13 ms·

I paid for Sublime Text

158 points by kapitanluffy 3y ago

ianai 3y ago
If you like something you should probably pay to support it in some fashion. The meme of “it was free at some point so I shouldn’t ever pay for it” is many things including deeply limiting.
orionblastar 3y ago
Like paying for WinZip? I use 7zip because it is free and open source software.
- jskherman 3y ago
  Honestly, 7zip seems to be better at the job than WinZip and lightweight too.
bradgessler 3y ago
I’ve seen developers who had thousands of dollars of corp training and tooling budget NOT buy an ST license purely out of laziness. ST could probably make a decent chunk of change if they tweaked their terms to require a license for authoring commercial software or content.
- TerminalFi 3y ago
  Business have to buy a license else they break the TOS. “a license must be purchased for continued use”
cobertos 3y ago
I hate that dialog box. It annoys me so much because I'm lazy and adding the key to a new install is always an afterthought. It's much worse with the Sublime SFTP plugin because I use it infrequently and so I only put in the license key after months or so of pestering. It's not that I didnt want to buy it, Ive paid for Sublime twice now! I grumbled through the second payment. Something about the license only applying to major versions for 3 years? It is an indispensable pieces of software for me though, and I've paid more for other stuff (Backlink tracking subscription)
- chpatrick 3y ago
  There's always vscode...
  - cobertos 3y ago
    I like Sublime a lot, no reason to switch. I just dislike the box
user8501 3y ago
I can't tell if this is sarcasm. I think it's pretty groovy to pay a one time fee for software.
- SanjayMehta 3y ago
  I think it’s virtual signalling designed to shame others into paying for it. With some cringeworthy attempts at humour.
DoctorDabadedoo 3y ago
To each their own, but I find funny that people shell out an absurd amount of money for games they will play exactly once but feel robbed when paying for software that they use every single day. The licensing from sublime is very amenable, I believe, far from what companies like Adobe force on their end users, IMO.
- Justsignedup 3y ago
  I pay for jet brains platform yearly and it is worth every single penny many times over. The eye rolls I get. Bro. You're literally getting paid 150k at a minimum, you can she'll out 100 dollars a year.
  - wernercd 3y ago
    "150k at a minimum" not to say you shouldn't support great companies but the average programmer salary isn't 150k. it's probably not even half that. https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/computer-programmer/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/computer-programm...
    - kqr 3y ago
      Especially not outside of the US and/or FAANG. I know of only one programmer making even close to 150k in Europe unless counting Google.
      - wernercd 3y ago
        As a programmer for a bank, I'm in the ballpark after benefits/yearly bonus (humble brag) but having been on the lookout for remote work in my line of specialty, for me to get a good remote position I will probably have to take a pay/benefits cut. (Long commute before covid. remote during. "hybrid" after. Looking to get back to no commute with rising prices of everything) Programmers with experience do make a good living but FAANG style jobs vastly skew what people think the average programmer makes. Just like unicorn companies make people forget that the vast majority of companies fail.
lawgimenez 3y ago
Nice write up fellow countryman.
astrodust 3y ago
Why is it shameful to pay to support something you use all the time? I've paid for BBEdit, SubEthaEdit, TextMate, Sublime Text, and probably others over the years. VS Code is really the first editor I haven't felt compelled to pay for.
steve_mcdougall 3y ago
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kristopolous 3y ago
As someone whose been on the other side, seeing money come in really obligates me to actually do something. There's a deeper feeling of responsibility when someone's given you cash and I seem to prioritize things that otherwise I probably wouldn't have found the time for. So you may think you "get" nothing, but what you might actually get is a developer to spend more time on it. Now of course there's diminishing returns, but zero to non-zero obligates the honest person. Beyond that it's mostly headcount. I'd work more for 10 people that gave $1 than for 1 person that gave $10 because I've gone from having a sponsor to an audience.
matthewtse 3y ago
Curious, why Sublime Text in this day and age of VS Code dominance? Sublime text was my first "in the middle" text editor, more featured than vim/emacs, but lighter weight than IntelliJ. I somehow got my internship company to buy me a license, which I ended up using for several years after leaving. But then VS Code came along. I was a skeptic for years, as it was based on Atom/Electron, which I found really sluggish, and it was Microsoft. The thing that converted me was the "it just works" extensions system. Most coding languages have syntax highlighting and intelligent code navigation out of the box, and if not, it's a few clicks away to install very well written extensions. Comparatively, it was a nightmare installing Sublime Text extensions. And over the years, Microsoft has poured immense amounts of money into developing features for VS Code.
- muzani 3y ago
  Note taking. Quick edits. Plugins are easy. Just copy in a bunch of JSON > CMD+SHIFT+P > "pretty"
- S201 3y ago
  > I was a skeptic for years, as it was based on Atom/Electron, which I found really sluggish, and it was Microsoft. This pretty much still sums it up for me.
  - matthewtse 3y ago
    After the Microsoft acquisition of GitHub (including Atom/Electron), they really made immense efforts to speed it up! It's been years since I've used Sublime Text, but I imagine VS Code is as fast if not faster at this point. As for "Microsoft". It's funny, I use to be a Windows/Microsoft fan in the 90s/2000s because that was the only way I was going to play computer games. Then they lost my trust during the Ballmer era, at the same time I started programming and appreciated linux/apple more. But VS Code has singlehandedly reignited my love of Microsoft. Despite the name "Visual Studio Code", it does not at all try to shove Microsoft languages like Visual Basic or C# down your throat. Support for common open source languages like python and javascript are amazing. It's as surprising to me as it is to you that I'm defending Microsoft in an online thread right now.
steve_adams_86 3y ago
I think Sublime Merge is also deserving of the small chunk of cash they ask for it. I’m not embarrassed at all about it, sarcastically or otherwise. It’s great software and I hope they keep developing great things.
- bradgessler 3y ago
  Agreed, I use it for committing specific lines of source. Atlassian SourceTree is also really good too.
- kapitanluffy 3y ago
  Yes, it is a great tool too! If you have any questions or curious if the product is still developed, hangout on Sublime's Discord :D
urthor 3y ago
Why is paying money for ethical, user-respecting software like Sublime Text a bad thing? Sublime HQ the company maintains an excellent reputation, and does a wonderful job.
- urthor 3y ago
  I think to add to this. If you're a fully employed professional of some means, which a huge amount of folk reading this are. Pay for your shareware software. Usually with independent SaaS software, after I've used software for 6+ months or more, I pay for the lifetime license. It's just polite.
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- tellarin 3y ago
  I don't have a problem with paying for software I use and like if the price and their terms are reasonable, which Sublime mostly is. However, my personal issue with Sublime is the fact some basic requested editor functionality hasn't been implemented in years. You can see multiple such issues opened against it. And I'm not talking about IDE-like stuff, just basic editor features, like having multiple rows of tabs when you have many files open.
- maronato 3y ago
  It isn’t a bad thing. The repo is sarcastic in a good way, making fun of how we take incredible software for granted. It got me to pay for Sublime even though I haven’t used it in years. When I used it, though, it was the best thing since sliced bread and more than paid for itself.
- TylerE 3y ago
  It's especially ironic on a forum where at least 90% of the userbase...writes software for a living.
- wryanzimmerman 3y ago
  I paid for it (and merge) even after I started using neovim full time, because I used it for years to learn to code before I got a paid job. Their license terms were kind enough to let me do that, so I honored the spirit of it and paid them once I got paid.
chii 3y ago
sublime merge looks pretty good and is worth paying for imho.
demondemidi 3y ago
I paid for sublime. Used it for years. Then VSCode overtook it on so many levels. I even used it for notetaking because it opened faster than vscode but then that was fixed. Good stuff but hard to avoid a solid ecosystem that is constantly evolving with the backing of big companies. kinda sad actually.
- matthewtse 3y ago
  Yeah, when your competitor is one of the biggest companies in the world who's willing to light millions on fire to offer a COMPLETELY FREE competitor for the sake of "developer mindshare", it's pretty easy to see the end result. I was really a skeptic for years, but Microsoft really threw money at this until it won.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
    This is probably the main reason why I won’t use it anymore: Microsoft is repeating in VSCode all the things it did in the Windows/IE era.
    - xarope 3y ago
