6 ms·

Sublime Text 3 marked as recommended build

233 points by sundvor 10y ago

FezVrasta 10y ago
Honestly I never used it because of its philosophy: - it's not open source (which is something bad nowadays for a text editor) - it's not really customizable (I must use my text editor all the day every day, I need an environment crafted on my needs) - it's not free (why should I pay for something that is available for free with Atom?) - it has python scripts... really? python? why?
- dkypyny 10y ago
  >it's not open source I'm glad it's not, because if it were open source, it'd look and feel like Windows 98 software (Notepad++). Open source serves developers, not users. >it's not really customizable How strange, cause my build is. >it's not free In the Winrar sense, yeah. You get an unintrusive popup in the background after a few saves. >it has python scripts... really? python? why? This one's kind of like an appeal to the current year in social issues. There's no substance to even respond to.
  - FezVrasta 10y ago
    1. Open source serves developers, and I'm a developer (as all the Sublime Text users, I guess). 2. I don't mean "change the syntax color", I mean, change every single pixel of its UI. 3. it's not free, it means that IT'S NOT FREE, you can just evaluate it, and then you MUST buy it. If you are using it for anything more than evaluating, you are violating its license. 4. seems fair, I don't really like python, and I think that JS based editors are much easier to hack and to develop plugins for.
tiplus 10y ago
I feel that the comments here are too negative, which ST2/3 does not deserve. ST is still a supreme editor and using/paying for ST is not a bad thing. Wasn't it ST which introduced the cool look&feel and features which Atom and VSCode now adopted? I love the ST ctrl+d select (even if it existed before). PLUS: ST still has a super quick loading time which makes it a great addition to emacs/vi in some use cases.
- wingerlang 10y ago
  > cool look&feel and features Which ones? And yes, cmd+d is the best thing since sliced bread.
- threatofrain 10y ago
  As a quibble, I would say that Visual Studio Code is unique in its own right, and not for any of its code editing features (which is comparatively lacking). It's a simple editor with a killer code insight feature. I have a feeling other editors will have difficulty replicating this feature.
  - daveroberts 10y ago
    What is the "code insight" feature? Is it an intellisense feature of VSCode?
gelatocar 10y ago
I think the title of this should be updated, as it is not correct. The sublime text homepage has been displaying builds for sublime text 3 since mid February[0] Sublime Text 3 is still in beta. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160211015747/http://www.sublimetext.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160211015747/http://www.sublim...
- dang 10y ago
  Ok, we'll use your phrase as the title. If someone suggests a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again. (Though that may have to wait overnight...)
  - SquareWheel 10y ago
    The current title ("Sublime Text 3 is still in beta") sounds like an attack to me, implying slow development. I'd suggest "Sublime Text 3 marked as recommended build (Feb 2016)", or something like that. More wordy, but more accurate.
    - sundvor 10y ago
      I agree, that's a much better title. It reflects the transition that has occurred.
    - gelatocar 10y ago
      I certainly didn't intend any negative connotations to that sentence, but I agree in the context of the title it does give undue emphasis to 'still'. FWIW I use ST3 beta every day and it is an excellent text editor. I have no qualms about the development rate. I think something like your title or even along the lines of 'Sublime Text 3 released [false alarm]' would work.
    - dang 10y ago
      Ok.
- sundvor 10y ago
  Wow, great pickup. I've been using my SublimeText install from 2015 and receiving RC updates; last time I installed it I had to go to the beta page to do so, etc. When I hit the ST front page today (after having reset my Windows 10 install due to issues going from RC1 to RC2 of dotNetCore) and saw the direct download link to ST3 I got the impression that it must just have been released - I got rather excited, not having seen any posts on HN to the effect (I searched). Unable to edit the post now; I feel incredibly silly, and sorry to have created false expectations by posting the submission using that title. My apologies to Jon Skinner; I love his work.
biot 10y ago
Why are modern text editors so slow? Here's an editor that I use from 1996 opening up a 1GB file of randomly generated bytes (dd if=/dev/urandom of=random_bytes.txt bs=64M count=16): http://i.imgur.com/BVln6Y2.gif http://i.imgur.com/BVln6Y2.gif -- it opens instantly and I can scrub to any point in the file with no delay. I've yet to find a modern editor that beats my 1996 one.
- humanfromearth 10y ago
