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Comment by mstade | Hacker News Reader

I honestly can't believe I'm saying this, but: can you please enable me to buy a new license for 4.0 even though it may not even be on the road map yet? Or switch to / enable a subscriber model which is paid yearly and gives access to all upgrades?

I rely so much on sublime for my day to day work and I fear the $80 or whatever I paid for it whenever ago is too cheap for the amount of value I'm getting out of it, and I'd hate to see this magnificent piece of software fall by the wayside because of an unsustainable business model.

Of course, if the business is perfectly sustainable then you know, carry on as you where.

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I understand your appreciation for the software but begging for another subscription fee? One feature here is that the authors charge a normal fee and are not greedy in your pockets, like 1Password and many others.

I really do appreciate the classic software pricing.

It could be a higher fee, or more frequent but I'm really tired of all the Recurring costs!

Exactly, for every one person like this there are probably many who would not renew if they went subscription. It's not like they rely entirely on new customers, the company only has two employees and I'm sure ST3 will be out for a few years and then ST4 will come along. Software companies existed long before "cloud licensing" became the norm.

I am not fan of replacing classic pricing model with recurring payments but instead of forcing recurring payment, allow that option for extra feature. Make the base app as it is now and add something on top of that for small fee. Like I suggested earlier, make small cloud service for syncing configs, addons and projects between installations. It's not a big thing, not deal breaking, it can be even done using rsync by user but I would happily pay couple dollars for that functionality and I would support devs. Development is recurring cost. Without aggressive marketing, like for example Microsoft, it's very hard to pay developers from selling not recurring licences every 3 or 4 years.

I would be okay with them having an optional cloud service for syncing settings.

But the issue you talk about is where major version upgrades come in. Sublime text could cease all development tomorrow and not pay another cent towards development, should people have to continue to pay to keep using it? If new major feature are requested then that is grounds for charging and upgrade fee, otherwise I don't see why people should pay.

For a piece of software that enables your career, helps you to provide for yourself and/or family, that you probably utilize for thousands of hours over a given year?

ST3 is continuously improved. They are developers. They eat. They have families. Just like you receive a salary, because the software you work on, probably is never done. Why would anyone feel entitled to improvements for a flat rate? Is that not greedy?

Yes. There are endless text editors doing the same for free.

I could never find one that is as well thought and as well written as Sublime, and I've tried many, many others before.

Switched from Sublime to VSCode a few months ago and I've found it better to my needs. It's free

I love Code. It's one of Microsoft's greatest masterpieces.

Not quite free – you're paying in ram. EDIT: I mean more ram than you would use in Sublime.

You already paid by buying a faster computer. Some don't want to upgrade their computer; in this case, sublime is well worth its price.

Well-written? I thought it was closed-source.

I assume he was talking about the lack of significant bugs.

>For a piece of software that enables your career, helps you to provide for yourself and/or family, that you probably utilize for thousands of hours over a given year?

Speak for yourself.

He obviously speaks for people who use ST as their editor. The grandparent expressed his opinion as one, and the parent answered as another.

People who don't have no says whatsoever in this particular subthread discussion.

The first line is the part I'm quoting, which is obviously what I'm addressing. He's making assumptions about the commenter that are completely unwarranted.

So no, he doesn't speak for the people who use ST.

It's Hacker News. We're discussing a mainstream code editor. There are multiple discussions of code/libraries/engineering every day.

The generalization that implies that the OP is a person who codes for a living is far from "completely unwarranted".

There are plenty of students and hobbyists here. So again, take it easy on the assumptions.

If the description of the parent doesn't fit you then maybe you weren't his/hers intended audience?

No reason to tell everyone about it.

If someone comments: "It's not much to pay $70 for something you use professionally, and get value out of it everyday etc" -- it only adds noise to chime in "I don't use it professionally" or "I don't use it everyday".

It's a conditional sentence (even if implicit). If one is not on that category, then yes, obviously the argument doesn't apply to them.

Gratuitous appeal to emotion. Sublime is already paid software, they are already eating, the commenter wasn't asking for it for free. It is not on the cheap end either - I have paid less for way more powerful and man-hours-consuming image/vector editors. Everything is fine.

I have a family and I have to eat, so give me your money and I'll give you a copy of VSCode that I worked on. I'll also give you the source code with that.

It's a way better deal (and arguably a better tool) than what you get with Sublime.

> [...] that you probably utilize for thousands of hours over a given year

Assuming 4hs net per day, 20 days/month, 12 months .. thats 960 hours/year

And that's assuming that you spent all those 4 hours _entirely_ on your text editor; no cli, no browser, no nothing.. only text editor.