      First thing I did in VScode was install/activate Vim mode. So if VScode does go the way of Windows, then I'll "just" go back to another editor with vi bindings. (yes yes, I remember some of my emacs bindings, wrote a thesis in latex on emacs, and learnt lisp as a result, but I realised that vi was more "portable")
      - kapitanluffy 3y ago
        btw, Sublime Text has a built in vim bindings albeit disabled by default. I suggest you give it a try.
    - demondemidi 3y ago
      > Microsoft is repeating in VSCode all the things it did in the Windows/IE era. Example?
namuol 3y ago
Many years ago I bought Sublime Text minutes after using the plugin system to install some support for the languages I use. This was a decade before VSCode took over, and at the time I was a Vim user for most of my career. It was a breath of fresh air compared to the Stockholm syndrome I had built around VimScript, and I never looked back. We (people like me) owe ST for opening the door for innovation in the general-purpose IDE space that created what is frankly a golden age compared to the century prior. Heck, the command palette has bled into tools well outside the scope of developer tools these days and it’s probably my favorite UX pattern in modern complex software. To any Vim users preparing to inform me about how much better Vim is these days, I’d argue that we still owe ST for raising the expectations that developers have of their editors.
muzani 3y ago
I paid for it earlier this month. I have a "charity" budget. I didn't get any dialog. But like OP, it's something I used since my first job (if you count ST2 as the same). So I figured this time instead of building wells in some remote location, the money should go into legally paying for something that's I use. It was second choice - first was Fork, which is even more embarrassing as it means I don't use the git CLI. But Fork rejected my card so ST it was. It does feel weird. There's no satisfaction. I don't use it that much these days; it's just a text editor that I paste logs into. It's pretty damn expensive for a text editor.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  I feel a small amount of satisfaction every time I open Sublime to take a random note, knowing that 1) once upon a time my work depended on it, and 2) I did my part to support its development.
emacs4evr 3y ago
Use emacs
- hirvi74 3y ago
  I still do on occasions, but I can't at work. I miss it all the time, but in someways, and I hate saying it, but I have been more productive. I spent too much time changing my config, QoL improvements, and breaking things. The sick part is that I miss it sometimes. I thinks is due to Emacs being the only software I have worked[1] on that actually meant something to me. [1] Worked on in the since of configurations, my own modes, packages, etc.. I have never contributed to Emacs the project.
- pb060 3y ago
  Emacs has such a steep and long learning curve that I couldn’t justify learning it while doing actual work. Still attracted by it, any suggestion for a smoother adoption?
  - tincholio 3y ago
    The learning curve is not so steep, as long as you don't try to learn ALL OF EMACS upfront. Just start using it for your basic editing, learn how to open/save files, how to navigate, buffer management, as you go. When you need something more specific, you can easily look it up in the great in-built documentation. You can also use something like Doom, which simplifies more advanced setups, and adds to discoverability (press the leader key, and you get a set of options for what else you can do from there). It's the same with Vim, if you learn how to do basic editing, the rest comes along easily, as you need it. (remember "ESC :q!", though :) )
  - globular-toast 3y ago
    I like "emacs bedrock" config to start with. And use magit (can be enabled in bedrock). You'll save so much time using git which means a) you'll never go back and b) you can use the time saved to get better at emacs. I won't lie to you, though. Emacs is the single greatest source of yak shaving there is. It becomes your passion project as you try to craft your ultimate editing experience. It's so cool to be able to use your own passion project for work every day.
iambateman 3y ago
TBH, I did pay for Sublime but lost my license key years ago. Ever since, I’ve been mired in the dialog pop up because I don’t want to buy it again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- ben-schaaf 3y ago
  If you have access to the email address you can easily recover the key here: https://www.sublimehq.com/store/retrieve_key https://www.sublimehq.com/store/retrieve_key.
nerdponx 3y ago
I paid for it and feel no shame. The core editor still beats VS Code by far, even though its plugin ecosystem really died off in the mid-2010s when the devs went nearly silent, and sadly never recovered.
zaphod420 3y ago
Sublime Text is a great text editor. It opens huge files quickly. It has all the features I need for programming via LSP packages. It just feels comfy to use. I happily paid for sublime text.
- kapitanluffy 3y ago
  btw, if you need help with issues or just curious whether Sublime is dead or not, head over to their unofficial Discord server -> https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu
26fingies 3y ago
I paid for sublime 3. I should pay for 4, but I havent yet.
- anthony_romeo 3y ago
  I think their license works for the current version at time of purchase and next version, so you’re good to go till version 5
  - ben-schaaf 3y ago
    The licensing used to be for a single major version. This was changed with Sublime Text 4: A license is permanently valid for any versions/builds released within 3 years of the purchase. See https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-4 https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-4
    - anthony_romeo 3y ago
      Got it, thanks!
- kapitanluffy 3y ago
  Sublime 4 is like a different world. There might be hiccups with moving to different versions but you can always ask at the discord server.
waynecochran 3y ago
You could have just used emacs and simply passed on a thank you to RMS.
tekla 3y ago
Its a very high quality piece of software that is fast, light, and has a rich plugin system, and it gets out of the goddamn way. This is such a weird insecurity to have. Are people so insecure that they have to be ashamed for buying a product?
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andrewstuart 3y ago
I happily pay for Jetbrains Pycharm and Clion. I'm a professional developer so the price is easily justifiable.
SanjayMehta 3y ago
I paid for Textmate on macOS which now seems to be in perpetual beta and free. I still prefer vi/vim for speed, and use Textmate only for restructuring code. VSCode is great for reading other people’s code, IMHO, but gets in the way while writing new code. Different tools for different tasks.
WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
I bought a license a while ago, but I found myself using it less and less.. why? I couldn't tweak something that was bothering me (file preview as you fuzzy search your file, causing ton of screen flickering, and is quite slow on my raspberry..) I now mostly use vim.. I'm pretty sure they'll never do it, but I think Sublime should embrace open source, or perhaps open more components of the editor..
tombert 3y ago
I don't use Sublime, but I have tried to get into the habit of donating "roughly how much I would pay at the store" for some of the open source software I use frequently, now that I make yuppie money. Stuff like ffmpeg or NeoVim or tmux are tools that I have become so dependent on, and they're all given away for free. I have also tried to be in compliance with "free for personal use" licenses; I pay the fee for business use of Obsidian now, because I do use it a lot for work.
MangoCoffee 3y ago
I paid for Sublime Text version 2 and 3 but stop at 4 because VSCode is good enough for coding.
nkantar 3y ago
Ha, amusing read—thanks for the chuckle. I paid for Sublime Text 3 while I was still using it. Even though I switched away (to Vim/Neovim, then Kakoune, then Helix), I don’t regret it at all. It was a fantastic tool I used for about two to three years, and it brought me far more value than the $70 it asked for in return. In fact, I’ve since bought a ton of other software when it’s proven useful more than the free alternatives. I’m particularly happy when it’s sold by a small team, just like Sublime. Some favorites I currently have installed: Acorn, Fantastical, Ivory, Monodraw, Things, Transmit, and Tweetbot (RIP).
- bradgessler 3y ago
  Fantastical is awesome. I wish Flexbits make a macOS email client, but they don’t seem interested.
  - nkantar 3y ago
    I had this exact thought when I first started using Fantastical a bit over a year ago. Would 100% be interested, even for my relatively easy needs.
    - bradgessler 3y ago
      They do such a great job sweating all the details that they’d make something far more amazing than Mail.app, Spark, or Canary. I’ve been tempted to build this email client since Flexbits won’t.
- nicwolff 3y ago
  I bet you'd like Bean: > Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor that is designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. Bean is lean, fast and uncluttered. It starts up quickly, has a live word count, and is easy on the eyes. Also, Bean is available free of charge. > Bean has some limitations: it doesn't do footnotes or use stylesheets and is only partially compatible with Word's file formats. Also, it allows in-line graphics, but not floating graphics. https://bean-osx.com/Bean.html https://bean-osx.com/Bean.html
tshirttime 3y ago
The guilt-trip business model is a shitty one. How I miss the days of shrink-wrapped diskettes when the software, and not the customer, was the deliverable.