  Modern editors are much more that file browsers. They do static analysis, syntax colouring, linting and many more things (depending on what plugins you have installed). I still like to open a plain vim and just focus on the task at hand without the magic, but that's just not how most web developers work these days.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    But there's not really a good reason why these features can not be processed in the background, e.g. in separate threads. Personally I don't care much about the 1GB file scenario, but I've mentioned before how "booting" AROS (AmigaOS reimplementation) hosted under Linux, straight into an Amiga editor like FrexxEd (which does have syntax highlighting for example) is faster than starting Emacs on my home machine. More importantly, a lot of this functionality is down to simply not thinking about consequences. E.g. try starting a typical Emacs installation on a box that has a network but where the DNS setup is broken, and enjoy waiting for DNS lookups to time out before it starts... (I'm sure there's an easy fix; I'll admit to being lazy and not having looked for how to prevent it and rather "just" fix my DNS when it's happened) All to often "nice to have" functionality ends up in the critical path of startup rather than lazily initialize in the background.
sundvor 10y ago
I went to download Sublime Text after refreshing my Windows 10 build, and noticed on the main page that 3 is now released. Build is 3114, dated May 12 2016 - this seems to now have been chosen as the RTM version. There's been a flurry of updates lately and I'm very pleased to see that Jon Skinner has been able to reach this milestone, after some slower periods. It's such a fantastic editor, one I've used for years; my previous was Textpad. I'll pay for the upgrade myself as soon as the site is updated with upgrade pricing, assuming that this will be an option.
sonnyp 10y ago
No, still beta "Sublime Text 3 is currently in beta. The latest build is 3114."
- sundvor 10y ago
  Are you hitting a different CDN box to me? In Australia, the text under the download box on the front page says "Sublime Text 3, Build 3114, 64 bit". Screenshot is still of v2. The about Sublime Text box on the installed editor says "Stable Channel, Build 3114".
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- tuananh 10y ago
  They feature version 3 on homepage now.
  - gear54rus 10y ago
    In addition to screenshot of version 2, in an impressive display of consistency :D
  - dewiz 10y ago
    This img https://www.sublimetext.com/images/win_title_bar.png https://www.sublimetext.com/images/win_title_bar.png used in the homepagbe still saying Sublime Text 2
  - shurcooL 10y ago
    This has been the case for a few weeks now. It did not change just recently.
- modeless 10y ago
  And this is important because existing Sublime Text licenses are only valid for the beta. When 3 exits beta then everyone will have to buy the upgrade.
Scarbutt 10y ago
Is sublimetext as hackable(extensible) as emacs or atom?
- JeremyMorgan 10y ago
  I would say pretty likely, plugins are Python based and easy to create.
- rattray 10y ago
  It's not open-source, so generally, no. Packages are in python, and most of those are open-source (and thus available as examples) so extending through packages is probably easy.
  - bjz_ 10y ago
    With Atom addons can also do a great deal of UI customization too, due to the fact that it is built on the web stack. You pay for it in performance though...
- wcummings 10y ago
  Atom? Maybe. Emacs? Nope.
  - Scarbutt 10y ago
    Well, in Atom you can replace any of the javascript Atom comes with with your own customizations, same in Emacs with elisp, where does the difference lie? (I'm a emacs/evil user).
    - provemewrong 10y ago
      I'm just guessing, but perhaps in the Elisp macro capabilities, that arise from the language's homoiconicity?
    - Derbasti 10y ago
      Emacs is written almost exclusively in elisp, and every elisp function can be changed at any time. Much of Emacs' core lies wide open in the global namespace, and is thus easy to change from any level. As far as I understand, Atom has quite a bit of code that is not openly accessible, be it because it is part of a Node.js, transpiled from something else, buried in closures, or simply too deep in the hierarchy to be easily reachable from the plugin level. Sure, you could change it if you set your mind to it and maybe patched a few files here and there, but it's certainly not as easy as in Emacs.
beardog 10y ago
Now if only I could afford it :D
- onion2k 10y ago
  I understand you're joking, but this is important. It's $70. I know that's a lot to some people, but if you're selling your time as a developer it's probably quite a lot less than 1/2 a day at your usual rate. For a tool that will save you many days a year (and increase your bottomline as much), that's really cheap. If you were a designer and needed Adobe's tools you'd be paying much every month. If you're using Sublime professionally you can afford it. You're choosing not to. That's fine because there are some great free alternatives to use instead, but you have no reason to complain.
  - brbsix 10y ago
    We don't know that he's a professional developer. He could be a student (or in a million other situations). I know that when I was 12 years old trying to learn C on my own, spending $70 on an editor would have been unthinkable.
    - onion2k 10y ago
