I actually use TextMate 1.5 more than I use Sublime Text. Unfortunately, TextMate 1.5 was never open-sourced and TextMate 2 broke plugins designed for 1.5. So for me, it is abandonware. :(
Considering that the author clearly went through serious burnout during that time, no, I would not joke about that: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1388905
Sure if you built something people loved, theres ton of pressure to follow up with something just as good.
But it's biology. People get bored, exhausted or uninspired with their projects.
At the end of the day he made a ton of money and built something thousands of people use everyday. That should be more important than having a good sequel. There will always be competitors who will keep customers happy. Thats not his full responsibility forever because he did it once.
Besides, he'll get motivated again one day and do something interesting.
The best quote I've read on the subject was that if people care enough to complain about your product, that means you did something right.
People do take things personally. This isn't constructive criticism we're talking about. It's not even a criticism of the product itself. It's making fun of someone for getting burnt out.
While I see your perspective, I think it's going to get pretty boring around here if we have to walk on eggshells for fear that somebody who probably isn't even paying attention might be offended at a jovial (if accurate) characterization of one of their shortcomings.
If you had serious depression going with your exhaustion at least, you might have had burn out.
The trivialization of burnout is damaging to the victims of burnout.
Burnout a temporary state (by nature) brought on by legitimate causes.
If it was depression, then that is a separate issue with plenty of it's own clinical treatments and reasoning.
You can't deal with burnout by suppressing everyone who brings it up.
It has to be accepted. He has to accept that there are fans of Textmate who are disappointed while being able to appreciate that he accomplished something really great regardless.
He accepted he can't finish the project and open sourced it, which was also a very nice gesture and made the fans quite happy.
There will always be people who are ignorant to the effects of burnout and try to make fun of failed projects. But that doesn't mean it has to be damaging to the project creators.
I’ve been very tempted to switch to ST2, but I realized that the TM2 delay could not have happened if it was open source.
Since then, I’m using Textmate 2 and Vim, and I plan to fully switch to Vim soon: open source, powerful, extensible, large community, lightweight, and multi-platform.