kristianp 3y ago
I feel bad now. I've been using sublime for years and still use it all the time. (F@#$ Microsoft and vscode basically). I'm gonna buy a license, just as soon as I have the time.
pupppet 3y ago
I still love and use sublime text. It has an SFTP package that knocks the socks off anything available on VScode. Plus I find the way it manages the search results screen far superior to VScode.
- aidog 3y ago
  I used that plugin extensively to develop PHP websites 10 years ago. Great feedback loop
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pentagrama 3y ago
Not a developer and I use Sublime Text everyday as a local note taking app. Is so so snappy, and the UI/colors are calm and attractive. I love Sublime Text. I guess I don't get the license message as the op because I don't save the tabs, all catched. I tryed obsidian for some time and was cool, but was miles behind in snappiness and wasn't worth it.
sharts 3y ago
You’d think by now editor configs could be easily migrated/translated between products.
ivanmontillam 3y ago
I remember back in the day purchasing 5 years for WhatsApp and I convinced a few friends to do so after a lot of convincing. It felt great even though I was being laughed at by many. I contributed to the great work these guys pre-Facebook were doing. To me it felt like buying me some good karma for when I sell my software. Now I pay for Telegram and I only have WhatsApp out of network effects.
below43 3y ago
For me it was a BB Edit license. Despite using VS Code for 90% of my projects, I still found myself using it for quick edits, or viewing of files.
james2doyle 3y ago
I've paid for all of the Sublime versions since 2. I even paid for Sublime merge. I like supporting the team because they have consistent patches and really have built an excellent tool that I used for hours a day. There are a lot of people talking about the VSCode plugin ecosystem but I've never lacked any plugins from Sublime. I just prefer the experience. Once you have LSP setup it sings. There are also some underutilized features like workspaces and build systems that are really handy when you set them up. The snippets and macros system is also really nice. I should also add that it is easy to build plugins for. The docs on plugins are a bit rough but there are lots of examples out there. It is overall a really good editor experience
- jiehong 3y ago
  Speaking of which, I’ve found that the api doc is getting better since Sublime Text 4. Not crazy better, but that’s something. I’d also enjoy some typing stubs for their API to import to help with autocompletion of their API, though.
fragile_frogs 3y ago
I have been using Sublime Text for about 8 years now, I have tried multiple different editors in the mean time including VS Code, Atom, Fleet and I always went back to Sublime Text. After years of using ST for free, I finally bought a license about two years ago when ST 4 came out, I am also a paid user of Sublime Merge, which is the best git client I have tried.
aragonite 3y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but I find the process of developing/modifying an extension such a PITA on vscode. In sublime it's frictionless, all you have to do is to save some python files in your user folder, then sublime will find them automatically, and hot reload them when you modify them! In VSCode, I have go through a whole build process, generate some .vsx and then manually install it. The tiniest modification to the code requires me to go through this whole process again. Am I doing something wrong here?
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- Dayshine 3y ago
  Funny, I had the opposite experience. Typescript has perfect language server support, the vs code api docs are very good and you can always just look at the source. Plus debugging vs code extensions is easy. Porting the same extension to sublime text was a nightmare. Python has poor language support in all ides, the docs were lacking, there was no good debugger and I couldn't just check the code.
  - jayemar 3y ago
    You didn't really answer their question, you really only said that you find it more comfortable working with Typescript than with Python. Are you aware of a way to install custom Typescript code as an extension without needing to go through the build and install process in VSCode, similar to the way a Python file can be pulled in by Sublime if placed in a specific folder?
  - aragonite 3y ago
    I can certainly imagine developing a complex extension intended for publication in the marketplace can involve a very different experience. I had in mind only the kind of extension a user might write for personal use, which may often involve adding some simple functionality (usually some event listener, e.g. intercepting auto-completion to do some filtering). I find it very convenient to be able to change the code and have the changes instantaneously reflected in the editor itself (rather than some sandboxed environment) and wish it were possible to do the same in VSCode
tantalic 3y ago
As someone who almost always has a text editor open, I have paid for many over the years. In particular multiple versions of TextMate and multiple versions of Sublime Text. I have also been responsible for getting licenses for my team(s) at work. I now find that the editor I am happiest with is VS Code, not because it's free but because of the extensibility and community support it brings. I'd happily pay for it - but I think the nature of it being free is what has brought so much community support to it.
xiaodai 3y ago
lol
blindriver 3y ago
I've paid for it twice now, once for version 2 and once for version 4 (I think that's the current version).
bigstrat2003 3y ago
I finally made an account just to say: I also bought Sublime Text, and I'm happy to do so. I'll pay for it again when my license runs up, most likely. Lots of people saying they use VSCode, and I can't blame them. It has a lot going for it. But when I recently tried each for a while, Sublime does everything VSCode does just as well. Even plugins - there's nothing I want (with one exception) I can't get in Sublime. So the calculus basically comes down to this: VSCode: the remoting feature is great, and Sublime currently can't match it (rsub is a poor substitute at best). Sublime: it's not an Electron app, and therefore uses a fraction of the resources. Working with the same set of files open, VSCode uses hundreds of MB of memory while Sublime uses 100 or so. So either way I have to give something up, but ultimately the massive bloat of VSCode bothers me more than the lack of good remoting functionality in Sublime. So I'm using Sublime for the foreseeable future.
- kapitanluffy 3y ago
  btw, if you need help with issues or just curious whether Sublime is dead or not, head over to their unofficial Discord server -> https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu the community is very much active in there!
ElectronBadger 3y ago
I paid for SublimeText and SublimeMerge and will happily pay another time, when my v3 license expires. While I'm mostly in the FOSS camp, Sublime software, together with Bitwig Studio (https://www.bitwig.com https://www.bitwig.com) and Reaper (https://www.reaper.fm https://www.reaper.fm), are the pinnacle of commercial products in their categories.
ghusto 3y ago
Love it :) Sublime Text is exactly the type of company I can support. Honest business, making a good and honest product. Unfortunately it's not _quite_ good enough for me :( I wish there was a viable alternative to VSCode. For a clue as to where that's headed, take a look at any free tool with heavy investment by a large corporation. Chrome is good case-study. VSCodium is ... I can't put my finger on it, but it doesn't cut it. Maybe death by a thousand cuts, many small things that don't quite work as cleanly as they should.
- kapitanluffy 3y ago
  I wonder what made you feel that Sublime is not good enough. Vent it out on me :D
Brajeshwar 3y ago
Been a paid user and happy customer since 2009. I have paid for every paid upgrade it asked. I've stopped coding for quite a while and now uses it to write mostly Markdown, and some others here and there. Sublimetext is worth it and (I believe), it is not even yearly but you pay once every 4th year (current license model). I tend to open directories/folders of projects and Sublime text is the only one that I can zip around while still being visually informative and beautiful. Thank you Sublimetext.
btach 3y ago
...#sublimeshame? I don't understand what is shameful. Nor do I see anything to be proud of either. It's a fantastic tool. I used Sublime Text for quite a while at version 2 and eventually bought a license. Later upgraded to 4. Still using it almost daily. It's a staple in my workflow and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Other tools would probably be just as good, but whatever, it is valuable to me.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Sublime Text was the last piece of daily software that I really enjoy. Since then nothing else has given me that feeling. I bought it a long time back of course. This is how Sublime Text started: https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/2007/11 https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/2007/11
klntsky 3y ago
It is rarely good to have that much emotional investment in software (or in the money that would otherwise be spent on donations to software devs). Most of us are fairly uninvolved: you either pay or not. This must be Sublime PR department psyop. A brilliant one, I must admit.
lycopodiopsida 3y ago
