying and will continue to do so.

⬐ wedowhatwedo

I bought the product in 2015. I don't remember the cost but let's assume it was $80. (EDIT, I just looked and it was $70 at the time) That's $16 a year. If you use even 5% of the functionality, isn't it worth that? I don't know what country you are from and there my be economic differences but sublime text has been one of the best software purchases I've made. It's worth every cent.

If you don't feel it's worth $80, you can use Visual Studio Code for free.

⬐ ipaddr

Are you offering to purchase this product for the parent commentor?

Unless you are offering to pay for it because the cost is so little I'm not sure your rebuttal holds water.

$80.00 US is a lot for an editor that doesn't provide updates.

⬐ wedowhatwedo

I completely disagree.

I didn't pay $80 for an editor that doesn't provide updates. I paid $70 for 5 years use of an editor that has updated a major version and a few minor versions and that I've installed on many workstations and VMs through the years. I use it every day so I'm glad I paid.

The parent commentor said they are already using it and will continue to do so without paying. Neither of you need to pay for the editor if you don't like it. Just use a different one.

⬐ dralley

It's a one-time fee. Personally, I still felt it was worth it.

⬐ therealdrag0

I don’t understand this whole threads obsession with updates. ST has always seemed like a finished product to me. Always does what I expect and is stable. I’m happy for paying the price I did for the features I got at that time.

⬐ jrochkind1

Interesting. As a long-time ST user, I was unaware that the level of ongoing work on ST is what you say it is.

I'm not interested in using a discord server to keep up.

But a monthly blog post with "what's happened in ST this month" might go a long way for letting users understand that it is still alive. The monthly post could even include things happening in the plugin ecosystem, interesting new plugins or popular plugins with new releases. But just 2-3 paragraphs a month would suffice.

As it is, I go to the ST website and it looks like it's stagnated, I see no sign of life. I'm not interested in intensively following dev releases, but I am interested in every once in a while checking out what's been going on that I might want to know about, and seeing evidence that ST is still alive.

I don't know for sure how typical I am, but based on this HN comment thread, I suspect I'm not alone.

⬐ thaumaturgy

This was how the majority of software development was done before Hamster Wheel Development became popular. There are a lot of people who prefer their software to just do each day the same things it did the previous day and not require a lot of attention beyond that.

⬐ jrochkind1

Yup. Twice now I think "I guess the dev is probably just sitting on all the money they made/are making now, there probably wont' be any more dev" -- to be surprised by a major release.

Wonder what's going on there.

Oh wait, will we need to pay to upgrade to ST4? That would explain it -- but unclear, ST3 was offered as a free upgrade to ST2 licenees I think.

At this point, if you had to pay to upgrade to ST4, I wonder how many people will be lost to VS Code instead. I hate learning/setting up new tools, but if i have to pay to upgrade to ST4, I'm gonna consider trying to switch to VS Code instead, which I hear good things about, seems very similar to ST, seems actively maintained, and is free. There is nothing I am aware of that is in ST but missing from VS Code, I've just been using ST since before VS Code existed.

⬐ signal11

> Oh wait, will we need to pay to upgrade to ST4?

Maybe not. Depends how/when you bought it, I think. From https://www.sublimehq.com/store/text:

> Personal licenses are a once off purchase, and come with 3 years of updates. After 3 years, an upgrade will be required to receive further updates. One license key is all you need for all your computers and operating systems.

Edit: the site seems to be a bit inconsistent about pricing info. https://www.sublimetext.com/sales_faq says:

> Licenses purchased for Sublime Text 3 do not expire, however an upgrade fee will be required for Sublime Text 4.

Can anyone please clarify what the correct answer is?

⬐ fprog

From the FAQ on the Sublime Discord:

> Any license bought after Sept 2019 warrants three years of updates, including "major" ones, analogous to the Sublime Merge licensing model. A road for upgrading a previously purchased license (potentially recently) has not been decided on yet.

⬐ ggregoire

I've switched from ST to VSCode 5 years ago and never looked back.

⬐ syspec

I down own a sublime license myself as I prefer intelli-j, but I never understand the aversion of developers to pay for tools especially what is easily the most important tool they use.

I've had colleagues marvel at the capabilities of my editor, then ask if it is free, then grumble and go back to wasting hours at a task I just showed them how to do in seconds.

These are developers making closer to 200k than 150k, and they will just not buy software!

Blows my mind

⬐ NikolaeVarius

Devs are entitled. News at 11.

