I still like Sublime Text
563 comments
·January 29, 2025munificent
nine_k
Funnily, my approach is somehow opposite. I run Emacs with all bells and whistles to write whatever language. With LSPs, you are now not married to a language-specific IDE. As a developer, I just start Emacs in server mode and never shut it down.
Then I use emacsclient to edit all kinds of files. It loads instantly, handles any reasonable files, can access remote files when needed, and has all the tools I want handy.
OTOH the IDE features do not clutter anything: I have no tabs, no toolbars, no file trees — not until I ask for them.
pinoy420
That sounds like an academic exercise rather than anything practical
soraminazuki
In what world does the topic of setting up an editor have any academic value?
nine_k
It looks like the comment is posted to a wrong thread.
(FTR, the setup above is used for practical, mostly commercial programming; I've left academia without even finishing my post-grad study, decades ago.)
alt227
Obligatory xkcd
muppetman
Well said. I work in networking, and I use Sublime for editing router configurations before updating them/applying them etc. I love that it's fast and performant and isn't chock-full of IDE features. I've been a vim user for almost all my life, but a workmate showed me him editing configs using Sublime and he was so fast and quick (especially multiple pointers) - plus we use git a lot (sublime merge) so I tried it and was very impressed. I still use vim a lot, but I simply love Sublime Text (and Merge) as well.
bonestamp2
I use sublime in exactly the same way. I've written hundreds of blog post on it. I use it for light data manipulation and other file editing. For writing, I like how I can move text up/down like code when I want to move around items in my outline. I showed a writer friend of mine this and it blew his mind (he doesn't know anything about text editors).
For data manipulation, I like multi-line cursors. Sure, I have expensive IDEs that can do this too, but sublime is great for non-technical people and it's very affordable and lightweight as you mentioned.
My other friend spends a lot of time in spreadsheets, and he was trying to import a bunch of tabular data one time and it didn't quite work due to the source formatting. I showed him how to pull it into sublime, quickly add some commas and remove some junk data on every line to get it in shape for importing into Excel. He loved it!
brailsafe
> At the same time, it's not the tool I use as an IDE. For programming, I use whatever IDE is dominant for the language I'm working in. Over time, that's been Visual C++, Visual Studio, XCode, Eclipse, IntelliJ, and most recently VS Code.
This is what I do too, some IDEs are just well-suited for one language or stack over others. That said, I wish languages and IDEs and editors would share ideas more often. I actually don't hate XCode except for the performance, but I prefer the git interface of VSCode, and I prefer the ability to dangle commas and easily format JS/TS consistently (although the tools somehow used to be easier to set up) in VSCode. (absolutely hate prettier)
curvaturearth
Thanks for your books!
devmor
I feel exactly the same about it.
SublimeText is where I go to take some notes I want to write unformatted, or with some markdown.
It's where I go to paste some blob of JSON or logs from a random command that I want to parse out into something more readable than my terminal gave me.
It's where I write a random snippet of code to help someone who's asking me a question, or a bash script for a one-off job.
It's not my IDE and I don't want it to replace my IDE, just like I don't want my leatherman tool or swiss army knife to replace my power drill or pliers.
null
zxvkhkxvdvbdxz
Same! I love that it is so snappy and fast, and don't choke on larger files. I use it for all of my non-programming note taking. I also hope it don't turn into a IDE.
ToucanLoucan
I've been a big fan of VS Code but the latest updates have shown Microsoft simply can't shake their addiction to bloating software with unnecessary features, so likely back to Sublime Text I go.
zxvkhkxvdvbdxz
I've been running vscodium for a couple of years now, and they rip out the MS specific stuff so no ChatGPT and so forth. I haven't noticed any slowdowns.
Maybe give it a try? https://vscodium.com/
ToucanLoucan
Well that'd be just about perfect! Thank you stranger!
ben-schaaf
Sublime Text developer here, thank you for all the praise! I'm looking forward to what we can accomplish this year. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer.
jll29
For starters, I love the licensing, as it is very fair: I bought a personal license and I can take it to as many machines as I have (I do use many different computers). And you can buy it one time, no silly monthly subscription fees.
As a result, Sublime ist the only commercial (locally installed) software I still use, and it is always open.
There are situations, where I use macros, regex substitutions, or browsing the file system (using the keyboard only for speed) when I prefer to use my other editor, Emacs.
I recently played with Zed, which looks cute, but I immediately lost an important file, so back I was in the Sublime buffer. (Both Sublime and Emacs always auto-save documents without explicit "save" action, so you can never lose anything.)
