I agree and I do use Vim for all quick edits I need. Just wanted to challenge the idea that Sublime Text was better than alternatives in the space of GUI text editors
It is not just about the opening, it is about the searching. Vim is fantastique, although VSCode got faster over time too. Grep is fantastic too (I am not trying to out-hardcore here ... I mean specifically for log file searching not actual coding!). Splunk is better though, but sometimes you are local, and sometimes you don't have a few mill to burn.
As a Sublime user I mostly agree, except for the project stuff. I can never bring myself to set that up. What are you using multiple LSP servers per file for?
If you have any in-lined code, SQL/HTML. I can see that being a great feature.
My eyes widened at that part of the article, as I have to betray syntax highlighting when I in-line something, which makes me want to break it into it's own file to get the highlighting back. But for simple things (like one-liners); breaking it into its own file makes things even more messy.
I got a perfect example: an Astro site. I currently have the Astro LSP, Tailwind LSP, and the Biome LSP, all running on the same file. I even have Typos LSP too. Having them all going at the sam time and being able to tweak their settings on a per-project basis is ideal for my workflow.
I’m a long-time Sublime user who also uses Emacs for single files/at the command line (I also have Emacs key bindings set up in ST), I have found over the years that I am prone to configuration rabbit holes with Emacs and that Sublime strikes a nice balance of good defaults, simplicity, and customizability.
I think that every time I’ve worked on a large project with Emacs I’ve started trying to optimize the partial/fuzzy filename search, trying all of the different ways people suggest online to see which one feels natural until I realize I’ve spent an entire day on it.
Over time I’ve come to really value software that is customizable, but that comes with defaults that I really like, rather than software that’s even more customizable but that must be customized for it to feel right. God forbid I run Emacs somewhere without my conf and forget to disable electric indent mode and want to flip my desk when it does its terrible default behavior.
I can answer the opposite of that question. Why Emacs?
For me, Emacs is valuable not for the things it can or cannot do, it's valuable because it gives me the perception of complete control over the things on my computer.
The other day, I was watching my teammate showing me some stuff over Zoom, and I didn't want to derail his thoughts by constantly stopping him: "hey, wait, don't scroll away, I'm still reading that," "wait a second, what was that URL again?" etc. So, the only thing I could do was take screenshots.
During the lunch break, I decided to solve this thing for myself. I wrote a command that checks ~/Desktop - it's where I drop my screenshots, then finds any .png file that was created no longer than 2 minutes ago, sends it to tesseract for OCR, and opens the text in a buffer. Took me less than 20 minutes.
Sure, there are many ways to get something like that done, but after trying so many different options, I was never able to extract the same feeling of control from any other alternative.
I have a command that inserts the url of my active tab in the browser, with description, in the correct format (e.g., markdown). I wrote that myself, because at some point it bothered me that I had to do that manually. There are many examples such that, where if I weren't using Emacs, I probably wouldn't even bother to acknowledge the existence of such small annoyances.
What makes Emacs truly exceptional isn't its vast feature set, but rather its ability to foster a problem-solving mentality - the "Emacs brain" - where no obstacle, regardless of size, goes unaddressed or unresolved.
I think Sublime Text was the first software I ever paid for. It has paid that back handsomely. And no, I’m not doing the usual “I’m a working professional so my time is directly attributable to my text editor” thing. I understand there are free options. I pay for it despite there being competition because of the extra value it brings me.
I was interested in the value that it brings you. I'm a former Sublime Text user and I switched to VS Code some time ago.
Do you also use Sublime Text as your primary IDE just like author does?
————
Mirroring the structure of the article:
1) Regarding the section about LSPs: do you also have the need to be able to “just add an LSP installed as a binary in on your usr/local/bin” even though by the author's own admission “VS Code is the LSP king”?
Kind of ironic to have the author say in the introduction about VS Code that “it probably has taken inspiration from Sublime. So why not check out one of the OGs” and then a bit later proceeds to say that the LSP “tech originat[es] with that editor [VS Code]”. I'm returning the question to the author and you: why not check out the OG?
2) Regarding the section about snippets author says that “VS Code can do this” and even that “the syntax for it is a bit nicer”.
3) Regarding workspaces VS Code does all of that. Author admits that he “ha[s]n't used it personally, so [he] can't speak to it much”.
4) Regarding build systems VS Code does all of that and it's easier because contrary to “the Package Control [that] is not part of Sublime” (and that you have to uglily inject in the Sublime Text console to get working), the VS Code plugin repository has everything already ready-to-use so that you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You can if you want though; Sublime Text doesn't provide anything extra in that regard.
