22 ms·

I still like Sublime Text

• TheKyleAmbert 2y ago
  I'm a professional data scientist and still use TextMate, AMA
• winrid 2y ago
  I still use the Sublime shortcuts in my IDE to this day. Sublime had a big impact on me when I got my first job as it introduced me to multiple cursors. It's still the best tool for many tasks.
• james2doyle 2y ago
  I often get asked why I still use Sublime. So I wrote this article singing it's praises.
  • eastbound 2y ago
    I never get asked. It’s obvious. Just open a 4Gb log file as a developer. All my developers have it.
    • spartanatreyu 2y ago
      I only keep sublime text around for opening +500mb dumps, everything else was moved to vscode years ago. Anything more than 500mb and I switch to less for instant reading/searching and sed for instant find/replace.
    • noname120 2y ago
      VSCode is just as fast for opening 4 GB log files
      • tasuki 2y ago
        Vim is not slower!
        • noname120 2y ago
          I agree and I do use Vim for all quick edits I need. Just wanted to challenge the idea that Sublime Text was better than alternatives in the space of GUI text editors
      • tbriudmepn 2y ago
        It is not just about the opening, it is about the searching. Vim is fantastique, although VSCode got faster over time too. Grep is fantastic too (I am not trying to out-hardcore here ... I mean specifically for log file searching not actual coding!). Splunk is better though, but sometimes you are local, and sometimes you don't have a few mill to burn.
    • james2doyle 2y ago
      Absolutely. I actually just made my own syntax for highlighting the log files in Laravel (Monolog): https://github.com/james2doyle/sublime-log-syntax https://github.com/james2doyle/sublime-log-syntax
  • saagarjha 2y ago
    As a Sublime user I mostly agree, except for the project stuff. I can never bring myself to set that up. What are you using multiple LSP servers per file for?
    • dijit 2y ago
      If you have any in-lined code, SQL/HTML. I can see that being a great feature. My eyes widened at that part of the article, as I have to betray syntax highlighting when I in-line something, which makes me want to break it into it's own file to get the highlighting back. But for simple things (like one-liners); breaking it into its own file makes things even more messy.
      • saagarjha 2y ago
        Hmm, so while it's not LSP I do have a Markdown plugin that highlights code blocks. But I don't rely on autocomplete there.
    • james2doyle 2y ago
      I got a perfect example: an Astro site. I currently have the Astro LSP, Tailwind LSP, and the Biome LSP, all running on the same file. I even have Typos LSP too. Having them all going at the sam time and being able to tweak their settings on a per-project basis is ideal for my workflow.
  • fergie 2y ago
    I'm curious though- as somebody who is reasonably technical I get why you would prefer Sublime to something like VSCode, but why not Emacs?
    • macNchz 2y ago
      I’m a long-time Sublime user who also uses Emacs for single files/at the command line (I also have Emacs key bindings set up in ST), I have found over the years that I am prone to configuration rabbit holes with Emacs and that Sublime strikes a nice balance of good defaults, simplicity, and customizability. I think that every time I’ve worked on a large project with Emacs I’ve started trying to optimize the partial/fuzzy filename search, trying all of the different ways people suggest online to see which one feels natural until I realize I’ve spent an entire day on it. Over time I’ve come to really value software that is customizable, but that comes with defaults that I really like, rather than software that’s even more customizable but that must be customized for it to feel right. God forbid I run Emacs somewhere without my conf and forget to disable electric indent mode and want to flip my desk when it does its terrible default behavior.
    • iLemming 2y ago
      I can answer the opposite of that question. Why Emacs? For me, Emacs is valuable not for the things it can or cannot do, it's valuable because it gives me the perception of complete control over the things on my computer. The other day, I was watching my teammate showing me some stuff over Zoom, and I didn't want to derail his thoughts by constantly stopping him: "hey, wait, don't scroll away, I'm still reading that," "wait a second, what was that URL again?" etc. So, the only thing I could do was take screenshots. During the lunch break, I decided to solve this thing for myself. I wrote a command that checks ~/Desktop - it's where I drop my screenshots, then finds any .png file that was created no longer than 2 minutes ago, sends it to tesseract for OCR, and opens the text in a buffer. Took me less than 20 minutes. Sure, there are many ways to get something like that done, but after trying so many different options, I was never able to extract the same feeling of control from any other alternative. I have a command that inserts the url of my active tab in the browser, with description, in the correct format (e.g., markdown). I wrote that myself, because at some point it bothered me that I had to do that manually. There are many examples such that, where if I weren't using Emacs, I probably wouldn't even bother to acknowledge the existence of such small annoyances. What makes Emacs truly exceptional isn't its vast feature set, but rather its ability to foster a problem-solving mentality - the "Emacs brain" - where no obstacle, regardless of size, goes unaddressed or unresolved.
• notepad0x90 2y ago
  Sublime Text is so awesome, I don't mind it's constant begging for a license purchase or whatever. It's right up there with Winrar.
  • eastbound 2y ago
    And the license is awfully expensive. I was going to the website to pay $50 for my 7 developers, but it turns out it’s $100. No way. Or $65 per year: https://www.sublimehq.com/store/text https://www.sublimehq.com/store/text
    • fastball 2y ago
      Software you like for the equivlaent of 0-2 hours of that dev's pay seems worth it.
    • saagarjha 2y ago
      I think Sublime Text was the first software I ever paid for. It has paid that back handsomely. And no, I’m not doing the usual “I’m a working professional so my time is directly attributable to my text editor” thing. I understand there are free options. I pay for it despite there being competition because of the extra value it brings me.
      • noname120 2y ago
        What extra value does it bring you compared to free alternatives like Notepad++?
        • saagarjha 2y ago
          Not trying to be rude but the article does a pretty good job laying out some reasons why I pick it.
          • noname120 2y ago
            I was interested in the value that it brings you. I'm a former Sublime Text user and I switched to VS Code some time ago. Do you also use Sublime Text as your primary IDE just like author does? ———— Mirroring the structure of the article: 1) Regarding the section about LSPs: do you also have the need to be able to “just add an LSP installed as a binary in on your usr/local/bin” even though by the author's own admission “VS Code is the LSP king”? Kind of ironic to have the author say in the introduction about VS Code that “it probably has taken inspiration from Sublime. So why not check out one of the OGs” and then a bit later proceeds to say that the LSP “tech originat[es] with that editor [VS Code]”. I'm returning the question to the author and you: why not check out the OG? 2) Regarding the section about snippets author says that “VS Code can do this” and even that “the syntax for it is a bit nicer”. 3) Regarding workspaces VS Code does all of that. Author admits that he “ha[s]n't used it personally, so [he] can't speak to it much”. 4) Regarding build systems VS Code does all of that and it's easier because contrary to “the Package Control [that] is not part of Sublime” (and that you have to uglily inject in the Sublime Text console to get working), the VS Code plugin repository has everything already ready-to-use so that you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You can if you want though; Sublime Text doesn't provide anything extra in that regard. 5) Regarding the “Multiple cursors” VS Code has it as well. 6) Regarding the block-level key bindings, have you ever needed them? For me the last thing I want is for my shortcuts to change dynamically based on which block I am in the file. Note that in Sublime Text “they cannot be saved on a per-project basis”, which is awkward to say the least. I would (much) rather have project-level keybindings rather than only block-level keybindings that apply globally. 7) Regarding using “Python all the way down” rather than JavaScript, I'm surprised that the author finds it to be a good thing considering that they primarily use it for “web-dev” and all their examples are frontend Javascript code. 8) Finally, the author complains about the terrible documentation of Sublime Text, the lack of a plugin system, and the fact that for the 3rd-party hacked-together plugin management system he finds that getting them on the “Package Control site to be quite a chore”. I have a ton more complaints about Sublime Text to add on top of that. I would rather directly donate money[1] to small developers rather than — as another commenter puts it — “supporting and using the products developed by a small team of dedicated engineers ...” ———— [1] And I do! Currently sponsoring 14 developers on a monthly basis[1]: https://github.com/devnoname120?tab=sponsoring https://github.com/devnoname120?tab=sponsoring
• BiteCode_dev 2y ago
  Same. I tried zed but it doesn't come close.
  • bayindirh 2y ago
    Zed tries too hard to be magical, plus their license terms are not the best. Before anyone asks any further. See the CLA [0] and the Privacy Policy [1]. [0]: https://zed.dev/cla https://zed.dev/cla [1]: https://zed.dev/privacy-policy https://zed.dev/privacy-policy
    • vollbrecht 2y ago
      I may see your first point, but how is GPL3 worse than a closed source software?
      • BoredPositron 2y ago
        Corps usually have problems with gpl software being used.
        • saagarjha 2y ago
          Everyone knows if you touch GPL you get cooties
          • bayindirh 2y ago
            Thanks for the info! I might be immune then. I swim in that thing.
          • user432678 2y ago
            Yet the whole world runs on Linux with no issues :shrugs:
        • bayindirh 2y ago
          It's not the GPLv3 license, it's the attached CLA and Privacy Policy.
• fabiensanglard 2y ago
  I wrote all my articles and three books with it. I love Sublime Text :) !
  • suby 2y ago
    I also like using Sublime as a text editor for my thoughts and notes. I don't need or want anything full fledged like a word processor. Sublime lets me write in a minimal format without distraction. Every action is instant and I'm not sure what I'd even change if given the chance.
• ad-astra 2y ago
  Love how lightweight and fast it is. Use it every day!
  • stonegray 2y ago
    I recall a few times accidentally opening GB-sized files and sublime having no perceptable performance impact. Sublime is stupendously performant.
• bayindirh 2y ago
  I mean, there's nothing wrong with it. I personally use Eclipse, BBEdit and KATE in 2025, and love them. Sublime is one of the tools which really grown and aged well, so it deserves the love it gets. I personally don't let anybody to tell me which tool to use. It's rude to mock and belittle the tools people use.
  • ahartmetz 2y ago
    AFAIU, Sublime Text and Kate (my editor of choice) are pretty similar in spirit, so when I read something nice about ST, I mentally insert "... and Kate". They are both snappy power editors, not IDEs, with LSP support.
    • bayindirh 2y ago
      Yes, KATE, ST and BBEdit (and VSCode) are "Code aware text editors". I use KATE and BBEdit for smaller project and Go mostly, and use Eclipse for the bigger stuff which needs its own "space" to be developed well and kept organized. It's a "correct tool for the job at hand" situation for me.
• muzani 2y ago
  I'm happy with just fast, multiple cursors, plugins -> syntax highlighting. Sometimes I paste a JSON dump in there to prettify it. I refer to a lot of tools as knives, but Sublime Text is the chopping block.
  • KolmogorovComp 2y ago
    How do you prettify it in Sublime?
    • muzani 2y ago
      There's plugins like this: https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Pretty%20JSON https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Pretty%20JSON There are others, this is the first that appears on a search. Sublime's package control makes it really easy to find tools like this. Another favorite is the one that renames the currently opened file.
    • james2doyle 2y ago
      A lot of the LSP plugins have a format feature, so you can format your code. I set most of mine up to trigger on save
• n0id34 2y ago
  I'm lazy, I don't want to leave the terminal.
  • stonegray 2y ago
    Alt-tabbing (or cmd-Q if you’re done) back to your terminal window after running `subl` to edit a file is equivalent difficulty (as measured by keystrokes) to exiting nano or vim.
    • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      I've been using iterm for years mainly because it has a Quake style terminal window. I realise how I just can't get to grips with tabbing through screens on either macos and windows anymore, not with having multiple browser profiles (personal and work) and screens open. I should figure out a solution to that, but at the same time I decided that I should keep my various employers (I'm a contractor/consultant/temp/whatever) separated better, so, different browser profiles, password databases, etc.
      • smitelli 2y ago
        Isn't that kind of where macOS features like Exposé and Mission Control come in handy?
    • nbenitezl 2y ago
      I'm on Linux and I just use one keystroke to switch (F2). I have F1 F2 F3 F4 keys binded to change to virtual desktops 1 2 3 4. 1 -> Console(s) 2 -> Editor (sublime) 3 -> Browser (Firefox) 4 -> Misc (File browser, other apps)
• js2 2y ago
  Maybe it's time I migrated off TextMate.
  • al_borland 2y ago
    Is TextMate still being maintained? Last time I looked, there were very few signs of life. If that is accurate, the clock is ticking until Apple inevitably drops Rosetta support on Apple Silicon Macs sometime in the (probably not too distant) future.
    • tectiv3 2y ago
      it is Apple Silicon native
    • whywhywhywhy 2y ago
      It's open source, think the developer is on a break from it. He's left it for a few years then done a set of updates in the past or fixed it if it broke because of an Apple update previously. Ultimately it kinda does everything it needs to.
  • est 2y ago
    I migrated off textmate to sublime, never regreted it.
    • js2 2y ago
      I've tried a few times, but Sublime is so obviously not a native Mac app, I find it painful to use. It's definitely the closest match to TM though; it was pretty obvious it was inspired by TM. I think it even used to (still does?) use the same language grammars as TM (regexes that define scopes, basically).
  • whywhywhywhy 2y ago
    I still use it, just love the Mac style text manipulation shortcuts, the way spell check actually works properly and natively in code (Spell check within strings only) which VSCode can't seem to handle with any of the plugins that claim to. I use VSCode on Windows but no matter what I do to it I can't get it feeling right.
• abraxas 2y ago
  I guess your love is not unlike my long ago passion for CodeWright. It was such a flexible beast with perfect support for BRIEF bindings and an infinitely configurable user interface. Alas, the world preferred the simplicity of Visual Studio or JBuilder and the best programmer's editor for Windows slowly but surely withered away. I'm not planning on repeating the mistake of learning a complex environment only to see it disappear with the demise of its parent company. That's why these days I'm mostly investing time in the Emacs ecosystem while occasionally trying and failing to love mode based setups like vim and neovim.
  • girvo 2y ago
    Similar to my love of KomodoEdit/IDE. Being built on XUL was fascinating to me as a Firefox die hard, web tech powered the UI which made it easy to hack on, and I still reckon it was the best most advanced editor for PHP at the time.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • dabbz 2y ago
      That's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I loved Komodo.
• mxwsn 2y ago
  I used sublime from 2013 to 2021. It was great. Since, I've switched to VS Code and haven't looked back.
• sharkjacobs 2y ago
  Sublime does everything that I want to do with it. What I do with it is throw arbitrary text files at it, and do quick text manipulations, especially multi cursor edits. I’m sure I could do this stuff just as well with something else, but I’d have to relearn my muscle memory.
  • niwtsol 2y ago
    This is my use case as well - large .csv's, scratch pad, pasting some bug error message in a cleaner format - Sublime is perfect for that IMO.
  • al_borland 2y ago
    I’ve had VS Code crash on me (repeatedly) with very large text files. Sublime is able to handle these files, even if it has to chunk on them for a while, if I do something silly like try to edit with several thousand cursors, but it will still do it.
• submeta 2y ago
  I can totally understand that. Why only one? I still use BBEdit on my Mac for all kinds of text editing (search/replace across files is excellent in it), even though I mainly use VS Code as IDE and Emacs for orgmode and automation via Elisp.
  • kstrauser 2y ago
    I love BBEdit, but it has one limitation that drives me batty: it has far fewer syntax highlighting scopes than many other editors. It’s simply not possible to make it as pretty and color as others, and that’s something I personally value. I have to look at a code editor all day, and I want it to look snazzy. I know it’s minor and petty, but it stills grates on me every time I fire it up.
    • submeta 2y ago
      Yeah, it‘s from another era. The concept of beatiful code came up with TextMate, Sublime, VS Code. And old editors tried to catch up, but didn’t really make it. But I have a nice-ish theme in BBEdit for markdown, and I‘m ok. I don’t code in it. Just plain text editing, using it as a scratchpad. It’s open all day long.
      • kstrauser 2y ago
        That’s totally reasonable. And I know that’s a goofy hill to die on, when it’s otherwise architecturally beautiful. But darn it, even if it turned out to be my perfect car, I don’t want to drive an Aztek.
  • eviks 2y ago
    Because it’s too complicated to learn many complicated tools well instead of tweaking Sublime to do the search and replace across files, even if it’s a bit worse. Also you’re not limited to Macs
• bambax 2y ago
  My files are on a NAS using Samba, and Sublime Text constantly does something (maybe it tries to poll the directory?) that makes it hang for around 10 seconds every minute, making it unusable. VS Code does nothing of the sort, it has plugins for any language imaginable; it's much faster and much better IMHO.
  • makapuf 2y ago
    You can prevent indexing in the config file
• mediumsmart 2y ago
  there can only be one true editor
  • saagarjha 2y ago
    Careful, the ed fans are not to be trifled with
    • rswail 2y ago
      About 10 years ago, I was working with a much younger team (I'm 61 now), and we had a Sun box that was broken in a co-lo. The guy sent down there had a laptop and a serial cable. I talked him through how to use one of the serial comms programs (miniterm?) to connect, but of course, there was no ncurses or equivalent, so not even vi would work to edit a file. So I got him to use "ed". It was hilarious that he thought I was, in some way, a magician. He and the others I was working with (all at least 2 decades younger than me) didn't understand why you'd want a "line editor" or how you could possibly write code using a DECwriter or, even worse, an ASR-33. It was then that I started feeling "old" in this industry.
• knighthack 2y ago
  Sublime Text is _the_ Swiss knife of all text editors: - Loads up fast, supports tons of very useful packages (e.g. TextPastry, SQLTools), extremely customisable. - Multi-cursors, multi-panes (e.g. with Origami), spellcheckers, extremely fast filesystem integration/browsing/preview (whether with/without projects and workspaces), color/UI schemes, syntax highlighting, search browsers, Git support (particularly when used with Sublime Merge), etc. Sure I love my Jetbrains IDEs and Vim, but nothing comes close; Sublime Text is in its own league.
  • mieses 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • BoredPositron 2y ago
      Sackmesser.
      • mieses 2y ago
        Thanks for the enlightenment. I didn't know this term.
    • OKRainbowKid 2y ago
      What algorithm?
  • beAbU 2y ago
    I reckon all text editors are some form of a Swiss army knife. IDE-ajacent text editors like VSCode et al are more like those ridiculous fat one with everything in it [1], and Sublime is the elegant model with only a blade and can opener, but the blade and can opener are both really good. And then you get Microsoft Notepad, one of those shitty metal nail files that seemingly everyone's wife has in the bottom of her handbag. 1 - https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpartsolutions.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F01%2FWorlds_largest_Swiss_Army_knife_wenger_giant_knife.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=645d3026d24293a434007977a22300b682d1b720e44e33269f1d2fa987a38c5a&ipo=images https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fp...
• nicbou 2y ago
  I write everything on All About Berlin in a souped up version of Sublime Text. I made my own color scheme for Markdown files, my own linters for the content, a build system to run the static site generator etc. I love just how fast I can move across hundreds of Markdown files, finding and replacing thimgs with regular expressions. It’s a night and day improvement over editing text in a CMS. I chose Sublime because it was blazing fast in my wee Macbook 12”, which I used until a year ago. Sublime Merge complements it really well.
  • qmmmur 2y ago
    Thanks for your website, it helped me enormously.
• monokai_nl 2y ago
  This is the one app I use every day. I practically live in it. Most editors are slower and more visually cluttered, or pack so much functionality that I often get lost. Sublime strikes the perfect balance between simplicity and functionality. Probably Emacs or Vim are even more expressive, but I've never bothered to learn those, Sublime just packs enough power for me. The LSP plugins are a good addition to give Sublime the same code completion / AI functionality of other editors.
• eknkc 2y ago
  Sublime was going great at some point and I guess the dev burned out churning new releases every week. So it got abandoned for a good amount of time. Something like 2 years. At the same time Atom and VsCode came in with all the good ideas from Sublime. I hope they made tens of millions during the height of its popularity.
  • vijaybritto 2y ago
    They are a company and they are still good. They changed their licensing model for v4 onwards. I have been using it for most of my note keeping and lite code editing tasks and its excellent as always. I think they can still get back to the old hype if they choose to use typescript for their plugin system. A lot of vscode plugins can be ported that way I hope
    • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      I doubt they'd want to create a schism and add a JS engine on top of the existing stuff. That said, Atom and VS Code's plugins being JS based was a huge benefit for them as at the time millions of developers started their career with or switched to using JS and web technology for their day job with webapps and nodejs.
  • dehrmann 2y ago
    > I hope they made tens of millions during the height of its popularity. I'm shocked at how often I'd see software engineers making software engineer salaries not pay for Sublime.
• bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Sublime is just great software. It does everything I could possibly ever want an editor to do, and it does it with half the memory usage of VS Code. I like VS Code well enough, but I can't abide resource waste like that, especially when it doesn't actually buy me anything. Honestly, I use Sublime because nothing else can compare. Everything else is slow, bloated, worse to use, or some combination of the above.
  • _cenw 2y ago
    Have you tried Zed, and if so, what's your opinion?
    • tipiirai 2y ago
      I have, but seems it has evolved quite a bit in the past year when looking at their new front page. I'll probably give it a shot. But in any case, I don't like their focus in collaborative features. It brings unnecessary bloat, that is not present in Sublime.
      • andrepd 2y ago
        Fwiw you can disable all AI bloat and online features with a couple of config keys
        • nottorp 2y ago
          But isn't that your "zed"'s selling point? What remains if you turn those off? Does it have gamification too, in addition to "AI" and "social"?
          • 369548684892826 2y ago
            An open source, fast, customizable cross-platform text editor with native UI and support for plugins and language servers. I don't think there's any other software that can tick all these boxes.
• rayrrr 2y ago
  Sublime is still my top choice for opening big data files, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But, since VS Code is becoming the new lingua franca code editor, I made the switch so as to play nice with others going forward.
  • dddw 2y ago
    +1 I was amazed the first time I opened a multi-GB sized sqldump in sublime
• sour-taste 2y ago
  I use sublime as a copy paste buffer when I need excellent visual regex search and replace. Vscodes regex search has awkward semantics (or at least I don't know them as well as sublimes) so I usually paste things into sublime, edit them with the regexes, then go back to what I was doing. My work has some extensions that only work in vscode so I'm stuck with it but it's good enough. I also never close sublime tabs and it persists them indefinitely with minimal memory usage, so I sometimes go back to grab things I was doing a few days ago. Definitely not the intended use but it works really well for me.
  • carpo 2y ago
    This is exactly how it use it too
  • steinsgatezero 2y ago
    Sounds like how I use Np++
  • sander1095 2y ago
    If you use windows, you can use WIN + V instead of using an editor for a copy paste buffer. WIN + V activates clipboard history, so you can see and select things you copied previously.
    • nyantaro1 2y ago
      This is the kind of thing I love HN for. Great tip!