I tend to have many Windows open (several dozens), some of them for several years, others for five minutes. The only two features I would like are: - search across all open files and - a list of edit buffers that is itself an editable buffer that you can walk around using cursor key and select a file by hitting RETURN like Emacs has it.
Generally, I prefer that I doesn't become a feature overloaded big monster of a program that can do everything (that's Emacs already, but I like both, I just want them to stay different).
Although for longer-term programming of bigger projects I prefer IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA or PyCharm CE, in recent time, I had to write mostly small programs, and both Emacs or Sublime fit that bill (no need for language servers for me for two screens full of a Python script as I also teach that stuff).
cobertos
It's not a one-time purchase if you consider updates.
> Personal licenses are a once off purchase, and come with 3 years of updates. After 3 years, an upgrade will be required to receive further updates.[0]
Tbh I think this is fair, but it surprises me every 3 years when I have to pay up again xD
guiambros
I actually like when I get the note that I need to pay for the upgrade. It's a good reminder that I still find Sublime valuable (so much that I use almost daily), and that I got 3-4 years of free upgrades for a fair price (vs. subscription models like 1Password, or version-specific rip-offs, like VMware Workstation).
It's one of my favorite piece of software. Obsidian being another one.
the_duke
> but I immediately lost an important file
Zed has an "autosave" setting, it's just off by default.
robin_reala
Sublime’s behaviour isn’t an autosave, it just never loses text in a window. You can upgrade the entire OS, start Sublime and your windows and text will be waiting for you, regardless of saved or unsaved state. I’ve got five-year-old scratchpad windows open that I’ve never saved.
paulcarroty
It works well, but Zed consuming too much CPU on Linux: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/14833
bondarchuk
>Both Sublime and Emacs always auto-save documents without explicit "save" action, so you can never lose anything.
Unless, of course, you accidentally press "delete folder" instead of "remove folder from project" in the sidebar context menu.
yladiz
As far as I’m aware it just goes to the bin, it’s not rm’d, so it is recoverable.
catwell
Hey! I'm a Sublime Text user since ST2 in 2011.
I love ST (my last blog post is https://blog.separateconcerns.com/2025-01-04-teal-lsp-sublim...) and I think the main thing lacking compared to the competition is the remote development experience.
I work in AI so we typically work over SSH on machines with big GPUs. Most of my colleagues use VSCode because it has a very good Remote Development extension.
james2doyle
I actually have heard that working over a remote connection can be a pain. From what I've seen from other Sublime users is that they will usually just mount a drive and then edit off that. There are also a couple of SSH plugins that can be used. In the past, I've just downloaded the files I've needed and then used rsync or scp. Not slick, but it works.
cobertos
Same experience. My local machine at $Job is so slow and locked down that spinning up a VM in the cloud + VSCode remote plugin is the only way I can develop now. I would not have switched if I could edit the remote filesystem without syncing. I've worked on a ton of projects with the paid SFTP plugin but it was too painful in this case.
InfinityByTen
Likewise!
The only reason I moved away from subl is that I got access to a big ass machine and I needed to work remotely. The performance of VS code here is so good that often times I forget that the code and terminal is not my local machine.
jandrewrogers
This would be my top feature request. In addition to being great to have generally, there are increasingly environments where this is essentially a requirement and local copies are often verboten so you can't just use rsync/ssh.
achairapart
This! Upvote for ST SSH remote development, currently using ST for local dev and VSCode for remote.
zxvkhkxvdvbdxz
IMO remote mounts is a feature of the OS.
For Linux and macOS, you can mount ssh directly.
Unfortunatley, Windows makes it a little more complicated.
But there's hope. You can use yasfw with dokany (dokan fork).
https://github.com/DDoSolitary/yasfw
https://github.com/dokan-dev/dokany
Or mount from inside WSL.
eitland
Can't this be solved using a remote file system these days?
I haven't done it in years since with every customer from the last few years the only official way to get to prod is a CI-pipeline, but I think I remember using sfpt or ssh-based file systems even a decade back?
catwell
You can use a remote FS but it is nowhere close to the experience VSCode gives you. For instance, running code will run it locally, not on the remote machine.
kakuri
Remote development is VSCode's killer feature.
csimon80
My preference is that it could use .ssh/config to explore the remote machine and then open/edit the file/dir.
mathijs
I've used it for 15 years and ST is still the first thing I install on a new PC.
All thoughts, meeting notes, journals, blog post drafts... everything is jotted down in ST first. I even went as far as writing my own to-do list syntax highlighter[1] which is the main reason ST is always open, at home and at work, even though I mostly use VSCode and IntelliJ for coding nowadays.