5) Regarding the “Multiple cursors” VS Code has it as well.
6) Regarding the block-level key bindings, have you ever needed them? For me the last thing I want is for my shortcuts to change dynamically based on which block I am in the file. Note that in Sublime Text “they cannot be saved on a per-project basis”, which is awkward to say the least. I would (much) rather have project-level keybindings rather than only block-level keybindings that apply globally.
7) Regarding using “Python all the way down” rather than JavaScript, I'm surprised that the author finds it to be a good thing considering that they primarily use it for “web-dev” and all their examples are frontend Javascript code.
8) Finally, the author complains about the terrible documentation of Sublime Text, the lack of a plugin system, and the fact that for the 3rd-party hacked-together plugin management system he finds that getting them on the “Package Control site to be quite a chore”. I have a ton more complaints about Sublime Text to add on top of that.
I would rather directly donate money[1] to small developers rather than — as another commenter puts it — “supporting and using the products developed by a small team of dedicated engineers ...”
On the LSP stuff, yes it did originate in VS code. I just find the experience in Sublime to be better. How ironic is that?
I didn't consider the conflict between how I said "try the OG" but then say "VS code is the OG". It is a good point.
I show an example of the block level key binding. So yeah, I needed it and used it. I only showed one example but I have a few more that are my own I just didnt write about them.
Around python vs. js for plugins, have you tried to make a VS code plugin? You need a package.json, npm, and vsce installed globally. Which language is being used is usually the least of my problems. For Sublime, you need a single .py file! Someone shared this 9 line plugin they made: https://gist.github.com/ckunte/31500c17452b0fd8c55bc9460bd9c... - I don't tthink plugin development could be more simple
I bet an LLM could spit out single file plugins very easily. VS code plugins are clearly more work to create and deploy even after taking into account my critiques of Package Control. At the end of the day you can just toss your plugin in a folder or push it to github and reference it with a URL.
I didn't say the docs were "terrible". I just said they were disjointed. They are complete and fully document the APIs. I just wish they were more like the PHP docs or the ones for VS code which are docs plus guides.
All your other points are fine critiques. I'll chalk the other complaints up as a matter of opinion
That guy is living off that money, and Sublime is one of the best text editors out there. Consider it like a SaaS, but something doesn't break or stop when your license expires.
If you think the price doesn't reflect the value the software brings, then it's your choice, and that's fair. But as for the things it brings to the table, I don't think it's that expensive.
I pay similar for BBEdit, and it saves my bacon regularly. Plus it's dependable.
I often see downvotes when people criticise ST's pricing, but I mostly agree with the detractors - the price always seems to be just a few bucks over the magical limit I'd be willing to pay.
Tech workers often spend $100 or more on a fancy meal with friends in a single night—I've definitely done that more than once. So paying $100 for a software license that I’ll be using almost every hour of the workday, and even more when working on personal projects, feels like a bargain.
I do wonder why it is that way though, because you're right, I've balked at the cost of software before, but had no issue in spending an order of magnitude more money on a flight to SF to meet up with other developers.
probably because there's a free OSS equivalent to most software.
The free equivalent to meeting up with friends/developers is a zoom call, and those suck.
I liked sublime text, but 65$ per year you can get the jet brain ide you need and it already includes most things you need and depends not on plugins from third party.
I'm curious where you're seeing jet brains subscriptions for $65 per year? Only RustRover and WebStorm seem to be somewhat close, with the rest being significantly more expensive.
You’re either hiring developers from countries where $100 is a lot of money, or you expect them to only open Sublime Text once a year. Don’t be stingy—$100 is a steal when it’s the primary tool for nearly every developer. You probably spend that much (or more) on a weekend outing with your partner or friends.
I paid for a license on one of the versions. I initially got upset when there was a major release that auto-updated and I got the pop up. However, I looked at my purchase date and it was so many years ago, and I was able to roll back to the version I paid for, so I definitely got my money’s worth. I didn’t end up buying the newer version, because work was forcing me onto VS Code.
The code might be GPLv3, which is my favorite license BTW, but they have a "nice" CLA [0] and Privacy Policy [1] which doesn't inspire confidence.
I think CLA is a nuanced thing, since Eclipse also has one and didn't rugpull anyone ever, but their Privacy Policy states that the tool is chockful with telemetry and can collect any personal and non-personal data as they see fit.
When somebody tells that you can opt-out of this, I have a hard time believing that the switches are connected to anything.
And yet, ST is closed source. Still a wild comparison.
