Sublime Text 3 Public Beta
sublimetext.com
sublimetext.com
6 years ago, I bought TextMate. Like Sublime Text, I enjoyed using it. Sadly, TextMate became abandonware. The sole developer suffered burnout. Bugs were never fixed. Promised features never showed up. Users wanted to fix these issues themselves. They begged the developer to release the source code, but it never happened. TM 2.0 was open-sourced, but TM 1.5 remains proprietary.
Developers marry their editors. They spend years learning every aspect of them. They customize their configuration. They install and develop plugins and extensions. If an editor becomes abandonware, the users of that editor have wasted an immense amount of time. All of their knowledge and work surrounding their editor becomes useless. They're forced to start over with something else.
All that said, I would recommend Sublime Text to others if the developer made an anti-abandonware pledge. The pledge would be to release the source code if no new version had been released in more than a year. I realize he has to make a living. Heck, I don't mind if he gets filthy rich from selling Sublime Text. I'm simply worried that despite his good intentions, he'll end up hurting his users in the long run. With an anti-abandonware pledge, users would be able to avoid the fate of TextMate users.
As a counterpoint, as long as the version you already have is useful, and as long as it's a permanent copy that is not going to just stop working if the supplier takes their ball and goes home (I'm looking at you, Adobe), all you're risking is not having improvements that you were never guaranteed anyway. If the current version is better for you than whatever else you could have used instead, it's probably still worth buying it even with no future-proofing, IMHO.
Don't you mean a low bus factor?
>The bus factor is the total number of key developers who would need to be incapacitated (as by getting hit by a bus/truck) to send the project into such disarray that it would not be able to proceed.
So, higher is better ? I was wondering too the other day and settled on "augmenting the bus factor", in a good way.
I don't understand what the concern is here.
As you say, developers marry their editors. I certainly would be frustrated if Sublime were abandoned tomorrow, but I'd still rather use it today over any other editor.
1. Sublime Text 2 (and also Textmate 1.5) are STILL good editors. And they will continue to be good editors for the foreseeable future. Just like Vim and Emacs. You don't need a newer version every year. Even though Vim and Emacs DO release newer versions, I have no idea what is in the new releases. Why? Because Emacs 22 and Vim 6.3 do well enough. Textmate 1.5 does well enough. Sublime Text 2 does just fine.
2. I get the bus factor ideal, but it doesn't always turn out that way. Sure it's a chance, but look at the Jack Slocum, ExtJS situation. He was a one man show. He was a machine that could output beautiful amazing work. Then he actually let Sench Labs take over. He seemed to disappear for a time. They had a few stumbles. Now he's back. Same could happen. The same could happen for Sublime.
Overall. I don't see it as a hinderance. Watch Railscasts or Peepcode. They don't seem to have a problem using a 5 year old editor. Heck, I still use a table saw from 1982.
M-x package-list-packages
Imagine APIs that let your editor of choice deeply integrate with LLVM or Web Inspector. We're getting there, but we still have a long way to go.
* Double clicking a directory will make that directory the top level directory in the project side bar.
* Having to double-click to open a file; you can single click but only if you click the small file icon instead.
* Silly fading animation whenever you open a file.
I know most of the time I use the file search anyways but those first impressions really put me off using it.
At the time TM2 was still private beta and not yet open sourced. I figured if I was gonna change to a CoreText editor, ST2 had the better support.
What exactly is "fabulous" about it? It's mostly a rehash of 1.5 with some random stuff thrown in. For a 5 year wait, I'd expect a lot more.
It's not even close to ST2, much less 3.
Emacs is old, complex and beautifully configurable. Vim is elegant and fast until you see Vimscript. Sublime is modern and great of out-of-the-box, but developed by a very smart guy that won't talk to his users on the forums).
It would also be nice if my $70 license included free upgrades to future versions. There's just not enough new for me to spend $70 every year for a slightly better text editor. I'll stick with whatever version it is that I have now.
Source: http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-3-beta
Off the top of my head, I was thinking ReiserFS [0] which seemed lose ground quickly after Reiser's murder charge and subsequent conviction [1].
0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReiserFS
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser#Trial_and_verdict
I'm probably an aberration, but I don't customize my text editors beyond the basics, and I definitely don't write plugins for them. It would probably make me a better developer, but I'm just not motivated to do that.
You didn't mention what you do recommend to peers?
In the case of ST2, it was pretty damn solid out of the box. There's tremendous power in the customization, but it's in no way required.
