8 ms·

Sublime Text Development Status

79 points by davidbarker 12y ago

dj-wonk 12y ago
Is it just me, or did the title cause anyone else to wonder if this was real or a parody of TextMate 2?
- holyjaw 12y ago
  Just you.
  - dj-wonk 12y ago
    The previous title was changed, mercifully.
- menssen 12y ago
  I didn't see the original title, but I still thought it might be a parody of TM2. The TextMate saga is a big part of the reason why I have become reluctant to make any non-OSS tools part of my daily life. (Although I might not say that had I not seen the vim light.)
bsimpson 12y ago
"in the works" is a bit premature. Isn't 3 still a beta? The race for 2020 President of the US is in the works too, if your bar is "someone is thinking about it what it might be like." [original title was "Sublime Text 4 In The Works"]
- sickmate 12y ago
  To be fair, ST3 is pretty stable for everyday use.
  - p3lim 12y ago
    Even the dev version of ST3 is.
  - Dolimiter 12y ago
    It is, I've used it since release on a permanent basis with no problems.
altyus 12y ago
Isn't Sublime text 3 still in beta?
- elithrar 12y ago
  http://www.sublimetext.com/3 http://www.sublimetext.com/3 > Sublime Text 3 is currently in beta. The latest build is 3059. Yep. Which makes this announcement extremely odd.
  - forrestthewoods 12y ago
    The announcement isn't odd. The bullshit HN title is.
  - meritt 12y ago
    It's actually 3062 from 5 May 2014. http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev
  - georgemcbay 12y ago
    Coincidentally, 3059 is also the projected release date year for Sublime Text 3.
thejosh 12y ago
Hang on, they have a single developer who is also the director? Yet they sell the IDE for a hefty sum with a healthy amount of "known" users https://sublime.wbond.net/stats https://sublime.wbond.net/stats - if they even have 10% of these are paying customers they should be able to afford more staff. Sublime must be the most mismanaged profitable company.
- ben336 12y ago
  They don't enforce paying for the editor. Those users may or may not be actually paying. You're right that it does seem like they could afford more staff. But its also pretty clear the guy who created it wants to write code and not deal with the other parts of being a "company" (see lack of public responses/updates). He created it, so he can market it/develop it as he sees fit. I admire what he's done, and respect his choice if he's really not expanding because he likes to code and doesn't want to deal with running a business. But I also now use Vim because I didn't trust Sublime's future.
  - codexon 12y ago
    I tried it and there was a pop up box every few minutes. It is unusable without a license.
    - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
      I use it full-time without a license and only get it twice or thrice a day at best (and the esc key is quickly hit); 'unusable' is a bit harsh.
      - codexon 12y ago
        Well I saw it pop up twice within a matter of minutes. Popups cause a huge break in my concentration especially when I am coding so it is unusable to me.
    - levosmetalo 12y ago
      Does having pop-up box once in a few days really makes it unusable without a license?
ben336 12y ago
Better title: Sublime Text is still alive. The synopsis seems to be that development is continuing, there are long term plans, but that development is slow and will probably continue that way at least until 3 is released (which there is no date given for). So basically nothing has changed :) [Edit: Title fixed to be less link-baity. Thanks!]
nobotty 12y ago
Don't companies usually need to pay ycombinator to place ads on HN? Please stop suggesting anyone is interested in closed source software.
- bsg75 12y ago
  Plenty of HN users are: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sublimetext#!/all/sort_by_date/0/sublimetext https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sublimetext#!/all/sort_by_date/0/s...
- cstrat 12y ago
  haha who is this guy. fight the machine, bro.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  Isn't ycombinator all about creating and advertising for (new) companies, often with closed-source software and for-profit goals?
jbergstroem 12y ago
I think the biggest problem with information from the Sublime office is that it's "just words". My take on this situation is that perceived activity were driven by software updates and presence in the forums. Both stopped a fair while ago (well, one release the last 6 months: http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev). The forums unfortunately also deteriorated to bickering between the "you're paying for future promises" and "you payed for a working editor up to date". Why people bicker at all is beyond me, but I guess both camps has enough opinion to engage. All in all, Sublime Text is excellent software – just as TextMate was (is, if you prefer) – before the business of "one man bands" most likely removed fun from the equation.