This isn’t just license preference either. I would imagine the efforts of the sublime lsp people would be greatly eased if they had access to the source.
No it's not. I mostly find closed source application with clear lines more trustworthy than openwashed software.
I'm a big Free Software supporter. For my personal projects, I only use (A)GPLv3 or later.
However, I have a problem with software which comes with "GPLv3 BUT..." licenses. We have seen how CLAs weaponized against their contributors with rugpull license changes.
Also, Zed was closed source at first. I had beta access to that thing. Then they pivoted to "Open source with closed source collaboration servers" thing, and they claimed rights on anything passing through their servers (collaboration / zed-ai).
When software stops being local-only, being Free Software loses half the meaning, because you can do all the nefarious things on the backend, without people seeing them. "We only send harmless usage data" you may say, but you don't say how you process and which other signals you mix into that data from other sources or data brokers. That's a problem.
Remember Go's opt-out telemetry debacle. The math was solid, it was anonymous, yes. However it was forced opt-out via an environment variable, so the burden was continuously on us, the users.
If the Go team didn't change it to opt-in, I was ready to drop Go as a programming language, like many individuals and companies. Now the telemetry is opt-in, and users have better control.
These things are nuanced. We should be diligent. For example, Eclipse (my favorite IDE for the last two decades) has CLA, but they never abused the power they have, plus that thing is Apache 2.0 licensed. However, Zed's actions, combined with their privacy policy, doesn't inspire confidence, so I don't use it, and share my view about Zed.
If you don't agree that's fine, but pointing fingers like that is not.
As I said, I have chosen BBEdit over sublime 15 years ago, and still use that, and if BBEdit can detect and run any supported LSP OOTB, like magic, Sublime can do the same technically. So they should barrage the bug tracker. It's on Sublime to make it better. It's closed source, so the developer has forced themselves to fix it by making it closed source.
> Then they pivoted to "Open source with closed source collaboration servers" thing, and they claimed rights on anything passing through their servers (collaboration / zed-ai).
Does this apply if you use it same as Sublime? That is without collaboration / ai.
In Zed's case, it's already dependent on "Magik". It constantly downloads something to provide some functionality. I can't vet, follow, verify that thing all day long.
Moreover, if it wasn't doing that, again yes.
If they didn't provide the functionality to begin with, then they can move on to "let's evaluate whether it's acceptable" phase.
I also like using Sublime as a text editor for my thoughts and notes. I don't need or want anything full fledged like a word processor. Sublime lets me write in a minimal format without distraction. Every action is instant and I'm not sure what I'd even change if given the chance.
AFAIU, Sublime Text and Kate (my editor of choice) are pretty similar in spirit, so when I read something nice about ST, I mentally insert "... and Kate". They are both snappy power editors, not IDEs, with LSP support.
Yes, KATE, ST and BBEdit (and VSCode) are "Code aware text editors". I use KATE and BBEdit for smaller project and Go mostly, and use Eclipse for the bigger stuff which needs its own "space" to be developed well and kept organized.
It's a "correct tool for the job at hand" situation for me.
There are others, this is the first that appears on a search. Sublime's package control makes it really easy to find tools like this. Another favorite is the one that renames the currently opened file.
Alt-tabbing (or cmd-Q if you’re done) back to your terminal window after running `subl` to edit a file is equivalent difficulty (as measured by keystrokes) to exiting nano or vim.
I've been using iterm for years mainly because it has a Quake style terminal window. I realise how I just can't get to grips with tabbing through screens on either macos and windows anymore, not with having multiple browser profiles (personal and work) and screens open. I should figure out a solution to that, but at the same time I decided that I should keep my various employers (I'm a contractor/consultant/temp/whatever) separated better, so, different browser profiles, password databases, etc.
I'm on Linux and I just use one keystroke to switch (F2). I have F1 F2 F3 F4 keys binded to change to virtual desktops 1 2 3 4. 1 -> Console(s) 2 -> Editor (sublime) 3 -> Browser (Firefox) 4 -> Misc (File browser, other apps)
Is TextMate still being maintained? Last time I looked, there were very few signs of life. If that is accurate, the clock is ticking until Apple inevitably drops Rosetta support on Apple Silicon Macs sometime in the (probably not too distant) future.
It's open source, think the developer is on a break from it. He's left it for a few years then done a set of updates in the past or fixed it if it broke because of an Apple update previously.
I've tried a few times, but Sublime is so obviously not a native Mac app, I find it painful to use. It's definitely the closest match to TM though; it was pretty obvious it was inspired by TM. I think it even used to (still does?) use the same language grammars as TM (regexes that define scopes, basically).