DarkCrusader2
I also use sublime for managing todo and IDE for coding as my work repo uses custom tooling for build and autocomplete which only supports Visual Studio.
I use PlainTasks [0] which is very similar to your plugin but also has a few keyboard shortcuts to toggle the item state. Using this with a watered down GTD setup has really brought a lot of peace in both my personal and professional life.
james2doyle
Wow, you really pulled out all the tricks for this one! Commands, key bindings, completions, snippets, and a syntax! Nicely done!
seedie
Love the simplicity of your to to-do list syntax highlighter in comparison to todo.txt. That's more how my brain works, as simple as possible. Especially your take on the due date vs. date when you plan to do it. Will definitely try it out.
james2doyle
That's really cool. Great work!
techiferous
Same! I use ST for my to-do list and personal wiki, with custom highlighting and commands, and VSCode for coding.
bruce343434
Why does sublime do code navigation in such a clunky way? Such as "go to definition". Control click does not work, instead you need to press the far away F12 key. It then opens up a new tab instead of an inline dropdown. Apparently that tab isn't normal text, it's clickable text. it contains usages as well as definitions so you need to manually scan and decipher the results. When you click on a result, it opens the file, but doesn't quite scroll to the definition, although it's in view (but not highlighted! So you have to scan for it again!)
The little pseudo terminal that pops up at the bottom when you press ctrl+b (build) is also highly annoying. Why does it not accept keyboard input? I keep having to open a separate terminal where I can compile and test my TUI apps. If I just use ctrlB, then my app hangs waiting for stdin that I can never provide. And that waiting process never gets removed by ST either when I press ctrlB again.
Furthermore, ST isn't capable of recognizing my various Makefile build commands. ST only shows make clean and make when I press ctrl shift B.
Farthestmost, why does ST not recognize when I'm in a different directory, that it should use a different build system? Why do I have to manually tell it to use python instead of C when I am editing a python file?
Ok last one. Setting up a "replace occurances within selection" is highly unintuitive. When you enter the search term, that RESETS your selection. And you have to start over. Ugh. I want to select my search area, then tell it what to look for, then tell it what to replace with, then replace all within that area.
ben-schaaf
> It then opens up a new tab instead of an inline dropdown. Apparently that tab isn't normal text, it's clickable text.
If you're talking about the built-in goto-definition then it's definitely not a tab, it's a popup similar to goto-anything and the command palette. You can type to filter, use the arrow keys, press enter, ctrl+enter for side-by-side, etc.
If you want to use the mouse you can hover over the symbol and get a list of definitions and references.
> it contains usages as well as definitions
That sounds like you've got a syntax that isn't classifying its symbols correctly. I vaguely remember Microsoft's Typescript package doing this. All the built-in syntaxes properly classify definitions so you won't have references show up in that list. It's possibly simply removing a package will fix this for you.
> When you click on a result, it opens the file, but doesn't quite scroll to the definition, although it's in view (but not highlighted! So you have to scan for it again!)
Not scrolling to the definition is odd, it's working fine for me. I agree we could highlight the definition better; by default the line is highlighted though. You can enable line highlighting if that's too subtle.
> The little pseudo terminal that pops up at the bottom when you press ctrl+b (build) is also highly annoying. Why does it not accept keyboard input? I keep having to open a separate terminal where I can compile and test my TUI apps. If I just use ctrlB, then my app hangs waiting for stdin that I can never provide. And that waiting process never gets removed by ST either when I press ctrlB again.
We don't currently have a terminal, but the Terminus plugin is fairly popular if that's what you're looking for.
> Furthermore, ST isn't capable of recognizing my various Makefile build commands. ST only shows make clean and make when I press ctrl shift B.
We generally don't integrate that tightly with build systems; doing so effectively requires a plugin per external build system. Though I don't know if you'd actually want to have all targets listed for Make, since virtually everything is a target (and apparently this wasn't possible until --print-targets was added last year).
> Farthestmost, why does ST not recognize when I'm in a different directory, that it should use a different build system? Why do I have to manually tell it to use python instead of C when I am editing a python file?
If you have the build system set to "Automatic", then ST will automatically pick which ones to make available. For Make it'll check for a Makefile for instance. You can then use Build With… to select the one you want to use. If you've manually picked a different build system then that's what ST will use.
> Ok last one. Setting up a "replace occurances within selection" is highly unintuitive. When you enter the search term, that RESETS your selection. And you have to start over. Ugh. I want to select my search area, then tell it what to look for, then tell it what to replace with, then replace all within that area.
The behavior you want it to have sounds like how I remember it being, but that's clearly not the case; I'll have to look into that, thanks.
bruce343434
Thank you for responding. I was wrong about some of these in hind sight.