I've had a personal license, but barely used it, because vim & emacs. But in the end, the problem with license is that I can't use it @myWork. There is plenty of outstanding editors these days - neovim, emacs, vscode for those loving to click around so that it would be difficult for me to argue why I do need a license for sublime. But I've had no problems to get my employer to pay for JIdea Ultimate, because the value of an IDE to vscode is pretty obvious.
- galleywest200 3y ago
  > But in the end, the problem with license is that I can't use it @myWorK Per the website: https://www.sublimehq.com/sales_faq https://www.sublimehq.com/sales_faq > As licenses are per-user, you're welcome to use your license key on all computers where you are the primary user, including at work.
  - lycopodiopsida 3y ago
    Not allowed, sadly, employee insists that all licenses used have to be bought ob their name. Legal something yada yada… I can’t just bring in my personal license.
    - kapitanluffy 3y ago
      That's unfortunate. Is it like they monitoring your laptop for software installed? I had this issue way back. I just said "Ah, Sublime Text is free. Sure, buy me a license if you want but if it's free, there are no legal issues, right?"
tongueinkek 3y ago
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sebiw 3y ago
Absolutely not connecting with the message. I happily and proudly bought Sublime Text after some time because it's a tool I really like and use pretty much daily. Thanks to the devs for a solid product.
8bitsrule 3y ago
Over here on Linux, I tried Sublime this summer for a couple months. Compared to Kate (which has grown a lot over the years), it had a couple of better options, but about the same number of strange oddities. And then I saw what it takes to modify some of the theme choices... ay yay. Back to Kate's well-known oddities.
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larodi 3y ago
I love Sublime Text. It is actually Microsoft who should've paid for it, because they adopted what was done in Atom and Atom is direct attempt at opensource rewrite of Sublime Text. Sublime showed what a fast editor could look like, and it basically brought to the GUI world the long-overdue search-in-all-menus functionality which is really everywhere these days. Yeah, sure vim does it for ages with commands, no disrespect, but only 1% of baby devs would land vim in their first years. Even though I appreciate opensource for many of its benefits (not quality, but mostly the community), there are dark sides to opensource that few mention. And one of it is the absolutely insanely negative view of anything that is closed-source software and needs to be paid for. Totally disregarding the qualities of product. This is so wrong on so many levels. Whats more - a company which builds its services on opensource very seldom open sources its own code. What a hypocrisy! I'm not even going to go into this discussion of Amazon vs Elastic. It is shameful that users of opensource so much under-appreciate the authors' work while doing thousands, if not millions, on top of it. But then it is even more shameful to deny the right of authors of great software such as Sublime Text to proudly collect money for their work. After all - these service companies which are 99% opensource based, do whatever they do, for a profit, right? And if we put this in perspective - whats the combined that you pay for Apple Music, Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Google Drive... whatever? Why not pay for the editor you are using on a daily basis, when its created by a hard-working professional. I'm not saying you have to pay for VSCode - its a marketing thing, very different. But people actually pay for Visual Studio, right? So nothing shameless in buying Sublime Text, in fact - it is commendable.
pjmlp 3y ago
I also paid for it. When people like to be paid for their work, they should consider how the authors of their work tools pay for their living as well.
throwaway_4638 3y ago
The main thing that actually convinced me to pay for Sublime a few years ago was a bug (or dark pattern?) in that very nag window: if it would pop up just as I clicked something, it would move to the background. Normally not an issue, but for some reason the area where the nag window is will block Sublime from registering scroll input. It was driving me crazy until I finally figured out what was causing it. I'm not sure if it still does this, but I have experienced this on multiple systems at the time. Happy I paid for it though, the sluggish VSCode bloatware is not doing it for me.
IronWolve 3y ago
hey, I paid for winrar too. Paying people for their work is a form of respect and enriches society. Karma is real.
transportheap 3y ago
i would consider buying if they stop shipping eol software. they ship py3.3 which is eol of 10 years! seems like a wont fix too https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/5984 https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/5984 https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/1163 https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/1163
- kapitanluffy 3y ago
  Yeah this sucks. Afaik, they're debating about this and from what I read removing 3.3 means killing the plugin ecosystem.
anarticle 3y ago
What the heck, am I the only one who doesn't feel bad about paying for a text editor?! I use it, it is nice and I enjoy, so I pay person some money. I figure I'm not buying some millionaire another boat. I have definitely spent more on worse / dumber things. Re: VSCode, I liked it more when MS stayed on their side of the fence, producing megacorper dev tools. This allowed smaller companies to flourish and create useful things and wild features. Now those same smallcos are relegated to the marketplace which is ruled by MS whim. I'm sure you can sideload etc, but I danno. Something about the freedom of Sublime plugs felt nice. Also what a great license scheme compared to all the other subscribeware we see anymore. Maybe I'm just a sucker, I pay for my own JetBrains sub lol.
hatsune 3y ago
As much as I respect the authors and their opinions, it feels terribly wrong to put that on Github. This is not a personal blog. There are no codes, no licenses, no whatever contribution or forks ever possible for the lack of meanings. Why? It does not take a body part to host a server or buy a VPS, or you can even use wordpress parts. If the only thing they are looking for is opinions (or, mainly similar opinions), they could go subreddits or forums like HN. Why Github?
stemlord 3y ago
Just went back to sublime from Obsidian for note taking. Nothing beats the speed of sublime (aside from CLI text editors). Obsidian is cool but too slow and filled with micro-annoyances that I just dont experience with sublime.
- kapitanluffy 3y ago
  Looks like I'm not the only one experiencing this with Obsidian. I have been trying to incorporate it with my flow but it feels clunky? I guess those are the micro-annoyances you are talking about? Thanks for this. I got a new plugin idea!
for_i_in_range 3y ago
It's sad. Sublime would be 20x better with a 2x better revenue model.
- kapitanluffy 3y ago
  Curious, what kind of revenue model do you suggest?
  - for_i_in_range 3y ago
    $12.95/mo. Or $120/year
    - kapitanluffy 3y ago
      Whoa. That looks more expensive than a $99/3 years or am I computing it wrong?
      - for_i_in_range 3y ago
        I'm writing from company's perspective, not cheap consumer's.
rixtox 3y ago
I shamefully paid for both Sublime Text and WinRAR
- kapitanluffy 3y ago
  my man!
fleeno 3y ago
I've also paid for Sublime, TextMate, and now, Nova! Nova is wonderful.
- kapitanluffy 3y ago
  Nova? Whoa! I will try this! btw, if you need help with issues or just curious whether Sublime is dead or not, drop by their unofficial Discord server -> https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu
  - fleeno 3y ago
    Nova is worth a try if you're a Mac user! On Sublime, it's a great editor, and being cross platform is really nice. They really do need to update the web site to reflect that it's not dead. The "see what's new" link is dated 2021.
kemko 3y ago
Once upon a time, I used Sublime Text, Sublime Merge, and paid for them. But one day, I realized enough was enough. Sublime Text 2 was worth its cost, and so was Sublime Text 3. But when we were introduced to Sublime Text 4 and its license with an annual fee, we were told that it was to avoid holding back significant features for the next major release to boost its sales. The annual fee would allow them to release new features just after done - that's what they said. But where is it? Sublime Text, previously stagnant, continued to stagnate in its fourth version. Recognizing this, I moved on to other solutions.
- kapitanluffy 3y ago
  Ah that is unfortunate. If I can say one thing against Sublime HQ, it is that they are bad at communicating. I assume you are on a business license (thus the yearly) and you expected that there will be releases. Not as frequent but something that will signal you that they are active. As a "dev" user (the unstable version), I can say that they are active. They have 6 builds just this year. 4 of which are large ones. Unfortunately, they just released those in "stable" last Aug 2. Previous years are also bad. They released to "stable" mostly before the year ends while "dev" has builds almost every month. If I were them, I would leverage the "we are so quiet" and provide exclusive access to frequent builds to paying customers. Sure they might be "unstable" but as a paying customer, I would rather have an unstable product than not hear from you the whole year. Anyway, going back to my point, they are active. I can vouch for that. They are just really bad in doing "company" things. In my purely honest opinion, it is not enough for a business to have a great product if you can't appeal to your target market. They are lucky enough that there are people who fell in love with ST and stuck around.