I still use it, just love the Mac style text manipulation shortcuts, the way spell check actually works properly and natively in code (Spell check within strings only) which VSCode can't seem to handle with any of the plugins that claim to.
I use VSCode on Windows but no matter what I do to it I can't get it feeling right.
Tried few times, nothing beats TextMate ergonomics. It's just a small things like the cursor will be in a place where it should be after autocompletions or closing brackets will align where they belongs to, but it makes huge difference for me
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.
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.
Sublime does everything that I want to do with it.
What I do with it is throw arbitrary text files at it, and do quick text manipulations, especially multi cursor edits. I’m sure I could do this stuff just as well with something else, but I’d have to relearn my muscle memory.
I’ve had VS Code crash on me (repeatedly) with very large text files. Sublime is able to handle these files, even if it has to chunk on them for a while, if I do something silly like try to edit with several thousand cursors, but it will still do it.
I can totally understand that. Why only one? I still use BBEdit on my Mac for all kinds of text editing (search/replace across files is excellent in it), even though I mainly use VS Code as IDE and Emacs for orgmode and automation via Elisp.
I love BBEdit, but it has one limitation that drives me batty: it has far fewer syntax highlighting scopes than many other editors. It’s simply not possible to make it as pretty and color as others, and that’s something I personally value. I have to look at a code editor all day, and I want it to look snazzy.
I know it’s minor and petty, but it stills grates on me every time I fire it up.
Yeah, it‘s from another era. The concept of beatiful code came up with TextMate, Sublime, VS Code. And old editors tried to catch up, but didn’t really make it.
But I have a nice-ish theme in BBEdit for markdown, and I‘m ok. I don’t code in it. Just plain text editing, using it as a scratchpad. It’s open all day long.
Because it’s too complicated to learn many complicated tools well instead of tweaking Sublime to do the search and replace across files, even if it’s a bit worse. Also you’re not limited to Macs
My files are on a NAS using Samba, and Sublime Text constantly does something (maybe it tries to poll the directory?) that makes it hang for around 10 seconds every minute, making it unusable.
VS Code does nothing of the sort, it has plugins for any language imaginable; it's much faster and much better IMHO.
About 10 years ago, I was working with a much younger team (I'm 61 now), and we had a Sun box that was broken in a co-lo.
The guy sent down there had a laptop and a serial cable.
I talked him through how to use one of the serial comms programs (miniterm?) to connect, but of course, there was no ncurses or equivalent, so not even vi would work to edit a file.
So I got him to use "ed". It was hilarious that he thought I was, in some way, a magician. He and the others I was working with (all at least 2 decades younger than me) didn't understand why you'd want a "line editor" or how you could possibly write code using a DECwriter or, even worse, an ASR-33.
It was then that I started feeling "old" in this industry.
Sublime Text is _the_ Swiss knife of all text editors:
- Loads up fast, supports tons of very useful packages (e.g. TextPastry, SQLTools), extremely customisable.
- Multi-cursors, multi-panes (e.g. with Origami), spellcheckers, extremely fast filesystem integration/browsing/preview (whether with/without projects and workspaces), color/UI schemes, syntax highlighting, search browsers, Git support (particularly when used with Sublime Merge), etc.
Sure I love my Jetbrains IDEs and Vim, but nothing comes close; Sublime Text is in its own league.
I reckon all text editors are some form of a Swiss army knife.
IDE-ajacent text editors like VSCode et al are more like those ridiculous fat one with everything in it [1], and Sublime is the elegant model with only a blade and can opener, but the blade and can opener are both really good.
And then you get Microsoft Notepad, one of those shitty metal nail files that seemingly everyone's wife has in the bottom of her handbag.
I write everything on All About Berlin in a souped up version of Sublime Text. I made my own color scheme for Markdown files, my own linters for the content, a build system to run the static site generator etc. I love just how fast I can move across hundreds of Markdown files, finding and replacing thimgs with regular expressions. It’s a night and day improvement over editing text in a CMS.
I chose Sublime because it was blazing fast in my wee Macbook 12”, which I used until a year ago. Sublime Merge complements it really well.
This is the one app I use every day. I practically live in it. Most editors are slower and more visually cluttered, or pack so much functionality that I often get lost. Sublime strikes the perfect balance between simplicity and functionality. Probably Emacs or Vim are even more expressive, but I've never bothered to learn those, Sublime just packs enough power for me. The LSP plugins are a good addition to give Sublime the same code completion / AI functionality of other editors.