I've been married to Photoshop for almost 20 years (which already ties me to either OS X or Windows) and our relationship has recently gone sour financially. Open Source gives you a peace of mind that's very reassuring when it's your daily, almost irreplaceable tool.
Your suggestion is good, I think we haven't yet reached the sweet spot between user freedom and developer paycheck.
For me, the reason is a bit more day-to-day practical in that I find myself increasingly doing development on Linux systems running on ARM chips and Sublime Text has no support for ARM builds. It is something often asked for in the forums and on the userecho site but is always shot down by the developer.
Editors are an odd case for me as a developer in that I'd rather use an editor I like slightly less that works on every platform I use in a consistent manner than use one that I like more but has limited platform support.
I hope Will Bond makes some money from that, given all the time (and hosting expenses) he puts in for the indispensable Sublime Package Control: http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control
Except, don't look under the hood, that's not for you. Editors should not be closed source, and a plugin system is just a hack for appeasement.
Nothing is stopping YOU from building an editor in your own time and making the source available.
But my original point is caution in these waters, when plenty of viable options exist.
This is like saying you won't marry that beautiful girl because she can die tomorrow and you will not know what to do with her dresses. Isn't more logical to enjoy beautiful girls and pleasant software while they are here?
Yeah, because it's fair to make an analogy between a Girl and a Text Editor. A text editor is a tool, I want the hammer to be there for me tomorrow, you can't assure that with a closed source editor (After Text Mate I swore I wasn't going to make the same mistake again, ever.)
You may invest some time/money on custom accessories for some editor, but if the author disappears it is not like a divorce, you can still use the tool until it breaks: if you can't get spare parts to fix your broken hammer because the maker went out of business, you just go to the hardware store and get a new hammer from other supplier.
Life has a "low bus factor".
This bus might hit YOU, after all.
Enjoy what you can, while you can. Who cares if you have to move to something else in 5 years?
Do you feel like the years you used TextMate were wasted? Haven't you wrote stuff with it?
I've seen tons of promising OSS projects becoming abandon-ware when a few core developers left -- or taking a turn and getting rewritten in a way I couldn't stand.
Case in point, TextMate becoming Open Source (isn't that the case, IIRC?) didn't really help it overcome obsoleteness. It got some new builds, and a few guys tinkering, but nothing worthy to use as a 2013 editor.
Then I made the realization that the editor you use has no bearing on your skill as a developer (well, as long as you're not using Notepad). I picked up Sublime, and my productivity shot up by an order of magnitude. It's fun, supports every single language I've written in, and has a plugin out there for my favorite color scheme of all time, Tomorrow Night (previously it was Solarized Dark). With sublime I can code circles around my former vim-imprisoned self any day.
I've tried to pick up Vim several times and never made it very far. But at least I know "i" and ":wq" now :)
Absolutely. Well, maybe I wouldn't call it "wired", but no one tool is right for everyone, and no one should feel bad or wrong for using something different.
I am a Vim lover. You can pry Vim from my cold, dead fingers. But of course it's not for everyone, for the same reason that we don't all use just one programming language or one web framework.
If I want to select four lines of text in any text editor that isn't vim, I just hold down the shift key and use any of the cursor navigation available to me. Not so in vim.
Upon leaving vim none of the key bindings are never used in any other program. That's antithetical to the manner in which I operate. Normally if a program doesn't support the odd keybinding or two I just use autohotkey or equivalent. But vim makes that impossible.
I personally find the navigation of vim so convenient that I use vimperator for Firefox, as well as the built in vim mode of sublime text.
I totally get that vim is a completely unnatural fit for some people. I certainly don't hold that against them, and I hope they don't hold it against me or vim itself.
That's actually not true at all. Lots of terminal programs have keybindings for stuff like hjkl. Even tig does. And if you're using git from the command line and haven't heard of tig, you need to look it up.
Even many roguelike games support vim keybindings for movement. Brogue is an example.
echo "set editing-mode vi" > ~/.inputrc
echo "bind -v" > ~/.editrcI say this as someone who uses vim very nearly exclusively.
If you are burning all your cycles trying to map the natural way your brain wants to operate to the way your text editor operates, what do you have left for the real work?
If you want to learn vim, by all means go ahead. But feel no shame if it just doesn't fit you.
This is how I learned Vim, so as far as I know it's the best resource out there.
I end up using visual mode a lot in VIM because it's often faster (or easier) than stopping to count how many times I need to repeat the operation.
