I've been using Sublime for many years, and I think I paid for Sublime a about a year in (I think it cost like 30$ back then). I think my current employer also

I've been using Sublime for many years, and I think I paid for Sublime a about a year in (I think it cost like 30$ back then). I think my current employer also got me a License. However, after the n-th re-install I got too lazy to find my license key and just used the unregistered version. I think I've been running that for years now. The popup wasn't annoying enough for me to go and find my license key. If you really want to use Sublime but find the 70$ a steep price, it's still completely usable for free if you don't mind a popup once a day. As an aside, I recently switched to Atom, mostly to stop the programming hipsters from constantly nagging me about how Atom is such a superior editor. With a little configuration I got it to look pretty much exactly like Sublime, and I don't have any issues with performance. If you're looking for a free Sublime alternative, Atom is pretty usable right now.