They are a company and they are still good. They changed their licensing model for v4 onwards. I have been using it for most of my note keeping and lite code editing tasks and its excellent as always. I think they can still get back to the old hype if they choose to use typescript for their plugin system. A lot of vscode plugins can be ported that way I hope
I doubt they'd want to create a schism and add a JS engine on top of the existing stuff. That said, Atom and VS Code's plugins being JS based was a huge benefit for them as at the time millions of developers started their career with or switched to using JS and web technology for their day job with webapps and nodejs.
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.
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.
An open source, fast, customizable cross-platform text editor with native UI and support for plugins and language servers. I don't think there's any other software that can tick all these boxes.
What an oddly aggressive tone x) It's not "my" Zed's selling point because I don't develop or even use zed daily atm. But it's also not the selling point period, it's one of them, the others being e.g. performance, responsiveness, and low memory footprint, as well as integration with tree sitter and LSP.
Not sure what you mean by gamification and social, we're talking about collaborative editing, not posting to twitter lol
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 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.
Sublime is still my top choice for opening big data files, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But, since VS Code is becoming the new lingua franca code editor, I made the switch so as to play nice with others going forward.
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.
Using Sublime Text since version 2, one of my relatively recent discoveries has been the Markdown Images Plugin[1], which renders images inline (rather than in a separate preview, as other editors do).
I find it extremely convenient to include images alongside text, such as diagrams and schematics for work, photos of goods in a shopping list, and inspiration collections for hobby projects, etc.
When combined with a simple web clipper script[2], it has been a game changer for me.
I've installed that plugin too, thanks for the recommendation. That said, installing it did show a big concern I have, maybe not so much for this plugin but for many others; its last release was in 2022, and many plugins I used to use back in 2012 haven't seen updates since 2016-17, roughly around the time VS Code became the most popular editor. I fear community support of plugins will become a major issue. I mean as long as the APIs etc don't change it's not a problem if these plugins are "done", but it just looks like things are no longer maintained and ST is a "dead" editor.
Welcome! I don't think the Sublime developers will change the plugin API dramatically at this point (@ben-schaaf is in this thread; we can ask him :) So, old plugins should remain compatible. What we should be concerned about is that if something new is invented, it will probably appear in a more widespread editors first. However, as practice shows, new plugins for Sublime continue to be created[1] so we are not missing lot.
> If you thought Sublime was dead, well you couldn't be more wrong! The latest build of Sublime as of this post is "4192" and was released 20th January 2025.
Since a huge chunk of value here is in the plugins (hello, there isn't even a built-in plugin manager, it's 3rd party and still haven't fully transitioned to 3.8 - and this isn’t a nitpick, the fact that it’s not part of the core, and the author went MIA is part of the problem), the release date of the editor itself doesn't determine the state of Schrödinger
> I think the thing to consider is how Sublime is basically "done" software.
Or, you know, take a look at the issue tracker, pick up a couple of dozen issues that impact you (directly or via the plugins that are blocked by these), and realize how far from reality this statement is. Or just look at your own wishlist…
> Sublime is fast. It starts instantly.
But it’s not usable instantly because a lot of functionality is in the slower loading Python plugins, so if you have some shortcut that depends on a plugin, you can’t use it right away…
> But I prefer authoring snippets in XML rather than JSON.
> Obviously, I'm twisted.
Obviously
> have tried Helix and I think it is a lot closer to what I would want from a modern editor
Indeed, operation after selection is much more intuitive, especially when limited to the viewport, but then unfortunately Sublime doesn’t have great modal editing support, and none that would mimic Helix visual-first paradigm
> The key and mouse bindings are what you would expect from a modern editor.
That’s what you’d expect from a pre-modern editor, a modern one should have much more sophisticated keybinding support, for example, you’d be able to pick that great modal Helix or Spacemacs keybinding scheme. And have great searchable help for that instead of having to look into the void trying to understand where exactly that `` contextual javascript keybinding was set and how to disable it.
It sounds like you've had some unfortunate issues with Sublime in the past. Maybe it's just the different types of projects that we're both working on or what plugins we have installed. I haven't encountered any day-destroying bugs since at least version 3 came out. I think the most recent bug I came across was that a language-specific syntax broke, but that was because I updated Sublime and the syntax wasn't updated for it. I don't really know who's to blame in that scenario, though.
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[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 231 ms ] threadAll my developers have it.
Anything more than 500mb and I switch to less for instant reading/searching and sed for instant find/replace.