⬐ brnt

Believe it or not: a majority of us does not in fact work in Silicon valley and earn 100k+.

⬐ therealdrag0

I started paying for my tools during my first job out of college outside SV making less then 100k.

Also most places I’ve worked offer to expense it.

⬐ brnt

Good for you.

Now consider that for a majority of Europeans 25k is a good salary. Now consider 6 billion world citizens can only dream of 25k.

⬐ therealdrag0

But that applies to everything. From photoshop or auto cad to laser cutters and pickup trucks.

Seems like the best you could argue for is discounts on older models or transfers of “used” licenses.

⬐ Narretz

Development for v4 has been going on semi-publicly on Discord for 2 years now. For Sublime Text 3 the dev builds were on the website, and im both cases the dev builds can be used as daily driver. Regarding plugins, Language Server Protocol really helps against defragmention and dead projects. There's an actively developed LSP plugin that theoretically works with any server.

⬐ danpalmer

As a previous customer, who is very interested in being a customer again in the future, I can find no mention of Discord on the website, no development activity since Oct 2019.

Even if I could find it, distributing releases via a chat room feels a bit 90s. I'd expect to just get auto-updates through the auto-update mechanism in Sublime Text.

⬐ dangelov

I really like(d) Sublime and used it till somewhat recently. If there was semi-public development going on, it wasn't very discoverable.

Just tried the LSP plugin before reading your comment. Wanted to use it for Go development, but it can't even do basic autocomplete or suggestions. Actually, I can't even tell if it's running. The VSCode PLS gets stuck sometimes, but 99+% of the time it works great.

Even so, damn, Sublime Text is fast. I really do wish they catch up in other aspects.

⬐ kamranjon

If you don't have autocompletion and suggestions working with LSP and Go it's almost certainly not setup correctly. I use it every day and it's great, the goto method def and preview popups are super slick too.

⬐ jonnytran

Which plugins do you use exactly? The last time I tried to set this up, there were multiple options, and I ended up never really figuring it out.

⬐ donatj

> I switched to another editor and it's slower, but fast enough.

I never understand the desire to switch. An editor is a tool, and I keep multiple tools. I use VSCode, Sublime and various JetBrains products and often have all 3 going at the same time. They all have strengths and weaknesses.

⬐ tehbeard

I think the implication here is a switch of which tool is your "daily driver", the one you lean on for most common tasks.

⬐ Arainach

Agreed. VSCode became my daily driver for 99% of things, and ST only comes out for very specifics scenarios it does better - which for me means multi-cursor and rectangle select scenarios, since even though some of them are possible in VSCode, they're keyboard-only and nowhere near as simple or intuitive as they are in Sublime.

.....although apparently at some point VSCode finally added Shift+Alt+drag, so now I have no idea what reasons I'd have for opening Sublime.

⬐ bdcravens

I keep Sublime around for opening giant files, which it is the best by far, but like many, switched to VS Code for development.

⬐ tartoran

Never tried sublime before but I use Notepad++ for large files. Sublime does look sublime. Does it have a keyboard oriented workflow or is it for the mousey workflows only?

⬐ bdcravens

I've never really had a keyboard-oriented workflow, so I can't really speak to it, but I know there are various tools available like vim-bindings, etc.

⬐ spurgu

It has keybindings for everything, which is one reason I feel a bit stuck in MacOS as the keybindings are slightly different on Linux. Since I use them for pretty much everything I'd have to retrain my muscle memory quite a bit after switching to Linux.

⬐ vagrantJin

> virtualenvs/per-project config/etc

To be fair, ST isn't an IDE. Handling virtualenvs and configs can be automated outside your text editor. I just use batch files and automate the sh*t out of setup including starting the project on ST.

We should do more simple automations rather than expect an already souped up, beefed up text editor to do everything and bake the cake.

But I do hear your point.

⬐ retSava

I love it. There's not enough praise I can give it for reducing friction and making me more productive. Part of that comes from making it very easy to write plugins, so I can quickly make small plugins.

Was about to describe them but turns out to be quite long to do so didn't. :)

Edit: mostly write C, js/python, makefiles and similar things. Going to buy this again, perhaps twice just because they are def worth it.

⬐ mikece

"...followed then by years of silence even though there are still issues... until there's a major version bump and the cycle starts again"

Sounds like a band that releases a great album, does a bit of touring, and then breaks up because they hate each other.... and reunite a few years later and repeat the cycle. I've heard the comparison between musicians and developers made over the years, but this is a different spin on it!