I'd say that on avg we should be doing ~200 hours per year.. Are there any study about this?

The average number of hours worked by a fulltime employee is approximately 2000.

Obviously not everyone will be using their editor more than half the time, but many do. And many often use their editor outside of work too.

Are you suggesting that everyone with an 8-5 job works in Sublime Text for at most 4 hours of the day?

Well. As a long-time Sublime Text user who sort of drifted off to Atom and VS Code in recent times, here's the thing: ST really hasn't been continuously improved; the sole developer frequently goes incommunicado for months, and there have been long stretches when there weren't any builds released. There are certainly substantial improvements between ST2 and ST3, but it's been over five years between ST2's initial release and ST3's. This is--kind of a worrisome pace of development.

So, this leaves me of two minds about a hypothetical subscription model. If it meant that ST's developers had an ongoing income that allowed them to work full-time on the project, set a regular release schedule, and be more open with communication, it would be worth it. But if users had been asked to pay, say, $49 a year for the last five years with ST3 on an "um, they pop up once a year to say they're still working on it, I guess" schedule, I'm pretty confident it would have gone over even more poorly than what actually happened.

Greedy? 1Password requires servers. You’re “consuming” that every month. Perhaps if 1Password cost $200 one time?

1Password works (or worked) without use of their servers by storing datastore on 3rd party cloud, which incurred no costs to them.

5/month to store 1kb of passwords

I’m having a big problem paying monthly for a password manager . May have to just roll my own in swift

There's always KeePassX if they're still around.

There is no open source mobile alternative active or big enough to be properly audited/trusted.

KeeWeb.info - there you go. Open Source, $0.

I was using MiniKeePass but it was hard to keep sync.

I'm worried about using the hosted version of KeeWeb, also it doesn't seems as practical as a standalone app. But I'll definitely try to host myself (or use locally on the phone?) and give a try. Thanks.

Take a look at Enpass (https://www.enpass.io) it has a free desktop app and one off fee for mobile apps. I've been using it for tree or four months and it's been great.

No. $5/mo to manage my team's sharing of accounts.

Thing is, software unlike say a book or a movie has sometimes significant maintenance costs. There are always bugs to be fixed, security vulnerabilities are found, third-party libraries need to be upgraded and so on.

The danger of the one-off model is that it sometimes creates the wrong incentives. Features and even bug fixes get pushed into newer versions, which may even delay their release until there's enough of them to justify a new version.

A good example of this going awry is the RAW file processing for Photoshop (pre-subscription). Newer cameras would get added to new versions of the Camera Raw plugin but you needed a new version of Photoshop to use the newer Camera Raw versions.

I honestly don't mind the subscription model and I think Jetbrains has about the best one of all: you get constant acess to upgrades. When you choose to stop subscribing, that simply locks in the latest version you can use (ie you don't lose access entirely).

The problem is many companies price subscriptions wrong. They say "our software costs $600 so we should charge $50/month". Because, you know, recouping that cost in a year is somehow reasonable.

Well, in contrast to a physical thing selling two copies is exactly as costly as selling one. I'd argue that that more than covers the cost of continued development.

I can't say I recognize that wrong incentives in real life and I've yet to find a single piece of software that I'm willing to pay a subscription for.

It all comes down to business ethics, are you trying to rip off your customers? Most can't afford to piss off their paying users so they play nice (and I hope that is not the only reason they are being reasonable).

I completely agree with you. I was a user of Balsamiq mock-up tool. But since they moved on to subscription model I stopped using it.

Balsamic mockups desktop is still a single 99 USD purchase. Maybe you thinking of the other versions?

I happily subscribe to bunches of services. Some I don't even use, I'm just keeping the option open. Am I being ripped off? I don't think so.

Well, I didn't mean to say that people buying subscriptions are being ripped off.

But rather that companies that don't offer subscriptions can't game on features and bug-fixes just to fish for upgrade fees before people feel (rightly so) ripped off. There is an implicit agreement on the support provided and if the company fails to deliver that people won't play along.

Isn't that the other way around? If I buy a license and I find a bug a year later, there's no guarantee of a fix. If I am subscribing, I can threaten to cancel.

It was a direct response to the parent.

Also, if you loose access when you stop subscribing that is actually much harder to do compared to not paying for an upgrade if you "own" a license of the software.

Good point. I guess your stance will depend on how troublesome the bug or feature request is.