My eyes widened at that part of the article, as I have to betray syntax highlighting when I in-line something, which makes me want to break it into it's own file to get the highlighting back. But for simple things (like one-liners); breaking it into its own file makes things even more messy.
I think that every time I’ve worked on a large project with Emacs I’ve started trying to optimize the partial/fuzzy filename search, trying all of the different ways people suggest online to see which one feels natural until I realize I’ve spent an entire day on it.
Over time I’ve come to really value software that is customizable, but that comes with defaults that I really like, rather than software that’s even more customizable but that must be customized for it to feel right. God forbid I run Emacs somewhere without my conf and forget to disable electric indent mode and want to flip my desk when it does its terrible default behavior.
For me, Emacs is valuable not for the things it can or cannot do, it's valuable because it gives me the perception of complete control over the things on my computer.
The other day, I was watching my teammate showing me some stuff over Zoom, and I didn't want to derail his thoughts by constantly stopping him: "hey, wait, don't scroll away, I'm still reading that," "wait a second, what was that URL again?" etc. So, the only thing I could do was take screenshots.
During the lunch break, I decided to solve this thing for myself. I wrote a command that checks ~/Desktop - it's where I drop my screenshots, then finds any .png file that was created no longer than 2 minutes ago, sends it to tesseract for OCR, and opens the text in a buffer. Took me less than 20 minutes.
Sure, there are many ways to get something like that done, but after trying so many different options, I was never able to extract the same feeling of control from any other alternative.
I have a command that inserts the url of my active tab in the browser, with description, in the correct format (e.g., markdown). I wrote that myself, because at some point it bothered me that I had to do that manually. There are many examples such that, where if I weren't using Emacs, I probably wouldn't even bother to acknowledge the existence of such small annoyances.
What makes Emacs truly exceptional isn't its vast feature set, but rather its ability to foster a problem-solving mentality - the "Emacs brain" - where no obstacle, regardless of size, goes unaddressed or unresolved.
Or $65 per year: https://www.sublimehq.com/store/text
Do you also use Sublime Text as your primary IDE just like author does?
————
Mirroring the structure of the article:
1) Regarding the section about LSPs: do you also have the need to be able to “just add an LSP installed as a binary in on your usr/local/bin” even though by the author's own admission “VS Code is the LSP king”?
Kind of ironic to have the author say in the introduction about VS Code that “it probably has taken inspiration from Sublime. So why not check out one of the OGs” and then a bit later proceeds to say that the LSP “tech originat[es] with that editor [VS Code]”. I'm returning the question to the author and you: why not check out the OG?
2) Regarding the section about snippets author says that “VS Code can do this” and even that “the syntax for it is a bit nicer”.
3) Regarding workspaces VS Code does all of that. Author admits that he “ha[s]n't used it personally, so [he] can't speak to it much”.
4) Regarding build systems VS Code does all of that and it's easier because contrary to “the Package Control [that] is not part of Sublime” (and that you have to uglily inject in the Sublime Text console to get working), the VS Code plugin repository has everything already ready-to-use so that you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You can if you want though; Sublime Text doesn't provide anything extra in that regard.
5) Regarding the “Multiple cursors” VS Code has it as well.
6) Regarding the block-level key bindings, have you ever needed them? For me the last thing I want is for my shortcuts to change dynamically based on which block I am in the file. Note that in Sublime Text “they cannot be saved on a per-project basis”, which is awkward to say the least. I would (much) rather have project-level keybindings rather than only block-level keybindings that apply globally.
7) Regarding using “Python all the way down” rather than JavaScript, I'm surprised that the author finds it to be a good thing considering that they primarily use it for “web-dev” and all their examples are frontend Javascript code.
8) Finally, the author complains about the terrible documentation of Sublime Text, the lack of a plugin system, and the fact that for the 3rd-party hacked-together plugin management system he finds that getting them on the “Package Control site to be quite a chore”. I have a ton more complaints about Sublime Text to add on top of that.
I would rather directly donate money[1] to small developers rather than — as another commenter puts it — “supporting and using the products developed by a small team of dedicated engineers ...”
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[1] And I do! Currently sponsoring 14 developers on a monthly basis[1]: https://github.com/devnoname120?tab=sponsoring
I didn't consider the conflict between how I said "try the OG" but then say "VS code is the OG". It is a good point.
I show an example of the block level key binding. So yeah, I needed it and used it. I only showed one example but I have a few more that are my own I just didnt write about them.
