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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>I love this editor and it makes me sad to see how the project is stalled.

Stalled? It just had an update.

It's also in the 3rd version, under development, which came just a couple of months after the 2nd version had been released. He could just have released ST2 and keep it at that version for 3-4 years.

Instead he immediately started development ST3, which had frenetic development in the first months, and has been completely stable for a year or more (I know, I use it everyday, along with several plugins).

And in the forum he even mentioned ST4 base libs he is preparing a month or so ago.

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> And in the forum he even mentioned ST4 base libs he is preparing a month or so ago.

Huh. Do you think there will be an ST4 beta/dev release before there's an ST3 stable release? I wonder if the developer has just decided to label all his releases beta from now on?

> and has been completely stable for a year or more

If this is true, why are the releases still labelled 'dev' releases?

How is anyone supposed to know that it's actually a stable release they should be using? Research it on HN comment threads?

>If this is true, why are the releases still labelled 'dev' releases?

Because it's an arbitrary label.

Or because John wants to hook something additional up or polish something before giving it his "3.0" blessing.

Or because it crashes on Linux and needs to fix that too...

But not because there's any issue with it on OS X, at least not for me, and I'm a heavy (8-10 hours per day) user.

Or because other people in this thread insist that in fact it's not stable, and there are numerous bugs on multiple platforms.

Regardless, if you want people to know that a release is ready for use by people who want a stable release, you label it a final release, right? Presumably the developer(s) do not believe it is ready for wide use. Whether they are being overly conservative or not is I suppose another question.

But it seems silly to suggest that everyone should do research on their own to discover something labelled 'beta' or 'dev' should really be considered the latest stable release.

>Or because other people in this thread insist that in fact it's not stable, and there are numerous bugs on multiple platforms.

I don't know what plugins those people use. They might have thrown in the kitchen sink of unstable plugins. Lots of people using ST3 in the forums without issues. Plus I know my personal experience on my platform of choice.

>Regardless, if you want people to know that a release is ready for use by people who want a stable release, you label it a final release, right?

Well, some projects prefer the perpetual beta designation. Heck, even Google did that for years for stuff like Gmail etc.

the dev releases are hidden on the website. You have to look to find them. The website by default directs you to the very stable 2 version. If you look you can find the stable 3 builds. If you dig deeper you can find the dev builds. Each of these things is clearly labeled and not mixed. Nobody going through the website is going to download a dev build on accident.

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