You're merely ripping yourself off sounds like :)

Not everyone feels that way. Some services are worth it of course, but there are a lot of pretenders that have entered the picture who do not sell things worthy of a subscription. There is an older model of software as eternal, you finish the program and then move on to the next bigger and better program. At least then your old userbase doesn't get as shafted.

> not worthy [of your money]

It's easier to cancel a subscription than get a refund on a license.

But those are entirely different measures. Not worthy of a subscription does not mean not worthy of my money, it simply means it is not worthy of my money on a recurring basis. Perhaps I am one of those seemingly rare consumers that did not mind high one-off costs, even in my poorer years -- in the end you still own the thing, or at least it's bits. Subscriptions net nothing over the long term and their recurring spikes will eat people to death.

"Well, in contrast to a physical thing selling two copies is exactly as costly as selling one."

Statements like this ignore the costs of creating it in the first place.

No, they don't. Even if the costs of creation were extremely high, selling more copies wouldn't change these costs.

"Greedy"?

Software is something that needs to be continuously developed and maintained. Charging a one-time fee is a fundamentally unsustainable approach. We all have to face reality and start paying for software as a subscription.

Now, that will likely end the bubble of "I can buy 100 apps, most of which I'll never use", which we have been in for the last 20 years or so. But perhaps the few apps that people will pay for will become better as a result. I'm hoping for it.

> Software is something that needs to be continuously developed and maintained.

Not always. Sometimes software is "done" and warrants no further changes or maintenance. I have run into this issue with mobile apps that worked perfectly to my satisfaction until the authors decided to "redesign" or "improve" it. I think subscription is a valid use case for customers who want active maintenance, but it should be opt-in. I detest the forced-subscription model that JetBrains attempted ("Didn't pay the latest subscription? We'll brick the application you've installed and are running on your hardware").

Do they actually brick it? I thought they just stopped upgrading it.

Reposting links I added in another reply. Yes they announced the bricking plans (http://bytecrafter.blogspot.com/2015/09/how-jetbrains-lost-y...) and then backtracked (https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/18/final-update-on-t...) - which is why I said "attempted".

Sometimes, sure. But nowadays software is more often than not something that isn't simply done and needs continuous updates, in the face of security vulnerabilities, changing requirements (people using the software for changing use cases), platform updates (new version of macOS or Linux that breaks compatibility), etc.

" I detest the forced-subscription model that JetBrains attempted ("Didn't pay the latest subscription? We'll brick the application you've installed and are running on your hardware")."

They never attempted that. You were always able to use the version you paid for, even if you stopped your subscription.

> They never attempted that

Oh, but they did[1]. You might have missed the initial drama as it transpired because of their quick U-turn (to their credit). I have reason to doubt the subscription plans they published which clearly stated that failure to keep up with the subscription would lead to bricked IDEs. JetBrains only backtracked[2] after receiving sustained pushback. There were HN posts for the initial bricking plan[3] and the backtrack[4].

1. http://bytecrafter.blogspot.com/2015/09/how-jetbrains-lost-y...

2. https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/18/final-update-on-t...

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10170089

4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10278285

The public does not give two shats what it costs you. In thier eyes they want it faster cheaper better.

Quite honestly, I don't mind paying a subscription for updates. But I detest having to pay a subscription when all I want is a single copy and don't require rolling updates and support.

Charging a one time fee works just fine for lots of folks out there making software. It's especially good for anyone who's doing it in their spare time as they don't have to provide updates for every little niggle someone may find. Some offer a subscription alongside the one-off model, which is the best of both worlds if the developer(s) are continuously working on it. Others ask you to purchase the major upgrades but give minor upgrades for free.

There are lots of payment models out there, and the developers should pick what works for both them and their customers. There's no way most of my colleagues who have a license would have purchased sublime if it was a rolling cost, so that model seems to be working in their favor right now, at least for single developer purchases.

Noone's stopping you from buying more licences, if you really want to support the dev. I think it's overpriced as it is (as another commenter mentioned, considering the competition is FOSS), but I might buy it one day, when I have more disposable money (assuming I won't have switched to VSCode or $hotNewThing by then). I really do like Sublime, and I'm happy 3 is out of beta, but seeing the userbase migrate to Atom/VSCode is worrisome, and makes me doubt $80 is worthwhile investment (I'm mostly worried about third party plugin devs, which was once Sublime's biggest strength).