Around python vs. js for plugins, have you tried to make a VS code plugin? You need a package.json, npm, and vsce installed globally. Which language is being used is usually the least of my problems. For Sublime, you need a single .py file! Someone shared this 9 line plugin they made: https://gist.github.com/ckunte/31500c17452b0fd8c55bc9460bd9c... - I don't tthink plugin development could be more simple
I bet an LLM could spit out single file plugins very easily. VS code plugins are clearly more work to create and deploy even after taking into account my critiques of Package Control. At the end of the day you can just toss your plugin in a folder or push it to github and reference it with a URL.
I didn't say the docs were "terrible". I just said they were disjointed. They are complete and fully document the APIs. I just wish they were more like the PHP docs or the ones for VS code which are docs plus guides.
All your other points are fine critiques. I'll chalk the other complaints up as a matter of opinion
If you think the price doesn't reflect the value the software brings, then it's your choice, and that's fair. But as for the things it brings to the table, I don't think it's that expensive.
I pay similar for BBEdit, and it saves my bacon regularly. Plus it's dependable.
I liked sublime text, but 65$ per year you can get the jet brain ide you need and it already includes most things you need and depends not on plugins from third party.
I've stopped paying them as a result
Before anyone asks any further. See the CLA [0] and the Privacy Policy [1].
[0]: https://zed.dev/cla
[1]: https://zed.dev/privacy-policy
I think CLA is a nuanced thing, since Eclipse also has one and didn't rugpull anyone ever, but their Privacy Policy states that the tool is chockful with telemetry and can collect any personal and non-personal data as they see fit.
When somebody tells that you can opt-out of this, I have a hard time believing that the switches are connected to anything.
[0]: https://zed.dev/cla
[1]: https://zed.dev/privacy-policy
[0]: https://zed.dev/cla
[1]: https://zed.dev/privacy-policy
This isn’t just license preference either. I would imagine the efforts of the sublime lsp people would be greatly eased if they had access to the source.
But nah zed bad because cla.
I'm a big Free Software supporter. For my personal projects, I only use (A)GPLv3 or later.
However, I have a problem with software which comes with "GPLv3 BUT..." licenses. We have seen how CLAs weaponized against their contributors with rugpull license changes.
Also, Zed was closed source at first. I had beta access to that thing. Then they pivoted to "Open source with closed source collaboration servers" thing, and they claimed rights on anything passing through their servers (collaboration / zed-ai).
When software stops being local-only, being Free Software loses half the meaning, because you can do all the nefarious things on the backend, without people seeing them. "We only send harmless usage data" you may say, but you don't say how you process and which other signals you mix into that data from other sources or data brokers. That's a problem.
Remember Go's opt-out telemetry debacle. The math was solid, it was anonymous, yes. However it was forced opt-out via an environment variable, so the burden was continuously on us, the users.
If the Go team didn't change it to opt-in, I was ready to drop Go as a programming language, like many individuals and companies. Now the telemetry is opt-in, and users have better control.
These things are nuanced. We should be diligent. For example, Eclipse (my favorite IDE for the last two decades) has CLA, but they never abused the power they have, plus that thing is Apache 2.0 licensed. However, Zed's actions, combined with their privacy policy, doesn't inspire confidence, so I don't use it, and share my view about Zed.
If you don't agree that's fine, but pointing fingers like that is not.
As I said, I have chosen BBEdit over sublime 15 years ago, and still use that, and if BBEdit can detect and run any supported LSP OOTB, like magic, Sublime can do the same technically. So they should barrage the bug tracker. It's on Sublime to make it better. It's closed source, so the developer has forced themselves to fix it by making it closed source.
Does this apply if you use it same as Sublime? That is without collaboration / ai.
In Zed's case, it's already dependent on "Magik". It constantly downloads something to provide some functionality. I can't vet, follow, verify that thing all day long.
Moreover, if it wasn't doing that, again yes.
If they didn't provide the functionality to begin with, then they can move on to "let's evaluate whether it's acceptable" phase.
I love Sublime Text :) !
Sublime is one of the tools which really grown and aged well, so it deserves the love it gets.
I personally don't let anybody to tell me which tool to use. It's rude to mock and belittle the tools people use.
It's a "correct tool for the job at hand" situation for me.
I refer to a lot of tools as knives, but Sublime Text is the chopping block.
There are others, this is the first that appears on a search. Sublime's package control makes it really easy to find tools like this. Another favorite is the one that renames the currently opened file.
Ultimately it kinda does everything it needs to.
I use VSCode on Windows but no matter what I do to it I can't get it feeling right.
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.
What I do with it is throw arbitrary text files at it, and do quick text manipulations, especially multi cursor edits. I’m sure I could do this stuff just as well with something else, but I’d have to relearn my muscle memory.
