Is Sublime still alive? | Hacker News Reader

Is Sublime still alive?

39 pointscryptos29 comments

The last activity of the developer of the Sublime text editor is from last december. Nothing has happens since then to complete the work on sublime 3.

Today we can see some other sublime inspired edtiors like Brackets or Atom come on stage.

So is Sublime still actively developed or is it dead?

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Great editor. Really poor customer interactions.

As Mattwritescode mentions - there was a forum post in July - which mentions an August update but nothing yet. Remember when there were almost daily updates?

There is Lime - which is an open source Sublime 'clone' https://github.com/limetext/lime

I was asking myself the same question last week.

This link here will explain all that is going on with the development of sublime text as of july (2014).

http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16517

For those who are lazy and will not read the link here is some text taken from the page.

> Sublime Text is still in development. We haven't sold out to atom.io, Jon hasn't died, there has been no hostile takeover by TextWrangler. We dropped back down to one developer earlier this year, and because that developer is also the director of the company, speed of updates was sacrificed in exchange for business planning, applying for a new payment platform and a vacation. Being a bit of a perfectionist probably contributes to the dearth of feature adds.

> However, development is still active: when I spoke to Jon today he advised me that not only does he expect an update to the beta in August, he has also started mapping out some frameworks for version 4 which will help guide future development.

I was asking myself the same question last year. Since moved to Vim. It sucks the same questions are still being asked but it goes to show what a nice piece of software it currently is. Unfortunately that's only 1 of several factors when choosing an editor.

Development progress is too slow. In my opinion its no longer a priority project for the developer. Personally am going to move to IntelliJ (i know its an ide not editor) when the next version is out as that is better maintained.

I think its time sublime got open sourced. Developer can maybe charge for pro features but make the core of the product open source.

What improvements do people want in the next version of ST? I don't mean that sarcastically, I'm genuinely interested.

A new version number. Seriously.

Most people would be happy if he pushed the code up unchanged but with a new version number just so they can feel like the project is fresh again... its not about features, its about having a shiny new version number to look at... like most software.

IMO, im still using ST2, because frankly 3 didnt bring enough new to the table...

Basically you're suggesting a six-monthly release cycle is used (like Ubuntu). Maybe not all that many changes, but a shiny new release to talk about every 6 months.

Agreed. I've heard a big demand for a new version but haven't heard requests for many features.

Bug fixes are obviously good.

I don't think a mature editor should need constant development. Think about the major release cycle for something like emacs.

I'm not sure if it's in the cards or whatever, but I'd love a better way of dealing with the preferences. I find opening up the "default preferences" and "user preferences" separately and copy-pasting or whatever to be pretty inconvenient. I don't mind that it's JSON, but it could easily be improved (maybe something where the two files are merged and when you modify preferences it uses context-specific "text completion" to show available options, with the default highlighted).

I haven't really needed a feature since they fixed the performance issues on hidpi displays. While I hope it's not dead, I am happy with the current state of the editor.

Oh maybe there's one thing: If you have a massive text file in your project, it will try to index it and things start to get slow.

I honestly see Sublime Text as 'almost-development-completed' tool. It does not seem to be getting more updates(even if it does, very slowly) but it works.

Then again, I only use it for html/js where the shift-enter(I know there is a term for it) and my trusty vim for the rest...

Considering that it is quite well done and I have yet to meet anyone who paid for it (aside from myself), I think its going about as well as to be expected.

I've paid for it. This editor works well, he can take my money.

I've also paid for it, recently.

I purchased it a long time ago. I know of others who have as well. It's nice they have the never ending demo -- but I'm glad people pay for it. It's a great editor.

I paid for it around a year ago. I would have thought that most freelance devs that use ST will have paid for it.

The company I work for paid for a few licenses to use. Paying for it lets the development continue.

I paid for it, as did my co-worker. We both use it for development. I strongly suspect that most people who use it at their job pay for it.

Looks dead. Customer support is the worst. One year or more has passed since sending an email to customer support, but I haven't received any reply since.

Seeing some new builds of ST popping up less than infrequently doesn't qualify ST as being developed or maintained. That's like some open source projects which get a few small commits every few months or years.

For people who've switched from Sublime to Atom, what are some of the things you miss/prefer from Sublime, and vice versa?

I've tried switching to Atom several times, but performance always brings me back: Sublime can edit a several-megabyte file with no stress, Atom becomes unusable; I can bash keys in Sublime and they instantly appear on the screen, there's an almost-noticeable-but-wait-is-it-even-really-there-yes-I-think-it-is delay on Atom. Also, vim mode isn't as robust as vintage mode (`ci"` to change the stuff inside of quotes, in particular, doesn't work in Atom).

I really hope whatever javascript/html/css framework they've set up has a lot of room for performance improvements. I'd much rather be using something open source based on these technologies (which, for me at least, would make the editor much more hackable).

I know Atom is still in its infancy so this is not a bash on it at all. The vim mode is what gets me. I keep using Sublime mostly because the vintage mode is quite good in comparison.

I really want to use Atom for the reasons you stated :)

As far as I could tell, Atom didn't have per-syntax settings. That made it a non-starter for me.

Brackets pre-dates Sublime AFAIK.

Sublime, I think, was inspired by TextMate.

I haven't been too impressed with Atom yet. It's really slow. Sublime is much faster for quickly editing a file.

Not Vim fast, but faster than Atom.

Its a small shop that makes a great product so it is slow going for the next version. I believe they only have 2 developers. their last blog entry said they are still working on the next version.

"The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior"

Sublime, in every possible way, reminds me of TextMate.

Yeah, all one-two guy products made by them in their free time as it seems cannot be a match for open-source projects. I like Sublime, I paid for it, I liked TextMate and paid for it as well, I've been getting disappointed by Atom so far, but I'd rather invest into a living product than in one in agony.

What about a Kickstarter/Indiegogo type campaign to pay the developer to opensource it ?

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