      Absolutely, but the answer to that problem shouldn't really be to use it unlicensed, even if it's 'only' nagware rather than a trial. There are many free alternatives that do the same job very well.
  - ofcapl_ 10y ago
    exactly! I've bought SublimeText couple years ago, when the value after currency conversion was 4x higher than for someone who earns in dollars - still it was the best investments in dev tool ever!
  - dewiz 10y ago
    I bought v3 a long ago, the price was ~30$, a good investment :-)
  - 10y ago
andrepd 10y ago
Is there a quick rundown on new features from 2 to 3?
cledet 10y ago
Such a great piece of software. Fast, cross-platform, and extendible. No brainer purchase.
DigitalSea 10y ago
I think ST3 really missed the boat. I used to love using Sublime Text 2 (occasionally I still do because it is fast), but I moved on when development stagnated and Jon seemingly disappeared off of the face of the planet, stopped responding to support requests and the like. There is no disputing ST is a great editor, but it has fallen behind in the face of Atom, Webstorm and Visual Studio Code (two of which are free).
- mastazi 10y ago
  VS Code is great, Atom too but I wish it was less buggy. Regarding ST, I used to feel the same but lately I have seen more releases and it seems that development is now moving again. Also, I'm really struggling to find any aspect where ST "lags behind", I pretty much seem to get all the same goodies that I get in Atom and VS Code.
  - bjz_ 10y ago
    VS Code seems much snappier than Atom, as someone who uses both. And the Rust extension is much better. Switching between the different key-bindings is a pain though - I wish VS Code used ST bindings, but I'm guessing they went for consistency with VS?
    - mastazi 10y ago
      > but I'm guessing they went for consistency with VS? Yes you are right, although in some cases they also support the "ST-style" shortcuts, e.g. I just realised that I can do block selection with ctrl-alt
- ashworth 10y ago
  Genuine question: What do Atom and Visual Studio Code offer that Sublime Text doesn't? I have tried both within the last year and wasn't able to find any significant advantages (except for VS Code's excellent TypeScript experience), but they both ran slower and used more memory. Perhaps I should have used Nuclide? (Not asking about Webstorm because I've used the IntelliJ family of IDEs and understand their advantages)
wassago 10y ago
I think it's fair enough to say that people should be using beta/dev builds, I've been using Sublime 3 for years (before switching to Atom a year ago) and there were just a handful of broken builds. That said, as much as I like the quality of the app, I wouldn't hold my breath for version 4.
Zalos 10y ago
It´s featured on the front page and it´s the same build number but the download page /3 which is generally an indication that Sublime 3 is the active current version still calls Sublime Text 3 a beta. Slightly confused now, /2 which is the page for Sublime Text 2 says: Sublime Text 3 is currently in beta, and contains many improvements over Sublime Text 2. and links to Sublime Text 3. This seems confusing but My guess is it´s still in beta as per the information but perhaps deemed stable enough that you can use it. I will probably wait until a news post have been made declaring Sublime Text 3 as 1.0 release. While I continue to use a mixture of Sublime Text and Atom.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
welder 10y ago
Make sure you check out all the wonderful packages available for Sublime Text 3 at https://packagecontrol.io/ https://packagecontrol.io/
forrestthewoods 10y ago
Excellent. I look forward to giving Jon another $70 for ST4 beta support in a few months. One of the best purchases a programmer can make.
dvcrn 10y ago
ST3 has been stable for a long long time. It's great that they finally flipped the switch and replace ST2 with it. This also forces developers to finally adapt the new API and Python3. Just too bad this came too late. I got frustrated with the plugin API long ago and no-brainer features like multiple elements in the gutter (which is needed for example for relative line numbers) have still not been implemented. When ST3 development seemed to have frozen completely, a lot of plugin developers have moved on to other platforms like atom or vscode. Even with this release, ST3 needs something bigger to bring people and plugin devs back to the platform. Once my ST2 license stops working for ST3 I will open the editor a lot less than I currently do but will monitor the changelog for long wanted features.
ff10 10y ago
To add to the confusion: it seems that build 3114, released on May 12th, labeled beta originally, is now designated as the ST3 stable release.
cleeus 10y ago
I've never used any of those new editors (ST, Atom, VS Code, ...). Can anyone compare them to the more classic ultraedit? Or said differently: Why would I chose ST3 over one of the classic editors?
- mevile 10y ago