Today when I tried goto-definition, it worked as expected. I'm not sure why it didn't before. This was for a C project. I do have various Package Control packages installed:
"Golang Build",
"Package Control",
"PackageResourceViewer",
"SublimeLinter",
"SublimeLinter-clang",
"Theme - One",
What I meant by "terminal" is the output monitoring pane. Whenever I build "C - single file" or "Python - single file", a pane with <textarea> behavior appears in the bottom, showing the program output. But if said program is interactive, there's no way to send it any input. Nor to stop the program. Building it again leads to a new instance of the program being spawned, but the old one stays running.
xwkd
It's rare for an app dev (of such a popular tool) to go out of their way to respond to a random forum user. Even rarer is to address every point on their list with patience and consideration.
You must be a remarkable person and I wish you nothing but success.
laserbeam
Is there any chance we'd see a Sublime Debug? Loved Sublime Text and Sublime Merge. The main thing I'm missing in my life is a really good and fast cross platform UI for a LOT of debugger backends. (I tend to works with a lot of programming languages, and CLI debuggers are really clunky to use).
blibble
I have found this plugin works surprisingly well
jrochkind1
Wow, I did not know about this.
ST user who is on it still mostly just by inertia (learning tools is my least favorite part of the job) but really not getting the features I want/need from it. This'll help!
laserbeam
Cool, but git integration in the editor was also cool until SublimeHQ decided to spin out a dedicated client for it.
The only debugger I'm happy with right now (in terms of performance/features) is RemedyBG, but it's windows only and compiled languages only. In general, I mostly live with painfully slow debugging in VSCode.
I would really love to see RemedyBG's dedicated debugging UI/UX approach refined by some group like SublimeHQ. A group who knows how to turn the UX up to 11.
alibarber
I'd also be delighted with, and happy to part with cash for, such a thing.
jamesmunns
Thanks for Sublime Text! It's been my daily driver for over 15 years :). 10 of those developing Rust, and making heavy use of the Rust Analyzer/LSP plugin infra.
I also want to thank you for having such a reasonable licensing model, I'm launching my own desktop app in the next week or so, and I plan to have a very similar model to Sublime (free to use with nags, license is good for any personal usage, inclusive of updates for X period of time).
Stoo
I've been using Sublime Text since version 2, so probably close to 15 years, and I love it! It's my go to editor for code (mostly front end web dev but I've used it for C# as well, when VS won't get out of the way) as well as all of my writing (using Markdown). I've published 5 tabletop RPGs and related supplements (with another on the way) all written using Sublime plus so many lines of notes and blog posts. It's a dream to work with!
I've paid for my licence but is there a tip jar anywhere?
Klaster_1
I've been a Sublime Text user for ten years, bought it and Sublime Merge multiple times. A year ago, I permanently moved to VSCode because of three things:
1. Solid coding AI integration with frequent improvements. Sublime Text at best gives you an option to plug an LSP with modest capabilities. It's behind the times.
2. Small community, infrequent extension updates.
3. Limited UI capabilities. Extensions have to contort hard to fit into available extension points.
What's your vision of ST future?
fauria
Those are actually some of the reasons why I use Sublime.
bigstrat2003
I agree. The last thing I want from Sublime is to have AI nonsense.
ok_computer
Yeah I have accessibility/distraction issues with all the flair and animations and small text in vs code.
I know all text editors need some degree of config to be comfortable but sublime is nearly immediately usable. Vs code is the only thing I need to configure to remove flair and features vs extend them.
mrThe
That's basically my experience. I've switched from ruby to golang a while ago and developing in sublime text was become a pure pain, while vscode provided a lot of plugins to solve basic needs. Then i switched back to ruby and discovered that vscode also have superior ruby support.
I still love sublime text, but there is no way i'm going back to it.
kapitanluffy
Here's my two (or three?) cents
1. There are several plugins that allow AI integration 2. There is an active community on https://discord.sublimetext.io
3. From what I can perceive based on Sublime HQ's responses, it's main focus for Sublime Text is simplicity and to be a text editor. You can notice this if you look at the banner text in the website; it says "Text Editing, Done Right". And while it is mainly used for code and most of its users are developers, it tries not to be. However, it does provide people the ability to extend it however they please.
Overall, Sublime Text is indeed not as fully featured as VSCode because it is not supposed to.
scop
So glad to see this. I have been down a long road of text editors:
- Sublime - Vim - Emacs - Atom - VSCode - Jetbrains IDE - Neovim - Zed - Cursor
And these aren’t just little flings. I’ve spent months if not years in most of these editors. However, at the end of the day I always come back to one: Sublime.