    • GrzegorzWidla 2y ago
      And on macOS an open source Maccy app is a great clipboard manager / buffer.
  • iforgot22 2y ago
    I'm gonna start doing that, cause TextEdit can't even copy-paste reliably, and vim isn't super convenient for this either. Edit: Wow Sublime is the nicest GUI text editor I've ever seen
• dmi3 2y ago
  Using Sublime Text since version 2, one of my relatively recent discoveries has been the Markdown Images Plugin[1], which renders images inline (rather than in a separate preview, as other editors do). I find it extremely convenient to include images alongside text, such as diagrams and schematics for work, photos of goods in a shopping list, and inspiration collections for hobby projects, etc. When combined with a simple web clipper script[2], it has been a game changer for me. [1]: https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Markdown%20Images https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Markdown%20Images [2]: https://github.com/dmi3/bin/blob/master/url-preview-md.py https://github.com/dmi3/bin/blob/master/url-preview-md.py
  • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    I've installed that plugin too, thanks for the recommendation. That said, installing it did show a big concern I have, maybe not so much for this plugin but for many others; its last release was in 2022, and many plugins I used to use back in 2012 haven't seen updates since 2016-17, roughly around the time VS Code became the most popular editor. I fear community support of plugins will become a major issue. I mean as long as the APIs etc don't change it's not a problem if these plugins are "done", but it just looks like things are no longer maintained and ST is a "dead" editor.
    • dmi3 2y ago
      Welcome! I don't think the Sublime developers will change the plugin API dramatically at this point (@ben-schaaf is in this thread; we can ask him :) So, old plugins should remain compatible. What we should be concerned about is that if something new is invented, it will probably appear in a more widespread editors first. However, as practice shows, new plugins for Sublime continue to be created[1] so we are not missing lot. [1]: https://packagecontrol.io/browse/new https://packagecontrol.io/browse/new
• supplemental 2y ago
  You can use whatever editor you like .. some weirdos even use vim.
• eviks 2y ago
  > If you thought Sublime was dead, well you couldn't be more wrong! The latest build of Sublime as of this post is "4192" and was released 20th January 2025. Since a huge chunk of value here is in the plugins (hello, there isn't even a built-in plugin manager, it's 3rd party and still haven't fully transitioned to 3.8 - and this isn’t a nitpick, the fact that it’s not part of the core, and the author went MIA is part of the problem), the release date of the editor itself doesn't determine the state of Schrödinger > I think the thing to consider is how Sublime is basically "done" software. Or, you know, take a look at the issue tracker, pick up a couple of dozen issues that impact you (directly or via the plugins that are blocked by these), and realize how far from reality this statement is. Or just look at your own wishlist… > Sublime is fast. It starts instantly. But it’s not usable instantly because a lot of functionality is in the slower loading Python plugins, so if you have some shortcut that depends on a plugin, you can’t use it right away… > But I prefer authoring snippets in XML rather than JSON. > Obviously, I'm twisted. Obviously > have tried Helix and I think it is a lot closer to what I would want from a modern editor Indeed, operation after selection is much more intuitive, especially when limited to the viewport, but then unfortunately Sublime doesn’t have great modal editing support, and none that would mimic Helix visual-first paradigm > The key and mouse bindings are what you would expect from a modern editor. That’s what you’d expect from a pre-modern editor, a modern one should have much more sophisticated keybinding support, for example, you’d be able to pick that great modal Helix or Spacemacs keybinding scheme. And have great searchable help for that instead of having to look into the void trying to understand where exactly that `` contextual javascript keybinding was set and how to disable it.
  • james2doyle 2y ago
    It sounds like you've had some unfortunate issues with Sublime in the past. Maybe it's just the different types of projects that we're both working on or what plugins we have installed. I haven't encountered any day-destroying bugs since at least version 3 came out. I think the most recent bug I came across was that a language-specific syntax broke, but that was because I updated Sublime and the syntax wasn't updated for it. I don't really know who's to blame in that scenario, though.
• zevon 2y ago
  To echo many sentiments here: Sublime does all I want in a text editor and I use it a lot. When VSCode became all the rage, I tried it but became annoyed very quickly with the loading times and wasted resources, so I switched back to Sublime.
  • noname120 2y ago
    You should consider trying it again, it's pretty fast now.
    • zevon 2y ago
      I have, from time to time. It certainly has become faster but Sublime still seems to be more nimble to me. On the more emotional side, I've also grown used to Sublime and I - mostly - just like using tools made by smaller shops or individual developers more than what the big corporations produce.
  • rikroots 2y ago
    In my last performance review 360 feedback colleagues suggested that my use of Sublime Text may be holding me back and I should consider moving over to VSCode. They're probably right ... but I'm old and there's more exciting things to learn than all the foibles of a new editor. Plus I like supporting and using the products developed by a small team of dedicated engineers ... it makes me feel less like a cog in the machine. Luckily I no longer seek promotions so I'll continue to resist moving to VSCode until I retire, or die.
    • 000ooo000 2y ago
      To be frank, it sounds like your colleagues may be holding you back.
    • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      Better the tool you know. Replace VSCode and Sublime with Vim and Emacs or Eclipse and hopefully they will realise how silly their feedback is. Maybe they should switch to Sublime or IntelliJ because I think their use of VSCode may be holding them back.
• yonisto 2y ago
  I'm always up for trying new or old text editors, but they must have certain features that work out of the box for me to even consider them. A few clicks are fine, but I don't want to edit configuration files. In 2025, remote development support is a must for me. Sadly it seems that Sublime doesn't do that yet
  • guessmyname 2y ago
    Sublime Merge offers a graphical user interface to edit the settings. I’m not sure why they haven’t implemented that in Sublime Text yet.
• WhereIsTheTruth 2y ago
  They need to enhance their plugin API asap, i remember wanting to make a small assistant panel, the only choice was to use a pseudo mini-HTML api, it's not good for anything dynamic.. a shame I'd love an Immediate Mode API, give me full control, or give me access to your OpenGL context, i'll write my own UI They also need to improve the layout system for their panels, Origami is good, but sometimes using your mouse is better And i agree about getting stuff to Package Control, it's unnecessary painful Other than that, it's the perfect editor, but that plugin API holds it back, lots of missed opportunity, specially with the advent of AI stuff
• GenericDev 2y ago
  There's dozens of us. Dozens! Seriously though, having a lightweight text editor like Sublime that I use is an interesting comparison when I see people immediately reach for tools like VS Code. Especially my juniors. The thing about VS Code is not that it's bad, it's just, like everything and the kitchen sink? Sublime Text just feels like a really nice tool bench that your craft for yourself. I'm really happy to hear there are others out there. (And yes, I totally bought the license, but never enter it in)
• ben-schaaf 2y ago
  Sublime Text developer here, thank you for all the praise! I'm looking forward to what we can accomplish this year. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer.
  • bussiere 2y ago
    Promise, when my situation get better i will pay the 80$ license. It is on my buylist since a lot of time :) Thanks for the software
  • shakna 2y ago
    One tiny thing, that I haven't investigated at all... And doesn't seem to be a common thing to worry about... If I have a file with an asterisk in it, then Sublime [0] seems to have issues displaying the file name. *.x will appear as [].x for some reason. [0] (Build 4180, out of date...)
    • ben-schaaf 2y ago
      That could be any number of things, I suggest posting an issue on our public issue tracker: https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues
  • stevoski 2y ago
    Sublime Text is great the way it is. If you have to change things, please make them just tiny, incremental changes.
  • llama_person 2y ago
    I bought Sublime with my first developer paycheck, eons ago. Thanks for your great work <3.
  • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    I think a big hit for ST's popularity - next to the rise of Atom and VS Code - was its upgrade from version 3 to 4; are you considering to do that again or, if funds are required, do a different way to raise money?
• chucky123 2y ago
  Sublime rules. I started my career with Brackets, then Sublime, then Atom for a short while. Then switched to VS Code for a few years and just recently switched back to Sublime because of how slow VS Code became. Also great pricing! One time purchase for Sublime is still available in 2025!
  • donatj 2y ago
    Where is one time purchase available? The only option I see is $99 for three years.
    • ben-schaaf 2y ago
      The license does not expire after 3 years, it is perpetual, but it doesn't apply to versions released more than 3 years after your purchase. If you don't want any newer features or fixes you can simply turn off updates. We warn you before updating to a version not covered by your license.
      • blame-troi 2y ago
        I find this to be a very reasonable license. Cost is low but provides an ongoing revenue source. I like free or perpetual licensing as much as the next guy, but us programmers gotta eat and pay the rent.
      • sandbags 2y ago
        How did you arrive at this model?
        • ben-schaaf 2y ago
          There's not much to it: we wanted steadier income and our customers wanted more consistent updates but also perpetual licenses. This model was the natural conclusion. We tried it out with Sublime Merge and then brought it over with ST4.
    • chucky123 2y ago
• kennydude 2y ago
  Sublime Text has always been great and reliable. But like with everything, having a great choice of fantastic text editors is always good so everyone finds something they enjoy using.
• dmi3 2y ago
  In the argument of Sublime Text vs. VS Code, the deal breaker for me has always been VS Code telemetry. Of course, you can disable it in the settings or firewall, but then you have to constantly monitor it to ensure that some "bug" or "update" does not re-enable it back. Alternatively, you can choose not to care about potentially sharing everything with Microsoft and their 829+ partners. However, I prefer to pay for Sublime rather than participate in some manager's brilliant idea to extract revenue from a "free" user base.
  • Ballas 2y ago
    If telementry is your main concern, just use vscodium. (or stick to SublimeText - I use both) https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases
  • warrenski 2y ago
    Have a look at VSCodium (https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/), it's a freely-licensed binary distribution of VS Code without the telemetry.
• eigenvalue 2y ago
  I use both Sublime and Vscode every day for different things. Sublime is just so fast and responsive all the time, while vscode can get annoying slow and laggy, often because of all the many plugins I have running. If I just need simple text file editing with syntax highlighting, say while editing a markdown file, Sublime is just snappier. For actual coding VScode is much better because of all the IDE features.
  • moffkalast 2y ago
    I like VSCode's feature where it doesn't constantly bitch and moan about buying a license. Like cmon, there's billions of text editors to pick from, it would be like paying for breathing air or worse, for winrar.
    • eigenvalue 2y ago
      Maybe I'm a sucker, but I bought a license for Sublime in like 2009 and re-upped for a later version. I also actually bought WinRAR from Eugene. It's good to support dedicated devs who make high quality tools that you use all the time.
      • moffkalast 2y ago
        The line between dedication and delusion is apparently pretty blurry. One can't seriously expect to profit with closed software in a space where free and open alternatives are the norm. VSCode is open source, 7-Zip is open source, they are both objectively better in every way. If anything I would rather support those by contributing directly. Besides absurd levels of market saturation, code editors are a complement to software, just like libraries and frameworks, and we benefit most as a society by keeping tools open. Imagine having to pay a monthly subscription for a json lib. I find the entire concept ridiculous.
        • eigenvalue 2y ago
          That wasn't the case in 2009. And yeah, I do use 7zip mostly now, but it was a different story back then and WinRar was really fast and had really great compression and features. And who cares, it was like $20 or something.
• fersarr 2y ago
  +1 love sublime
• helloguillecl 2y ago
  I used Sublime for coding before switching to VS Code for coding, but I could never leave Sublime text for some use cases. For example: The possibility to edit large SQL dump files, which I cannot even open in VS Code.
