Ask HN: How did Sublime Text get traction?

While it's not open source it is functional without a license, so the payment isn't really a barrier to usage, much like most people are using WinRar without ever paying for it.

Functionality and ascetics are just better than any of the other text editors that I've used in the past, plus I'm happy with it so don't really go looking at alternatives these days.

When I first went to OSX a few years back TextMate seemed to be the dominant editor, Sublime for me just naturally replaced that with improved visuals and features. When your watching tutorial videos and the person is doing magic in a text editor, you start to question why am I still using my current one that doesn't have them features.

Marketing was just word of mouth, and how much support do you really need for a text editor? If it breaks it's not like you can't find another one to use...

When sublime text gained it's traction, the scene was a little less crowded. Atom was not available at that time.

I think it gained traction on OS X. The dominant text editors for OS X at the time were Textmate and Coda. The development of Textmate stalled and people were looking for an alternative. Coda had a very different approach from Textmate (you were either a Textmate or a Coda gay/gal, never both), and Sublime really comes close to Textmate.

My experience is that Sublime looks/works great out of the box, colleagues actually asked "what's that editor?" before monokai/solarized were widely known.

Recommending it is pretty easy: Less crashes than Eclipse/Atom; less setup, tinkering and learning curve than vim/emacs. Just works, cross-platform.

Finally, in a professional setting, the cost of Sublime is completely negligible vs e.g. losing work from crashes or even messing around with vim for two hours.

Sublime Text got it's initial traction because it was essentially TextMate's cross platform little brother. When your friend couldn't use TextMate on his Windows machine, you told him to go get Sublime. It might have even been linked to from the mate TextMate site under the question, "what about Windows Support"

How sure are we that it really has traction, and the business sense? I paid for my license, and I meet lots and lots of people using lots of editors including Sublime, and from this (smallish, and perhaps bad) sample only a tiny fraction of users have paid for it.

It is better than alternatives (faster, easier to use)

It is cheaper than alternatives (time, licence)

It was introduced in right time (surge in web boom)

It have easy to use API (Python vs Elisp)

It is cross-platform (*nix comeback)

Simple, easy. And used on huge amounts of instructional videos, leading influence of others.

Sublime's out of the box theme attracted people and it's demonic speed and the Goto-Anything feature got them talking about it. Atleast that is my take.

Not sure why ST gained traction with other but here is why I love it.

Notepad++ was text editor for me. ST was a sexy thing. I was drooling.

I am yet to buy a license for ST but I use it always.

As a guy from an IDE heavy dev background, I was impressed that I can carry around my dev tool in a USB and also keep it in a folder on the network. Plus if a version is acting weird, I have can just trash-&-switch. I had many issues with VS acting nuts and it took more than 1 day to repair it. That is what push me to leave IDE oriented development. I am happy with a customized/tweaked text editor approach.

A negative:

Now I am playing more with Atom (ST clone) as its open source and more than 1 dev is involved. So, I will not be forced to change if the dev suddenly decides to stop. That is the main attraction for me in terms of the app being open source. I know that someone will continue and if I am desperate, I can attempt to tweak the app.

Despite the huge size of Atom, one thing that attracted me to it was the aesthetics aspect. ST was missing something.

Because of the ongoing share of OSX among Devs/Devops and the fact that it is multiplatform. When I switched from Windows to a Mac a few years ago, I found the text editors somewhat lacking until I discovered ST. I still needed and need to RDP to Windows so the fact that was multiplatform sold me.

So in my opinion, it found a niche but growing market in OS X that had network effects in other platforms.

Regarding the business side as lost opportunity to get more revenue, it's important to know that success is a state of mind. I'm quite confident that the current state of things regarding ST business fall within the comfort zone of its creator and that he has amassed more money than he can spend.

For those of you who think $70 is too much for a text editor, consider how often you use Sublime Text. I personally use it every day, 5+ hours a day, 25+ hours a week. In just two weeks it's down to $1/hour. In one month it's down to $2.50/day. In 3 months, $1/day. In a year, you're paying pennies per day of use.

If you're a heavy Sublime Text editor that hasn't bought a license yet and don't care that much for Atom/Visual Studio, consider buying a license. It supports the author and you're getting your money's worth, imo.

That's my two cents (or more to the point: 3 days of Sublime Text usage).

I remember trying it out and saw how fast it loaded. Never looked back.

I never thought it needed support, it just does what it is supposed to.

I have Sublime and I paid for a license. It's my second editor of choice and I like how it integrates with the OS better than terminal Vim (my number 1 editor of choice) on OS X (drag and drop files onto the Dock icon for example for a quick edit). My only nitpick about Sublime is that I don't like how it looks (Chrome like) instead of the native OS X GUI widgets.

I'm curious though, since TextMate 2 is open source and is regularly updated why is it not as popular for OS X users? What's the turn off that makes Sublime that much better?

Editors I used on OSX before sublime text:

- textmate - BBEdit

Before I was an OSX user, my editor of choice in Windows was Crimson Editor.

All of these have two things in common: simplicity and speed. They are extremely simple to use, but also have some powerful features (if I didn't have to resort to perl most of the time, I was happy). And they didn't hog system memory or hang when editing large files.

Textmate added something to the mix: It was pleasant on the eyes. I'm a big fan of dark themes.

When sublime text came along, it added the absolute killer feature: "do anything" typing. I'm a HUGE keyboard navigator, avoiding mouse pointing a lot in favor of keystrokes. The ability to hit Cmd+P and type a couple letters of what I want to do and sublime text prompts. I can open files, edit in several ways, find and replace, do a build, whatever I want, all from the home row.

If there's ever a better editor than sublime text, it would have to be an IDE that brings fast, efficient, memorable keyboard-only navigation. And current IDEs do a decent job of this, although they're way sluggish compared to sublime text, and not as feature rich.