clark-kent 12y ago
It's worth saying, I admire how they run the company.
desireco42 12y ago
I use to mock textmate users over the very same thing. Yet I never felt Sublime is as closed and distant as TM. So I like it and use it, paid for it, totally worth it, however it seems it is going the way of TextMate. Which makes me worry I will have to continue to use Vim for next decade. Vim is great, but we need to find something better. I think, if I were author, I would try to find a way to incorporate what makes editors like Vim awesome, what makes Emacs awesome is already implemented several times. This other part is still elusive and could benefit innovation.
darrenf15e 12y ago
darrenf15e 12y ago
chdir 12y ago
The finesse of Sublime Text is admirable (considering it's mostly 1 guy's work). However the ratio of open/closed bugs on Github isn't too comforting. I hope they expand the team soon.
aeturnum 12y ago
Oh, Sublime Text 4 announced. How nice. I'm glad I didn't waste money on Sublime Text 3 (given how little it changes over 2). Don't see much of a reason to buy 4 either - 6-8 seems like the sweet spot. /s
- joesb 12y ago
  After paying for Sublime Text 2 and saw how it is abandon almost right after the released, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm just going to keep using Sublime Text 3,4,5,...N in trial version mode. I love it, but I'm not going to pay for beta App. And if I paid for promised of released app, you'd better makes me feel like you are abandoning me right away. I'll gladly pay when I see that they updates some minor version for a while after release.
zyxley 12y ago
Honestly, at this point the only things actually keeping me using ST over Atom are (1) the SFTP plugin, (2) per-project settings, and (3) click-and-drag multiple cursors... and Atom plugins have already started making headway on 1 and 2.
- Dolimiter 12y ago
  Atom is too slow to be useable in real world projects. It's fine for hobby coding a few files. But try opening anything larger: it's painfully horribly slow. This is not something that can be fixed; it's because they are using a browser to render the code. Therefore Atom has no chance of replacing Sublime Text. Sorry.
  - gomesnayagam 12y ago
    Are you not trolling? I dont think so is allowed in HN
- tmikaeld 12y ago
  Atom is open source and have gained popularity and momentum very quickly - it's also backed by the king of source code. I believe Atom will run laps around ST before 4 development is even started.
  - jonah 12y ago
    I doubt they'll ever get the performance of ST though. I use ST3 daily and have tried Atom a couple times, it's just not fluid enough to feel comfortable with.
- moepstar 12y ago
  At least 3) is adressed with Chocolat, an other text editor for Mac OS. I've came to like it while pondering dropping 70$ on ST when i got Chocolat for free in some kind of software bundle (can't recall which), so there's that..
politician 12y ago
As a paying customer of ST2, "meh". ST3 was not a compelling upgrade, and, IMHO it's about time Jon open-sources this editor. A significant amount of its value is in the extensibility system and package discovery is basically owned by Package Control. This is a community project, stop being a bottleneck.
- jamesaguilar 12y ago
  What's in it for him? Likely loss of his primary revenue stream and control over the project's destiny? It doesn't seem like a compelling move.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - rolandnsharp 12y ago
    I'd like to see a Kickstarter for it to be released to open source.
    - jiggy2011 12y ago
      Trading a continual long term revenue source for a single one off payment, probably isn't very compelling.
      - nikatwork 12y ago
        The risk being that a slow development pace will allow Atom to eat ST's lunch. Then any future revenue falls off a cliff. Use Kickstarter to open source it and you both cash in and do the community a favour.
        jiggy2011 12y ago
        Last I tried Atom it's quite a long way from offering any significant advantage over ST and has it's own risks due to not having a clear revenue model. If the ST devs believe that they can sell 100K licenses over say 5-10 years at $60 each then that sets the kickstarter goal in the region of $6M without offering any rewards for backers which seems like a pretty unrealistic target.
farawayea 12y ago
Sublime Text's support is horrible and so is the developer's policy regarding updates. They're not going to get any more money from me.