  • karpovv-boris 2y ago
    Ha, I,m cannot use st for large file editing, in this case vscode is more performant.
• Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  I've reinstalled ST a while ago, for years I've tried VS Code and I do my main work in IntelliJ but I never got that feeling of productivity and an editor that isn't in the way back after stopping to use Sublime back in the day. Mind you, at the time the world had moved on as well; my main ST days were developing a JS application in the days before Typescript / Flow and the like, so all my work relied on my own memory, consistent naming, global search and cmd+p to open files. There was a "gap" in between editors like IntelliJ having better / smarter support for JS and the rise of LSPs, making those features available for all editors again. IntelliJ had a competitive advantage for a while. Likewise, VS Code had a competitive advantage along with Atom for having all its code written in web language / JS, which millions of developers learned or pivoted to in the 2010's. I still can't fully grasp how huge it was, but the last few jobs I had interviews with all used JS for back-end, migrating from PHP.
  • z3t4 2y ago
    > my main ST days were developing a JS application in the days before Typescript / Flow and the like, so all my work relied on my own memory, consistent naming, global search and cmd+p to open files. Ohh the days where you could open a JS project, immediately understand what it did and make a quick fix. Now it's 15 lines of imports, then one line of code that you have no idea what it does because you have to find what it actually does by digging 10 layers down in the import inception. Buf if you have a IDE you can tell by the type annotation that it's an EnterpriseJavaScriptBeanConstructorFactorFunctionIterator and by clicking ctrl+space you can see that it has four methods: .create() .read() .update() and .delete()
• amatecha 2y ago
  I've used Sublime since 2012 or 2013 or so. It's really legit. Lightweight, "it just works", and has generally stayed the same while adding some nice features along the way. Thank you!! <3
• mstade 2y ago
  I too still like Sublime Text in 2025, largely for the same reasons. I have liked it very much for the past decade or so, and at this rate, I'll most likely keep liking Sublime Text for many years to come. It's an incredible tool that does its job extremely well. Worth every penny!
• grougnax 2y ago
  I love Sublime Text, it is so snappy and lightweight. Great software!
• factsaresacred 2y ago
  Reluctant VScode user here. Sublime's speed make it the best editor to work with by far, but its package manager is in a sorry state. A good 70%+ of packages are outdated or don't work. Fix this and I'd be back in a flash.
• turblety 2y ago
  I used to love Sublime Text and used it for my daily driver. Even bought a license. But just downloaded it again, and while it definitely felt snappy, after 15 minutes I still couldn't find a way to get TypeScript type checking working, or even any type of JavaScript/TypeScript autocomplete.
  • ben-schaaf 2y ago
    If you want IDE-like behavior you'll need to install the TypeScript LSP: https://packagecontrol.io/packages/LSP-typescript https://packagecontrol.io/packages/LSP-typescript. We do have our own limited language-agnostic indexing and auto-complete if you open your projects folder; it relies on existing code to provide suggestions.
    • turblety 2y ago
      I installed that. Spent 15 minutes trying to get it to work. No joy :(
      • james2doyle 2y ago
        Oh, that's frustrating. I think it'd be great to have some more concrete guides for modern Sublime. Maybe I'll write one about getting TypeScript and everything working starting from scratch
  • fergie 2y ago
    If you are locked in to TypeScript, you are basically locked in to VSCode (albeit a "soft" lock-in).
    • Klaster_1 2y ago
      Not really, I didn't see much difference between ST with all LSPs configured and VSCode. What features do you find missing?
      • 2y ago
• unwind 2y ago
  So, uh, the author mentions the "command palette" as being a killer feature, and links to an article about them, that has zero images of this GUI feature. I can't even ... what? I found [1] which at least shows what it looks like, for those of us who haven't had the pleasure to test Sublime Text. I gather that the search that is integrated in the palette is an important aspect of their use, so perhaps it's hard to show actual UX in a still image. [1]: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/sublime_text/sublime_text_command_palette.htm https://www.tutorialspoint.com/sublime_text/sublime_text_com...
• ghiculescu 2y ago
  Very relatable piece, the intro felt like I could have written it (I like the URL too). “It fast” is enough for me, many of the “features” in editors are noise, and Sublime is the simplest and least noisy.
• ElectronBadger 2y ago
  Sublime Text user here, it's been my go to editor for the last few years. The best. A keeper.
• NetOpWibby 2y ago
  I came to Sublime Text 3 from Atom because I wanted a native editor. It boggles my mind that so many people love VS Code. I’ve tried Zed, it’s a beautiful editor…it’s just too opinionated. For whatever reason, it doesn’t understand my Deno projects and I content get rid of the red squigglies. Sublime lives up to its name.
  • dominicrose 2y ago
    VS code has good defaults and extensions but if you have time to configure it precisely it's also possible. When configured to your needs the differences between ST and VSC aren't big. What I don't understand is why would anyone use Eclipse.
    • GuB-42 2y ago
      Eclipse is a full IDE. Sublime Text and VSCode are not. A competitor to Eclipse would be JetBrains IntelliJ or Visual Studio (not Code), both are often considered superior by far, but neither are free. Eclipse is also a platform for creating applications (RCP/RAP).
      • juleiie 2y ago
        Free or paid what’s the difference. If you have company you can afford it professionally, if you are a student you can get a free license, if you are NEET dev you can —————- it.
        • GuB-42 2y ago
          I understand the downvotes but it is an interesting point. First thing, Eclipse is not just free as in free beer, it is also free as in freedom, which can matter. In addition, you may be surprised how much free (as in free beer) matters to large companies and governments. Of course, a multi-billion dollar company can pay, but the simple act of acquiring a license, no matter the cost, can be a lengthy bureaucratic process for the lowly developer who needs it. It is usually much easier to use free software, especially big names like Eclipse that may be pre-approved. Of course, using a free licence you have no right to, let alone piracy is a big no no. And while I don't think corporate inefficiency is a good reason, it is a reality and you have to work with it.
• ciaovietnam 2y ago
  I also use ST and use browser if I need some AI assisted coding. What about you guys? Is using IDEs with native AI coding plugin a good reason to switch away from ST?
  • mulle_nat 2y ago
    Frankly yes, though I still prefer text editing in Sublime Text.
  • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    If anything, ST taught me that I didn't actually need an IDE to be productive, but mind you this was in the years where JS became huge but didn't have good editor support yet.
• Duke64 2y ago
  I bought a "double license" for Text and Merge three years ago and spent money on Sublime for the first time. I will definitely be renewing it in February.
• pavelevst 2y ago
  I still like textmate and use it daily, together with heavy IDEs, imo best multiline editing and search in large codebase
  • tectiv3 2y ago
    As do I. TextMate is still unbeatable, especially after I added Copilot and LSP to it!
    • aequitas 2y ago
      I recently switched from TextMate to Zed because of the lack of LSP support and other modern features. Zed comes closest to a native macOS app of all the editors I tried, but nothing could beat TextMate at that. What did you do to get LSP supported? I might give TextMate another try.
      • tectiv3 2y ago
        Zed is as close as it gets, I also use it, but it is still slow and cumbersome sometimes. https://github.com/tectiv3/lsp-client/issues/1 https://github.com/tectiv3/lsp-client/issues/1
• jonwinstanley 2y ago
  I'm a Sublime fanboy, but have been using VSCode for years as I like the Github Copilot integration :-(
  • alibarber 2y ago
    There's a, community supported, Copilot LSP plugin for Sublime. It can be rough around the edges - but I tried it and it was enough to get me to buy a 1yr Copilot seat (at current pricing). Completely understand if Copilot is enough to make people want to switch over - but for me it wasn't, and I don't feel like I'm missing out with this setup.
• modernfears 2y ago
  Can’t not mention tonsky’s post about most important feature of Sublime: https://tonsky.me/blog/sublime/ https://tonsky.me/blog/sublime/
  • lopatin 2y ago
    Step 1. Write blog post about how unnecessary feature churn can make a product worse. Step 2. Put an avalanche of moving snowflakes in the background of the blog post to make it nearly unreadable.
    • 4k93n2 2y ago
      i really dont get why people do that haha. at least the snow doesnt pile up i suppose
• dkdbejwi383 2y ago
  I really want to like Sublime (it's so fast, I like the minimal UI), but VS Code has so much inertia, and does so much out of the box or with minimal extra effort that it's hard to not use it instead. At the end of the day, I have things to get done, I'm not here to tinker with tools. Same reason I never got into vim/emacs etc as a daily driver.
  • andrepd 2y ago
    Well that is my rationale for working with Sublime instead of VScode!
    • dguest 2y ago
      That's also why I use emacs. It was the first text editor I learned.
  • zelphirkalt 2y ago
    Emacs and Neovim are things one gets into in ones free time and gets good enough to make the switch at some point at the job. Of course that is mostly only feasible, if the projects at the job are set up in a tool agnostic way or choice exists in the first place. I also want to like Sublime, but I already have a well configured Emacs and I like using free/libre software. While Sublime was great when I used it in the past, I am not sure I would use it much, since I use Emacs all day now. But the reason for Sublime over VS code is, that it is way less bloated and not running in a browser. Would need to see a direct comparison, but wouldn't be surprised, if it showed to be way snappier. If one does not need lots of specifically VS code features, I think Dublime gets out of ones way and lets you get shit done.
    • diggan 2y ago
      > Emacs and Neovim are things one gets into in ones free time and gets good enough to make the switch at some point at the job. I'd probably never end up proficient with vim (and today neovim) if I didn't do the complete opposite of this and forced myself to use it for real work directly. True, I went a bit slower for one/two weeks, but if you really have to use something foreign for most of your work, you'll learn it really quickly, as long as you're up for looking things up as you go along. Of course, YMMV and all that yadda yadda.
• unnamedd 2y ago
  I have always loved Sublime Text, but in 2023, Zed captured my heart, and now I have neither Sublime Text nor VS Code installed on my machine anymore.
  • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Is Zed's AI integration optional or are they pushing it hard like intellij, vs code and warp are?
    • herrherrmann 2y ago
      I think you can opt out of its AI features more or less completely, but you do have to look up all the relevant config options (mostly to hide buttons in the UI leading to AI festures).
• nbenitezl 2y ago
  Another happy customer of Sublime Text here, but still not dare to take the step to buy SublimeMerge, I'm pretty well served in console for my git use, except for 'git blame' that I prefer to do in a UI tool, but SublimeMerge blame support is awful.
  • dpjohnst 2y ago
    G'day, I head up the Sublime Merge team. I'd love to hear your feedback on how we can improve the blame functionality! I can look into getting anything resolved there.
    • nbenitezl 2y ago
      [Thanks to be opened for suggestions] - One major improvement would be to provide a button to "View blame prior to this change" like Gitlab blame does (screenshot below): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BjXpQNlFgHKIJz-5SmJIxYB6fGD4_03v/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BjXpQNlFgHKIJz-5SmJIxYB6fGD... Because c++ codebases nowadays are full of commits that just reformat or refactors code (clang-format, update to smart pointers, update to new api, etc) and so if I just want to find out the original commit which introduced that codeline (because I want to know the _original_ motivation for it), it means in Gitlab I just need to click 3 or 4 times on said button to skip all such formats/refactor commits until I get to the one I'm interested in. That is easy in Gitlab, while SublimeMerge just let me click on the SHA of the last change for the codeline, and from there I'm lost I don't know how to keep "blaming back" like Gitlab easily let me. - In the same vein of easy skipping blame changes until the one you want, it would help a lot supporting the git config setting blame.ignoreRevsFile: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config#Documentation/git-config.txt-blameignoreRevsFile https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config#Documentation/git-config... Thanks and long life to Sublime!
