I prefer Sublime over VSCode, Atom, etc. but at the end of the day VSCode is free and still very good. Perhaps not quite as fast as Sublime but it also offers other features out of the box which Sublime doesn't so there is a trade off. Is Sublime "better" than VSCode to justify $70? That is something that can only be answered on a case by case basis I think.
Sublime Text has been feature complete (for my liking) for a lot of years now. The only thing I wish it had is an integrated debugger but it's not a deal breaker for me.
I've tried to jump ship to open source alternatives (atom and vscode) but they feel sluggish to me. Most people will be happy with their performance but I've been spoiled by Sublime Text and the slightest delay feels sluggish to me.
There was a time when that was the case, but for quite a while now we've been seeing frequent releases.
The way I think about it is: How many hours of time does Sublime save me per year relative to another editor. Even just 1 hour makes it worth it.
I still have a licence and want to support the excellent work. There's a ton of features in VSC that were inspired from sublime. Minimap being one.
Speed is a major feature.
And battery/memory efficiency is too.
And, on principle, I'd pay to NOT have to use an Electron app.
That said, I've used VSCode from time to time.
I don't want Sublime to be IDE, I have programable environment called Emacs for that. Integrating everything into editor is cool, to the point where you ask yourself "why am I doing all this?" and erase everything and just start writing code, not code for the editor. Again, this is my _personal_ experience, so take everything with grain of salt. I know your case is different, but I think you can see the reasoning behind my words.
That's crazy. My computer was waiting with a license for ST3 when I arrived at my first day of work at my job. Everyone's is, and if you prefer Atom or VSCode, they don't care if you switch.
Yeah this is how it always goes. The 'almost as good but totally free' alternative almost always wins in the long run. Even when the cost isn't an issue it's just inconvenient to buy anything in most companies. Most people don't have expense accounts, company credit cards or simply don't want to deal with the hassle of paying out of pocket and getting reimbursed.