  Atom and VS Code use the same basic underlying technology and are JavaScript under the hood. With both you can actually open up a chrome like web inspector to help you write and debug plugins. These editors are Open Source and funded by companies whose main source of income is not the editor, but have money (GitHub and Microsoft). Sublime Text is an editor that brought a lot of new ideas that many editors now adopt (multiple cursors, minimap). It's written in native platform code + python 3. It is closed source and written by a small group of people. Their company only sells Sublime Text. Personally I prefer intellij. I do use VS Code for text/non project editing but out of ST, VS Code and Atom I think ST is the better editor, it's future is just isn't certain but it's widely used and has a great eco system.
  - FezVrasta 10y ago
    Actually multi cursor has been available in Gedit for several years... I really doubt that Sublime Text invented it.
    - mevile 10y ago
      I've used gedit, but I'm not familiar with multi-cursor implementation in it. I suppose I've always seen the multi-cursor implementation in Sublime Text as top-notch with other editors struggling to implement anything like it. Intellij finally has pretty decent multi-cursor support but it's still a little bit behind ST's. For example, in IntelliJ the ease of applying multiple cursors seems to involve more work than in ST. In VS Code multiple cursors isn't nearly well implemented as ST or even IntelliJ.
  - KennyCason 10y ago
    intellij++
dvirsky 10y ago
Maybe I'm biased but it seems like Sublime lost its huge margin in the "editor race". Occasionally I try to use Sublime, but the plugins are always lacking. For my needs, VSCode is already better with better plugins (C, Go, Python), and I'm more productive with it although it lacks some features in the editor itself. And it doesn't feel slower even though it's written in JS. Plus it's open source. I hope the Sublime author will release it as open source, at least in some IntelliJ style freemium model. That might give it back the boost it needs.
- imron 10y ago
  > For my needs, VSCode is already better with better plugins I bet the Sublime spell-check plugin doesn't send your entire file to a third-party server over plain http.
  - dvirsky 10y ago
    Does VScode's?
    - imron 10y ago
      The most popular one does, at least according to this recent HN thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11804366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11804366
      - dvirsky 10y ago
        Thanks. Not using this one.
  - LaurentVB 10y ago
    Probably not, but it's also pretty hard to know what Sublime does, given its closed-source nature.
- ensiferum 10y ago
  Does VSCode have a plugin for C++ code completion yet? There are several for ST.
SquareWheel 10y ago
I don't see any updated builds or blog post about this. Is it just because the homepage now links to ST3 instead? Because it's been that way for some time now, and the download label still says it's a beta. Am I missing the real release? Could be a CDN issue?
- shurcooL 10y ago
  No, there's nothing new. Someone posted the link to Sublime Text homepage and many people upvoted it when seeing the title, without first verifying the link pointed to an actual release. So it ended up getting a lot of upvotes. The homepage links to ST3 as the default version to download, as it has for a few weeks/months now, that's not new. ST3 is still described as beta. The last release was on May 12.
theshrike79 10y ago
VSCode still lacks the ability to have multiple root-level folders in one "project". This is the only deal-breaker I still have that's keeping me from moving away from ST3. I think Atom has some semblance of multiple roots, but it was a hack when I last checked.
wodenokoto 10y ago
Please correct title. The file linked to on the webpage is a 2 weeks old beta. Sublime Text 3 has NOT been released.
mstade 10y ago
I'm not sure what all the missed-the-race type comments are all about – what does this even mean? ST3 is a solid editor with what I consider a very healthy plugin eco system. I don't think there's a single feature I've missed that so many seem to think are crucial to any reasonable development (web or otherwise) and its speed and accuracy is what keeps me as a customer. (Multi-file search and replace is a breeze, even in huge files.) Worth every penny.
- mstade 10y ago
  I forget to mention the fact that ST has saved my ass more than once by always keeping buffers persisted. This alone paid the price of admission several times over in not having to redo work when I've been a klutz.
  - untoreh 10y ago
    in comparison both vscode and atom have crap statufulness, in my case they both crash every half hour and when you reopen them everything is gone, atom right now (1.7.3/4) has a bug that makes the editor crash some times when you save files, electron is all fun for customization but damn if it is unstable. Sublime been rocksolid no crash and 100% stateful.
    - mstade 10y ago
      I can't speak for the others because I have no experience, but definitely echo your Sublime experience. Even when it has crashed, and the only times I can recall have been on Windows, it's always kept state so not once have I lost work. This feature alone, as I mentioned, is worth the price of admission. It's a life saver.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
garbad 10y ago
When Sublime Text 3 comes out of beta, they can have my money, please. I've tried Atom and Brackets but 'Nope!'