I use Sublime and paid for it a few years ago. That said, I also use VS Code which I really like for certain things. I actually use both of them daily and simply get different utility from them. If Sublime went to subscription then I would make do with other products. VS Code has a robust plugin ecosystem and I see that growing in the near future. I honestly think Sublime will eventually end up as FOSS. Whether that is from a drop or increase in subscribers I don't know.

It needs to provide you with just enough productivity to help you work for 2 extra hours, and it'll have paid for itself. $80 is peanuts for this.

I don't live in the United States so my purchasing power from two hours of work is exponentially smaller, but I get your point. Truth is, I don't really use Sublime (or any other text editor) that often anymore, because I'm working with Java and using IntelliJ IDEA for that. If I used Sublime Text professionally, I (or my employer) would have bought the licence in a heartbeat.

Does every developer earns $80 for two hours? No.

Can someone please explain to me why $80 for Sublime Text is a good price for a text editor?

I'm not flaming, I genuinely want to know. I've tried Gedit, Atom, VS Code, Notepad++ and I fail to see what Sublime offers over those to justify the price.

>I'm not flaming, I genuinely want to know. I've tried Gedit, Atom, VS Code, Notepad++ and I fail to see what Sublime offers over those to justify the price.

It's better than Gedit in every way, it's way faster and more lightweight than Atom and VS Code, and it has a far better plugin ecosystem and functionality than Notepad++.

I'd pay triple the price.

> it's way faster and more lightweight

Now you've got me wondering why editor speed is actually a thing.

It matters for huge files

So not source code, for the most part.

I don't use Sublime Text as an IDE (I have Intellij for that), mainly to edit scripts, large CSV files, as a scratchpad etc. but It's always open and increases my productivity a lot.

You mean why some editors are slow or why I care?

Not sure about the first.

I care about speed because I like to use "large" files. I prefer a few large files to many small files.

Slow software is frustrating. A text editor is a tool, it should help and not hinder.

There are a lot of factors that play into the speed (perceived and real) of an editor. Sublime is written in C, which is generally recognized as a performant language when used correctly. In contrast, Atom and VS Code are Electron[1] apps, which mean they have to deal with browser optimization. They both use a lot of tricks[2] to operate as quickly as they do. And in all editors, one bad extension can kill performance, from my recent experience Resharper in Visual Studio increases startup time by 3x.

An editor is not as simple as displaying lines of text a la Notepad, different editors optimize for different use cases.

1. https://electron.atom.io/

2. http://blog.atom.io/2017/06/22/a-new-approach-to-text-render...

Sublime Text is written is C++ FYI.

Having tried Atom, it's the main reason I stuck with Sublime. Somehow, even typing was slow in some larger files...

Try using something like xcode or a jetbrains IDE with a large codebase (for the record I like jetbrains software, but it can be slow comparatively).

edit: not sure I correctly understood the parent

The same reason its annoying when any other kind of program is slow, especially interactive ones.

I don't want to see freezes for 2-3 seconds for some GC run, I don't want the letters to appear several 100ms after I've typed, I don't want to wait minutes for it to parse a large-ish file or update the autocomplete suggestions.

https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/

Not only does the editor need to track project folders and open files, even something seemingly simple like syntax highlighting can be surprisingly complex[0]. The editor needs to be able to read your inputs (mouse and keyboard) and represent those changes onscreen just like every other piece of software. It needs to repaint the screen with your changes and, depending on the complexity of the editor, load and implement a host of features (auto-complete? bracket matching? code indentation? code standards a la pep8? updates to source control?), with every single keypress and ideally in a matter of milliseconds. All of that takes memory and different editors make different sacrifices.

Of course the extent to which this happens is the whole reason there are different editors. If all you want to do is write text with zero features, then speed isn't an issue at all and you can just write directly in your terminal to a single file with pico or something.

[0] https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/02/08/syntax-highli...

> even something seemingly simple like syntax highlighting can be surprisingly complex

I was troubleshooting something with a colleague who was using Atom, and every time he opened a new file, it'd take somewhere between 1 and 2 seconds before the syntax highlighting was applied. As someone who's in and out of files all day, that'd drive me bananas.

It's highly likely that OP simply stumbled upon it, or someone recommended it, and now he learned it and is used to it and knows how productive it can be.

Thing is, same is true for any other good IDE, of which there are plenty.

Personally, it always blows my mind that people don't use VIM :) if they actually spent 5-20hours learning VIM correctly they would not touch these inferior pretty looking UIs

Agree! I do almost everything in VIM for file-efficient languages and environments (NodeJS projects, Python projects, HTML, C++ ROS packages, most things that promote DRY coding, etc.)