• dsego 2y ago
  Not sure how projects and workspaces are a feature, it's the most convoluted thing ever. I just use `subl .` to open my project directory. I think it would be saner to just have a dot file in the directory if you want to tweak settings for that project/directory.
  • andrepd 2y ago
    Well that exactly how it works ahaha! There's the .sublime-project file with settings for that directory.
• lopatin 2y ago
  The main feature of Sublime Text for me is that it doesn't throw away your buffers. Ever. So it's mainly a note taking app with vim key bindings for me / snappy scratch pad. All of my actual code editing happens in an IDE or actual VIM when on a server.
  • noisy_boy 2y ago
    This is similar to how I use Kate on Windows. The configs can be somewhat complicated but it is very flexible and nice to use.
  • quesera 2y ago
    I see how the separation of "persisted active buffers" from "saved files" is important, but FWIW I have vim configured to (for a specific note-taking FileType) write the buffer out on 60 seconds of inactivity. Not the same, but adequate for my needs.
• jc_811 2y ago
  I. Love. Sublime I’ve tried all the other main editors but always come back to Sublime. The simplicity, the speed, the near instantaneous load time. I feel like I’m such an outlier but for my text editor I don’t want all the fancy bells and whistles that come with all the IDEs nowadays. It feels like Sublime is the only one that is so intuitive OOTB while allowing access to a plethora of features (if you need/want them). Whereas the others throw everything in your face and it feels like a battle to just get it configured for your needs. Granted, I mainly code for personal and side projects, and actually enjoy the coding part so I don’t want AI, or advanced features, writing code for me! Even for the productivity gains, I just find coding on my own enjoyable and solving problems as they arise. That being said, I can totally understand why devs who need to collaborate with large teams, under strict deadline, across multiple countries - probably absolutely need the fancy features that come with enterprise IDEs. I just love my Sublime editor and never plan on switching :)
• pshirshov 2y ago
  vscode keybindings are insane. There are couple of thousands of them turned on by default with multiple duplications and no abstrations. So you have to negate them all first (that takes around 5000 lines of json) and then carefully go over around 500-700 definitions which might be important for you. So, my custom keymap in intellij has 44 definition, the vscode equivalent takes 675 and 2000 lines of json.
• kristianp 2y ago
  I've bought a license recently. I found the LSP-clangd plugin to be useful for the linting features of clangd and clangd-tidy for a C++ project recently. Having the lint highlighting helped me clean up some possible problems, (after reducing the number of types of lint to a shortish whtielist)
• ototot 2y ago
  Sublime is my default editor on Windows since 2012. I really enjoy its lightweight and cleanness.
• kergonath 2y ago
  Hell, I still like TextMate in 2025 :) (Though I use Sublime more, and I like it as well)
• infinitifall 2y ago
  Sublime Text used to be my go-to editor when I didn't need a full fledged IDE. A rare gem in an arena of slow mammoths. I've since switched over to Lite XL, which is FOSS, just as fast (if not faster), and the plugins cover nearly all my niche use cases. While I respect the effort that goes into creating quality software and am not averse to spending money, I'd rather not live in a world where the best softwares are closed source.
• DaveMcMartin 2y ago
  This brings back good old memories. Sublime was my editor from 2010 until 2016, when I switched to VS Code. Eventually, I got hooked on Neovim, and I still use it to this day since I can't live without Vim motions anymore. But I built dozens of websites using Sublime, so in a way, it helped me earn $300k.
• braggerxyz 2y ago
  Maybe Sublime Text is good, but I refuse to pay for something as profane as a text editor. A decent editor (syntax highlighting, LSP, regex search, keybindings for the 21st century etc) needs to be part of every operarting system. For me nowadays, Lapce is quickly growing on me.
  • pell 2y ago
    You can essentially use Sublime for free indefinitely. It shows you a prompt to buy a license for every few saves you make but that’s about it. Not invasive in my book. I also think people underestimate the amount of work that goes into building a good text editor and keeping it up to date over the years.
    • noname120 2y ago
      You can, but then the license explicitly forbids you from using it for commercial purposes.
      • braggerxyz 2y ago
        Which is basically anything that is done on company hardware. Also there is a compliance factor, at least at my company.
    • braggerxyz 2y ago
      I cannot use Sublime without license in my work setting without violating License terms. That's a huge deal breaker
      • pell 2y ago
        That’s a good point. I think if you really like the editor it might be something your employer could pay for. At least ST only offers a one-time fee for each major version. Of course that depends on where you work and their policies. So I see how it’s not so easy and my comment definitely missed that part.
  • 2y ago
• sneak 2y ago
  Kernel, compiler, text editor: all must be free software, with full source code and permissive licenses. I will die on this hill. Closed source editors (including VS Code) are simply nonstarters for me. This is my toolchain, my job, my life, my hobby, my passion. The legal prohibition on modifying it is against every single thing I sit down at a computer to do. It might sound snobbish, but if you can’t (or don’t) modify your #1 tool (your editor), are you really a hacker? What are you hacking on, and why, then?
  • sksrbWgbfK 2y ago
    Are you really a hacker if you haven't soldered you CPU and RAM yourself? Is your electricity coming from a OSS treadmill? I question your dedication.
    • sneak 2y ago
      Not remotely the same, false equivalence. I don’t regularly need to add CPU instructions; I do regularly need to amend my tools.
      • sksrbWgbfK 2y ago
        Yet you deny this freedom to your own users (as seen in a AGPL thread in 2021). Interesting.
        • sneak 2y ago
          Users of a service provided by software running on someone else’s computer and users of software that runs on their own computer are not remotely (no pun intended) the same thing. The AGPL is plainly a nonfree license. @marcan has documented the other nonsensical requirements it has and how complying with it as written is basically impossible even if you want and intend to. It was created by anticapitalist zealots who want to conflate use and modification of software (a solo activity) to consumption of a service (an activity that involves others). It fails both logically and legally. The fact that people regard the AGPL as a free software license is insane to me. It reduces your rights if you plug an ethernet cable in. It’s insane.
• timmfin 2y ago
  I'm another "use Sublime text for all kinds of scratch and random needs, but vscode daily driver". But this was a good reminder for me of the value I still get out of Sublime and that I should upgrade my license. One small pet peeve, I do wish more of the functionality in the menu bar (mac?) was available in the command menu (cmd+shift+p). I still fairly frequently try cmd+shift+p "Spel..." to try and turn on Spell check mode, but then realize I need to hit my mac shortcut to search the menu bar (cmd+shift+/) and then type "Spel..."
  • james2doyle 2y ago
    That's a good one. I also noticed that I couldn't create new snippets or plugins from the command prompt. So, there are definitely some things missing from there.
• mmustapic 2y ago
  Besides Sublime Text, the same company makes Sublime Merge, a great git UI.
• 8fingerlouie 2y ago
  I've used Sublime Text since it's initial release, and later on Sublime Merge, and i own licenses for every major version released. However, my ST4 license recently expired, and that caused me to look back at the previous 3 years to see what my money was actually buying me, and it turns out it was mostly bugfixes. There have been, rather consistently, 2 releases per year (november and august), and the last major feature was in 2022 with syntax code folding and recent files integration, and those are the only "new features" added since ST4 was released in 2021. Don't get me wrong, i don't mind paying for software, especially software i use every day, but ST4 more or less feels like it's on the backburner, with nothing much going on, so i let my "subscription" (ST4 licensing is more or less a subscription for 3 years) lapse. I've instead switched to Zed (zed.dev) as my "main and fast" editor. Yes it has some rough edges, but feature wise it's very much like Sublime Text. It doesn't support Windows (yet), which is not a problem for me, but i can see how that could be a dealbreaker for some.
  • rollcat 2y ago
    I think that as software asymptotically approaches mostly-bugfix releases, it's a good sign that it's "done", and therefore just stable, reliable, and "boring". Sometimes boring is good, especially for your core toolkit. It can free up your energy to spend it on more interesting things, like actual coding.
    • 8fingerlouie 2y ago
      > Sometimes boring is good, especially for your core toolkit. I agree, but considering the "editor space" has progressed a lot in the past decade or so, i would hardly call Sublime Text "done". It has it's strengths and weaknesses, and while it was a great editor 15 years ago, and had it's share of innovative features, things have stagnated quite a bit in recent years. ST4 felt more like a minor update to ST3, and ST3 was probably also just a minor update to ST2 (i forgot which one was the big rewrite, but i think it was ST2). Compare that to what has been going on with VSCode and Zed in recent years, which far surpass Sublime Text in many ways, and doing it for free. So, in the end, for me, it turned out to be a subscription based "slightly better than average" editor. Yes, i still love it, and i would love for it to get a revival and spring to life again, and i would switch back in a heartbeat, but sadly the "maintenance mode" has been going on for almost a decade now.
• robblbobbl 2y ago
  Recommended due to the good property of a file system search.
• nneonneo 2y ago
  I don't use ST3 as my daily driver (I use BBEdit instead - still not on the VSCode train), but I do use it for lots of random editing and scratch needs. Shameless plug - I wrote a plugin ages ago which makes it possible to replace and sort text using Python code (https://nneonneo.github.io/sublime-replace-with-python/ https://nneonneo.github.io/sublime-replace-with-python/). This little plugin has been incredibly useful for certain tasks, and serves both as a useful prototyping tool (playing with text modifications before implementing a full-blown script) as well as a general-purpose text wrangling utility. Basically, you can select some text (or find it with regex), then activate the plugin and type a line of Python code; it will then run the code for each selection region and produce the replacement. Sorting works similarly - select some regions, enter an expression as a sort key, and the selections will be rearranged according to the key. I love how a plugin I wrote nearly a decade ago is still working with essentially no changes needed since 2017. Stable software is reliable software!
  • nanook 2y ago
    Why BBEdit? What languages do you code in?
  • rollcat 2y ago
    > Shameless plug - I wrote a plugin ages ago which makes it possible to replace and sort text using Python code [...] I've been trying out Lite XL, and I have a crude (WIP) plugin that can pipe selected text thru any shell command (sed, sort, etc), and either output to a new buffer, or replace the selection. Then I started writing some scripts to supply the commands I miss from Emacs, like align-regexp. Since it's just shell commands, you can write them in any language. I'm not sure if I like Lite XL, but the scripts I already wrote would be easily reusable in any editor that supports piping selections. Perhaps it would be a fun project to create a collection of such portable scripts, sort of like what LSP did.
    • gherard5555 2y ago
      nice to see another lite XL enjoyer. Neat editor and its stupid easy to write plugins for it.
• brainzap 2y ago
  Sometimes when the OS built in search does not work I Open the directory in Sublime and use it as search tool.
• scop 2y ago
  So glad to see this. I have been down a long road of text editors: - Sublime - Vim - Emacs - Atom - VSCode - Jetbrains IDE - Neovim - Zed - Cursor And these aren’t just little flings. I’ve spent months if not years in most of these editors. However, at the end of the day I always come back to one: Sublime. It is a beautiful piece of software. It feels like writing with one’s “good pen and good paper”, that high quality stationary sort of thing. It is just me and the code. There is something that just feels different or even tactile about Sublime. That actually leads me to ask as this is outside of my expertise: why does Sublime feel more tactile/real than other editors? When I look at the code in other editors it feels like I’m looking at a projector on a wall. When I look at the code in Sublime it feels like I’m looking at something painted on the wall. Anybody else have the same experience? What’s the psychological/software reason for that?