233 points by sundvor 10y ago

Honestly I never used it because of its philosophy: - it's not open source (which is something bad nowadays for a text editor) - it's not really customizable (I must use my text editor all the day every day, I need an environment crafted on my needs) - it's not free (why should I pay for something that is available for free with Atom?) - it has python scripts... really? python? why?

dkypyny 10y ago
>it's not open source I'm glad it's not, because if it were open source, it'd look and feel like Windows 98 software (Notepad++). Open source serves developers, not users. >it's not really customizable How strange, cause my build is. >it's not free In the Winrar sense, yeah. You get an unintrusive popup in the background after a few saves. >it has python scripts... really? python? why? This one's kind of like an appeal to the current year in social issues. There's no substance to even respond to.
- FezVrasta 10y ago
  1. Open source serves developers, and I'm a developer (as all the Sublime Text users, I guess). 2. I don't mean "change the syntax color", I mean, change every single pixel of its UI. 3. it's not free, it means that IT'S NOT FREE, you can just evaluate it, and then you MUST buy it. If you are using it for anything more than evaluating, you are violating its license. 4. seems fair, I don't really like python, and I think that JS based editors are much easier to hack and to develop plugins for.

tiplus 10y ago

I feel that the comments here are too negative, which ST2/3 does not deserve. ST is still a supreme editor and using/paying for ST is not a bad thing. Wasn't it ST which introduced the cool look&feel and features which Atom and VSCode now adopted? I love the ST ctrl+d select (even if it existed before). PLUS: ST still has a super quick loading time which makes it a great addition to emacs/vi in some use cases.

wingerlang 10y ago
> cool look&feel and features Which ones? And yes, cmd+d is the best thing since sliced bread.
threatofrain 10y ago
As a quibble, I would say that Visual Studio Code is unique in its own right, and not for any of its code editing features (which is comparatively lacking). It's a simple editor with a killer code insight feature. I have a feeling other editors will have difficulty replicating this feature.
- daveroberts 10y ago
  What is the "code insight" feature? Is it an intellisense feature of VSCode?

gelatocar 10y ago

I think the title of this should be updated, as it is not correct. The sublime text homepage has been displaying builds for sublime text 3 since mid February[0] Sublime Text 3 is still in beta. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160211015747/http://www.sublimetext.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160211015747/http://www.sublim...

dang 10y ago
Ok, we'll use your phrase as the title. If someone suggests a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again. (Though that may have to wait overnight...)
- SquareWheel 10y ago
  The current title ("Sublime Text 3 is still in beta") sounds like an attack to me, implying slow development. I'd suggest "Sublime Text 3 marked as recommended build (Feb 2016)", or something like that. More wordy, but more accurate.
  - sundvor 10y ago
    I agree, that's a much better title. It reflects the transition that has occurred.
  - gelatocar 10y ago
    I certainly didn't intend any negative connotations to that sentence, but I agree in the context of the title it does give undue emphasis to 'still'. FWIW I use ST3 beta every day and it is an excellent text editor. I have no qualms about the development rate. I think something like your title or even along the lines of 'Sublime Text 3 released [false alarm]' would work.
  - dang 10y ago
    Ok.
sundvor 10y ago
Wow, great pickup. I've been using my SublimeText install from 2015 and receiving RC updates; last time I installed it I had to go to the beta page to do so, etc. When I hit the ST front page today (after having reset my Windows 10 install due to issues going from RC1 to RC2 of dotNetCore) and saw the direct download link to ST3 I got the impression that it must just have been released - I got rather excited, not having seen any posts on HN to the effect (I searched). Unable to edit the post now; I feel incredibly silly, and sorry to have created false expectations by posting the submission using that title. My apologies to Jon Skinner; I love his work.

biot 10y ago

Why are modern text editors so slow? Here's an editor that I use from 1996 opening up a 1GB file of randomly generated bytes (dd if=/dev/urandom of=random_bytes.txt bs=64M count=16): http://i.imgur.com/BVln6Y2.gif http://i.imgur.com/BVln6Y2.gif -- it opens instantly and I can scrub to any point in the file with no delay. I've yet to find a modern editor that beats my 1996 one.