It is a beautiful piece of software. It feels like writing with one’s “good pen and good paper”, that high quality stationary sort of thing. It is just me and the code. There is something that just feels different or even tactile about Sublime. That actually leads me to ask as this is outside of my expertise: why does Sublime feel more tactile/real than other editors? When I look at the code in other editors it feels like I’m looking at a projector on a wall. When I look at the code in Sublime it feels like I’m looking at something painted on the wall. Anybody else have the same experience? What’s the psychological/software reason for that?
munificent
> That actually leads me to ask as this is outside of my expertise: why does Sublime feel more tactile/real than other editors?
Performance is a big part of that.
Even a few millisecond delay changes the user experience from "I am physically interacting with an object" to "I am requesting this service do a thing on my behalf". Sublime is consistently fast enough to feel like the former. Most other IDEs feel like the latter.
(Another example of this effect is the difference between driving a manual transmission and an automatic. When I drive a manual, it feels like I'm in control of the engine. When I drive an automatic, it feels like I'm executive sending messages to my engineer who then applies changes to the engine... eventually.)
scop
Thanks for the info! I was wondering if it was something more than speed, but what you said makes a lot sense. Love the "I am interacting" vs "I am requesting" way of putting it as it highlights just how dramatically different of an experience it is.
bruce343434
Sublime is really snappy and responsive. But it also doesn't have as many fancy automation like jetbrains. Maybe that keeps the code "real", rather than some artifact that you have the computer manipulate for you.
91bananas
This is the main reason I've ever found myself using it if not vscode or now cursor. If I have some massive file that needs messing with nothing handles it as well as sublime does.
scop
That’s definitely part of it. Though even before I start typing and am just looking at the characters on the screen, they seem more dense, tactile, and real. Is there a categorical difference for how Sublime renders text vs other editors out there?
IggleSniggle
I don't use or actually even like Sublime, but I have the exact same experience of it. Quick loads and lack of "extras" that cause even portions of lag in the experience; there's an immediacy to Sublime.
But those things that introduce clunkiness are often very useful. They take away from the aesthetic feel of writing code, but give advantages that are too useful to give up, imho.
jojva
I wonder how much of it is simply that Sublime has a very pleasant default color theme (Monokai) in my opinion. It feels warmer than other IDEs. I actually use it in VScode too now.
ch33zer
I use sublime as a copy paste buffer when I need excellent visual regex search and replace. Vscodes regex search has awkward semantics (or at least I don't know them as well as sublimes) so I usually paste things into sublime, edit them with the regexes, then go back to what I was doing. My work has some extensions that only work in vscode so I'm stuck with it but it's good enough. I also never close sublime tabs and it persists them indefinitely with minimal memory usage, so I sometimes go back to grab things I was doing a few days ago. Definitely not the intended use but it works really well for me.
sander1095
If you use windows, you can use WIN + V instead of using an editor for a copy paste buffer.
WIN + V activates clipboard history, so you can see and select things you copied previously.
nyantaro1
This is the kind of thing I love HN for. Great tip!
steinsgatezero
Sounds like how I use Np++
iforgot22
I'm gonna start doing that, cause TextEdit can't even copy-paste reliably, and vim isn't super convenient for this either.
Edit: Wow Sublime is the nicest GUI text editor I've ever seen
carpo
This is exactly how it use it too
dkdbejwi383
I really want to like Sublime (it's so fast, I like the minimal UI), but VS Code has so much inertia, and does so much out of the box or with minimal extra effort that it's hard to not use it instead.
At the end of the day, I have things to get done, I'm not here to tinker with tools. Same reason I never got into vim/emacs etc as a daily driver.
zelphirkalt
Emacs and Neovim are things one gets into in ones free time and gets good enough to make the switch at some point at the job. Of course that is mostly only feasible, if the projects at the job are set up in a tool agnostic way or choice exists in the first place.
I also want to like Sublime, but I already have a well configured Emacs and I like using free/libre software. While Sublime was great when I used it in the past, I am not sure I would use it much, since I use Emacs all day now. But the reason for Sublime over VS code is, that it is way less bloated and not running in a browser. Would need to see a direct comparison, but wouldn't be surprised, if it showed to be way snappier. If one does not need lots of specifically VS code features, I think Dublime gets out of ones way and lets you get shit done.
diggan
> Emacs and Neovim are things one gets into in ones free time and gets good enough to make the switch at some point at the job.