I know it’s minor and petty, but it stills grates on me every time I fire it up.
But I have a nice-ish theme in BBEdit for markdown, and I‘m ok. I don’t code in it. Just plain text editing, using it as a scratchpad. It’s open all day long.
But darn it, even if it turned out to be my perfect car, I don’t want to drive an Aztek.
VS Code does nothing of the sort, it has plugins for any language imaginable; it's much faster and much better IMHO.
The guy sent down there had a laptop and a serial cable.
I talked him through how to use one of the serial comms programs (miniterm?) to connect, but of course, there was no ncurses or equivalent, so not even vi would work to edit a file.
So I got him to use "ed". It was hilarious that he thought I was, in some way, a magician. He and the others I was working with (all at least 2 decades younger than me) didn't understand why you'd want a "line editor" or how you could possibly write code using a DECwriter or, even worse, an ASR-33.
It was then that I started feeling "old" in this industry.
- Loads up fast, supports tons of very useful packages (e.g. TextPastry, SQLTools), extremely customisable.
- Multi-cursors, multi-panes (e.g. with Origami), spellcheckers, extremely fast filesystem integration/browsing/preview (whether with/without projects and workspaces), color/UI schemes, syntax highlighting, search browsers, Git support (particularly when used with Sublime Merge), etc.
Sure I love my Jetbrains IDEs and Vim, but nothing comes close; Sublime Text is in its own league.
IDE-ajacent text editors like VSCode et al are more like those ridiculous fat one with everything in it [1], and Sublime is the elegant model with only a blade and can opener, but the blade and can opener are both really good.
And then you get Microsoft Notepad, one of those shitty metal nail files that seemingly everyone's wife has in the bottom of her handbag.
1 - https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fp...
I chose Sublime because it was blazing fast in my wee Macbook 12”, which I used until a year ago. Sublime Merge complements it really well.
Something like 2 years. At the same time Atom and VsCode came in with all the good ideas from Sublime.
I hope they made tens of millions during the height of its popularity.
I'm shocked at how often I'd see software engineers making software engineer salaries not pay for Sublime.
Honestly, I use Sublime because nothing else can compare. Everything else is slow, bloated, worse to use, or some combination of the above.
Does it have gamification too, in addition to "AI" and "social"?
The other boxes can be ticked by a lot of editors that were made before the js monopoly.
Not sure what you mean by gamification and social, we're talking about collaborative editing, not posting to twitter lol
I don't want to support VC-backed companies.
WIN + V activates clipboard history, so you can see and select things you copied previously.
Edit: Wow Sublime is the nicest GUI text editor I've ever seen
I find it extremely convenient to include images alongside text, such as diagrams and schematics for work, photos of goods in a shopping list, and inspiration collections for hobby projects, etc.
When combined with a simple web clipper script[2], it has been a game changer for me.
[1]: https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Markdown%20Images
[2]: https://github.com/dmi3/bin/blob/master/url-preview-md.py
[1]: https://packagecontrol.io/browse/new
Since a huge chunk of value here is in the plugins (hello, there isn't even a built-in plugin manager, it's 3rd party and still haven't fully transitioned to 3.8 - and this isn’t a nitpick, the fact that it’s not part of the core, and the author went MIA is part of the problem), the release date of the editor itself doesn't determine the state of Schrödinger
> I think the thing to consider is how Sublime is basically "done" software.
Or, you know, take a look at the issue tracker, pick up a couple of dozen issues that impact you (directly or via the plugins that are blocked by these), and realize how far from reality this statement is. Or just look at your own wishlist…
> Sublime is fast. It starts instantly.
But it’s not usable instantly because a lot of functionality is in the slower loading Python plugins, so if you have some shortcut that depends on a plugin, you can’t use it right away…
> But I prefer authoring snippets in XML rather than JSON. > Obviously, I'm twisted.
Obviously
> have tried Helix and I think it is a lot closer to what I would want from a modern editor
Indeed, operation after selection is much more intuitive, especially when limited to the viewport, but then unfortunately Sublime doesn’t have great modal editing support, and none that would mimic Helix visual-first paradigm
> The key and mouse bindings are what you would expect from a modern editor.
That’s what you’d expect from a pre-modern editor, a modern one should have much more sophisticated keybinding support, for example, you’d be able to pick that great modal Helix or Spacemacs keybinding scheme. And have great searchable help for that instead of having to look into the void trying to understand where exactly that `` contextual javascript keybinding was set and how to disable it.