  • bruce343434 2y ago
    Sublime is really snappy and responsive. But it also doesn't have as many fancy automation like jetbrains. Maybe that keeps the code "real", rather than some artifact that you have the computer manipulate for you.
    • scop 2y ago
      That’s definitely part of it. Though even before I start typing and am just looking at the characters on the screen, they seem more dense, tactile, and real. Is there a categorical difference for how Sublime renders text vs other editors out there?
    • 91bananas 2y ago
      This is the main reason I've ever found myself using it if not vscode or now cursor. If I have some massive file that needs messing with nothing handles it as well as sublime does.
  • IggleSniggle 2y ago
    I don't use or actually even like Sublime, but I have the exact same experience of it. Quick loads and lack of "extras" that cause even portions of lag in the experience; there's an immediacy to Sublime. But those things that introduce clunkiness are often very useful. They take away from the aesthetic feel of writing code, but give advantages that are too useful to give up, imho.
• ckunte 2y ago
  Long time Sublime Text and Sublime Merge fan, and a paying user since 2011. It's very good; I use all three OSes (Windows at work, MacOS on occasion, Linux is primary driver, and I've now switched to Pi 5. Zed does not even load on this, whereas ST just flies. (The only real competition is Neovim.) That reminds me, I wonder if Sublime Text still has room to improve in some areas. Here's an example, in Vim generating a date stamp is a one liner incl. text expansion[0], whereas in Sublime Text, one has to write a multi line plugin and a separate keyboard shortcut[1] to get the same functionality as that of Vim. [0]: https://gist.github.com/ckunte/2d7a750e6cf8b96f98f028e90c8ab712 https://gist.github.com/ckunte/2d7a750e6cf8b96f98f028e90c8ab... [1]: https://gist.github.com/ckunte/31500c17452b0fd8c55bc9460bd9cc92 https://gist.github.com/ckunte/31500c17452b0fd8c55bc9460bd9c...
  • james2doyle 2y ago
    I think it would be cool to see some built-in commands for common things like that. But I think the fact that your plugin is so small and so quick to add, proves that going that route is probably the best one. I'm sure if there was a plugin out there that added dozens of these little commands, it would probably do pretty well.
  • ben-schaaf 2y ago
    You can achieve the same thing using the arithmetic command in the command palette: `__import__('datetime').datetime.now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M")`.
    • ckunte 2y ago
      Thank you, Ben. Wow! TIL.
• pupppet 2y ago
  I find ST and the SFTP plugin (paid) a killer workflow combo, super useful for updating WordPress sites. Update your file locally, hit the shortcut to upload, done. I find this experience superior to editing directly on the external file as I may want to save but not necessarily commit that change. And for smaller projects you are the only developer on, git can be overkill.
• jokoon 2y ago
  They finally fixed some syntax highlighting issues. But yeah, it's the best editor out there, I still uses it. I wish I could have more tab rows. Still a bit expensive, in my view. I tried sublime text projects/workspace once, but they are not that great.
• brine 2y ago
  I was 100% with you... until 3 days ago I tried [Zed](https://zed.dev https://zed.dev) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • james2doyle 2y ago
    There is a lot to like about Zed. But I still can't get past how it doesn't feel as snappy as Sublime. As I mentioned in the post, their snippet solution is not ideal for my needs. Something I didn't mention, though, was that I find the LSP configuration to be really frustrating in Zed. Their configuration/settings file is kind of a mess. They've clearly gone through a couple different versions of how to configure things because every couple of releases. They have changed the way that LSP formatting is configured at least twice.
• kopirgan 2y ago
  I hard a hard time getting LSP to work with Neovim, had to give up. Didn't want to install yet another plug-in manager like Mason etc some of which go out of circulation or could be risky. Maybe I am below average. As it is free, I just use it without any extras although that is less productive of course.
• markus_zhang 2y ago
  Thank you. Sublime text is my goto text editor. I code in VSCode but whenever I need to edit a text file I switch to Sublime text.
• nijuashi 2y ago
  The only gripe I have is I have like 100 project windows open and I need to look for it (ctrl+P only works within the project window). Otherwise, it’s pretty much a perfect editor. Maybe I’m missing a plugin.
  • dishsoap 2y ago
    Yeah this, it's annoying to find a specific open file if you have tons of windows. Absolutely love sublime text apart from that.
• starlite-5008 2y ago
  [dead]
• nroize 2y ago
  Switched to it last year for working on a large C codebase, huge fan. Visual Studio Code was always way too slow at indexing, Sublime is fast.
• fifticon 2y ago
  I use a mix of sublime and vscode. I often pick sublime, because I want peace of mind. I trust it to not try to make me 'do something else'. It (mostly) doesn't pester me with things to update or that are out-of-date, it doesn't run or fail with weird things in the background I didn't ask it to do. It sticks to a minimal layout. I had a similar love relationship with early versions of paintshop-pro - it contained the right balance of 'enough to do what you need, but not too much to overwhelm you'. Whenever I ran into a too-new version of paintshop-pro, I closed it again because I didn't want to deal with their lost-sense-of-balance. Sublime for me is like that, it is a hammer where the head won't suddenly fall off. I had an eye-opening experience with VSCode recently: I had brought one of my laptops on a car drive, where I had a few hours before the people (family) I chauffeured would come back, and I had a coding project I wanted to update some stuff on. The kicker: I didn't have internet in the car, but for local vscode editing, that shouldn't be a problem, right(?) At least, I had not thought it would be. Well, for some reason, VSCode suddenly became stupid. It could not longer figure out where my methods and classes were defined, so I had to navigate my code-base by hand (god forbid). It also flashed something about not being able to connect to "dot net" / ".NET" or something similar. I am not quite sure what was going on, maybe copilot..? Whatever, my VSCode was in a mode where it seemed to rely on some online resource to operate, and suddenly had become braindead by severing the cord..?? This reminds me why I like sublime.
• singhrac 2y ago
  I was a longtime user of Sublime Text and switched to VSCode because of Remote Development and Pylance. Everything else is pretty much fine and Sublime has always had better performance, though these days having support for AI integration (a la Copilot) is also necessary for me. I tried Zed recently because it has remote support and AI integration, but the Python integration is limited to Pyright so I gave up temporarily (I guess I can recreate Pylance using this doc: https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-release/blob/main/USING_WITH_PYRIGHT.md https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-release/blob/main/USING...).
• racl101 2y ago
  It's my new notepad. When I don't need the bloat of VSCode, or any JetBrains editor, etc. nor have the will to fight with Vim and, yet, still need something that supports code syntax.
  • nothrowaways 2y ago
    +1
• thecrumb 2y ago
  I'd probably move back if the sidebar could move to the right LOL. I still see people ask on the forum post and I'm always amazed this simple feature hasn't been added yet.
  • james2doyle 2y ago
    I haven't heard that complaint before. But it's a good one! I personally don't use a sidebar, but I can see that being annoying if you do
• dataengineer56 2y ago
  I use Sublime as my notepad alternative. I use no plugins and don't know any keyboard shortcuts but I love it. It's quick, the tabs work well, you don't have to save files for it to remember them...
• kasperset 2y ago
  Just a shout out to Sublime Text. My first text editor that I have used for serious work. Even though I have moved to Vscode, it is my go to open text files in GUI. It rarely fails me.
• OutsmartDan 2y ago
  Love Sublime and have used it since its inception long ago, however as the times changes with different built-in convenience tooling (such as AI), Zed has overtaken Sublime IMO. It's fast, has VIM mode, extensions, and takes away some of the hassle that you have to go through with ST. I still use ST for basic editing, but for day-to-day, Zed is the go to, simply because it just helps me get my work done slightly faster. PS I still pay for a ST License every 3 years <3
• wkirby 2y ago
  Sublime is still great. I wish it had a tighter LSP integration — the plugin is decent, but individual language implementations are hit or miss. I sincerely appreciate that it has an old school fallback for languages that don’t have robust LSP support (looking at you Ruby).
• mcflubbins 2y ago
  Long live Sublime Text! also pretty please give us a native FreeBSD port...
• ubermonkey 2y ago
  I definitely still use Sublime. It's not my go-to for everything now, but my job has drifted in a way that means I don't DO those kinds of tasks that often anymore. For writing I've gravitated towards tools with better innate outlining and/or Markdown support (Obsidian); my work notes are still mostly in emacs/orgmode. But if I need to open a big-ass text file, or process something in a pure text environment without anything helping me or trying to preserve formatting... yeah, it's probably still Sublime.
  • JAMES201 2y ago
    [dead]
• mcflubbins 2y ago
  Sublime text is the best. I change _one_ setting (disable word wrap by default) and I have an entirely usable editor, I then install syntax packages as needed. Its beautiful, simple, and performant.
• wvlia5 2y ago
  I implemented the Python Debugger plugin for ST
• mezod 2y ago
  Yesterday, I got laughed at for "still" using ST. Today, HN delivers.
  • james2doyle 2y ago
    I got you
• hit8run 2y ago
  I use Sublime everyday and pay for it for more than 10 years. It’s hands down the best piece of proprietary software I ever bought. I heavily customize Sublime and supercharge it with a few high quality plugins. I also contribute to the ecosystem. To another 10 sublime years.
• legend11 2y ago
  It's what i started programming with . Used it until i fell into the neovim rabbit hole . Still use it sometimes to write my notes and to make simple changes to code
• geenat 2y ago
  Sublimes' skeleton is excellent- Python extensions are a pleasure to write compared to VS Code. HOWEVER it desperately needs a UI/UX polish pass to stay competitive: * Drag and drop in the sidebar folder list. * Drag and drop tab to create 2+ column view. * Focus the open tab if a file is already open in any Sublime window.. Please stop opening duplicates- one mistake and you've overwritten your work.
  • nine_k 2y ago
    The first two points are a good illustration of how varied an audience may be. Most of the time I see people striving to make their text editor experience such that they don't have to reach for the mouse at all. The last point is a good illustration that your product may have terrible bugs that destroy user data, and still be well-loved because the overall experience is slick, and certain other capabilities are second to none.
• codeslord 2y ago
  I appreciate all of them— VS Code, Vi, Emacs, Sublime, JetBrains, Cursor. At the end of the day, they’re all text editors, and each has its own strengths.
• antfarm 2y ago
  I still like TextMate.
• readingnews 2y ago
  Used to use sublime, and wanted to purchase a license, but it is only good for the version you are on. Since I use gentoo and it upgrades frequently, my license would require me to hold it back, and eventually it will break. How do others deal with this? Just keep purchasing a license?
  • cruffle_duffle 2y ago
    That is kind of why so many software companies switched to subscription models.
  • smitelli 2y ago
    I used ST2 for like five years in its unregistered state. (I rationalized that by telling myself that nothing I used it for made me money, but I still feel a little gross about it.) In practice it was no problem. I paid for an ST3 license, then I paid again for an ST4 license. Whenever ST5 comes out, if they ask, I'll pay for that too.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• robinhood 2y ago
  Sublime is extraordinary. It's one of the softwares I've loved the most, by far. Even today, it's always opened and I use it for quick fixes and code browsing. However, despite my fondness for it, VS Code, and now Cursor, have largely taken over for me. Cursor, in particular, has literally completely transformed how I code. And yes, it's slower and more bloated, but the value-added of Cursor is worse it.
  • tclancy 2y ago
    That is an early candidate for Freudian Slip of the Year.