I'd probably never end up proficient with vim (and today neovim) if I didn't do the complete opposite of this and forced myself to use it for real work directly. True, I went a bit slower for one/two weeks, but if you really have to use something foreign for most of your work, you'll learn it really quickly, as long as you're up for looking things up as you go along. Of course, YMMV and all that yadda yadda.
mufasachan
I would be curious to know how you managed to do this. I really tried to do this but the tons of dev tools I am using was too much for transitioning to neovim for my daily work. Namely, I need a DAP, multiple dev tools (lsps, linters, formatters) because I work with several projects which do not have the same tools[^1]. Luckily, I do not mix multiple programming languages. Plus, I containerize all my dev env. There might be some elements missing, but the point is the number of tools is overwhelming and it makes me think that I should do the whole configuration/setup on my free time.
Did you face similar issues? If yes, how did you solve them? Or maybe your work does not need that much tools? Or you have been more minimalistic than me for the number of features to be included in the neovim configuration?
[1]: I work in R&D, I need to tweak and contribute in many papers code or different toolboxes/frameworks on top of the team projects.
VHRanger
I would include helix in the list with nvim nowadays.
The LSP support is native and very easy to set up for most languages.
iforgot22
Yeah, I got used to vim while I was in school and probably wouldn't have put in the investment otherwise. It was worth. I'm not an expert in it, nor do I have a ton of fancy things installed, but it's fast and works in basically any situation (esp over SSH). My coworkers keep getting forced to change IDEs while I stick with vim.
wuliwong
I didn't want to switch to VS Code and kinda did b/c there is less friction when I'm using the same tools as my counterparts. I like VS Code just fine. My first true love was textmate tbh. :)
buu700
Same, after a certain point (for TypeScript particularly) I found it was too big a hassle not to switch to VS Code. All these years later, I still have VS Code configured to look and behave like Sublime. I found it funny one time when someone noticed me working on my laptop in public and said it was nice to see another Sublime user, which I had to correct him on.
andrepd
Well that is my rationale for working with Sublime instead of VScode!
dguest
That's also why I use emacs. It was the first text editor I learned.
james2doyle
I hear you. I think that is why I prefer Helix to Neovim when it comes to editors in terminals. There is a lot that is just done and there are sane defaults. I think the default Sublime experience is pretty slim and trim. Maybe too much for some but just right for me
null
jc_811
I. Love. Sublime
I’ve tried all the other main editors but always come back to Sublime. The simplicity, the speed, the near instantaneous load time.
I feel like I’m such an outlier but for my text editor I don’t want all the fancy bells and whistles that come with all the IDEs nowadays. It feels like Sublime is the only one that is so intuitive OOTB while allowing access to a plethora of features (if you need/want them). Whereas the others throw everything in your face and it feels like a battle to just get it configured for your needs.
Granted, I mainly code for personal and side projects, and actually enjoy the coding part so I don’t want AI, or advanced features, writing code for me! Even for the productivity gains, I just find coding on my own enjoyable and solving problems as they arise.
That being said, I can totally understand why devs who need to collaborate with large teams, under strict deadline, across multiple countries - probably absolutely need the fancy features that come with enterprise IDEs.
I just love my Sublime editor and never plan on switching :)
sadcodemonkey
I went back to Sublime Text after trying VS Code for a few months.
VS Code is very nice, when it works. My main problems had to do with the extension ecosystem. It felt very chaotic: it was hard to figure out which ones to install to get the functionality I wanted. Updates to Python extensions sometimes caused instability, crashing the editor. And I found it difficult to set extension preferences: the UI tries to be slick but in practice it ends up being clunky and awkward. On top of that, there was an annoying bug on Linux, related to Electron, that prevented the Save dialog box from appearing properly, which... kind of sucks. https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/32857
Sublime is the perfect programmer's editor for dynamic languages like Python, and for general text editing. It's lightning fast. LSP is just enough to be helpful without getting in the way. Workspaces work the way I would expect. I prefer editing JSON files for preferences over navigating a complex GUI.
Best money I've ever spent on a license, and I'll happily renew just for maintenance updates, to be honest.
cosmic_cheese
The way Sublime makes a strong effort to not only smooth out per-platform kinks but also better integrate into each platform it runs on is definitely a factor for my choice to use it over VS Code. macOS, Windows, Linux, whatever, it works correctly everywhere without also taking a “least common denominator” approach which I really appreciate. I wish more cross platform apps would do this.
8fingerlouie
I've used Sublime Text since it's initial release, and later on Sublime Merge, and i own licenses for every major version released.
However, my ST4 license recently expired, and that caused me to look back at the previous 3 years to see what my money was actually buying me, and it turns out it was mostly bugfixes. There have been, rather consistently, 2 releases per year (november and august), and the last major feature was in 2022 with syntax code folding and recent files integration, and those are the only "new features" added since ST4 was released in 2021.