Editors do make a difference in your productivity - that is why people have favourites and why they have flamewars. That productivity matters.
How do these people know it makes a difference? Do they measure their productivity? Is there any scientific research on this?
Similarly, a top flight programmer who has mastered emacs or vim or Sublime Text won't be operating at a conscious level but will be controlling the environment in front of them at a far higher level, especially if the conceptual model of the text buffer is the same no matter what they're doing with it.
An extreme comparison would be to sit two people of the same ability down in front of the Linux kernel source tree, one armed with emacs, cscope, syntax highlighting, org-mode and cc-mode and the other with nano and see who is faster at some non-trivial task.
Sure you don't. You can feel the difference. The problem occurs when people treat their editors as an extension of themselves and can't tell the difference between "not liking you" and "not liking your editor", eventually getting defensive. That's a "cognitive level" I don't want to get myself into.
I've interviewed people who were exposed to Nano at school, and have never tried out any other editor. They are missing out on productivity improvements available in many other editors. More middling of the scale I've also interviewed someone who used Eclipse as their first editor and has proceeded to use it ever since despite not working on Java projects any more. That isn't bad per se, but I rank someone higher if they at least try out others every now and then.
The fact that people feel strongly about something does not mean it is important. Lots of people have very strong feelings about the New Jersey Devils or the Miami Heat. That doesn't mean that sports or teams matter.
I'm not saying your conclusion is wrong, but your comment does not constitute a valid argument in favor of that conclusion.
I meant important to them individually, not the whole world
Which would probably be important if you were interviewing them to be local sportscasters in those markets, no?
Combining vim and tmux with the basix Unix command line and a few other tools like ack, tig, etc., gives me an environment that I can't really replicate with desktop applications, at least not on OS X, which lacks a true tiling window manager (i.e., one which, unlike slate, spectacle, etc., tiles the windows for you automatically). I've considered a switch to Linux for xmonad, but I still love OS X overall and am more than happy with my terminal workflow.
I work with two 27-inch monitors, and I like to dedicate one entire monitor to a single full-screen terminal with tmux as the window manager.
Admittedly, this has its downsides. For instance, I feel hopeless trying to do serious coding on Windows.
Here's a bug that's been driving me crazy: http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8889
I can edit the theme file, but it's hit-and-miss guessing game that hasn't yielded any results. I also couldn't find any comprehensive docs for the theme file format. I can't look at the editor source code to see whether any solution is possible, because the source is closed. Likewise, there's no way someone could supply their own patch to the author, for the same reason. So anyone who needs this fixed is at the mercy of the author, who has not responded in any way yet.
Don't get me wrong: Sublime Text 2 has been a delight to use, for the most part. Sublime Text 3 seems to be equally great. I would probably shell out $70 if that would mean I would have better chances to have my pet peeves fixed in some foreseeable future, but I can't see any clear indication of that, either.
There are things I'd like to change about sublime and can't do with plugins.
The future of editors are web-based IMO.
Plus: what are those "small bugs and inconsistencies"? I've been using ST2 for a year, and ST3 since it was publicly available an an alpha, and can't remember anything other than totally insignificant issues.
edit: typo
Also, when your cursor is on a word, and you press F12, it will bring you to the definition of the class or function. This also works with CSS classes and ID's from your HTML.
It's really great to see a developer treating Windows, Linux and OSX all as first class targets (not just wrt the installers).
The method jumping functionality is very good. Not on par with RubyMine; e.g you can't jump to an ActiveRecord method or any other 3rd party gem. But for navigating your code base, it reliably finds method definitions across the whole project and find them quickly.
It's not on par with RubyMine, but it's still a solid addition.
all the feature requests are simply mothballed for years, including some that are showstoppers for me.
Syntax / Code folding
- feature for dealing with bad code. Solution: write good code. We don't need additional cruft in the editor slowing it down.
Terminal panel (specifically for windows)
- Would actually be nice for windows users. I am not one. Probably why the console in sublime is so limited, supporting windows in this regard is terribly difficult.
Matching HTML/XML tags
- A package called 'All Autocomplete' already does this.
Side by side comparison
- use a diff tool.
Theming of the sidebar
- http://sublimetext.userecho.com/topic/19274-theming-of-the-s...
Printing
- surprised this doesn't exist, surprised I never noticed.
Armv7 or armv6 version of sublime text 2 for linux
- I don't even know what to say about this one.
