I paid for Sublime Text

https://github.com/kapitanluffy/i-shamefully-paid-for-sublime-text

by kapitanluffy • 3 years ago

158 246 3 years ago

ianai• 3 years ago

If you like something you should probably pay to support it in some fashion. The meme of “it was free at some point so I shouldn’t ever pay for it” is many things including deeply limiting.

orionblastar• 3 years ago

Like paying for WinZip? I use 7zip because it is free and open source software.

jskherman• 3 years ago

Honestly, 7zip seems to be better at the job than WinZip and lightweight too.

bradgessler4• 3 years ago

I’ve seen developers who had thousands of dollars of corp training and tooling budget NOT buy an ST license purely out of laziness.

ST could probably make a decent chunk of change if they tweaked their terms to require a license for authoring commercial software or content.

TerminalFi• 3 years ago

Business have to buy a license else they break the TOS. “a license must be purchased for continued use”

cobertos2• 3 years ago

I hate that dialog box. It annoys me so much because I'm lazy and adding the key to a new install is always an afterthought. It's much worse with the Sublime SFTP plugin because I use it infrequently and so I only put in the license key after months or so of pestering.

It's not that I didnt want to buy it, Ive paid for Sublime twice now! I grumbled through the second payment. Something about the license only applying to major versions for 3 years? It is an indispensable pieces of software for me though, and I've paid more for other stuff (Backlink tracking subscription)

chpatrick• 3 years ago

There's always vscode...

cobertos2• 3 years ago

I like Sublime a lot, no reason to switch. I just dislike the box

user8501• 3 years ago

I can't tell if this is sarcasm. I think it's pretty groovy to pay a one time fee for software.

SanjayMehta2• 3 years ago

I think it’s virtual signalling designed to shame others into paying for it. With some cringeworthy attempts at humour.

DoctorDabadedoo• 3 years ago

To each their own, but I find funny that people shell out an absurd amount of money for games they will play exactly once but feel robbed when paying for software that they use every single day.

The licensing from sublime is very amenable, I believe, far from what companies like Adobe force on their end users, IMO.

Justsignedup3• 3 years ago

I pay for jet brains platform yearly and it is worth every single penny many times over.

The eye rolls I get. Bro. You're literally getting paid 150k at a minimum, you can she'll out 100 dollars a year.

wernercd2• 3 years ago

"150k at a minimum"

not to say you shouldn't support great companies but the average programmer salary isn't 150k. it's probably not even half that.

https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/computer-programm...

Toutouxc5• 3 years ago

European Rails dev here, working for a startup with a cozy atmosphere, friendly team, not job hopping or playing the Leetcode and 100+ interviews game, I’m looking at something like $50k, which is very nice in my country, but sometimes the numbers getting thrown around here make me feel kind of uncomfortable.

solardev• 3 years ago

Get me a job that pays 150k and I'll pay for your Jetbrains

happymellon• 3 years ago

It really depends on the app, I'm in Jet Brains apps a lot so it makes sense.

I would like a nice Git GUI, but GitKraken pricing is nonsense. I've settled with Fork, but I would prefer it if there was a native Linux version.

packetlost• 3 years ago

You're literally getting paid 150k at a minimum

There's more of the world than SV. Most people outside of those areas do not make that much or even close to it.

sam_goody• 3 years ago

I sometimes forgot that there even are programmers anywhere in the world that are making 150k; maybe one day I will fly to the States just to meet you guys.

Some of the comments on HN have a vibe of "Let them eat cake" - they are out of touch with how most of us plebs in the rest of the world are living.

And then I realize that the rich influence all the decision making that affects the poor - and it scares me.

(BTW: I assume this number is yearly; $12.5K/mo. Which is multiple times the average dev pay out where I live. Even in the States, I assume no one pulls $150K/monthly, amiright?)

P_I_Staker• 3 years ago

You're literally getting paid 150k at a minimum

Where? This website can be so frustrating with all the silicon valley privileged richy riches.

You understand that 150k is a massive salary?

paxys• 3 years ago

It's not about the dollar amount. $2000 can be a justified payment for a text editor and $1 can be too much. It all depends on how much value you get out of it.

Sublime is personally worth $0 to me because I wouldn't use it at all regardless of what I paid for it. And I say that as someone who bought every new version starting from the first one up until ~2018. VS Code is just that much better.

metaphor3• 3 years ago

VS Code is just that much better.

The trouble here is that "better" comes at a cost that the community has yet to truly realize, and Microsoft is very good at playing the long, slow bleed game; if strategic fractures[1] come to fruition, that debt will be repaid and it's going to be very expensive.

