Isn't this a clever way to make users buy into a paid upgrade for a stable version of an editor they already bought?
I'm happy to pay Jon as long as he keeps cranking out fast, high-quality software. Think of it as a subscription where you still own the software if you want to get out of it.
I paid for Sublime Text 2 with the expectation of continued support of the quality we had during beta, but instead we have waited months for bug fixes which have never arrived. ST2 was essentially abandoned after it left beta, and now we find our money hasn't gone into supporting the product we paid for, it's gone into funding the next one.
As a developer I know this makes excellent business sense, but as a user it feels like I've been tricked. The changelist looks more like a point release, but one we have to pay another 50% for in the hope our bug reports will eventually be acknowledged. Given the past 6 months I have no confidence that'll happen.
Perhaps I'm being unfair - after all, I use ST2 all the time, and I've certainly got my money's worth out of it, even with the bugs - but something about this just doesn't feel right.
Rationally, as a software guy, this seems somehow unfair. After all, even as it was launched and without any further changes, ST2 is a good product at a low price.
But the reality is that I feel the same way as radiac. When I chose to spend real money on a text editor -- not exactly a field where the free competition is lacking -- I did so because I wanted to support and encourage a project that did seem to have a lot of nice little touches and did seem to keep coming out with them. The obvious and abrupt end of the stream of incremental updates the moment ST2 went final does irritate me.
Unfortunately, contrary to the post I just read about how stable ST2 is, I have seen irritating crashes that stopped me using it for some work, and I haven't seen a bug fix even for that, nor any other improvement since I sent the money. I probably won't pay for ST3 at this point, because at least now I've figured out what does crash ST2 and how to avoid it, and fairly or otherwise, the assumption in the back of my mind is going to be that ST3 might make a few minor improvements of the kind we used to get anyway, but if it has any sort of crash or data loss bugs they won't get fixed.
As a prospective user of Sublime Text (3, now), it's interesting to think about how I would feel had I bought ST2 a year ago, and now felt compelled to upgrade. The price is semi-negligible, in terms of how much one pays for a quality tool -- it's a fraction of the price of Komodo IDE or PyCharm, for example -- but the hassle is still annoying.
As Silhouette points out, it really makes one wonder about how long "support" (bugfixes, etc) will last for the current version. I think one of the more interesting questions to arise from this thread has been what the difference is (or should be?) between a point release (vN.5) and version N+1.
That's what I view as honest, "I'm going to work on ST3 to convince you that its worth buying."
I haven't faced the same quality issues you speak of. TM2 has been rock solid for me. The only thing that never felt right was the theme (install Soda) and icon (Yuck, reminds me of Comic Sans)
As both a user and a developer, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect paid software to get support and bugfixes for a while - at least until the next version leaves beta. "Pay an extra 50% and maybe I'll fix the bugs" doesn't seem fair.
I'll happily pay for the upgrade if it keeps the author cranking away at a similar pace.
If not for the save your ass by not losing work bit, I like it for not being annoying.
- I run it on Linux, and had an unstable distribution for a while. I had a couple of occasions where the OS hard-locked, but on reboot Sublime started right back up to its last state -- including unwritten changes to multiple files.
- During a move to a new distribution, once I got my old /home remounted, Sublime amazingly did the right thing and again reloaded all of its state from the last operating system. I was expecting to have to re-open 30+ tabs/files and redo all of my user settings. Nope, Sublime did the right thing again.
- An update on my current OS has caused a problem with fuse which is causing my development directory to get unmounted on a regular basis. Sublime doesn't have a problem with this; any files that it loaded from the now-unavailable mount point are still there, the content is still all there, it doesn't freak out, it just marks the file as dirty (letting me know I need to remount that directory again).
- An rsync went afoul and nuked a pile of changes to a local development copy of a site. I was able to retrieve a bunch of my work from Sublime's open tabs.
None of these things are really examples of brilliant new engineering, but, in my experience they're all the kinds of details that too many other programs don't get right. Sublime just always seems to do what I would expect software to do in 2013.
That, plus ctrl-D is beautiful.
If I had to think of something I don't like about it, about the only things would be that occasionally the autocompletion is a nuisance, and occasionally I'll need to open a really really big file and a plugin causes it to stall for a bit. It sounds like the latter problem has been taken care of now in v3.
If Sublime were a bro, I'd always buy his beer. Instead, I'll be more than happy to pay the upgrade price.
I don't get these price discussions. If you earn your money by programming, I think it is crazy to be cheap on your tools if you can get the job better done using them.
If you program occasionally, then use some free open source editor.
People on construction sites don't use the cheapest tools available for a reason. If you use it to earn money, you shouldn't be short sighted.
If you tell me a Ford Taurus costs $40,000, justifying that by telling you I spent $100,000 on a broken bike doesn't make the former a good deal.
The way I see it, $70 on its own is meaningless. A lot of people are taken aback because it feels like $70 for an advanced text editor. And in many ways, it is that with some IDE flair built-in.
I own a license and honestly still find myself in Notepad++ for a bunch of things. As a professional programmer, I have come to the conclusion that for my purposes it's overpriced. Your mileage ... well, it should vary.
My point is you can't quantify the value or justify the cost in this way. Surely, a $40,000 Ford Taurus provides more value than the $100,000 broken bike, but that doesn't mean the Ford Taurus is priced appropriately for needs.
[Not that I'm saying this upgrade isn't worth it]
Absolutely.
>Goto to symbol is great, but all other bullet points taste like what I expected 2 to have once it left beta (basically, speed and not letting plugins crash my session).
I bought ST2 without expecting all these features. Taking the effort to add out-of-process plugins? That's more that the TextMate guy has done in all 6 years of dabbling with 2.
On top of that, it has other nice stuff I want. It might be OK calling it 2.5, but it's not a scam by any imaginable stretch of the word.
>Isn't this a clever way to make users buy into a paid upgrade for a stable version of an editor they already bought?
No. Did you find ST2 any less stable than any other editor out there? I use it for a year for working on 3-4 different languages and it never has crashed on me.
So, I appreciate the cynicism but it's misguided here.
This is a discussion about sublime, not other editors. And if other editors have shortcomings, it's not an excuse.
I also think that after paying for software the least you can expect is relatively bug-free code or quick updates to fix them, and a reduced number of crashes. That is, for software that has left beta to be labelled stable.
Yes, but only if by "spreading shit on everyone else" you mean:
1) a comparison between the speed of development/releases of ST (which was the very topic of this comment thread) and that of TextMate.
2) a generic statement that ST2 was as stable as any other competing browser.
So, really NO, not at all. Oversensitive much? As if "the other editors" (of which I only mention _one_) are gonna feel hurt?
>This is a discussion about sublime, not other editors.
No discussion about anything can be made without relating to other things, especially of it's own category.
If someone tells you "is this editor worth it" the only possible answer will take into account the other editors and what they offer.
this, and the rest of API-specific features will add 0.5 to make it completely "worth" the 3.0 tag.