- Dolimiter 12y ago
  It baffles me why the ST company don't communicate better. I'm a huge supporter of Sublime Text because it enables me to be hugely more productive. Everyone I know who uses it can never go back. BUT! It's run as if it was a hobby project coded in mom's basement. He surely must be earning enough money to get more people on board.
  - jinushaun 12y ago
    Because it's still just one guy's hobby project.
  - farawayea 12y ago
    They haven't responded to emails sent more than one year ago. I don't think it will survive after Atom becomes popular and stable. He had a lot of customers at some point. That's when he should have brought in more people to do things right. He chose to do it all on his own, get himself burnt out and completely stop communicating. I don't see a future for this project if it doesn't get open sourced. The main problem is there's absolutely no support once he releases a stable ST version. You never have anything stable they support.
joesb 12y ago
Already planned for Sublime text 4? Probably another rewrite? I assumed the same faith of Sublime Text 2 is happening with Sublime Text 3 after its release, then. Dead project after people paid to make it released. Really, how many version does he need to reimplement the same features again and again? I'm all for him getting my money more than once for Sublime Text. But is it really that hard to at least evolve the Same editor instead of rewriting it over and over just so he can get another round of money?
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  > Already planned for Sublime text 4? Probably another rewrite? I assumed the same faith of Sublime Text 2 is happening with Sublime Text 3 after its release, then. Which is exactly why I'm still running the evaluation license of ST 3; I paid for ST 2, but shortly after it got out of beta it was pretty much abandoned in favor of another years-long beta period for ST 3. I'm not falling for that one again. Likewise I fell into the 'early access' trap for Steam games, where a developer gets rich without any obligation to deliver. It worked (and was successful) for Minecraft, but other games have yet to deliver.
  - joesb 12y ago
    > Which is exactly why I'm still running the evaluation license of ST 3; I paid for ST 2 I do the exact same thing. I might pay for ST3 if the developer can convince me that he is going to put some update in ST3 after it is released.
Derbasti 12y ago
There have always been three text editors: Vim, Emacs, and the closed source Mac editor de jour. I used to think that if only that closed source editor would go open source, it could enter that timeless transcendance of Emacs and Vim. But now Textmate is open source, and now there is Atom, I am not so sure any more. Neither Textmate nor Sublime Text, nor Atom seem to be able to stand up to the two old ones in term of development community and community involvement. Maybe it is a question of novelty. Vim still has unmatched key bindings. Emacs atill has unmatched total flexibility. Textmate had snippets (which now everyone has), Sublime Text has multiple cursors (which is maybe not a big enough improvements over macros to matter). Light Table seemed interesting, but probably too narrow in scope. My hope is that Atom's openness will finally allow it to transcend its brethren. But I don't see a compelling reason for that yet.
- weavie 12y ago
  Also what makes Vim and Emacs timeless is that they run everywhere. Command Line and Windowed, over SSH or on your machine. This is something no other 'modern' text editor even tries to match.
- Dolimiter 12y ago
  The notion that Sublime Text's USP is "multiple cursors" is absurd. It is a lightning fast next-generation editor. It changed the game entirely when released, and still nothing comes close.
  - fsckin 12y ago
    Do you edit very large files? The regex engine and UI update speed feels incredibly slow to me when making complex changes across thousands of lines in a 200MB file, while vim or grep/awk/etc have no such problem.
    - Dolimiter 12y ago
      No, I don't edit 200MB files, and I suspect that that is not what Sublime Text was optimized for. I would use another tool for that.
gomesnayagam 12y ago
stick to eclipse for hassle free development
- Dolimiter 12y ago
  Are you trolling? I didn't think that was allowed on HN.
  - gomesnayagam 12y ago
    No, if you cant pay for worthfull feature provide by sublime text then use any open source, that was my personal opinion
jbrooksuk 12y ago
I'm confident in Jon's ability here. They previously hired another developer, but it seems that didn't work out. ST4 hasn't been announced yet, just that it's something they want to do - which is great! I look forward to the August releases.

