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I'm a co-owner of a small software business, so in a very similar situation to the Sublime Text developer (with the exception that my product is much less succe

I'm a co-owner of a small software business, so in a very similar situation to the Sublime Text developer (with the exception that my product is much less successful). I went and looked at the linked-to list of builds. There's a bit of a gap from December 2013 to May 2014. But then there's a release every couple of months. I know that in the past the builds have been fast and furious, but, honestly, I don't see any reason to have a new build more than every couple of months. More than that and it wastes my time; I suspect the ST developer has learned that more frequent builds waste his time as well. Sublime Text is fast, powerful, intuitive, and--the killer feature for me--cross-platform. It's well worth the money to me now, regardless of its long-term future (in the long run, we're all dead). While development has been sporadic, at least it seems like the developer has not succumbed to the Moby Dick/Second System effect, so that's a plus. It would be great in the long run (i.e., when the developer tires of full-time work) if it were open source, but it's nigh-impossible to support oneself with open source applications, so it seems healthier now for it to be a proprietary app.

yoodenvranx 12y ago
The problem with Sublime in 2014 was not the number of releases but the fact that the developer more or less just disappeared for a year. I am totally fine if he does not release something new for half a year, but at least he could've written a short blog post that he will take some time off. Even a short "Hey guys, I am still working on it but things are very slow right now" every 8 weeks would've been totally fine.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >I am totally fine if he does not release something new for half a year, but at least he could've written a short blog post that he will take some time off. He did write a short post of that effect. >Even a short "Hey guys, I am still working on it but things are very slow right now" every 8 weeks would've been totally fine. The TextMate guy posted frequent updates just like that -- and it got nowhere.
veidr 12y ago
But the thing is with Sublime, these months-and-months-long gaps in the release cycle yield incredibly modest improvements. The 8+ months between 3059 (2013-12-17) and 3065 (2014-08-29) yielded 1 significant (but Windows-only) feature, 8 very minor new features, and 4 bug fixes (including crash bugs).[1] That's so much less than, say, Bare Bones does in an equivalent time frame with BBEdit[2], that it is laughable. And, significantly, it is also much (much!) less than Textmate 2 does currently[3]. I think Sublime Text had its Textmate moment[4] sometime around ST2, and it shows. The dev gets rich[5] (congrats) and then — sure! — doesn't feel like working on a text editor for a few weeks, which become months and years. Textmate solved that by going legit open source. It is hard to think that Sublime Text will be able to solve it without following suit. (But I suppose it's also possible that a year of waning sales might re-light the fire.) Disclaimer[6]: I have paid for and still use Sublime Text, Textmate, and BBEdit, in addition to many other fine and not-so-fine text editing products. -- [1]: http://www.sublimetext.com/3 http://www.sublimetext.com/3 [2]: http://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/archived_notes.html http://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/archived_notes.html [3]: https://github.com/textmate/textmate/blob/master/Applications/TextMate/about/Changes.md https://github.com/textmate/textmate/blob/master/Application... [4]: http://blog.macromates.com/2006/year-in-review/ http://blog.macromates.com/2006/year-in-review/ [5]: for values of rich approximating 'can buy a $1,000,000 house with cash, but still can't afford a private jet' [6]: in the modern usage meaning 'tangential statement about my background that is not actually a disclaimer'
- coldtea 12y ago
  >That's so much less than, say, Bare Bones does in an equivalent time frame with BBEdit[2], that it is laughable. And yet, BBEdit is nowhere near as capable a programming editor as ST2/3 + plugins is. >And, significantly, it is also much (much!) less than Textmate 2 does currently[3] And yet, Textmate 2 is an immature software that doesn't improve much upon Textmate even.
  - veidr 12y ago
    Your comment makes me think you aren't very familiar with BBEdit, or how capable it is. I personally don't use it for programming, but I do use it for certain text processing tasks; dealing with malformed international text encodings, converting bank CSV downloads to sane UTF-8 and stripping bullshit, editing HTML, and certain other one-off tasks that it's especially well suited to. Even so, however, more shipping code has been written in BBEdit than will likely ever be written in Sublime Text, unless Jon Skinner gets back to work and stays extremely focused until 2035. As for Textmate, I certainly haven't been a fan of it historically[1], but it gradually and grudgingly won me over in 2014. I don't tend to attach myself to editors, but I just found myself reaching for TM2 more, and ST3 less, over the course of the year. Frequent improvements are good, but fast resolution to bugs is perhaps even better. And I personally think it has tremendous advantages over Textmate 1.x, not the least of which is being able to edit the text I need to edit [1 also]. [1]: http://masonmark.com/mother-fuck-textmate-to-hell/ http://masonmark.com/mother-fuck-textmate-to-hell/