Don't get me wrong, i don't mind paying for software, especially software i use every day, but ST4 more or less feels like it's on the backburner, with nothing much going on, so i let my "subscription" (ST4 licensing is more or less a subscription for 3 years) lapse.
I've instead switched to Zed (zed.dev) as my "main and fast" editor. Yes it has some rough edges, but feature wise it's very much like Sublime Text.
It doesn't support Windows (yet), which is not a problem for me, but i can see how that could be a dealbreaker for some.
rollcat
I think that as software asymptotically approaches mostly-bugfix releases, it's a good sign that it's "done", and therefore just stable, reliable, and "boring".
Sometimes boring is good, especially for your core toolkit. It can free up your energy to spend it on more interesting things, like actual coding.
8fingerlouie
> Sometimes boring is good, especially for your core toolkit.
I agree, but considering the "editor space" has progressed a lot in the past decade or so, i would hardly call Sublime Text "done".
It has it's strengths and weaknesses, and while it was a great editor 15 years ago, and had it's share of innovative features, things have stagnated quite a bit in recent years. ST4 felt more like a minor update to ST3, and ST3 was probably also just a minor update to ST2 (i forgot which one was the big rewrite, but i think it was ST2).
Compare that to what has been going on with VSCode and Zed in recent years, which far surpass Sublime Text in many ways, and doing it for free.
So, in the end, for me, it turned out to be a subscription based "slightly better than average" editor. Yes, i still love it, and i would love for it to get a revival and spring to life again, and i would switch back in a heartbeat, but sadly the "maintenance mode" has been going on for almost a decade now.
skytwosea
I can empathize with your take, but my sentiment is the polar opposite. I like the toolchain shuffle - exploring this, trying out that - but I always, always come back to Sublime specifically because they have not implemented major changes. I _deeply_ appreciate the fact that it has remained essentially the same for years, and I very sincerely hope that it doesn't change much going forward. This boringness is what keeps me coming back, and is what I'm paying for.
Sublime has become my refuge from the crap that other editors are trying to cram in to every available nook and cranny. Zed was pleasant at first blush, but the way that AI is central to the platform was a huge turn-off and disabling that (and a few other things) was not intuitive. Same goes for many other editors I've tried over the years.
I would like to see more activity in plugin development and maintenance, but always peripheral to the core Sublime experience. Give me a stable, quiet, boring platform and let me choose the features and noise!
bradgessler
I similarly switched from ST4 to Zed after using it for several years. I agree that good software eventually becomes "bugfixes", but if you expand the universe of ST4 out to popular plugins for specific programming languages, it starts to become really buggy. That's something I wish ST would focus on, make the most popular plugins more stable and continue doing that for the next decade.
I posted in the ST forum that achieving a stable configuration of plugins in ST4 seems more difficult than it should be, but they declined to take this on as a problem.
Meanwhile Zed made it pretty easy to achieve a stable set of plugins very quickly, particularly around language services, shell integration, etc. That's what prompted me to switch; however Zed has taken a few steps backwards in that department since they started spinning out language extensions into plugins that require more configuration and are more prone to breaking.
Fnoord
The Apple macOS model of implementing useful features from apps (in ST's case: plugins) stands out as long as there are reasonable trade offs.
Without it, you have to use so much glue for a good experience. So, look at the very popular extensions and see if they can become native.
rollcat
Well, Apple is giving me more and more reasons to switch away from their default apps (which I used to love) with every release. They focus too much on new features, too little on stability and good experience.
I've already ditched Music (macOS: Cog; iOS: Decoupled), I'm holding off upgrading for Photos' sake, Home on macOS is an absolute nightmare, Mail is meh but ok (fingers crossed they won't accidentally break it), and I'm hoping they will never go after Notes - it's central to so many things in my life.
Meanwhile, I'm still using Emacs, because despite its many shortcomings (mostly the legacy architecture), ELisp makes writing simple plugins simple, and the few that I use are too excellent to get me to switch.
nottorp
Do you prefer the modern style of application that breaks your workflow every 6 hours with popups advertising the latest feature you don't care about?
I'm assuming "license expired" means losing just access to newer versions. Which you explicitly said that you don't need.
Why change the tool then?
Fnoord
I got a burn-out and lost my job. In the meantime my license expired. Once I get a job again (if ever) I will once again buy a license.
I'll give zed a look. One thing I miss with ST is remote editing.
bigstrat2003
Sublime is just great software. It does everything I could possibly ever want an editor to do, and it does it with half the memory usage of VS Code. I like VS Code well enough, but I can't abide resource waste like that, especially when it doesn't actually buy me anything.