humanfromearth 10y ago
Modern editors are much more that file browsers. They do static analysis, syntax colouring, linting and many more things (depending on what plugins you have installed). I still like to open a plain vim and just focus on the task at hand without the magic, but that's just not how most web developers work these days.
- vidarh 10y ago
  But there's not really a good reason why these features can not be processed in the background, e.g. in separate threads. Personally I don't care much about the 1GB file scenario, but I've mentioned before how "booting" AROS (AmigaOS reimplementation) hosted under Linux, straight into an Amiga editor like FrexxEd (which does have syntax highlighting for example) is faster than starting Emacs on my home machine. More importantly, a lot of this functionality is down to simply not thinking about consequences. E.g. try starting a typical Emacs installation on a box that has a network but where the DNS setup is broken, and enjoy waiting for DNS lookups to time out before it starts... (I'm sure there's an easy fix; I'll admit to being lazy and not having looked for how to prevent it and rather "just" fix my DNS when it's happened) All to often "nice to have" functionality ends up in the critical path of startup rather than lazily initialize in the background.

sundvor 10y ago

I went to download Sublime Text after refreshing my Windows 10 build, and noticed on the main page that 3 is now released. Build is 3114, dated May 12 2016 - this seems to now have been chosen as the RTM version. There's been a flurry of updates lately and I'm very pleased to see that Jon Skinner has been able to reach this milestone, after some slower periods. It's such a fantastic editor, one I've used for years; my previous was Textpad. I'll pay for the upgrade myself as soon as the site is updated with upgrade pricing, assuming that this will be an option.

sonnyp 10y ago

No, still beta "Sublime Text 3 is currently in beta. The latest build is 3114."

sundvor 10y ago
Are you hitting a different CDN box to me? In Australia, the text under the download box on the front page says "Sublime Text 3, Build 3114, 64 bit". Screenshot is still of v2. The about Sublime Text box on the installed editor says "Stable Channel, Build 3114".
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
tuananh 10y ago
They feature version 3 on homepage now.
- gear54rus 10y ago
  In addition to screenshot of version 2, in an impressive display of consistency :D
- dewiz 10y ago
  This img https://www.sublimetext.com/images/win_title_bar.png https://www.sublimetext.com/images/win_title_bar.png used in the homepagbe still saying Sublime Text 2
- shurcooL 10y ago
  This has been the case for a few weeks now. It did not change just recently.
modeless 10y ago
And this is important because existing Sublime Text licenses are only valid for the beta. When 3 exits beta then everyone will have to buy the upgrade.

Scarbutt 10y ago

Is sublimetext as hackable(extensible) as emacs or atom?

JeremyMorgan 10y ago
I would say pretty likely, plugins are Python based and easy to create.
rattray 10y ago
It's not open-source, so generally, no. Packages are in python, and most of those are open-source (and thus available as examples) so extending through packages is probably easy.
- bjz_ 10y ago
  With Atom addons can also do a great deal of UI customization too, due to the fact that it is built on the web stack. You pay for it in performance though...
wcummings 10y ago
Atom? Maybe. Emacs? Nope.
- Scarbutt 10y ago
  Well, in Atom you can replace any of the javascript Atom comes with with your own customizations, same in Emacs with elisp, where does the difference lie? (I'm a emacs/evil user).
  - provemewrong 10y ago
    I'm just guessing, but perhaps in the Elisp macro capabilities, that arise from the language's homoiconicity?
  - Derbasti 10y ago
    Emacs is written almost exclusively in elisp, and every elisp function can be changed at any time. Much of Emacs' core lies wide open in the global namespace, and is thus easy to change from any level. As far as I understand, Atom has quite a bit of code that is not openly accessible, be it because it is part of a Node.js, transpiled from something else, buried in closures, or simply too deep in the hierarchy to be easily reachable from the plugin level. Sure, you could change it if you set your mind to it and maybe patched a few files here and there, but it's certainly not as easy as in Emacs.

beardog 10y ago

Now if only I could afford it :D

onion2k 10y ago
I understand you're joking, but this is important. It's $70. I know that's a lot to some people, but if you're selling your time as a developer it's probably quite a lot less than 1/2 a day at your usual rate. For a tool that will save you many days a year (and increase your bottomline as much), that's really cheap. If you were a designer and needed Adobe's tools you'd be paying much every month. If you're using Sublime professionally you can afford it. You're choosing not to. That's fine because there are some great free alternatives to use instead, but you have no reason to complain.
- brbsix 10y ago
  We don't know that he's a professional developer. He could be a student (or in a million other situations). I know that when I was 12 years old trying to learn C on my own, spending $70 on an editor would have been unthinkable.
  - onion2k 10y ago
    Absolutely, but the answer to that problem shouldn't really be to use it unlicensed, even if it's 'only' nagware rather than a trial. There are many free alternatives that do the same job very well.
- ofcapl_ 10y ago
  exactly! I've bought SublimeText couple years ago, when the value after currency conversion was 4x higher than for someone who earns in dollars - still it was the best investments in dev tool ever!
- dewiz 10y ago
  I bought v3 a long ago, the price was ~30$, a good investment :-)
- 10y ago

andrepd 10y ago

Is there a quick rundown on new features from 2 to 3?

cledet 10y ago

Such a great piece of software. Fast, cross-platform, and extendible. No brainer purchase.