yoodenvranx 12y ago

The problem with Sublime in 2014 was not the number of releases but the fact that the developer more or less just disappeared for a year. I am totally fine if he does not release something new for half a year, but at least he could've written a short blog post that he will take some time off. Even a short "Hey guys, I am still working on it but things are very slow right now" every 8 weeks would've been totally fine.

coldtea 12y ago
>I am totally fine if he does not release something new for half a year, but at least he could've written a short blog post that he will take some time off. He did write a short post of that effect. >Even a short "Hey guys, I am still working on it but things are very slow right now" every 8 weeks would've been totally fine. The TextMate guy posted frequent updates just like that -- and it got nowhere.

veidr 12y ago

But the thing is with Sublime, these months-and-months-long gaps in the release cycle yield incredibly modest improvements. The 8+ months between 3059 (2013-12-17) and 3065 (2014-08-29) yielded 1 significant (but Windows-only) feature, 8 very minor new features, and 4 bug fixes (including crash bugs).[1] That's so much less than, say, Bare Bones does in an equivalent time frame with BBEdit[2], that it is laughable. And, significantly, it is also much (much!) less than Textmate 2 does currently[3]. I think Sublime Text had its Textmate moment[4] sometime around ST2, and it shows. The dev gets rich[5] (congrats) and then — sure! — doesn't feel like working on a text editor for a few weeks, which become months and years. Textmate solved that by going legit open source. It is hard to think that Sublime Text will be able to solve it without following suit. (But I suppose it's also possible that a year of waning sales might re-light the fire.) Disclaimer[6]: I have paid for and still use Sublime Text, Textmate, and BBEdit, in addition to many other fine and not-so-fine text editing products. -- [1]: http://www.sublimetext.com/3 http://www.sublimetext.com/3 [2]: http://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/archived_notes.html http://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/archived_notes.html [3]: https://github.com/textmate/textmate/blob/master/Applications/TextMate/about/Changes.md https://github.com/textmate/textmate/blob/master/Application... [4]: http://blog.macromates.com/2006/year-in-review/ http://blog.macromates.com/2006/year-in-review/ [5]: for values of rich approximating 'can buy a $1,000,000 house with cash, but still can't afford a private jet' [6]: in the modern usage meaning 'tangential statement about my background that is not actually a disclaimer'

coldtea 12y ago
>That's so much less than, say, Bare Bones does in an equivalent time frame with BBEdit[2], that it is laughable. And yet, BBEdit is nowhere near as capable a programming editor as ST2/3 + plugins is. >And, significantly, it is also much (much!) less than Textmate 2 does currently[3] And yet, Textmate 2 is an immature software that doesn't improve much upon Textmate even.
- veidr 12y ago
  Your comment makes me think you aren't very familiar with BBEdit, or how capable it is. I personally don't use it for programming, but I do use it for certain text processing tasks; dealing with malformed international text encodings, converting bank CSV downloads to sane UTF-8 and stripping bullshit, editing HTML, and certain other one-off tasks that it's especially well suited to. Even so, however, more shipping code has been written in BBEdit than will likely ever be written in Sublime Text, unless Jon Skinner gets back to work and stays extremely focused until 2035. As for Textmate, I certainly haven't been a fan of it historically[1], but it gradually and grudgingly won me over in 2014. I don't tend to attach myself to editors, but I just found myself reaching for TM2 more, and ST3 less, over the course of the year. Frequent improvements are good, but fast resolution to bugs is perhaps even better. And I personally think it has tremendous advantages over Textmate 1.x, not the least of which is being able to edit the text I need to edit [1 also]. [1]: http://masonmark.com/mother-fuck-textmate-to-hell/ http://masonmark.com/mother-fuck-textmate-to-hell/