For file-inefficient environments (e.g. Java/Android -- 79 files for a "hello world" Android app!) I have to grudgingly use an IDE because I have no idea how to update the 78 other manifest/gradle/workspace/resource/etc. files based on the 1 file I change and the IDE takes care of the magic, as much as I hate that way of working.

Whereas I view vim as simply a necessary evil and I mean "necessary" in the sense that I want to edit something over ssh.

Bret Viktor's oft-quoted "Inventing on Principle" talk touches on this subject where a lot of research has shown that bimodal editors are worse. While I can't argue for how true that statement is, it's certainly been my experience. I always find it jarring to think I'm in command mode but I'm actually in edit mode or vice versa. Any vim user has had the experience of pasting text in command mode. I just absolutely hate bimodal editors.

Additionally, staunch vim (and emacs) users I know seem to spend an inordinate amount of time screwing around with plugins to get some pale version of behaviour you get out the box on any halfway decent IDE or even text editor.

I feel the same way about learning yet another series of keyboard shortcuts for, say, tmux/screen.

You could argue the mouse is slower. I'm not sure if this actually holds up to empirical measurement (or at least not to the degree that's claimed) but the point is, the barrier for entry is so much lower. You can just click around and find things. If you find yourself doing something a lot, you can find out what the keyboard shortcut is.

Thus you don't need to spend 50 hours upfront on a GUI editor.

From the point of view of "onboarding" (aka barriers to entry), as you say, point-and-click is miles ahead of the unfriendly-at-first-glance Vim.

But I'd like to say that I cannot honestly recall an instance where I was in normal mode and ended up pasting something -- I assume you mean Ctrl-V-ing and having the paste interpreted as commands? -- once I got used to it after leaving Sublime Text, which I'd say took me a couple of weeks of hating myself. It's a matter of how much effort one thinks it makes sense to put into learning the editor, but IME there is a significant payoff, even if it is hard-won.

I'm not sure if it's harder for some people to internalize (which is by no means a value judgment; it's why Emacs/ST/Atom/whatever exist and are powerful) but once that is done, one never gets confused about what mode you're in simply because one is almost never in insert mode! "Probabilistically" speaking, you are in insert mode for 0 time. ;)

In any case, I don't hate non-bimodal editors, just hope that the subset of those using them who have not seen Vim for what it is yet do so quickly. (And, of course, there are those who are genuinely repulsed by modal editing, and that's fine!)

I can't speak to "inordinate amount of time screwing around with plugins": I have a plugin for each language I use, and perhaps four or five others. The rest of my init.vim (I use Neovim) is about ... 30 lines long? It's my experience that most (Neo)vi(m) users use little of the power of plain vi -- I know that because I myself was like that for almost three or four years after I started using Vim. (This is ignoring, e.g. large Java projects, where IDE-style code navigation is basically a requirement if you want to get anything done.) But there is definitely a culture where a customized-to-the-hilt editor is seen as something to be proud of, and why shouldn't it? It's what you "live in", isn't it? :)

You don't know the right vim / emacs users then :)

It's possible to go overkill with learning tons of unnecessary shortcuts, but in my opinion all you really need for tmux is attach, detach, split horizontal, split vertical, fullscreen.

5 shortcuts is a paltry investment for a pretty sweet gain.

And unlike an IDE, this can be readily available on any machine you SSH into. Which is also what makes VIM so handy.

The 'micro' text editor is a fantastic vim replacement for SSH editing. It's a text-ui like vim, but it has mouse support (for selecting text, etc), and keyboard shortcuts that match bio stands, ctrl-s for save, ctrl-q for quit, etc.

Worth noting, Vim has full mouse support for scrolling, selecting text, resizing windows, etc. in the terminal and when working over SSH.

> You could argue the mouse is slower. I'm not sure if this actually holds up to empirical measurement

It is slower, and does hold up to empirical measurement. Yes, if you want 'ease of onboarding', then vim is not for you. It's a powerful tool for professionals, and like a lot of such tools, it requires some training. No-one ever complains that Photoshop requires training, yet a brand new user to Photoshop is completely befuddled and it takes a long time before they're proficient.

I've owned Photoshop since it was distributed on diskettes and I'm still befuddled every time I need its impressive power. (I'm not a professional graphics/photography person so I use the program only a few times per year now.)

I think this is a really good analogy to using pro-level text editing tools (e.g. Emacs or Vi). A mouse is great for poking around menus and operating sliders in a new or unfamiliar program, but Emacs and especially Vim are so fast to use without a mouse that it pains me to watch other programmers editing while using one.

