There haven’t been any significant gaps in our release cadence since before I joined the company in 2016.
That said, the current dev cycle has been a little longer because people do expect more from major version releases. We’ve got a large collection of new features, improvements and bug fixes coming with this release.
We’ve addressed over 600 issues on GitHub in the current release, added some pretty significant changes, and laid the foundation for more to come. IMO, it is by far the most significant release we’ve ever done.
We’ve also got some changes planned to help shorten our release cycles moving forward!
I'm not interested in using a discord server to keep up.
But a monthly blog post with "what's happened in ST this month" might go a long way for letting users understand that it is still alive. The monthly post could even include things happening in the plugin ecosystem, interesting new plugins or popular plugins with new releases. But just 2-3 paragraphs a month would suffice.
As it is, I go to the ST website and it looks like it's stagnated, I see no sign of life. I'm not interested in intensively following dev releases, but I am interested in every once in a while checking out what's been going on that I might want to know about, and seeing evidence that ST is still alive.
I don't know for sure how typical I am, but based on this HN comment thread, I suspect I'm not alone.
I guess the blog could also work, especially if it auto-publishes to social media, but of late that too, like the Twitter feed, has been mostly about Sublime Merge -- whereas I care a lot more about Sublime Text.
I think Sublime is really good and has lots of value even in a world with VS Code, but it's important to ensure people inclined to giving it a go sense that the project is ticking along well.
Back when ST started to get popular, you were up against Notepad++, TextEdit2, Visual Studio perhaps, and others. Now there's Atom and VSCode that are actively maintained and have active communities. I doubt I'll use ST4, but I wish you all the best, but I do think the model is wrong.
We’ve just been releasing those discreetly during this current dev cycle since we’ve got a huge user base and wanted a smaller group to test some of our bigger changes on.
For our future dev cycles, our dev builds will be returning to our site.
I'd much rather pay $50 a year for ~monthly releases than $70 every 2-3 years for one release and a few bug fixes.
We are doing a big release because our current licensing scheme requires a "major version" release for paid updates. If we did a release once a month, they would all be trivial features, and wouldn't justify a major version bump.
For license holders, we've actually been shipping new dev builds every one to two weeks. However, since this is a major release, it has some very significant changes that need testing, refining and polishing. I don't think anyone in their right mind would ship a half-finished product and call it a major release, so we've been doing the work that shows it is a major release. The downside of bigger releases is that sometimes they end up dragging on a little longer than you want, and we'd rather uphold our vision for the product than have a release done a few months earlier.
As I mentioned in my post above, we've got some changes coming that will help address the "major version" issue and allow us to take on a faster release cycle. That said, I'm not sure I agree that new releases once a month are a good fit for the majority of users. We do, however, provide dev builds for users who do like seeing changes quickly.
We've got a super active group of some of the more prolific plugin developers that we interact with on a daily basis on our public Discord server. They definitely provide a lot of feedback and we make a point of listening to what the have to say.
The reality of it is that most open source developers wax and wane in their development work. The ones who stick with projects for years and years tend to either do open source work related to their day job, or are at least partially employed to work on the open source work. Others will get an itch, scratch it, share it, improve it and then be satisfied.
As an end user: that model doesn’t work for me at all. Most other apps I use get regular feature and bugfix updates and I admit that I’m spoiled by those regular updates. That ST2 went so very long between releases made it feel like a dead project. Even if behind the scenes it was still active and healthy, I didn’t see that and couldn’t tell the difference between “actively developed, thriving project that just doesn’t release often” and “developer woke up one month and thought ‘hey, I should close a feature request or two this quarter’”.
Again, I’m definitely not arguing that you’re not hard at work on it. I mean this in the spirit of feedback: as an end user who wasn’t active in the plugin developer forums, I didn’t realize anyone was still working on it full-time. And because of that, I stopped using ST because it felt like it was a dead end and I wanted to put my mental resources toward learning and using something still alive and thriving.
Who cares if it "feels" like a dead project? I know it's not dead, I don't care what it feels like.
I don't use software for the feeling of being up to date on the cutting edge, I use it because it suits my needs.
Turns out ST wasn’t actually a dead project, although it seemed like it. The ST team probably lost more users than just me from not communicating.
I am glad to pay for software that doesn't keep me on the run like a treadmill. It is possible for software as simple as a text editor to be "finished".
Really excited about ST4, looks like a major upgrade!
I like VSCode, and I use it for a lot of IDE-like stuff. But for normal reading and writing code? I use Sublime Text. Sublime Text is so much faster and more fluid, and able to handle much larger files, and has a better set of text editing tricks in my opinion. And that is worth enough to me that I wouldn't trade it for being able to do everything in one editor.
Sublime + plugins has "enough" features that I only switch when I really need to. And while I can't put my finger on exactly why I feel this way, text just seems to look more pleasant than on other editors, even when using the same fonts and similar color schemes.
I'm a licence holder and I haven't seen an update since October 2019. Despite reading most of this thread I haven't managed to figure out where any more recent releases are. Can you point me towards them?
Respectfully, ST devs, I think you might need to have a hard look at how you do customer communication. I stopped using ST essentially because of stagnation that hadn't actually happened!