158 points by kapitanluffy 3y ago

If you like something you should probably pay to support it in some fashion. The meme of “it was free at some point so I shouldn’t ever pay for it” is many things including deeply limiting.

orionblastar 3y ago

Like paying for WinZip? I use 7zip because it is free and open source software.

jskherman 3y ago
Honestly, 7zip seems to be better at the job than WinZip and lightweight too.

bradgessler 3y ago

I’ve seen developers who had thousands of dollars of corp training and tooling budget NOT buy an ST license purely out of laziness. ST could probably make a decent chunk of change if they tweaked their terms to require a license for authoring commercial software or content.

TerminalFi 3y ago
Business have to buy a license else they break the TOS. “a license must be purchased for continued use”

cobertos 3y ago

I hate that dialog box. It annoys me so much because I'm lazy and adding the key to a new install is always an afterthought. It's much worse with the Sublime SFTP plugin because I use it infrequently and so I only put in the license key after months or so of pestering. It's not that I didnt want to buy it, Ive paid for Sublime twice now! I grumbled through the second payment. Something about the license only applying to major versions for 3 years? It is an indispensable pieces of software for me though, and I've paid more for other stuff (Backlink tracking subscription)

chpatrick 3y ago
There's always vscode...
- cobertos 3y ago
  I like Sublime a lot, no reason to switch. I just dislike the box

user8501 3y ago

I can't tell if this is sarcasm. I think it's pretty groovy to pay a one time fee for software.

SanjayMehta 3y ago
I think it’s virtual signalling designed to shame others into paying for it. With some cringeworthy attempts at humour.

DoctorDabadedoo 3y ago

To each their own, but I find funny that people shell out an absurd amount of money for games they will play exactly once but feel robbed when paying for software that they use every single day. The licensing from sublime is very amenable, I believe, far from what companies like Adobe force on their end users, IMO.

Justsignedup 3y ago
I pay for jet brains platform yearly and it is worth every single penny many times over. The eye rolls I get. Bro. You're literally getting paid 150k at a minimum, you can she'll out 100 dollars a year.
- wernercd 3y ago
  "150k at a minimum" not to say you shouldn't support great companies but the average programmer salary isn't 150k. it's probably not even half that. https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/computer-programmer/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/computer-programm...
  - kqr 3y ago
    Especially not outside of the US and/or FAANG. I know of only one programmer making even close to 150k in Europe unless counting Google.
    - wernercd 3y ago
      As a programmer for a bank, I'm in the ballpark after benefits/yearly bonus (humble brag) but having been on the lookout for remote work in my line of specialty, for me to get a good remote position I will probably have to take a pay/benefits cut. (Long commute before covid. remote during. "hybrid" after. Looking to get back to no commute with rising prices of everything) Programmers with experience do make a good living but FAANG style jobs vastly skew what people think the average programmer makes. Just like unicorn companies make people forget that the vast majority of companies fail.

lawgimenez 3y ago

Nice write up fellow countryman.

astrodust 3y ago

Why is it shameful to pay to support something you use all the time? I've paid for BBEdit, SubEthaEdit, TextMate, Sublime Text, and probably others over the years. VS Code is really the first editor I haven't felt compelled to pay for.

steve_mcdougall 3y ago

[dead]

kristopolous 3y ago

As someone whose been on the other side, seeing money come in really obligates me to actually do something. There's a deeper feeling of responsibility when someone's given you cash and I seem to prioritize things that otherwise I probably wouldn't have found the time for. So you may think you "get" nothing, but what you might actually get is a developer to spend more time on it. Now of course there's diminishing returns, but zero to non-zero obligates the honest person. Beyond that it's mostly headcount. I'd work more for 10 people that gave $1 than for 1 person that gave $10 because I've gone from having a sponsor to an audience.

matthewtse 3y ago

Curious, why Sublime Text in this day and age of VS Code dominance? Sublime text was my first "in the middle" text editor, more featured than vim/emacs, but lighter weight than IntelliJ. I somehow got my internship company to buy me a license, which I ended up using for several years after leaving. But then VS Code came along. I was a skeptic for years, as it was based on Atom/Electron, which I found really sluggish, and it was Microsoft. The thing that converted me was the "it just works" extensions system. Most coding languages have syntax highlighting and intelligent code navigation out of the box, and if not, it's a few clicks away to install very well written extensions. Comparatively, it was a nightmare installing Sublime Text extensions. And over the years, Microsoft has poured immense amounts of money into developing features for VS Code.

muzani 3y ago
Note taking. Quick edits. Plugins are easy. Just copy in a bunch of JSON > CMD+SHIFT+P > "pretty"
S201 3y ago
> I was a skeptic for years, as it was based on Atom/Electron, which I found really sluggish, and it was Microsoft. This pretty much still sums it up for me.
- matthewtse 3y ago
  After the Microsoft acquisition of GitHub (including Atom/Electron), they really made immense efforts to speed it up! It's been years since I've used Sublime Text, but I imagine VS Code is as fast if not faster at this point. As for "Microsoft". It's funny, I use to be a Windows/Microsoft fan in the 90s/2000s because that was the only way I was going to play computer games. Then they lost my trust during the Ballmer era, at the same time I started programming and appreciated linux/apple more. But VS Code has singlehandedly reignited my love of Microsoft. Despite the name "Visual Studio Code", it does not at all try to shove Microsoft languages like Visual Basic or C# down your throat. Support for common open source languages like python and javascript are amazing. It's as surprising to me as it is to you that I'm defending Microsoft in an online thread right now.

steve_adams_86 3y ago

I think Sublime Merge is also deserving of the small chunk of cash they ask for it. I’m not embarrassed at all about it, sarcastically or otherwise. It’s great software and I hope they keep developing great things.

bradgessler 3y ago
Agreed, I use it for committing specific lines of source. Atlassian SourceTree is also really good too.
kapitanluffy 3y ago
Yes, it is a great tool too! If you have any questions or curious if the product is still developed, hangout on Sublime's Discord :D

urthor 3y ago

Why is paying money for ethical, user-respecting software like Sublime Text a bad thing? Sublime HQ the company maintains an excellent reputation, and does a wonderful job.

urthor 3y ago
I think to add to this. If you're a fully employed professional of some means, which a huge amount of folk reading this are. Pay for your shareware software. Usually with independent SaaS software, after I've used software for 6+ months or more, I pay for the lifetime license. It's just polite.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
tellarin 3y ago
I don't have a problem with paying for software I use and like if the price and their terms are reasonable, which Sublime mostly is. However, my personal issue with Sublime is the fact some basic requested editor functionality hasn't been implemented in years. You can see multiple such issues opened against it. And I'm not talking about IDE-like stuff, just basic editor features, like having multiple rows of tabs when you have many files open.
maronato 3y ago
It isn’t a bad thing. The repo is sarcastic in a good way, making fun of how we take incredible software for granted. It got me to pay for Sublime even though I haven’t used it in years. When I used it, though, it was the best thing since sliced bread and more than paid for itself.
TylerE 3y ago
It's especially ironic on a forum where at least 90% of the userbase...writes software for a living.
wryanzimmerman 3y ago
I paid for it (and merge) even after I started using neovim full time, because I used it for years to learn to code before I got a paid job. Their license terms were kind enough to let me do that, so I honored the spirit of it and paid them once I got paid.

chii 3y ago

sublime merge looks pretty good and is worth paying for imho.

demondemidi 3y ago

I paid for sublime. Used it for years. Then VSCode overtook it on so many levels. I even used it for notetaking because it opened faster than vscode but then that was fixed. Good stuff but hard to avoid a solid ecosystem that is constantly evolving with the backing of big companies. kinda sad actually.