⬐ wbond

We actually went from a singer/songwriter to a duo and then a full six-piece band between 2016 to 2019! We've been putting out albums and EPs quite a bit, just been quiet in the public sphere since late 2019 since we've been working on a double-album. ;-)

⬐ achikin

I agree, the plugin ecosystem is far from VSCode. I usually use Sublime/VSCode as a lightweight editor to learn new languages and technologies and VSCode plugins for Haskell/Clojure/etc are far ahead of Sublime. I don't care much about editor speed, but I do care about getting unfamiliar environments up and running as fast as possible.

⬐ ybbond

about the release cycle:

from the release of version 3 to the upcoming version 4, they actually release a lot of beta enhancement, new features, bug fixes. the beta link is in their Discord forum, and can only be accessed if you have the license.

even though they dub the frequent releases as "beta", I never feel them as beta software because they are stable, very low occurrence of bug, and many major improvements.

⬐ slifin

Maybe it looks that way if you don't go out of your way to use or follow the Dev build but development has been consistent over the last couple of years

⬐ danpalmer

Opened Sublime text – no updates since Oct 2019. Went to the website – everything about ST3 from Oct 20190. Went to Download – Build 3211 from Oct 2019. "For _bleeding edge_ releases, see the dev builds" – last build September 2019, older than the stable one.

I'm all for using "bleeding edge" (although I don't with VSCode because I don't need to in order to have a working dev environment), but I've had a really good look in all the places I'd expect to see this and am thoroughly convinced that I'm using the very latest version of ST and that it is therefore out of development.

I understand that this thread saying something different, but if I've had a good look _knowing there is a later version_ and can't find it, then how would a customer know? A sufficiently hidden development process is indistinguishable from a project being dead.

Edit: really keen to use a later version if one is available, can anyone point me towards a download link? I own a licence for ST3.

⬐ benfrain

Here’s the discord server https://discord.gg/D43Pecu

I agree it’s not straightforward to know it exists but that’s probably the point. Once you do know I literally just googled ‘Sublime Text Discord’ and it was the first result. Look in the #announcement channel there. Been using v4 builds for months. Love it so much I’m recording a course on it!

⬐ danpalmer

> Once you do know I literally just googled ‘Sublime Text Discord’ and it was the first result

This is kinda my point. I don't know or even want to know about their Discord, I want a text editor that is updated more regularly than once a year.

It reminds me of that scene from Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy:

“But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”

“Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.”

“But the plans were on display …”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.”

⬐ kamranjon

I keep hearing the argument that the plugin community appears to be dead, but I've never had any issues. It pretty quickly got support for LSP and that covered most languages I use. The JS plugins for specific libraries like react/JSX/Sass are great. There is some configuration you have to do for some plugins but that's the case with any editor.

I actually really like the development cycle, if it allows the devs to keep the same payment model, I'm all for it. Also sublime merge is just awesome, I will pay for and support whatever they build cause they seem to really understand what users want and put out really good quality software.

⬐ mercer

> I keep hearing the argument that the plugin community appears to be dead, but I've never had any issues.

As someone who moved from Sublime to VSCode, my experience was that I didn't exactly 'miss' crucial stuff in the former, but found things to still be better in the latter.

If I wouldn't be using VSCode, I'd probably not miss too much, but using it and its plugin ecosystem, it's hard to go back to Sublime as my main editor.

⬐ danpalmer

I had many issues with the Python ecosystem. It's fairly fundamental to multi-project workflows to be able to use virtualenvs. Most of the community and tooling has centralised on them at this point. With VSCode you can launch the editor from a Terminal session with your virtualenv activated and it "Just Works". This will for the most part pick up your auto-formatter if you have one installed, that formatter will use the config in your project directory, etc etc.

With ST3 and the available plugins I was at the stage of editing my config every time I switched project to configure the paths, and it still didn't work as expected. Getting plugins to use config from a project directory rather than their own config was often impossible (e.g. black formatting plugin using pyproject.toml instead of the sublime black formatter configuration).

If I was working on projects with no other developers this might not be much of a problem, but working on a team where all canonical config is committed into the repo was essentially impossible.

⬐ kstrauser

That’s the one reason above all others why I stopped using ST. I just couldn’t get it to work at all.

⬐ kamranjon

Hmm I'm not super familiar with python ecosystem though I know some python devs at my company also use sublime.

In the JS ecosystem there are quite a few project specific configs (prettier, eslint, nvm) that seem to be read in by sublime and accounted for fine from project to project (possibly requiring package level config in some cases).