ST is a fine editor, and I use IntelliJ for Java, but I've already spent the time (years) learning Emacs. Is it worth it for me to start over? No. I use IntelliJ for Java programming, but I use only its basic Emacs keybindings and the mouse for everything else (befuddled like I am in Photoshop).

You can have your cake and eat it too.

There are some really great vim plugins for Sublime Text, including one that uses NeoVim. For me, Sublime Text is basically Vim with an nice UI and some IDE features built in. And Goto Anything. I wouldn't want to live without Goto Anything.

They're always inferior editing experiences, these vim bolt-on plugins. Missing key features like 'jk' mash escaping and other remapping support.

      { "keys": ["j", "k"],       "args": {"key": "<esc>"},    "context": [{ "key": "setting.actual_intercept", "operand": true }], "command": "actual_keypress" },

That, in your Sublime keymap, should map jk to escape if you're using the ActualVim plugin.

On the backend, it's using NeoVim... So it's literally just vim. You can even use vim plugins. There really shouldn't be any missing features.

Oh! Didn't know this. Thanks.

I don't want to put anyone off they're favourite editor but you can have all of that cake (well maybe not all the eye candy) in Vim/NeoVim.

e.g. Goto anything you can use the Ctrl-P plugin.

Counter-example: I used vim for years, then switched to Sublime.

I bought a license simply beacuse Sublime Text was the only editor that could open a wikipedia json data dump. I installed many editors before I more than willingly paid for Sublime.

For me, same thing: no other editor gives me the decent UI of a GUI-based editor, but with the speed of vim when working with large text files (e.g. 10MB+).

I will often use sed or other CLI tools to parse through giant files (1GB+), but sublime only takes a short bit to load in a pretty hefty file, or a do regex search across entire projects with multiple-GB of files, and it works natively on Mac and Windows, so even when I'm forced to work on something on my Windows 10 laptop, I can be productive.

Well worth whatever I paid for it 4 years ago.

It's a dead simple editor, comparing to VIM or Emacs (both I used a lot). Everything behaves just as you would expect.

And it's fast, it's small, and it's got a lot of packages. What more do you want?

Terminal support? To be fair, sublime text is great and I use it sometimes, but if your job requires you to work over ssh then vim definitely beats all modern editors.

Yeah, I agree. That's when I use vim/emacs.

I think it is in a similar situation as JavaScript. It is not strictly better than its competitors, but it still manages to attract an entire community of people[1] to contribute actively to the project and its popularity.

[1] https://packagecontrol.io/stats

Nothing is faster for me when opening gargantuan text files. It's never broken for me and never lagged either. I think that's pretty impressive, not to mention the customizability options.

Define gargantuan. I just opened a 900MB CSV and it choked part-way through and eventually opened after about a minute. Windows 10, 8GB RAM and running on an SSD.

Not to mention if you hit ctrl-f and search for something in the file. Another lock-up for a few minutes while it tries to figure out highlighting. This is something I've reported to them. I have never considered Sublime to be a good handler of large files.

> Windows

Same problem on my mac with 16GB RAM and also an SSD

Opened a 1GB text file on MacOS 15gb ram and SSD.

The small things are really well done.

It has almost all of the features of the Electron based editors (aka Atom) but with a C++ backend instead of HTML/JS toilet water. So you have all the customization you could ever want with the speed of low level code.

It's an organic, artisanal text editor lovingly hand-carved from gap-buffer wood by craftsmen from a remote Tibetan village. A steal at thrice the price!

Speed and stability, search, command palette, file navigation, Goto.

And the excellent Python plugin API, which has made the plugin ecosystem so vibrant. Here's one I wrote, https://github.com/kylebebak/Requester, an HTTP client that goes toe to toe with Paw and Postman on features and outdoes them on usability.

I couldn't have have written something like this for any other editor, or any other platform.

Agree, yet even SlickEdit - which costs several times more, is still running strong. I wonder what kind of audience pays for it.

What about the idea to sell 'silver/gold/diamond supporter' licences for 100/200/300$ to people who _really_ love your software?

I am not even talking about adding some special features, just enable people to pay more than the normal price and perhaps just add a nice 'Thanks for your extra support' badge to the 'Info' menu.

Buy licenses and donate to your local high school.

Excellent, excellent suggestion.

My local high school will refuse them. The computer science classes use Geany because it “builds character” and anything that looks remotely like an IDE apparently “does too much work for students”.