Honestly, I use Sublime because nothing else can compare. Everything else is slow, bloated, worse to use, or some combination of the above.
asmor
Have you tried Zed, and if so, what's your opinion?
tipiirai
I have, but seems it has evolved quite a bit in the past year when looking at their new front page. I'll probably give it a shot. But in any case, I don't like their focus in collaborative features. It brings unnecessary bloat, that is not present in Sublime.
andrepd
Fwiw you can disable all AI bloat and online features with a couple of config keys
jeltz
I tried it a few months ago and it was a buggy mess with strange defalts. Totally unusable on a couple of the projects I tried it on.
bigstrat2003
I haven't tried Zed. I looked into it, but there was some reason I decided it wasn't for me. I want to say it was that they seemed focused on LLMs, but it's been a while so I forget exactly what it was that I didn't like about it when I researched.
shafyy
Not the person you're replying to, but I have tried Zed and I think it does too much things I don't need (like LLM integration, all that "multiplayer" stuff), and it's funded by VCs, so it will go down the road of enshittification (or sale, or shut down) eventually.
I don't want to support VC-backed companies.
NetOpWibby
I came to Sublime Text 3 from Atom because I wanted a native editor. It boggles my mind that so many people love VS Code.
I’ve tried Zed, it’s a beautiful editor…it’s just too opinionated. For whatever reason, it doesn’t understand my Deno projects and I content get rid of the red squigglies.
Sublime lives up to its name.
dominicrose
VS code has good defaults and extensions but if you have time to configure it precisely it's also possible. When configured to your needs the differences between ST and VSC aren't big. What I don't understand is why would anyone use Eclipse.
GuB-42
Eclipse is a full IDE. Sublime Text and VSCode are not.
A competitor to Eclipse would be JetBrains IntelliJ or Visual Studio (not Code), both are often considered superior by far, but neither are free.
Eclipse is also a platform for creating applications (RCP/RAP).
Asraelite
> Eclipse is a full IDE. Sublime Text and VSCode are not.
I don't understand what practical difference there is between Eclipse/IntelliJ and VSCode with extensions that makes one an IDE and the other not.
juleiie
Free or paid what’s the difference. If you have company you can afford it professionally, if you are a student you can get a free license, if you are NEET dev you can —————- it.
NetOpWibby
Ugh, typo.
*"cannot", not "content"
dividedbyzero
I don't really use it as a (lightweight) IDE or the like anymore, but as a place to keep unstructured notes and snippets and the like because SublimeText never ever loses anything unsaved. It's pretty much indispensable at this point, whenever I compose something a bit longer or have some text to do a search-replace on or just some text I need three steps later in what I'm doing, it goes in another tab in Sublime. I have at least one tab I re-use since before Covid-19, it's absolutely fantastic how stable it is. Love it for that.
stuff4ben
That's interesting. I use BBEdit for that purpose and VSCode for code editing. I really don't like BBEdit's layout except for log viewing and unsaved snipets/notes. I might have to try Sublime now...
abraxas
I guess your love is not unlike my long ago passion for CodeWright. It was such a flexible beast with perfect support for BRIEF bindings and an infinitely configurable user interface. Alas, the world preferred the simplicity of Visual Studio or JBuilder and the best programmer's editor for Windows slowly but surely withered away.
I'm not planning on repeating the mistake of learning a complex environment only to see it disappear with the demise of its parent company. That's why these days I'm mostly investing time in the Emacs ecosystem while occasionally trying and failing to love mode based setups like vim and neovim.
girvo
Similar to my love of KomodoEdit/IDE. Being built on XUL was fascinating to me as a Firefox die hard, web tech powered the UI which made it easy to hack on, and I still reckon it was the best most advanced editor for PHP at the time.
dabbz
That's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I loved Komodo.
null
I love Sublime Text. It's one of my favorite pieces of software. I have it running 100% of the time on every machine I work on.
It's where I write all of my personal notes, blog posts, and it's where I wrote both "Game Programming Patterns" and "Crafting Interpreters".
At the same time, it's not the tool I use as an IDE. For programming, I use whatever IDE is dominant for the language I'm working in. Over time, that's been Visual C++, Visual Studio, XCode, Eclipse, IntelliJ, and most recently VS Code.
That doesn't mean to me that I want Sublime to turn into an IDE. I like that it's lighterweight than that. It's the perfect sweet spot for me of rich enough to handle piles of notes and documents and small scale code editing, but not so huge and cumbersome that it gets in my way.