    • robinhood 2y ago
      How come?
      • balls187 2y ago
        Your typo: "worse it", vs "worth it." E.g. Cusors Bloat makes it worth it, but also makes it worse.
  • cruffle_duffle 2y ago
    Bloated compared to sublime, yes. But VScode is absolutely lightweight compared to something like eclipse or one of those other heavyweight enterprise Java IDE’s. Cursor is lightweight but have you ever seen the amount of memory that thing seems to consume? Holy mother of silicone.
    • robinhood 2y ago
      I completely agree. It takes a lot of resources. Again - it's all about the value it gives in return of what it takes. For me, it's worth it. For many others, it's not.
• ShonT 2y ago
  [dead]
• geerlingguy 2y ago
  Been using it and upgrading each new version. One of the best software applications I've ever used that's both multi platform and actually-good on every platform, not just a skinned web app like Photoshop
• dividedbyzero 2y ago
  I don't really use it as a (lightweight) IDE or the like anymore, but as a place to keep unstructured notes and snippets and the like because SublimeText never ever loses anything unsaved. It's pretty much indispensable at this point, whenever I compose something a bit longer or have some text to do a search-replace on or just some text I need three steps later in what I'm doing, it goes in another tab in Sublime. I have at least one tab I re-use since before Covid-19, it's absolutely fantastic how stable it is. Love it for that.
  • stuff4ben 2y ago
    That's interesting. I use BBEdit for that purpose and VSCode for code editing. I really don't like BBEdit's layout except for log viewing and unsaved snipets/notes. I might have to try Sublime now...
• christiangenco 2y ago
  I freakin' love Sublime Text but the AI chat features of Cursor make all of the benefits in this post irrelevant. It's fast? Not as fast as an LLM. LSP code completion? Not as good as LLM completions aware of your entire codebase at once. Snippets? These don't matter if an LLM can just make them up on the fly. We've entered a new paradigm of what it means to be a good code editor. I'd love if Sublime added the LLM chat and code diff from Cursor but I think the new way to edit code is going to look a lot more like having a conversation (text or voice) with an LLM that's making the changes for you.
  • zaphod420 2y ago
    Deep understanding and being able to reason about problems is more important than speed. Offloading too much to LLMs has a detrimental effect on our brains. I'm not saying don't use LLMs. Use them in ways that increase your skills, and be wary of using them in ways that atrophy your skills.
  • james2doyle 2y ago
    AI LSPs are coming. There are about half a dozen of them right now that you can find on GitHub, but I haven't been able to get any of them working really nicely and Sublime. But I have faith that eventually they'll mature up and a good one will surface as the go-to solution.
• emigre 2y ago
  I love Sublime Text and would use it and pay for a license regularly if it were open source.
• toastercat 2y ago
  Sublime Text is my primary editor. I had a brief 2 years where I used VSCode and got addicted to plugins, until I realized I was spending too much time configuring plugins and went back to Sublime Text with the release of ST4. It was mind-boggling to me after those 2 years how much faster ST was than VSCode. The LSP plugin was icing on the cake. Even in instances where I lack LSP, Sublime Text 4's context-aware autocomplete/finder works surprisingly well. The only thing I really find myself missing is a visual debugger. I've tried Neovim and Zed -- Sublime Text is still faster and more polished in my experience. It embodies the "do one thing well" philosophy perfectly. Also, Sublime Merge is awesome.
• zaphod420 2y ago
  I use neovim, but I also pay for sublime text because it's just good.
• Minor49er 2y ago
  I had been considering switching to VS Code because of its plugin support, but decided against it because it couldn't regex-grep a codebase anywhere nearly as fast as Sublime Text, or with extended regex features
• kigiri 2y ago
  What I love most is how well "out of the box" sublime work for me. Even on a fresh install it's very usable without doing anything, I usually install about 3 extensions (not counting specific language syntax support). Integrated LSP would be nice to have, but most of the time I don't use it and I like to be able to turn it of and have the simple autocomplete that is very predictable and unintrusive. And performance, I know Zed showed some benchmarks on how fast it is, I still had some hang up from time to time with it and some crash, I can't suffer jankiness in my editor, it stress me out. Thanks for the work done on Sublime.
  • james2doyle 2y ago
    I think the best thing about Sublime's LSP plugin is that you have everything off by default and then only turn it on on a per-project basis. I actually have an example of that in the article. Do a search on the article for "eslint" and you'll find the section where I show ESLint being disabled and Biome being enabled
• bun_terminator 2y ago
  [dead]
• brachkow 2y ago
  Few years ago I wrote a guide about turning Sublime Text into IDE which will be on-par with IDE features of VSCode while retaining performance benefits of ST — https://www.brachkow.com/notes/sublime-text/ https://www.brachkow.com/notes/sublime-text/. Sadly, I almost stopped using Sublime Text around a half year ago. Development of AI coding tools made flexible UI plugins support a must. Right now when I'm using ST as main editor I feel like 0.5x developer compared to myself and my colleagues with Cursor, because of being limited to very lazy and limited Copilot suggestions passed via LSP.
  • james2doyle 2y ago
    I think once we get some good LSPs that can do AI work then you can come back to Sublime! There are some out there. I have tried about 3. But they haven't really worked well for me yet. I think the best option for me right now is just a simple build system that calls Ollama or a remote API. I don't want code completion. I usually want some type of "enhanced google"
• didip 2y ago
  I tried really hard to stay on Sublime Text. But one fateful day, the Go plugin made itself hard to install so I downloaded VSCode, installed all the useful plugins, and never look back.
• silverwind 2y ago
  Using Sublime since 2008. Never liked the bloated and telemetry-infested mess that VSCode is.
• lbrito 2y ago
  Sublime user since 2014. I tried vim and nvim. Its just more overall effort and I'm never as productive as with Sublime. I tried zed and it doesn't work with Linux. I briefly opened vscode but haven't tried it out earnestly yet. I think its mostly muscle memory. I'm just too used to the shortcuts, workflow etc. You can teach new tricks to an old dog; I can learn and get used to another editor, but ultimately I always ask myself -- why? I have to get shit done and unless the new thing has some other benefit that compensates for the productivity decline in the first weeks/months/years, it will always be a hard sell.
  • james2doyle 2y ago
    I hear you. Zed does supply a Sublime key mapping. But it isn't the same. There is something off about it. With all the investment in Zed and its GPU-based rendering, it still doesn't feel as snappy as Sublime to me!
  • 369548684892826 2y ago
    > I tried zed and it doesn't work with Linux Did you mean to say Windows? It definitely does work with Linux
    • lbrito 2y ago
      I mean Linux. I know they offer a Linux build, I've tried it. It doesn't work out of the box on arguably the most popular Linux distribution. The "fixes" are doing a bunch of config I frankly don't have time for. https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/14204 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/14204 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/14237 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/14237
      • 369548684892826 2y ago
        Fair enough, I've only tried it on Kubuntu 24.04 and it's been really good.
• ddingus 2y ago
  So do I. Thank you devs.
• kunley 2y ago
  Also: great API for creating own plugins.
• sadcodemonkey 2y ago
  I went back to Sublime Text after trying VS Code for a few months. VS Code is very nice, when it works. My main problems had to do with the extension ecosystem. It felt very chaotic: it was hard to figure out which ones to install to get the functionality I wanted. Updates to Python extensions sometimes caused instability, crashing the editor. And I found it difficult to set extension preferences: the UI tries to be slick but in practice it ends up being clunky and awkward. On top of that, there was an annoying bug on Linux, related to Electron, that prevented the Save dialog box from appearing properly, which... kind of sucks. https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/32857 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/32857 Sublime is the perfect programmer's editor for dynamic languages like Python, and for general text editing. It's lightning fast. LSP is just enough to be helpful without getting in the way. Workspaces work the way I would expect. I prefer editing JSON files for preferences over navigating a complex GUI. Best money I've ever spent on a license, and I'll happily renew just for maintenance updates, to be honest.
  • cosmic_cheese 2y ago
    The way Sublime makes a strong effort to not only smooth out per-platform kinks but also better integrate into each platform it runs on is definitely a factor for my choice to use it over VS Code. macOS, Windows, Linux, whatever, it works correctly everywhere without also taking a “least common denominator” approach which I really appreciate. I wish more cross platform apps would do this.
• anonymous344 2y ago
  vscode would be better than sublime, but I hate so much every notification and dialogs every time popping up when i just trying to focus on my work. for this reason i still use sublime 3, yes not the 4 because the 3 was supposed to have lifetime licesense.
• munificent 2y ago
  I love Sublime Text. It's one of my favorite pieces of software. I have it running 100% of the time on every machine I work on. It's where I write all of my personal notes, blog posts, and it's where I wrote both "Game Programming Patterns" and "Crafting Interpreters". At the same time, it's not the tool I use as an IDE. For programming, I use whatever IDE is dominant for the language I'm working in. Over time, that's been Visual C++, Visual Studio, XCode, Eclipse, IntelliJ, and most recently VS Code. That doesn't mean to me that I want Sublime to turn into an IDE. I like that it's lighterweight than that. It's the perfect sweet spot for me of rich enough to handle piles of notes and documents and small scale code editing, but not so huge and cumbersome that it gets in my way.
  • ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    I've been a big fan of VS Code but the latest updates have shown Microsoft simply can't shake their addiction to bloating software with unnecessary features, so likely back to Sublime Text I go.
    • zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 2y ago
      I've been running vscodium for a couple of years now, and they rip out the MS specific stuff so no ChatGPT and so forth. I haven't noticed any slowdowns. Maybe give it a try? https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/
      • ToucanLoucan 2y ago
        Well that'd be just about perfect! Thank you stranger!
  • electrondood 2y ago
    100% ditto for me. It's the interface for my external brain. The file search and global search are exactly what I need, and the multi-cursor editing, etc. are fantastic. I always have my IDE up on one monitor and Sublime on the other.
• dazzaji 2y ago
  I’ve been using Sublime Text many times a day since around 2010 for my daily and weekly logs. My Mac is set to use it as the default for .py, .md, and .txt files, so I find myself in Sublime all the time—and I absolutely love it! Sure, I develop in VS Code, but I live in sublime. It’s fast, clean, and dependable. Thanks to the team for building such a fantastic editor!
• wnevets 2y ago
  I love sublime text but it has been feeling like its falling behind other editors. Whenever see someone showing off a tip or trick in VSCode I am disappointment to learn it doesn't exist in sublime text and there isn't a package for it.
• alfredxing 2y ago
  I love Sublime and am probably the only one at work still using it. LSP support is nice but there doesn't seem to be great support for a TypeScript LSP server that works reliably with large projects. VSCode is slow here, too, but there are some specific optimizations they do I think that help a bit.
• erdaniels 2y ago
  I love it. I had to drop it temporarily recently for a go project using bazel that simply just doesn't work well in many editors other than Intellij. But I got back to it recently on another go project and god damn it's so fast. I'm so much more productive using it. Global symbol search is always amazing and everything is always so damn snappy. If I could buy a lifetime license I would. I hope it doesn't go away for as long as I want to write code
• curvaturearth 2y ago
  Sublime Text is a great piece of software
• deleted 2y ago
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• BorisMelnik 2y ago
  I am gen x and stuck in my ways. I still love Notepad++ What are people using now instead of this that is supposedly better?