This is great, I will have my accountant look into how I can do this. Thanks for the suggestion!

Or give the diamond supporters the ability to vote on features. That may not be something Jon and Will would want though.

That is exactly what I would avoid. Don't add any special features to it (vote for features, faster support responses) because that will take time from normal development. Just clearly state: "This software cost x$. And if you love it so much that you would pay double the price then you are free to do so."

Totally. I bought my license in 2013 and just realized that I didn't even have to pay the 3.0 license upgrade fee! I have used Sublime daily for almost 5 years now and I almost feel guilty for paying so little. I'd be more than happy to pay for a future 4.0 upgrade fee now.

Bought mine November 2012. Just paid my US$11 now. Far too cheap; but... good on you Jon! Thanks for all the effort - you rock!

Same here. I honestly didn't expect this, that's a bargain.

As a former paying user of Sublime, I find this interesting, because their pricing seems to be right on target all around.

If there was a subscription available that offered some amount of extra features, I probably wouldn't have purchased anything at all.

So many nasty replies. :o(

(Some pretty great replies too – thanks!)

I'm not a ST dev, I have no financial interests in ST becoming more expensive or changing to a (for the company) more lucrative business model. I have tried alternative editors, anything from vi and emacs to VSCode and Atom, but nothing hits the marks for me as ST does. It has – in my opinion – great UX, its speed and efficiency is unmatched in the GUI editor space, and my favorite feature: it has rock solid buffer persistence.

I can't tell how many times ST has saved me from system crashes and just me being an idiot and restarting everything before saving anything, or removing a file but ST keeping a buffer. I've come to rely on this, and it's rock solid. Not once in the years since I started using it (I believe I bought my first license in 2012) have I encountered a situation where ST lost my data. I've never experienced this with any other editor (I'm sure vi and emacs can do this, but in years of trying, I can't come to grips with their UX – they're just not for me) and this feature alone has paid for the price of admission for me, many many times over.

In short – I don't care that there are FOSS alternatives. I don't care that there are alternatives that are "better" by some measure. Until they can match these three things, in increasing order of importance, they will never compete with ST for me:

- Great UX

- Speed and efficieny

- Rock solid buffer persistance, even for unsaved files

Someone in this thread suggested I buy licenses and donate to a local high school. I'm going to seriously look into this as a viable way to both support the company producing ST, as well as hopefully enabling kids to learn programming, or write novels, or whatever they want to do with the software.

Agreed. I am a very appreciative Sublime user as well and want to ensure your business is successful.

I started with Textmate during the Rails craze and transitioned to Sublime due to the portability of themes etc. I think I'm still using my 10 year old TM theme.

Thank you for the continued dedication to this project.

Amusingly, your 10 year old TM theme probably shows different/inaccurate colours than it did in TM unless you went to the trouble of converting it to sRGB for Sublime.

I'm out now but it looks identical. I'll share a screenshot and download link when I'm back! It's my favorite.

Here's an interminable github issue thread about it. https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/880

Update: It's called Made of Code.

Here is the screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/JvDEBk7.png

Here is the theme: http://fl-mwhalen-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/Made%20of%20Code.tmTh...

https://i.imgur.com/cUCwysp.png

Please explain your wizardry.

It's just your theme opened in TextMate and Sublime. Sublime displays the AppleRGB colorspace colors (the default in the original TextMate) as sRGB. So they come out off. Check out the linked github thread for the gory/inconclusive details.

Update: Turns out I bought Sublime in 2012 so I was due to pay the $30 upgrade fee. Gladly! Just completed the process.

This was the easiest upgrade to consider in my career; $30 is nothing compared to the value and ecosystem around Sublime Text.

I'd entertain such a model as OP to ensure the ongoing viability of the app.

I concur with this. I'm appreciative of Atom -- and recommend it to folks who aren't professional programmers and can't imagine paying for a text editor -- and I've heard similar great things about VS Code, but ST and its ecosystem has just been so dependable for me. It was inconvenient to switch over from TextMate to ST initially, but ended up being a great move overall. I haven't yet seen anything on the horizon that would seem like the next phase from ST for me.

I left VIM after 20 year to VS Code. I find that the ecosystem at VS Code to be the best I have ever seen. Great job by Microsoft and I use it on my Linux box all day.

Vim code in VS code works very well (and integrates commonly used vim extension such as 'surround'). You can have the best of both worlds.

I should have stated that I still use VIM mode and bindings. It is the reason why I am there. I tried Sublime, Atom and other text editors and VS Code's VIM mode was on par.