matthewtse 3y ago
Yeah, when your competitor is one of the biggest companies in the world who's willing to light millions on fire to offer a COMPLETELY FREE competitor for the sake of "developer mindshare", it's pretty easy to see the end result. I was really a skeptic for years, but Microsoft really threw money at this until it won.
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
  This is probably the main reason why I won’t use it anymore: Microsoft is repeating in VSCode all the things it did in the Windows/IE era.
  - xarope 3y ago
    First thing I did in VScode was install/activate Vim mode. So if VScode does go the way of Windows, then I'll "just" go back to another editor with vi bindings. (yes yes, I remember some of my emacs bindings, wrote a thesis in latex on emacs, and learnt lisp as a result, but I realised that vi was more "portable")
    - kapitanluffy 3y ago
      btw, Sublime Text has a built in vim bindings albeit disabled by default. I suggest you give it a try.
  - demondemidi 3y ago
    > Microsoft is repeating in VSCode all the things it did in the Windows/IE era. Example?

namuol 3y ago

Many years ago I bought Sublime Text minutes after using the plugin system to install some support for the languages I use. This was a decade before VSCode took over, and at the time I was a Vim user for most of my career. It was a breath of fresh air compared to the Stockholm syndrome I had built around VimScript, and I never looked back. We (people like me) owe ST for opening the door for innovation in the general-purpose IDE space that created what is frankly a golden age compared to the century prior. Heck, the command palette has bled into tools well outside the scope of developer tools these days and it’s probably my favorite UX pattern in modern complex software. To any Vim users preparing to inform me about how much better Vim is these days, I’d argue that we still owe ST for raising the expectations that developers have of their editors.

muzani 3y ago

I paid for it earlier this month. I have a "charity" budget. I didn't get any dialog. But like OP, it's something I used since my first job (if you count ST2 as the same). So I figured this time instead of building wells in some remote location, the money should go into legally paying for something that's I use. It was second choice - first was Fork, which is even more embarrassing as it means I don't use the git CLI. But Fork rejected my card so ST it was. It does feel weird. There's no satisfaction. I don't use it that much these days; it's just a text editor that I paste logs into. It's pretty damn expensive for a text editor.

nerdponx 3y ago
I feel a small amount of satisfaction every time I open Sublime to take a random note, knowing that 1) once upon a time my work depended on it, and 2) I did my part to support its development.

emacs4evr 3y ago

Use emacs

hirvi74 3y ago
I still do on occasions, but I can't at work. I miss it all the time, but in someways, and I hate saying it, but I have been more productive. I spent too much time changing my config, QoL improvements, and breaking things. The sick part is that I miss it sometimes. I thinks is due to Emacs being the only software I have worked[1] on that actually meant something to me. [1] Worked on in the since of configurations, my own modes, packages, etc.. I have never contributed to Emacs the project.
pb060 3y ago
Emacs has such a steep and long learning curve that I couldn’t justify learning it while doing actual work. Still attracted by it, any suggestion for a smoother adoption?
- tincholio 3y ago
  The learning curve is not so steep, as long as you don't try to learn ALL OF EMACS upfront. Just start using it for your basic editing, learn how to open/save files, how to navigate, buffer management, as you go. When you need something more specific, you can easily look it up in the great in-built documentation. You can also use something like Doom, which simplifies more advanced setups, and adds to discoverability (press the leader key, and you get a set of options for what else you can do from there). It's the same with Vim, if you learn how to do basic editing, the rest comes along easily, as you need it. (remember "ESC :q!", though :) )
- globular-toast 3y ago
  I like "emacs bedrock" config to start with. And use magit (can be enabled in bedrock). You'll save so much time using git which means a) you'll never go back and b) you can use the time saved to get better at emacs. I won't lie to you, though. Emacs is the single greatest source of yak shaving there is. It becomes your passion project as you try to craft your ultimate editing experience. It's so cool to be able to use your own passion project for work every day.

iambateman 3y ago

TBH, I did pay for Sublime but lost my license key years ago. Ever since, I’ve been mired in the dialog pop up because I don’t want to buy it again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ben-schaaf 3y ago
If you have access to the email address you can easily recover the key here: https://www.sublimehq.com/store/retrieve_key https://www.sublimehq.com/store/retrieve_key.

nerdponx 3y ago

I paid for it and feel no shame. The core editor still beats VS Code by far, even though its plugin ecosystem really died off in the mid-2010s when the devs went nearly silent, and sadly never recovered.

zaphod420 3y ago

Sublime Text is a great text editor. It opens huge files quickly. It has all the features I need for programming via LSP packages. It just feels comfy to use. I happily paid for sublime text.

kapitanluffy 3y ago
btw, if you need help with issues or just curious whether Sublime is dead or not, head over to their unofficial Discord server -> https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu

26fingies 3y ago

I paid for sublime 3. I should pay for 4, but I havent yet.

anthony_romeo 3y ago
I think their license works for the current version at time of purchase and next version, so you’re good to go till version 5
- ben-schaaf 3y ago
  The licensing used to be for a single major version. This was changed with Sublime Text 4: A license is permanently valid for any versions/builds released within 3 years of the purchase. See https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-4 https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-4
  - anthony_romeo 3y ago
    Got it, thanks!
kapitanluffy 3y ago
Sublime 4 is like a different world. There might be hiccups with moving to different versions but you can always ask at the discord server.

waynecochran 3y ago

You could have just used emacs and simply passed on a thank you to RMS.

tekla 3y ago

Its a very high quality piece of software that is fast, light, and has a rich plugin system, and it gets out of the goddamn way. This is such a weird insecurity to have. Are people so insecure that they have to be ashamed for buying a product?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

andrewstuart 3y ago

I happily pay for Jetbrains Pycharm and Clion. I'm a professional developer so the price is easily justifiable.

SanjayMehta 3y ago

I paid for Textmate on macOS which now seems to be in perpetual beta and free. I still prefer vi/vim for speed, and use Textmate only for restructuring code. VSCode is great for reading other people’s code, IMHO, but gets in the way while writing new code. Different tools for different tasks.

WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago

I bought a license a while ago, but I found myself using it less and less.. why? I couldn't tweak something that was bothering me (file preview as you fuzzy search your file, causing ton of screen flickering, and is quite slow on my raspberry..) I now mostly use vim.. I'm pretty sure they'll never do it, but I think Sublime should embrace open source, or perhaps open more components of the editor..

tombert 3y ago

I don't use Sublime, but I have tried to get into the habit of donating "roughly how much I would pay at the store" for some of the open source software I use frequently, now that I make yuppie money. Stuff like ffmpeg or NeoVim or tmux are tools that I have become so dependent on, and they're all given away for free. I have also tried to be in compliance with "free for personal use" licenses; I pay the fee for business use of Obsidian now, because I do use it a lot for work.

MangoCoffee 3y ago

I paid for Sublime Text version 2 and 3 but stop at 4 because VSCode is good enough for coding.

nkantar 3y ago

Ha, amusing read—thanks for the chuckle. I paid for Sublime Text 3 while I was still using it. Even though I switched away (to Vim/Neovim, then Kakoune, then Helix), I don’t regret it at all. It was a fantastic tool I used for about two to three years, and it brought me far more value than the $70 it asked for in return. In fact, I’ve since bought a ton of other software when it’s proven useful more than the free alternatives. I’m particularly happy when it’s sold by a small team, just like Sublime. Some favorites I currently have installed: Acorn, Fantastical, Ivory, Monodraw, Things, Transmit, and Tweetbot (RIP).

bradgessler 3y ago
Fantastical is awesome. I wish Flexbits make a macOS email client, but they don’t seem interested.
- nkantar 3y ago
  I had this exact thought when I first started using Fantastical a bit over a year ago. Would 100% be interested, even for my relatively easy needs.
  - bradgessler 3y ago
    They do such a great job sweating all the details that they’d make something far more amazing than Mail.app, Spark, or Canary. I’ve been tempted to build this email client since Flexbits won’t.
nicwolff 3y ago
I bet you'd like Bean: > Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor that is designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. Bean is lean, fast and uncluttered. It starts up quickly, has a live word count, and is easy on the eyes. Also, Bean is available free of charge. > Bean has some limitations: it doesn't do footnotes or use stylesheets and is only partially compatible with Word's file formats. Also, it allows in-line graphics, but not floating graphics. https://bean-osx.com/Bean.html https://bean-osx.com/Bean.html

tshirttime 3y ago

The guilt-trip business model is a shitty one. How I miss the days of shrink-wrapped diskettes when the software, and not the customer, was the deliverable.