You have really odd expectations of a small team making a targeted tool and for which you have expounded at length about how it doesn't work for you. Cool beans, my dude.
I love Sublime. The devs have earned a good portion of my trust to keep on rocking; they'll get my license fee whenever they ask for it (the benefit of trust).
I'm all for small dev teams doing things that let them stay small, but we're not talking about substantial changes here, we're talking about a sentence on their website saying "ST4 is in active development, you can follow progress on the forums", or other small changes like that.
I actually agree with the parent.
I've been a long time ST, and I've found significant limitations and bugs; since they haven't been fixed/improved for a while, and there were no news, I switched, and I'm not going back again.
While the parent's post may have been better phrased, I think that it's correct that with a better communication, they could have retained more customers.
Sublime Text 3, as you say, has gone without dev updates since 2019 with no announcements about why or pointers to the new version.
Yes, they're very bad at some of these communications issues. :D
Clearly you disagree with that decision, but we do communicate with our users pretty much every day. We simply decided trying to communicate and gather feedback from tens of thousands of users was less productive for a team of six than hundreds of engaged power users.
Sticking a note at the top of the ST3 dev build page akin to the one on the ST2 dev builds page, even without a link to the discord or new builds, would have changed their perception of things.
Or even just a post on your news blog that you're moving active development to an upcoming version? A pinned post on your forum? There really was no communication to users who're not actively involved in the community, that I could find.
While posting new builds in a not easily discoverable location is technically compatible with the statement of:
> For license holders, we've actually been shipping new dev builds every one to two weeks.
In practice the result is that (by stated design) the majority of sublime text license holders will not be aware of new builds for several years at a time until they are announced in the easily discoverable public location again.
I think it's good for them to pursue whatever development and community engagement model feels most sustainable, but it is disingenuous to claim that both users have access to the current dev builds while also trying to hide those builds from most users.
(edit: grammar)
"Release early, release often" -- but not too often. I'm not a beta tester, I want stable software.
I registered my copy of sublime text maybe 8 years ago. Before that I had used Notepad++ for years as well. I love that sublime is a thing that I paid for once and I can trust that it will always fundamentally work without problems for my basic use cases. I never have to think about "oh well I'm not doing so much text editing at the moment, maybe I'll turn it off for now..." like I do with some other subscriptions. I'm not worried it won't work or will degrade because it seems stable as a rock. I primarily used Windows when I bought it, and I've been Mac only for 4 years, and it's still with me.
Sublime text is special and I love what you guys have done! And I appreciate that for my $80 or whatever it was, I can use this thing the way I use it right now and never worry about it again.
Honestly, I think people are being reactionary from how common abandonware is in the open source community (obviously sublime is closed source, but people who use sublime use a lot of open source), as well as the long delay between ST2 and ST3. I remember plugins with docs that said "I have abandoned this project because Sublime Text is dead" when ST3 was still in beta. It is... probably not great that when I check the About window on my copy of SublimeText, it says Copyright 2019 and the changelog on your website says October 2019. It is useful for a customer facing product to not look dead, but this is completely possible without being forced to ship updates or features on a regular basis. Just be mindful of customer perceptions and what the touch points are and be patient and consistent within your bandwidth.
> A license is valid for Sublime Text 3 [...]. Future major versions, such as Sublime Text 4, will be a paid upgrade.
> [...] an upgrade fee will be required for Sublime Text 4.
I'd feel pretty bad if I bought ST3 and the next day you'd decide to release ST4 and now I'd have to pay for an upgrade. Why not just stick to the terms on the buy page:
> Personal licenses are a once off purchase, and come with 3 years of updates. After 3 years, an upgrade will be required to receive further updates.
Why not:
> [...] come with 3 years of updates *regardless of version*.
Then I wouldn't have to worry about a new release being right around the corner.
As it's now I can only feel comfortable buying ST when a new major version comes out, which sucks. I could have bought it years ago.
I understand that providing release dates of future major versions can be hard but could you at least show the cost of the upgrade?
Sublime is great btw, I'll definitely make a purchase once ST4 comes out <3
I really enjoy using Sublime Text for some parts my daily workflow yet that equates for me using like 5% of the actual functionality. I don't actively write code within ST but use it for stuff surrounding my coding workflow.
Nonetheless, thanks for the product. I really enjoy it.
edit: lol downvotes because I'm trying to give someone money
If you don't feel it's worth $80, you can use Visual Studio Code for free.
Unless you are offering to pay for it because the cost is so little I'm not sure your rebuttal holds water.
$80.00 US is a lot for an editor that doesn't provide updates.
I didn't pay $80 for an editor that doesn't provide updates. I paid $70 for 5 years use of an editor that has updated a major version and a few minor versions and that I've installed on many workstations and VMs through the years. I use it every day so I'm glad I paid.
The parent commentor said they are already using it and will continue to do so without paying. Neither of you need to pay for the editor if you don't like it. Just use a different one.
I understand the frustration with subscription pricing, but it's a business model that actually aligns my incentives with the developer's. I want an up-to-date product and they want ongoing revenue for their ongoing work.
Maybe applying only after a N consecutive months with an active subscription, to prevent paying for a single month behaving as a lifetime purchase.