79 points by davidbarker 12y ago

dj-wonk 12y ago

Is it just me, or did the title cause anyone else to wonder if this was real or a parody of TextMate 2?

holyjaw 12y ago
Just you.
- dj-wonk 12y ago
  The previous title was changed, mercifully.
menssen 12y ago
I didn't see the original title, but I still thought it might be a parody of TM2. The TextMate saga is a big part of the reason why I have become reluctant to make any non-OSS tools part of my daily life. (Although I might not say that had I not seen the vim light.)

bsimpson 12y ago

"in the works" is a bit premature. Isn't 3 still a beta? The race for 2020 President of the US is in the works too, if your bar is "someone is thinking about it what it might be like." [original title was "Sublime Text 4 In The Works"]

sickmate 12y ago
To be fair, ST3 is pretty stable for everyday use.
- p3lim 12y ago
  Even the dev version of ST3 is.
- Dolimiter 12y ago
  It is, I've used it since release on a permanent basis with no problems.

altyus 12y ago

Isn't Sublime text 3 still in beta?

elithrar 12y ago
http://www.sublimetext.com/3 http://www.sublimetext.com/3 > Sublime Text 3 is currently in beta. The latest build is 3059. Yep. Which makes this announcement extremely odd.
- forrestthewoods 12y ago
  The announcement isn't odd. The bullshit HN title is.
- meritt 12y ago
  It's actually 3062 from 5 May 2014. http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  Coincidentally, 3059 is also the projected release date year for Sublime Text 3.

thejosh 12y ago

Hang on, they have a single developer who is also the director? Yet they sell the IDE for a hefty sum with a healthy amount of "known" users https://sublime.wbond.net/stats https://sublime.wbond.net/stats - if they even have 10% of these are paying customers they should be able to afford more staff. Sublime must be the most mismanaged profitable company.

ben336 12y ago
They don't enforce paying for the editor. Those users may or may not be actually paying. You're right that it does seem like they could afford more staff. But its also pretty clear the guy who created it wants to write code and not deal with the other parts of being a "company" (see lack of public responses/updates). He created it, so he can market it/develop it as he sees fit. I admire what he's done, and respect his choice if he's really not expanding because he likes to code and doesn't want to deal with running a business. But I also now use Vim because I didn't trust Sublime's future.
- codexon 12y ago
  I tried it and there was a pop up box every few minutes. It is unusable without a license.
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    I use it full-time without a license and only get it twice or thrice a day at best (and the esc key is quickly hit); 'unusable' is a bit harsh.
    - codexon 12y ago
      Well I saw it pop up twice within a matter of minutes. Popups cause a huge break in my concentration especially when I am coding so it is unusable to me.
  - levosmetalo 12y ago
    Does having pop-up box once in a few days really makes it unusable without a license?

ben336 12y ago

Better title: Sublime Text is still alive. The synopsis seems to be that development is continuing, there are long term plans, but that development is slow and will probably continue that way at least until 3 is released (which there is no date given for). So basically nothing has changed :) [Edit: Title fixed to be less link-baity. Thanks!]

nobotty 12y ago

Don't companies usually need to pay ycombinator to place ads on HN? Please stop suggesting anyone is interested in closed source software.

bsg75 12y ago
Plenty of HN users are: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sublimetext#!/all/sort_by_date/0/sublimetext https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sublimetext#!/all/sort_by_date/0/s...
cstrat 12y ago
haha who is this guy. fight the machine, bro.
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
Isn't ycombinator all about creating and advertising for (new) companies, often with closed-source software and for-profit goals?

jbergstroem 12y ago

I think the biggest problem with information from the Sublime office is that it's "just words". My take on this situation is that perceived activity were driven by software updates and presence in the forums. Both stopped a fair while ago (well, one release the last 6 months: http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev). The forums unfortunately also deteriorated to bickering between the "you're paying for future promises" and "you payed for a working editor up to date". Why people bicker at all is beyond me, but I guess both camps has enough opinion to engage. All in all, Sublime Text is excellent software – just as TextMate was (is, if you prefer) – before the business of "one man bands" most likely removed fun from the equation.