Autocomplete hints
- Sublime is a text editor, not an IDE.
Have an API for Tooltips
- Reasonible request.
Documentation!!!
- Reasonible request.
Icons in the sidebar
- Checkout 'Theme - Flatland' to see how this is done.
Background transparency at the color scheme level
- Couldn't care less.
Move tabs to the title bar like in Google Chrome
- Not sure what this means.
Rename files/folders via Project Sidebar
- Feature added.
Better, or customizable match_brackets style
- Can't say I've looked into this, probably a package exists.
Add intellisense-like support
- Sublime is a text editor, not an IDE.
Double clicking in an empty tab area should create a new tab
- Feature added.
Side Bar API
- Reasonible request.
SCM integration
- Packages exist.
feature is useful
Quickly going through that list, the biggest outstanding issues are documentation and printing. It's not really legitimate to say the developer is ignoring user feedback. It would appear that bad feedback is being ignored and good feedback is being added.
i don't use code-folding either, but blaming the users for writing poor code is a pretty shitty excuse not to implement the most requested feature.
- Matching HTML/XML tags
- Better, or customizable match_brackets style
just because something can be done via an extension, doesn't mean that it should be done that way. The most popular extensions, i think, belong in the core.
Whether you think any of these points are valid is your personal opinion, against hundreds/thousands of others. If he didnt want to take user feedback seriously, then why bother with a prominent feature tracking system?
EDIT: looks like Matching HTML/XML tags is implemented in the new beta (with some quirks). Unfortunately, the fact that the highlight style cannot be customized makes it just as useless as the existing, barely-noticeable match_brackets feature. Is it really that difficult to let users customize the editor's marking style?
I was hesitant to add that comment, but it needs to be said. Pushing people into the pit of success is a good thing. Sucks to read 10,000 line files? Stop writing 10,000 line files. I also really like how fast sublime is. Coming from an IDE for about 6 years, this is one of the features I like the most. Code folding is bloat.
>Whether you think any of these points are valid is your personal opinion
I didn't post this under any other assumption. These are all my opinion, as a full time sublime user.
>If he didnt want to take user feedback seriously, then why bother with a prominent feature tracking system?
I would argue that he is taking user feedback seriously. One of the most difficult things to do with any product is to decide what feedback is valuable and what feedback is not. I think sublime is doing a very good job of this.
I'm not sure history supports that position, at least in the context of software development.
For example, in C++ the syntax for the new-style type cast operators was made deliberately awkward. The argument was that casting is generally not to be encouraged, so doing it should be ugly. What this actually did was encourage almost everyone to ignore the new-style casts and just write the old C-style ones instead, because they worked and didn't make your lines 157 characters long.
If you make software development tools, fighting against what software developers want to do is almost never a winning strategy IME. You promote better practices by providing better tools that make those practices easier, not by providing worse tools that make some things harder and hoping that will stop people doing those things instead of ignoring your inferior tools.
What it means is like chrome there should be no title bar. Precious vertical pixels wasted for something that is never used. Like chrome or most modern browsers have moved the tabs in the title bar sublime should do this too.
Block or multi selection, though I don't use it as often is another thing that is often poorly done or requires a mouse.
I can't recall that I have ever felt that a text editor was "slow".
That said, I feel odd about this being a primary upgrade point. Speed improvements to me indicate that there were speed issues (confirmed by others here). I read that as "bug," not "feature request." It almost feels like you're going to be paying $15/$30 for a patch in this instance.
In ST3, no such problems.
If you listen for on_modified as a plugin and do any work, the next keystroke won't appear until you return from on_modified. Multiply that across many plugins, some of which don't care about speed, and your editor becomes very slow.
Notepad++ is a lot quicker for those.
{ "keys": ["command+shift+g"], "command": "reindent", "args": {"single_line": false}}
Will Bond, the creator of Package Manager maintains a list of compatible packages here: https://github.com/wbond/sublime_package_control/wiki/Sublim...
It's worth checking if any essential ones will work for you before switching.
Personally, my biggest issue is that wbond's Sublime FTP doesn't work, but the overall speed increase is so great that I'm trying to make my workflow work without it.
Emmet, LESS sintax and other addons work properly. That was all I needed.
"always_show_minimap_viewport": true
This why it is still beta. You should bother to explore the settings sometimes.
I talk about c++ and Python though, where no 'real cool' IDE exists. Not so for statically-typed reflexive languages like Java and C#, where your well-informed IDE can make code transformations of arbitrary complexity.