DigitalSea 10y ago

I think ST3 really missed the boat. I used to love using Sublime Text 2 (occasionally I still do because it is fast), but I moved on when development stagnated and Jon seemingly disappeared off of the face of the planet, stopped responding to support requests and the like. There is no disputing ST is a great editor, but it has fallen behind in the face of Atom, Webstorm and Visual Studio Code (two of which are free).

mastazi 10y ago
VS Code is great, Atom too but I wish it was less buggy. Regarding ST, I used to feel the same but lately I have seen more releases and it seems that development is now moving again. Also, I'm really struggling to find any aspect where ST "lags behind", I pretty much seem to get all the same goodies that I get in Atom and VS Code.
- bjz_ 10y ago
  VS Code seems much snappier than Atom, as someone who uses both. And the Rust extension is much better. Switching between the different key-bindings is a pain though - I wish VS Code used ST bindings, but I'm guessing they went for consistency with VS?
  - mastazi 10y ago
    > but I'm guessing they went for consistency with VS? Yes you are right, although in some cases they also support the "ST-style" shortcuts, e.g. I just realised that I can do block selection with ctrl-alt
ashworth 10y ago
Genuine question: What do Atom and Visual Studio Code offer that Sublime Text doesn't? I have tried both within the last year and wasn't able to find any significant advantages (except for VS Code's excellent TypeScript experience), but they both ran slower and used more memory. Perhaps I should have used Nuclide? (Not asking about Webstorm because I've used the IntelliJ family of IDEs and understand their advantages)

wassago 10y ago

I think it's fair enough to say that people should be using beta/dev builds, I've been using Sublime 3 for years (before switching to Atom a year ago) and there were just a handful of broken builds. That said, as much as I like the quality of the app, I wouldn't hold my breath for version 4.

Zalos 10y ago

It´s featured on the front page and it´s the same build number but the download page /3 which is generally an indication that Sublime 3 is the active current version still calls Sublime Text 3 a beta. Slightly confused now, /2 which is the page for Sublime Text 2 says: Sublime Text 3 is currently in beta, and contains many improvements over Sublime Text 2. and links to Sublime Text 3. This seems confusing but My guess is it´s still in beta as per the information but perhaps deemed stable enough that you can use it. I will probably wait until a news post have been made declaring Sublime Text 3 as 1.0 release. While I continue to use a mixture of Sublime Text and Atom.

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welder 10y ago

Make sure you check out all the wonderful packages available for Sublime Text 3 at https://packagecontrol.io/ https://packagecontrol.io/

forrestthewoods 10y ago

Excellent. I look forward to giving Jon another $70 for ST4 beta support in a few months. One of the best purchases a programmer can make.

dvcrn 10y ago

ST3 has been stable for a long long time. It's great that they finally flipped the switch and replace ST2 with it. This also forces developers to finally adapt the new API and Python3. Just too bad this came too late. I got frustrated with the plugin API long ago and no-brainer features like multiple elements in the gutter (which is needed for example for relative line numbers) have still not been implemented. When ST3 development seemed to have frozen completely, a lot of plugin developers have moved on to other platforms like atom or vscode. Even with this release, ST3 needs something bigger to bring people and plugin devs back to the platform. Once my ST2 license stops working for ST3 I will open the editor a lot less than I currently do but will monitor the changelog for long wanted features.

ff10 10y ago

To add to the confusion: it seems that build 3114, released on May 12th, labeled beta originally, is now designated as the ST3 stable release.

cleeus 10y ago

I've never used any of those new editors (ST, Atom, VS Code, ...). Can anyone compare them to the more classic ultraedit? Or said differently: Why would I chose ST3 over one of the classic editors?