clark-kent 12y ago

It's worth saying, I admire how they run the company.

desireco42 12y ago

I use to mock textmate users over the very same thing. Yet I never felt Sublime is as closed and distant as TM. So I like it and use it, paid for it, totally worth it, however it seems it is going the way of TextMate. Which makes me worry I will have to continue to use Vim for next decade. Vim is great, but we need to find something better. I think, if I were author, I would try to find a way to incorporate what makes editors like Vim awesome, what makes Emacs awesome is already implemented several times. This other part is still elusive and could benefit innovation.

darrenf15e 12y ago

chdir 12y ago

The finesse of Sublime Text is admirable (considering it's mostly 1 guy's work). However the ratio of open/closed bugs on Github isn't too comforting. I hope they expand the team soon.

aeturnum 12y ago

Oh, Sublime Text 4 announced. How nice. I'm glad I didn't waste money on Sublime Text 3 (given how little it changes over 2). Don't see much of a reason to buy 4 either - 6-8 seems like the sweet spot. /s

joesb 12y ago
After paying for Sublime Text 2 and saw how it is abandon almost right after the released, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm just going to keep using Sublime Text 3,4,5,...N in trial version mode. I love it, but I'm not going to pay for beta App. And if I paid for promised of released app, you'd better makes me feel like you are abandoning me right away. I'll gladly pay when I see that they updates some minor version for a while after release.

zyxley 12y ago

Honestly, at this point the only things actually keeping me using ST over Atom are (1) the SFTP plugin, (2) per-project settings, and (3) click-and-drag multiple cursors... and Atom plugins have already started making headway on 1 and 2.

Dolimiter 12y ago
Atom is too slow to be useable in real world projects. It's fine for hobby coding a few files. But try opening anything larger: it's painfully horribly slow. This is not something that can be fixed; it's because they are using a browser to render the code. Therefore Atom has no chance of replacing Sublime Text. Sorry.
- gomesnayagam 12y ago
  Are you not trolling? I dont think so is allowed in HN
tmikaeld 12y ago
Atom is open source and have gained popularity and momentum very quickly - it's also backed by the king of source code. I believe Atom will run laps around ST before 4 development is even started.
- jonah 12y ago
  I doubt they'll ever get the performance of ST though. I use ST3 daily and have tried Atom a couple times, it's just not fluid enough to feel comfortable with.
moepstar 12y ago
At least 3) is adressed with Chocolat, an other text editor for Mac OS. I've came to like it while pondering dropping 70$ on ST when i got Chocolat for free in some kind of software bundle (can't recall which), so there's that..

politician 12y ago

As a paying customer of ST2, "meh". ST3 was not a compelling upgrade, and, IMHO it's about time Jon open-sources this editor. A significant amount of its value is in the extensibility system and package discovery is basically owned by Package Control. This is a community project, stop being a bottleneck.

jamesaguilar 12y ago
What's in it for him? Likely loss of his primary revenue stream and control over the project's destiny? It doesn't seem like a compelling move.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- rolandnsharp 12y ago
  I'd like to see a Kickstarter for it to be released to open source.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    Trading a continual long term revenue source for a single one off payment, probably isn't very compelling.
    - nikatwork 12y ago
      The risk being that a slow development pace will allow Atom to eat ST's lunch. Then any future revenue falls off a cliff. Use Kickstarter to open source it and you both cash in and do the community a favour.
      - jiggy2011 12y ago
        Last I tried Atom it's quite a long way from offering any significant advantage over ST and has it's own risks due to not having a clear revenue model. If the ST devs believe that they can sell 100K licenses over say 5-10 years at $60 each then that sets the kickstarter goal in the region of $6M without offering any rewards for backers which seems like a pretty unrealistic target.

farawayea 12y ago

Sublime Text's support is horrible and so is the developer's policy regarding updates. They're not going to get any more money from me.