I have tried vscode and vim plugin but found it to be noticeably less responsive than vim.

Is it built in, or is it a plugin?

plugin

I like it except that it installed it's own apt sources for updates without telling me, and that rubbed me the wrong way.

I believe that would be distro dependent. On my Linux base I just use the RPM until I added a repo.

Yes. They could make some kind of small cloud service to pay for on a monthly/yearly basis. I would gladly pay for a service that would allow me to share my Sublime settings, addons and projects across all my Sublime installations. This can be done either way but I would happily pay Sublime devs for that.

You should buy multiple licenses of Sublime Text 3.0

I'm in a situation where if I had $10 or $80 extra, I would use it to buy baby supplies, not software. Many others are in the same situation, or worse (thinking of those in developing countries where $80 represent a week's worth of savings).

I agree on the point that useful software/service providers must have a sustainable business model, but I see your point about $80 being too cheap as just one data point (not that you were claiming otherwise, and you did appreciate the value that you get). There are many people for whom spending $80 every few years may be a bigger burden too. Subscriptions, without significantly lower per year prices, also favor the ones for whom these aspects don't matter as much.

I just wanted to put these points across since a single price probably may not well serve all user classes and the developer/company.

I would also like if the developer would agree to release the source code under a FLOSS license should he find working on Sublime Text is no longer worthwhile for him (could be financial but could also just be because he has lost interest in developing it, etc).

Feel free to donate licenses to university students!

I don't feel like Sublime Text has the development momentum to justify the subscription model.

That isn't necessarily bad; it's a great editor and I've been happy to pay for all versions of it.

But if I am paying an ongoing, continual fee, I expect rapid delivery of updates and new features. I pay for an IDE from JetBrains, and they deliver solid incremental improvements and bug fixes, continuously. So I feel the continual fee is acceptable.

Sublime Text is known for going on hiatus for months at a stretch, with no or negligible updates. That would irritate me as a paying subscriber to the software; it doesn't bug me when I pay a lump sum for the big milestone releases.

I think I'm going to start buying licenses for my interns and students. It's an investment in our future. Today's interns and students are tomorrow's senior devs. Best to start them off proper.

Same here, I get wayyyyyy more than $80 of usage out of this software. I'm very very appreciative of the great work that has gone into this product and don't want it going any place!

I think the price is fair given their competition is foss.

Agreed, I just paid my upgrade fee and it seemed too small.

I feel ST could have a checkbox during checkout to add an additional $50 or something in that range. "I'd like to be a supporter for an extra $50". I'm pretty sure I would opt-in to that, but maybe I'm just saying that now because there isn't such an option....

Yes, happy to pay more often. Or just have smaller releases. It must have been years since I last paid for Sublime

You could buy some additional licenses and donate them to someone.

Also, I don't see Sublime in the MacOS App store. I'd suggest it get added there, even if you have to charge more due to the percentage that Apple takes.

The sand boxing requirements plus STs plugins may make that a non starter.

Ah right. Thanks

I suspect it wouldn't work with the sandboxing required for the mac app store.

Honestly, I'm in. I'm absolutely dependent on Sublime Text for my workflow. I don't mind paying more for it /whatsoever/

Would a crowdfunding campaign help to fund a product like Sublime Text which has a lot of traction? I think so.

It has worked in the past, for example: I would consider the recent FontAwesome 5 kickstarter campaign a huge success both from a funding point of view and the backers getting what they wanted. This was only really possible in my opinion due to the reputation Dave Gandy built up by releasing the open source version of FA prior. One needs only to look at the myriad of failed software kickstarters for examples of what happens when a unknown person who hasn't proven they are capable of delivering what people want tries the same thing.

Probably they just need to add a Donate button for people who wants give more than license fee only.

The first thing I did after Ulysses went the way of subscription was get a refund from App Store. :)

Do you think that TextMate fell by the wayside because of an unsustainable business model?

It fell by the wayside because 2.0 was the HL3 of text editor releases, IMO. Open sourcing it was too little, too late. Even though Sublime Text has had long periods of inactivity, the beta releases every quarter or two were just enough to keep people who loved the editor hooked. TextMate lost people like me because there was, for a long time, zero indication it would continue being developed.

Encourage them to set up a Patreon page? Do people use Patreon for software projects?

Or keep the current model as is and add an optional recurring donation somewhere.

You can always buy more licenses and give away to other people. :)

Just buy another license.

Buy a copy for a friend!

nice try sublime dev :>

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