mevile 10y ago
Atom and VS Code use the same basic underlying technology and are JavaScript under the hood. With both you can actually open up a chrome like web inspector to help you write and debug plugins. These editors are Open Source and funded by companies whose main source of income is not the editor, but have money (GitHub and Microsoft). Sublime Text is an editor that brought a lot of new ideas that many editors now adopt (multiple cursors, minimap). It's written in native platform code + python 3. It is closed source and written by a small group of people. Their company only sells Sublime Text. Personally I prefer intellij. I do use VS Code for text/non project editing but out of ST, VS Code and Atom I think ST is the better editor, it's future is just isn't certain but it's widely used and has a great eco system.
- FezVrasta 10y ago
  Actually multi cursor has been available in Gedit for several years... I really doubt that Sublime Text invented it.
  - mevile 10y ago
    I've used gedit, but I'm not familiar with multi-cursor implementation in it. I suppose I've always seen the multi-cursor implementation in Sublime Text as top-notch with other editors struggling to implement anything like it. Intellij finally has pretty decent multi-cursor support but it's still a little bit behind ST's. For example, in IntelliJ the ease of applying multiple cursors seems to involve more work than in ST. In VS Code multiple cursors isn't nearly well implemented as ST or even IntelliJ.
- KennyCason 10y ago
  intellij++

dvirsky 10y ago

Maybe I'm biased but it seems like Sublime lost its huge margin in the "editor race". Occasionally I try to use Sublime, but the plugins are always lacking. For my needs, VSCode is already better with better plugins (C, Go, Python), and I'm more productive with it although it lacks some features in the editor itself. And it doesn't feel slower even though it's written in JS. Plus it's open source. I hope the Sublime author will release it as open source, at least in some IntelliJ style freemium model. That might give it back the boost it needs.

imron 10y ago
> For my needs, VSCode is already better with better plugins I bet the Sublime spell-check plugin doesn't send your entire file to a third-party server over plain http.
- dvirsky 10y ago
  Does VScode's?
  - imron 10y ago
    The most popular one does, at least according to this recent HN thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11804366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11804366
    - dvirsky 10y ago
      Thanks. Not using this one.
- LaurentVB 10y ago
  Probably not, but it's also pretty hard to know what Sublime does, given its closed-source nature.
ensiferum 10y ago
Does VSCode have a plugin for C++ code completion yet? There are several for ST.

SquareWheel 10y ago

I don't see any updated builds or blog post about this. Is it just because the homepage now links to ST3 instead? Because it's been that way for some time now, and the download label still says it's a beta. Am I missing the real release? Could be a CDN issue?

shurcooL 10y ago
No, there's nothing new. Someone posted the link to Sublime Text homepage and many people upvoted it when seeing the title, without first verifying the link pointed to an actual release. So it ended up getting a lot of upvotes. The homepage links to ST3 as the default version to download, as it has for a few weeks/months now, that's not new. ST3 is still described as beta. The last release was on May 12.

theshrike79 10y ago

VSCode still lacks the ability to have multiple root-level folders in one "project". This is the only deal-breaker I still have that's keeping me from moving away from ST3. I think Atom has some semblance of multiple roots, but it was a hack when I last checked.

wodenokoto 10y ago

Please correct title. The file linked to on the webpage is a 2 weeks old beta. Sublime Text 3 has NOT been released.

mstade 10y ago

I'm not sure what all the missed-the-race type comments are all about – what does this even mean? ST3 is a solid editor with what I consider a very healthy plugin eco system. I don't think there's a single feature I've missed that so many seem to think are crucial to any reasonable development (web or otherwise) and its speed and accuracy is what keeps me as a customer. (Multi-file search and replace is a breeze, even in huge files.) Worth every penny.

mstade 10y ago
I forget to mention the fact that ST has saved my ass more than once by always keeping buffers persisted. This alone paid the price of admission several times over in not having to redo work when I've been a klutz.
- untoreh 10y ago
  in comparison both vscode and atom have crap statufulness, in my case they both crash every half hour and when you reopen them everything is gone, atom right now (1.7.3/4) has a bug that makes the editor crash some times when you save files, electron is all fun for customization but damn if it is unstable. Sublime been rocksolid no crash and 100% stateful.
  - mstade 10y ago
    I can't speak for the others because I have no experience, but definitely echo your Sublime experience. Even when it has crashed, and the only times I can recall have been on Windows, it's always kept state so not once have I lost work. This feature alone, as I mentioned, is worth the price of admission. It's a life saver.

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garbad 10y ago

When Sublime Text 3 comes out of beta, they can have my money, please. I've tried Atom and Brackets but 'Nope!'