kristianp 3y ago

I feel bad now. I've been using sublime for years and still use it all the time. (F@#$ Microsoft and vscode basically). I'm gonna buy a license, just as soon as I have the time.

pupppet 3y ago

I still love and use sublime text. It has an SFTP package that knocks the socks off anything available on VScode. Plus I find the way it manages the search results screen far superior to VScode.

aidog 3y ago
I used that plugin extensively to develop PHP websites 10 years ago. Great feedback loop

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pentagrama 3y ago

Not a developer and I use Sublime Text everyday as a local note taking app. Is so so snappy, and the UI/colors are calm and attractive. I love Sublime Text. I guess I don't get the license message as the op because I don't save the tabs, all catched. I tryed obsidian for some time and was cool, but was miles behind in snappiness and wasn't worth it.

sharts 3y ago

You’d think by now editor configs could be easily migrated/translated between products.

ivanmontillam 3y ago

I remember back in the day purchasing 5 years for WhatsApp and I convinced a few friends to do so after a lot of convincing. It felt great even though I was being laughed at by many. I contributed to the great work these guys pre-Facebook were doing. To me it felt like buying me some good karma for when I sell my software. Now I pay for Telegram and I only have WhatsApp out of network effects.

below43 3y ago

For me it was a BB Edit license. Despite using VS Code for 90% of my projects, I still found myself using it for quick edits, or viewing of files.

james2doyle 3y ago

I've paid for all of the Sublime versions since 2. I even paid for Sublime merge. I like supporting the team because they have consistent patches and really have built an excellent tool that I used for hours a day. There are a lot of people talking about the VSCode plugin ecosystem but I've never lacked any plugins from Sublime. I just prefer the experience. Once you have LSP setup it sings. There are also some underutilized features like workspaces and build systems that are really handy when you set them up. The snippets and macros system is also really nice. I should also add that it is easy to build plugins for. The docs on plugins are a bit rough but there are lots of examples out there. It is overall a really good editor experience

jiehong 3y ago
Speaking of which, I’ve found that the api doc is getting better since Sublime Text 4. Not crazy better, but that’s something. I’d also enjoy some typing stubs for their API to import to help with autocompletion of their API, though.

fragile_frogs 3y ago

I have been using Sublime Text for about 8 years now, I have tried multiple different editors in the mean time including VS Code, Atom, Fleet and I always went back to Sublime Text. After years of using ST for free, I finally bought a license about two years ago when ST 4 came out, I am also a paid user of Sublime Merge, which is the best git client I have tried.

aragonite 3y ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but I find the process of developing/modifying an extension such a PITA on vscode. In sublime it's frictionless, all you have to do is to save some python files in your user folder, then sublime will find them automatically, and hot reload them when you modify them! In VSCode, I have go through a whole build process, generate some .vsx and then manually install it. The tiniest modification to the code requires me to go through this whole process again. Am I doing something wrong here?

deleted 3y ago
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Dayshine 3y ago
Funny, I had the opposite experience. Typescript has perfect language server support, the vs code api docs are very good and you can always just look at the source. Plus debugging vs code extensions is easy. Porting the same extension to sublime text was a nightmare. Python has poor language support in all ides, the docs were lacking, there was no good debugger and I couldn't just check the code.
- jayemar 3y ago
  You didn't really answer their question, you really only said that you find it more comfortable working with Typescript than with Python. Are you aware of a way to install custom Typescript code as an extension without needing to go through the build and install process in VSCode, similar to the way a Python file can be pulled in by Sublime if placed in a specific folder?
- aragonite 3y ago
  I can certainly imagine developing a complex extension intended for publication in the marketplace can involve a very different experience. I had in mind only the kind of extension a user might write for personal use, which may often involve adding some simple functionality (usually some event listener, e.g. intercepting auto-completion to do some filtering). I find it very convenient to be able to change the code and have the changes instantaneously reflected in the editor itself (rather than some sandboxed environment) and wish it were possible to do the same in VSCode

tantalic 3y ago

As someone who almost always has a text editor open, I have paid for many over the years. In particular multiple versions of TextMate and multiple versions of Sublime Text. I have also been responsible for getting licenses for my team(s) at work. I now find that the editor I am happiest with is VS Code, not because it's free but because of the extensibility and community support it brings. I'd happily pay for it - but I think the nature of it being free is what has brought so much community support to it.

xiaodai 3y ago

lol

blindriver 3y ago

I've paid for it twice now, once for version 2 and once for version 4 (I think that's the current version).

bigstrat2003 3y ago

I finally made an account just to say: I also bought Sublime Text, and I'm happy to do so. I'll pay for it again when my license runs up, most likely. Lots of people saying they use VSCode, and I can't blame them. It has a lot going for it. But when I recently tried each for a while, Sublime does everything VSCode does just as well. Even plugins - there's nothing I want (with one exception) I can't get in Sublime. So the calculus basically comes down to this: VSCode: the remoting feature is great, and Sublime currently can't match it (rsub is a poor substitute at best). Sublime: it's not an Electron app, and therefore uses a fraction of the resources. Working with the same set of files open, VSCode uses hundreds of MB of memory while Sublime uses 100 or so. So either way I have to give something up, but ultimately the massive bloat of VSCode bothers me more than the lack of good remoting functionality in Sublime. So I'm using Sublime for the foreseeable future.

kapitanluffy 3y ago
btw, if you need help with issues or just curious whether Sublime is dead or not, head over to their unofficial Discord server -> https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu the community is very much active in there!

ElectronBadger 3y ago

I paid for SublimeText and SublimeMerge and will happily pay another time, when my v3 license expires. While I'm mostly in the FOSS camp, Sublime software, together with Bitwig Studio (https://www.bitwig.com https://www.bitwig.com) and Reaper (https://www.reaper.fm https://www.reaper.fm), are the pinnacle of commercial products in their categories.

ghusto 3y ago

Love it :) Sublime Text is exactly the type of company I can support. Honest business, making a good and honest product. Unfortunately it's not _quite_ good enough for me :( I wish there was a viable alternative to VSCode. For a clue as to where that's headed, take a look at any free tool with heavy investment by a large corporation. Chrome is good case-study. VSCodium is ... I can't put my finger on it, but it doesn't cut it. Maybe death by a thousand cuts, many small things that don't quite work as cleanly as they should.

kapitanluffy 3y ago
I wonder what made you feel that Sublime is not good enough. Vent it out on me :D

Brajeshwar 3y ago

Been a paid user and happy customer since 2009. I have paid for every paid upgrade it asked. I've stopped coding for quite a while and now uses it to write mostly Markdown, and some others here and there. Sublimetext is worth it and (I believe), it is not even yearly but you pay once every 4th year (current license model). I tend to open directories/folders of projects and Sublime text is the only one that I can zip around while still being visually informative and beautiful. Thank you Sublimetext.

btach 3y ago

...#sublimeshame? I don't understand what is shameful. Nor do I see anything to be proud of either. It's a fantastic tool. I used Sublime Text for quite a while at version 2 and eventually bought a license. Later upgraded to 4. Still using it almost daily. It's a staple in my workflow and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Other tools would probably be just as good, but whatever, it is valuable to me.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

Sublime Text was the last piece of daily software that I really enjoy. Since then nothing else has given me that feeling. I bought it a long time back of course. This is how Sublime Text started: https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/2007/11 https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/2007/11

klntsky 3y ago

It is rarely good to have that much emotional investment in software (or in the money that would otherwise be spent on donations to software devs). Most of us are fairly uninvolved: you either pay or not. This must be Sublime PR department psyop. A brilliant one, I must admit.

lycopodiopsida 3y ago

I've had a personal license, but barely used it, because vim & emacs. But in the end, the problem with license is that I can't use it @myWork. There is plenty of outstanding editors these days - neovim, emacs, vscode for those loving to click around so that it would be difficult for me to argue why I do need a license for sublime. But I've had no problems to get my employer to pay for JIdea Ultimate, because the value of an IDE to vscode is pretty obvious.

galleywest200 3y ago
> But in the end, the problem with license is that I can't use it @myWorK Per the website: https://www.sublimehq.com/sales_faq https://www.sublimehq.com/sales_faq > As licenses are per-user, you're welcome to use your license key on all computers where you are the primary user, including at work.
- lycopodiopsida 3y ago
  Not allowed, sadly, employee insists that all licenses used have to be bought ob their name. Legal something yada yada… I can’t just bring in my personal license.
  - kapitanluffy 3y ago
    That's unfortunate. Is it like they monitoring your laptop for software installed? I had this issue way back. I just said "Ah, Sublime Text is free. Sure, buy me a license if you want but if it's free, there are no legal issues, right?"

tongueinkek 3y ago

[dead]

sebiw 3y ago

Absolutely not connecting with the message. I happily and proudly bought Sublime Text after some time because it's a tool I really like and use pretty much daily. Thanks to the devs for a solid product.