Dolimiter 12y ago
It baffles me why the ST company don't communicate better. I'm a huge supporter of Sublime Text because it enables me to be hugely more productive. Everyone I know who uses it can never go back. BUT! It's run as if it was a hobby project coded in mom's basement. He surely must be earning enough money to get more people on board.
- jinushaun 12y ago
  Because it's still just one guy's hobby project.
- farawayea 12y ago
  They haven't responded to emails sent more than one year ago. I don't think it will survive after Atom becomes popular and stable. He had a lot of customers at some point. That's when he should have brought in more people to do things right. He chose to do it all on his own, get himself burnt out and completely stop communicating. I don't see a future for this project if it doesn't get open sourced. The main problem is there's absolutely no support once he releases a stable ST version. You never have anything stable they support.

joesb 12y ago

Already planned for Sublime text 4? Probably another rewrite? I assumed the same faith of Sublime Text 2 is happening with Sublime Text 3 after its release, then. Dead project after people paid to make it released. Really, how many version does he need to reimplement the same features again and again? I'm all for him getting my money more than once for Sublime Text. But is it really that hard to at least evolve the Same editor instead of rewriting it over and over just so he can get another round of money?

Cthulhu_ 12y ago
> Already planned for Sublime text 4? Probably another rewrite? I assumed the same faith of Sublime Text 2 is happening with Sublime Text 3 after its release, then. Which is exactly why I'm still running the evaluation license of ST 3; I paid for ST 2, but shortly after it got out of beta it was pretty much abandoned in favor of another years-long beta period for ST 3. I'm not falling for that one again. Likewise I fell into the 'early access' trap for Steam games, where a developer gets rich without any obligation to deliver. It worked (and was successful) for Minecraft, but other games have yet to deliver.
- joesb 12y ago
  > Which is exactly why I'm still running the evaluation license of ST 3; I paid for ST 2 I do the exact same thing. I might pay for ST3 if the developer can convince me that he is going to put some update in ST3 after it is released.

Derbasti 12y ago

There have always been three text editors: Vim, Emacs, and the closed source Mac editor de jour. I used to think that if only that closed source editor would go open source, it could enter that timeless transcendance of Emacs and Vim. But now Textmate is open source, and now there is Atom, I am not so sure any more. Neither Textmate nor Sublime Text, nor Atom seem to be able to stand up to the two old ones in term of development community and community involvement. Maybe it is a question of novelty. Vim still has unmatched key bindings. Emacs atill has unmatched total flexibility. Textmate had snippets (which now everyone has), Sublime Text has multiple cursors (which is maybe not a big enough improvements over macros to matter). Light Table seemed interesting, but probably too narrow in scope. My hope is that Atom's openness will finally allow it to transcend its brethren. But I don't see a compelling reason for that yet.

weavie 12y ago
Also what makes Vim and Emacs timeless is that they run everywhere. Command Line and Windowed, over SSH or on your machine. This is something no other 'modern' text editor even tries to match.
Dolimiter 12y ago
The notion that Sublime Text's USP is "multiple cursors" is absurd. It is a lightning fast next-generation editor. It changed the game entirely when released, and still nothing comes close.
- fsckin 12y ago
  Do you edit very large files? The regex engine and UI update speed feels incredibly slow to me when making complex changes across thousands of lines in a 200MB file, while vim or grep/awk/etc have no such problem.
  - Dolimiter 12y ago
    No, I don't edit 200MB files, and I suspect that that is not what Sublime Text was optimized for. I would use another tool for that.

gomesnayagam 12y ago

stick to eclipse for hassle free development

Dolimiter 12y ago
Are you trolling? I didn't think that was allowed on HN.
- gomesnayagam 12y ago
  No, if you cant pay for worthfull feature provide by sublime text then use any open source, that was my personal opinion

jbrooksuk 12y ago

I'm confident in Jon's ability here. They previously hired another developer, but it seems that didn't work out. ST4 hasn't been announced yet, just that it's something they want to do - which is great! I look forward to the August releases.