• htamas 2y ago
  I used to use Sublime Text around 8-10 years ago, but once VS Code became a thing, I switched to that, then to Zed last year. Inspired by this post, I decided to give ST another try. Here's how it went: 1. Installed ST via brew, all good so far. Let's open my hobby project written in Go. 2. Syntax highlighting works by default, great! But uh-oh, there's no autocomplete or any LSP. Alright, let's install one. 3. Hmm I need to install package control first - right I'm starting to remember now. I'm thinking it's strange how they are still two separate entities. 4. Ok, PC installed. Let's install a... ok Package Control crashed... 5. Copying the error from the debug console points me to a two-year-old forum post where the accepted solution is to either remove OpenSSL (?!) or install a beta PC version (outdated now) or try to uninstall Package Control and reinstall it. 6. Ok, how do I uninstall Package Control? The documentation says they are just package files stored on my machine. It doesn't tell me where those files are, and I can't find a menu point to open the folder containing them... 7. Open Zed.
• deleted 2y ago
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• ziml77 2y ago
  I love it too, though I never use it for working with entire projects but rather for smaller text editing tasks because it's so snappy. It's my scratchpad for notes and stuff, I will investigate and edit single files, and I use it for find-and-replace within a directory. Though for the single file operations, it really depends on how I'm currently interacting with the system. If I'm browsing the files in a GUI then I'll use ST. If I'm in a terminal I'll use neovim. One enhancement I would love to see to ST is better large file support. If I open a 330MB CSV in Notepad++ it displays instantly and uses 350MB of RAM. If I open the same file in ST it takes a few seconds to show and uses 1.5GB of RAM. (This is with both editors using no plugins beyond whatever is default)
• sigmonsays 2y ago
  I use sublime text to edit all my notes for both work and personal. It runs on every computer and laptop I have. I love sublime text. I'm on version 3, i think there is a 4 out but nothing is drawing me to use it.
• sr3d 2y ago
  I love using Sublime for Python. It's still my go-to IDE for development.
• jd3 2y ago
  sublime still has the lowest latency compared to any other major text editor i've tried
• mgaunard 2y ago
  I also prefer Sublime Text to all of the clones. I'm more of less forced to use VS Code at present and it's an overengineered slow mess.
• ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I still like BBEdit, and I've been using it for over 30 years. https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/ https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/
• aerb 2y ago
  You should fix your atom feed
• gamedever 2y ago
  I'm going to comment on sublime merge since I see others have. (I'm a paid user and paid again for the latest year or whatever the term of support is). To be honest, I'm not sure what this product does or does better than all the other similar apps. VSCode has git tools. There's gitlens add on. There's also github's git UI app and some other ones. https://git-scm.com/downloads/guis https://git-scm.com/downloads/guis In all of them I see diffs. I can stash/stage/commit. I'm not sure what "amazing" features one has over the other. What I can't do * I can't copy text from anywhere in the UI. I might be looking at a diff, a path appears, I want to open that path in my editor, so, I want to be able to copy the path from Sublime Merge and paste the path into my editor or shell. Sorry, S.O.L. * It puts headings on diff sections. I want to copy text that from Sublime Merge and search for the identifier in my editor. Sorry, S.O.L. * I want to search for things across changes - sorry, S.O.L. - "someIdenifier" doesn't exist in the current code. When was it deleted? Let me search. Also a minor nit. I hate that it doesn't respect platform conventions. The default folder to open should not be root, it should be my user folder (or something) but definitely not root. No other app on my Mac does this. If you want yours to be root find, add a pref, but by default it should do what other apps do. --- As for Sublime Text - Of course you can use whatever you want. I used SlickEdit since ~1994 through ~2015 (forgot when I switched to VSCode). The thing is, you should at least know what you're missing. In VSCode I use it's SSH remote feature to connect to my linux machine. This is not simple SSH file sharing (Slickedit had that and FTP even). VSCode starts a custom server on the remote machine and uses it to coordinate. Examples: * open remote /usr/my/project1 VSCode loads that project remotely. It edits the files locally (meaning when you open a file, it copies it from my linux box back to the mac in the local editor. IIUC, it proxies the language server stuff so it launches language server support on linux remotely. This means all the TS/C++/Rust etc intellisense stuff is being indexed on Linux in that project's environment. VSCode opens a terminal to /usr/my/project1 in VSCode. I can start running shell commands. I used to use separate terminals, external to VSCode, and I still do. But the nice thing about the VS code ones is they're per project. If I switch over the a different project (multiple projects at once), each one has it's own terminal, relevant to that project VSCode monitors and forwards servers from that terminal. If I type `python3 -m http.server 9000` in the VSCode terminal, it will launch python3 and then VSCode will automatically forward that port to my mac. I can open http://locahost:9000 http://locahost:9000 on my mac and access the server running on linux (yes I can do that manually. It's nice that it's zero effort) VSCode debugs remotely. If I launch the debugger it will debugger (gdb/llvm) on linux but the UI will be local (mac). I can set breakpoints in VSCode in mac, it will set them remotely on linux. I can view data etc. VScode opens local UIs remotely. If, in the terminal for /usr/me/project1 I `cd ../project2 && code .` or `code ../project2` (so these commands are running on linux), it spawns a new window on Mac connected via SSH automatically to /usr/me/project2 VSCode's terminal is using an editor window and keeping it synchronized with the remote shell. This means it's more responsive than SSH from a normal terminal. In a normal terminal IIUC. I type 'x' on my keyboard. It's sent to the remote server over SSH. The shell over there emits an 'x' which is sent back to my local machine. In VSCode. I type 'x', the 'x' is put in the editor control that's shadowing the terminal. It's assumed the remote machine will return 'x' but it doesn't wait for it. Rather, you're typing locally, and it's catching up. So, even and a slow connection you can type faster in VSCode's terminal than you could in a standard SSH terminal. I'm sure there are places where this is not perfect but the general experience is it's way more responsive . This is a short list of some of the things that VSCode is doing that AFAIK, most other editors are not (yet?). There's lot of other features though. I have lots of issues with VSCode. I wish it had keyboard macros. I wish it it's undo system didn't suck. I wish it did auto backups like Slickedit did. I wish it had search and replace across a folder tree with undo like Slickedit did. I wish it had column select (different than multi-cursor as a column can go into virtual space and multi-cursor can't) All that said, the pluses outweigh the minuses and I can't go back.
• McUsr 2y ago
  I'm glad you're fond of Sublime Text. Personally I'm totally sold on 'Vim' I have lsp through 'YouCompleteMe', which works great for C-languages, and I have Automatic update of tags with 'GutenTagsPlus', And I also use 'c-scope', 'Git' and 'Id-utils', and I have 'ulti-snips' which I probably use too little. So yeah, this and the GCC toolchain, is pretty much the ultimate for me, and I have tried a lot of Editors through the years.
• kapitanluffy 2y ago
  If you (or anyone here) feel Sublime Text is dead, the community is super active at discord. You can actively engage with ST devs and package developers there. Just head over to the unofficial discord server: https://discord.sublimetext.io/ https://discord.sublimetext.io/
• jsx2 2y ago
  [dead]
• DigitalSea 2y ago
  I love Sublime Text editor. Have been using it for 15 years now and despite the fact most of my development is done inside of VSCode or other editors, I still use ST for large files and notes. I can confidently open up a 1gb SQL dump in ST and it won't break a sweat, try that in VSCode and you can see it freeze up for a bit and that's on a decent machine too.
• hatmanstack 2y ago
  How dare you.
• ponsfrilus 2y ago
  Nobody mentionned *Pulsar* (https://pulsar-edit.dev/ https://pulsar-edit.dev/) which is the community maintained Atom since its sunsetting (Dec 2022). Atom was created by Nathan Sobo, who is now working on Zed (https://zed.dev/ https://zed.dev/).
• jchook 2y ago
  ELI5 Why use Sublime over NeoVim?
• andreyazimov 2y ago
  I'm also still using Sublime with ChatGPT. I've tried Cursor for a week and went back to Sublime. I wonder if Sublime will ever have AI integration like Cursor
• nzd 2y ago
  I'm sort of married to Sublime Text. I install all my plugins via "git clone" and never Package Control. Then I study their details, customize them in the source, modify keybindings etc. If you are this attached to a tool, it becomes an extension to your body. P.S. No need to say that I update my plugins through code review!
• 0n0n0m0uz 2y ago
  I use it too. What do most people consider as a better alternative?
  • rglynn 2y ago
    Zed, unless you are on Windows. VSCode sucks on the performance front, which is why Sublime was still popular. Now Zed has taken that niche (while also having a lot of modern features).
• EmileSonneveld 2y ago
  Even non coders enjoy it. I got 2 people hooked up that now use it as a notes app.
• JAMES201 2y ago
  [dead]
• rglynn 2y ago
  IMO the main thing going for Sublime was performance, since VScode lacks in that area. Unfortunately, Zed now exists and I see no reason to use Sublime other than habit/specific use cases.
  • wetpaws 2y ago
    [dead]
• sabhiram 2y ago
  Between vi(m) and VSCode - sublime has grown increasingly less useful in my day to day life. Used to use it exclusively, but it has lately been squeezed on both ends due to increasing server side development needs.
• apocalyptic0n3 2y ago
  I don't often use Sublime for coding nowadays (I'm generally using PhpStorm) but I have it open at almost all times as a scratchpad. It's so dang quick that opening it to jot something down or examine JSON is instant. And so performant that if I forget to close it, my system is never bothered by it. And it retains unsaved files forever – a must for a scratchpad in my opinion, and something many others fail to do. Long term notes get converted to Obsidian, but Sublime is just so easy to get something quick going that I love it and happily pay for a license. Same goes for Sublime Merge, which is the best Git GUI I've ever used.
• 4k93n2 2y ago
  my favourite feature that i havnt seen in any other editors that ive tried is being able to ctrl + click on a tab to create a temporary split, then you just have to click any tab again to remove any splits
• akullpp 2y ago
  Sublime has a place in my heart, it was my first editor as IDE when I started 15 years ago. Such a great piece of software, thanks for all the work!
• nsonha 2y ago
  pretty elaborated way to say "because it's fast"
• t_sea 2y ago
  TIL my daily text editor is ancient enough to warrant a post about how old it is. Thanks for that.
• soheil 2y ago
  I avoid VS Code like the plague, been resisting it for years now, I still have the scars of ie6 to know no MS product can be trusted. Not to mention how bloated it already is, uses Electron to function, I can already imagine its core engineers sitting somewhere similar to an XP background sipping on ice tea and saying to themselves "who needs to optimize code editors, devs have millions of cores anyway" the phrase "compile to native" was never uttered in their blue and green background life. So no I'm not going to use a freaking browser to write code in no matter how much the hn hivemind really wants me to. Sublime has been sublime for over a decade that I've been using it, I prefer version 3 and still have all the old packages/themes compatible with it. I have my favorite theme Afterglow. I've made so many changes to it, there is a command on save in every project folder I have for things like quick deploying apps be it a quick npm build + rsync or more complex capistrano prod deploy command, or sending a ctrl signal to a sock file to have chatgpt's response appear after asking it anything and pressing cmd+s in any open .md file. It's glorious seeing its response stream right there and then. Screw people making bloated IDEs and feel sorry for people who use them because they don't know any better. Sublime is pure, extremely quick to search or load massive files, I often have over 20 folders/windows open each with hundreds of dual column tabs. Never have to close it because it's running out of memory or bogging down my system, never. It's written well, the person who made it cares for writing good code and making good software. That's all you really need to know. Sublime is the way to go and will most likely will be for the next 10 years at least for me.