Current version is ST2-only.
In Sublime's case, any time I'm working on a ".ino" file, I get an "Arduino" menu added to the menubar, which gives me all of the options needed for compiling & uploading code to the Arduino &etc.
Every other language is fine though.
For the plugins I use, they all updated fine.
The sentence loses its meaning because its so often spoken following Apple's marketing speak.
Why ? I was really hoping to just use a credit card directly.
I spent some time last year using Sublime Text 2. [1] But I didn't get very far before I switched back to vim. My guess is that I'll have to unlearn my vim-ism or go all-in on vim and spend time practicing the more esoteric commands until they become second nature.
[1]: https://walledcity.com/supermighty/first-impression-sublime-...
Still, can't switch away from VIM :(
The only thing that I found really attractive in Sublime Text 2 is Goto Anything. ctrlp.vim brings some of its advantages to vim.
And if you work in a big company, who knows! They might already have a group license you can you.
As for me, you can pry my Emacs from my cold, dead fingers.
Step 1. Remove nag message. Step 2. Release to the world. Day 3. Tonnes of people jump to non-nag version and never pay.
The plugin system and API is available for those that wish to complement or extend the editor. Making the code available directly harms their ability to make money and their ability to continue to invest time and money building the product.
I do understand the concern though, but for a lot of people (myself included) ST is a better solution than a non-proprietary solution.
Perhaps the wrong place for flaimbait.... I apologize ahead of time!
I would have bought it if it was $29 and proprietary OR $70 opensource donation ware or $49 proprietary with 3 free version upgrades. That's my comfort feel around editors - YFMV of course.
Otherwise just deal with unobtrusive nagging until you decide it is worth it
If were purely a Python, PHP or otherwise Web developer, I haven't found a whole lot in ST2 that you can't get in Notepad++ (even without additional plugins).
The great news here is you can test drive Sublime Text to definitively decide if the price is right. For me, it was, but I would also caution against jumping on it just because a lot of people do/have. There are developers who wouldn't necessarily benefit from this over the alternative(s).
Anyone have an org mode? I'd at least like to make urls clickable.
If you are a professional developer living in a reasonably modern country and cannot afford 70$ for what is supposed to be to be your primary tool, then you are not underpaid, you are being scammed.
That the features it offers are not worth 70$ compared to free editors is another matter entirely, and a purely personal matter.
I must just not be as good as a Junior in middle america.
In the UK, a salaried senior software developer would typically make £45-60K before tax (currently around $70-90K US). Working for someone else as an employee, you'd expect to reach that level after maybe 5-8 years, but then stick there for the rest of your career. Obviously the rates can be higher with special circumstances and they are somewhat higher if you're working in London, but anything close to what is normal in the US would be a rare exception in the UK (and most other places outside the US).
But that being said, there is still a significant difference in wages for salaried positions. Contracting rates seems much more similar. And the tax treatment for contractors in the UK is so favourable as to make it more worthwhile than all but the very highest salaried developer roles in the City.
IME as someone who does freelance work in the UK, the tax treatment usually isn't a big win. There are some tax advantages, but in practice they are usually balanced or significantly outweighed by the extra overheads of running a business (accounting, legal, insurance, equipment purchases, etc.), the loss of typical employee benefits (paid time off, pension contributions, etc.), and the risk of downtime when you don't have work. If these kinds of downsides don't apply to you, then you're likely to be treated as a disguised employee and the IR35 rules will negate the tax advantages as well.
I find the big difference in moving to contract/freelance work in the UK is that you change the frame of reference from employer-employee negotiations and their associated expectations to business-business negotiations and their very different associated expectations. If you're good, and therefore generate a lot of obvious value to clients, the latter removes the glass ceiling. I suspect not coincidentally, as you mentioned, rates for this kind of work seem to be much more consistent among different countries.
As another person mentioned, being in the UK you face different challenges. My reply was partially to help you, but also to let other American programers know that there are better options out there.
I buy a lot of software, if a tool is useful it's going to pay for itself in no time.
I'm in Spain.
Then again, not sure why, if you're really employed as a developer, your company isn't paying for your development tools. DId you have to buy your own laptop?
Put `"fade_fold_buttons": false` in to your user settings.
"When 3.0 is released, upgrades will be available for $30, or $15 for users who have purchased recently. The cut off date for the reduced upgrade price will be based on the actual date of the 3.0 release."