8bitsrule 3y ago

Over here on Linux, I tried Sublime this summer for a couple months. Compared to Kate (which has grown a lot over the years), it had a couple of better options, but about the same number of strange oddities. And then I saw what it takes to modify some of the theme choices... ay yay. Back to Kate's well-known oddities.

deleted 3y ago

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larodi 3y ago

I love Sublime Text. It is actually Microsoft who should've paid for it, because they adopted what was done in Atom and Atom is direct attempt at opensource rewrite of Sublime Text. Sublime showed what a fast editor could look like, and it basically brought to the GUI world the long-overdue search-in-all-menus functionality which is really everywhere these days. Yeah, sure vim does it for ages with commands, no disrespect, but only 1% of baby devs would land vim in their first years. Even though I appreciate opensource for many of its benefits (not quality, but mostly the community), there are dark sides to opensource that few mention. And one of it is the absolutely insanely negative view of anything that is closed-source software and needs to be paid for. Totally disregarding the qualities of product. This is so wrong on so many levels. Whats more - a company which builds its services on opensource very seldom open sources its own code. What a hypocrisy! I'm not even going to go into this discussion of Amazon vs Elastic. It is shameful that users of opensource so much under-appreciate the authors' work while doing thousands, if not millions, on top of it. But then it is even more shameful to deny the right of authors of great software such as Sublime Text to proudly collect money for their work. After all - these service companies which are 99% opensource based, do whatever they do, for a profit, right? And if we put this in perspective - whats the combined that you pay for Apple Music, Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Google Drive... whatever? Why not pay for the editor you are using on a daily basis, when its created by a hard-working professional. I'm not saying you have to pay for VSCode - its a marketing thing, very different. But people actually pay for Visual Studio, right? So nothing shameless in buying Sublime Text, in fact - it is commendable.

pjmlp 3y ago

I also paid for it. When people like to be paid for their work, they should consider how the authors of their work tools pay for their living as well.

throwaway_4638 3y ago

The main thing that actually convinced me to pay for Sublime a few years ago was a bug (or dark pattern?) in that very nag window: if it would pop up just as I clicked something, it would move to the background. Normally not an issue, but for some reason the area where the nag window is will block Sublime from registering scroll input. It was driving me crazy until I finally figured out what was causing it. I'm not sure if it still does this, but I have experienced this on multiple systems at the time. Happy I paid for it though, the sluggish VSCode bloatware is not doing it for me.

IronWolve 3y ago

hey, I paid for winrar too. Paying people for their work is a form of respect and enriches society. Karma is real.

transportheap 3y ago

i would consider buying if they stop shipping eol software. they ship py3.3 which is eol of 10 years! seems like a wont fix too https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/5984 https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/5984 https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/1163 https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/1163

kapitanluffy 3y ago
Yeah this sucks. Afaik, they're debating about this and from what I read removing 3.3 means killing the plugin ecosystem.

anarticle 3y ago

What the heck, am I the only one who doesn't feel bad about paying for a text editor?! I use it, it is nice and I enjoy, so I pay person some money. I figure I'm not buying some millionaire another boat. I have definitely spent more on worse / dumber things. Re: VSCode, I liked it more when MS stayed on their side of the fence, producing megacorper dev tools. This allowed smaller companies to flourish and create useful things and wild features. Now those same smallcos are relegated to the marketplace which is ruled by MS whim. I'm sure you can sideload etc, but I danno. Something about the freedom of Sublime plugs felt nice. Also what a great license scheme compared to all the other subscribeware we see anymore. Maybe I'm just a sucker, I pay for my own JetBrains sub lol.

hatsune 3y ago

As much as I respect the authors and their opinions, it feels terribly wrong to put that on Github. This is not a personal blog. There are no codes, no licenses, no whatever contribution or forks ever possible for the lack of meanings. Why? It does not take a body part to host a server or buy a VPS, or you can even use wordpress parts. If the only thing they are looking for is opinions (or, mainly similar opinions), they could go subreddits or forums like HN. Why Github?

stemlord 3y ago

Just went back to sublime from Obsidian for note taking. Nothing beats the speed of sublime (aside from CLI text editors). Obsidian is cool but too slow and filled with micro-annoyances that I just dont experience with sublime.

kapitanluffy 3y ago
Looks like I'm not the only one experiencing this with Obsidian. I have been trying to incorporate it with my flow but it feels clunky? I guess those are the micro-annoyances you are talking about? Thanks for this. I got a new plugin idea!

for_i_in_range 3y ago

It's sad. Sublime would be 20x better with a 2x better revenue model.

kapitanluffy 3y ago
Curious, what kind of revenue model do you suggest?
- for_i_in_range 3y ago
  $12.95/mo. Or $120/year
  - kapitanluffy 3y ago
    Whoa. That looks more expensive than a $99/3 years or am I computing it wrong?
    - for_i_in_range 3y ago
      I'm writing from company's perspective, not cheap consumer's.

rixtox 3y ago

I shamefully paid for both Sublime Text and WinRAR

kapitanluffy 3y ago
my man!

fleeno 3y ago

I've also paid for Sublime, TextMate, and now, Nova! Nova is wonderful.

kapitanluffy 3y ago
Nova? Whoa! I will try this! btw, if you need help with issues or just curious whether Sublime is dead or not, drop by their unofficial Discord server -> https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu
- fleeno 3y ago
  Nova is worth a try if you're a Mac user! On Sublime, it's a great editor, and being cross platform is really nice. They really do need to update the web site to reflect that it's not dead. The "see what's new" link is dated 2021.

kemko 3y ago

Once upon a time, I used Sublime Text, Sublime Merge, and paid for them. But one day, I realized enough was enough. Sublime Text 2 was worth its cost, and so was Sublime Text 3. But when we were introduced to Sublime Text 4 and its license with an annual fee, we were told that it was to avoid holding back significant features for the next major release to boost its sales. The annual fee would allow them to release new features just after done - that's what they said. But where is it? Sublime Text, previously stagnant, continued to stagnate in its fourth version. Recognizing this, I moved on to other solutions.

kapitanluffy 3y ago
Ah that is unfortunate. If I can say one thing against Sublime HQ, it is that they are bad at communicating. I assume you are on a business license (thus the yearly) and you expected that there will be releases. Not as frequent but something that will signal you that they are active. As a "dev" user (the unstable version), I can say that they are active. They have 6 builds just this year. 4 of which are large ones. Unfortunately, they just released those in "stable" last Aug 2. Previous years are also bad. They released to "stable" mostly before the year ends while "dev" has builds almost every month. If I were them, I would leverage the "we are so quiet" and provide exclusive access to frequent builds to paying customers. Sure they might be "unstable" but as a paying customer, I would rather have an unstable product than not hear from you the whole year. Anyway, going back to my point, they are active. I can vouch for that. They are just really bad in doing "company" things. In my purely honest opinion, it is not enough for a business to have a great product if you can't appeal to your target market. They are lucky enough that there are people who fell in love with ST and stuck around.