[1] https://ghuntley.com/fracture/

ipaddr2• 3 years ago

Do you miss multiple cursors and the speed?

drcongo• 3 years ago

I've never found anything about VSCode to be better - it's janky and unpredictable, with large files you can often watch the syntax highlighting happening, and input lag is way behind Sublime. VSCode is the Internet Explorer of text editors.

ternaryoperator• 3 years ago

My experience is unlike yours: VSCode with a couple of small files open uses >200MB of RAM--Sublime Text uses 11MB. ST also loads much faster, opens large data files without delay, and does search/find in the blink of an eye--which VSCode cannot match. My time and the RAM usage are both of value to me, so I have no difficulty accepting that those benefits (among others) cost me $80 upgrade every three or four years.

tiffanyh2• 3 years ago

”I find it funny people shell out an absurd amount of money for games”

People are always more willing to spend on entertainment where they get personal joy … than on tools.

eindiran• 3 years ago

In professions where tooling is very important, this is somewhat unique to tech; carpenters, machinists, plumbers, etc are definitely spending a lot of money on their tools.

jbverschoor• 3 years ago

Yet they complain about their TC

Barrin92• 3 years ago

People don't pay for software because of some sort of editor version of the labor theory of value, they pay for software if its a differentiated product they can't find a cheaper alternative for. This is true for most games. There's no GNU Elden Ring yet.

When it comes to Sublime these days it's hard to see why I'd pay for proprietary software, likely more than once when there's everything from Vim to Emacs, to VsCode and a dozen others.

pjmlp4• 3 years ago

Maybe they would think otherwise if those paying them take the same approach.

wink3• 3 years ago

I agree with your point here, but I think the discussion is usually more nuanced.

The things you use every day for quite a bit plus one time purchase - sure.

But let's take some hypothetical note-taking tool I access 2 times per day for one minute. Am I willing to pay a subscription for 60 minutes of use per month? nope.

And the same is true for development tools I purely use for my fun projects. I kinda like IDEA but 170€ per year? No way, I regularly don't need an IDE for months at a time. Their one-time purchase (was it like 300?) wasn't much better. I don't personally like Sublime, but if I did, 99€ one time sounds absolutely fair.

The problem arises when there are a dozen tools.

So yeah, my main gripe is with subscriptions, but no, I can't simply justify those purchases to feel more productive in my spare time. I don't really care if I theoretically would need twice as much time to code a feature for a few hours a week. Games are fun, and sometimes art - I enjoy them and so I am willing to pay.

In work settings I'm mostly a tool developer myself, so it might sound weird, but I wouldn't want to work for a company that sells a product to end users that does something I can get done 90% with FLOSS tools and fix the bugs I encounter.

amne• 3 years ago

To be fair JetBrains offers fallback licensing.

It's 170e/year if you keep paying for it. You can stop and get to keep the latest version you payed.

Example: IDEA 1.0 is out now and you pay 170e. 12 months later IDEA 1.9 is out .. if you pay another 170e you get to use 1.9+ If you don't pay you stay on IDEA 1.0. If you cancel earlier than 12 months you don't get to keep anything.

lawgimenez• 3 years ago

Nice write up fellow countryman.

astrodust• 3 years ago

Why is it shameful to pay to support something you use all the time?

I've paid for BBEdit, SubEthaEdit, TextMate, Sublime Text, and probably others over the years. VS Code is really the first editor I haven't felt compelled to pay for.

kristopolous• 3 years ago

As someone whose been on the other side, seeing money come in really obligates me to actually do something.

There's a deeper feeling of responsibility when someone's given you cash and I seem to prioritize things that otherwise I probably wouldn't have found the time for.

So you may think you "get" nothing, but what you might actually get is a developer to spend more time on it.

Now of course there's diminishing returns, but zero to non-zero obligates the honest person. Beyond that it's mostly headcount. I'd work more for 10 people that gave $1 than for 1 person that gave $10 because I've gone from having a sponsor to an audience.

matthewtse3• 3 years ago

Curious, why Sublime Text in this day and age of VS Code dominance?

Sublime text was my first "in the middle" text editor, more featured than vim/emacs, but lighter weight than IntelliJ. I somehow got my internship company to buy me a license, which I ended up using for several years after leaving.

But then VS Code came along. I was a skeptic for years, as it was based on Atom/Electron, which I found really sluggish, and it was Microsoft.

The thing that converted me was the "it just works" extensions system. Most coding languages have syntax highlighting and intelligent code navigation out of the box, and if not, it's a few clicks away to install very well written extensions. Comparatively, it was a nightmare installing Sublime Text extensions.

And over the years, Microsoft has poured immense amounts of money into developing features for VS Code.

S201• 3 years ago

I was a skeptic for years, as it was based on Atom/Electron, which I found really sluggish, and it was Microsoft.

This pretty much still sums it up for me.

matthewtse3• 3 years ago

After the Microsoft acquisition of GitHub (including Atom/Electron), they really made immense efforts to speed it up! It's been years since I've used Sublime Text, but I imagine VS Code is as fast if not faster at this point.

As for "Microsoft". It's funny, I use to be a Windows/Microsoft fan in the 90s/2000s because that was the only way I was going to play computer games. Then they lost my trust during the Ballmer era, at the same time I started programming and appreciated linux/apple more.

But VS Code has singlehandedly reignited my love of Microsoft. Despite the name "Visual Studio Code", it does not at all try to shove Microsoft languages like Visual Basic or C# down your throat. Support for common open source languages like python and javascript are amazing.

It's as surprising to me as it is to you that I'm defending Microsoft in an online thread right now.

steve_adams_862• 3 years ago

I personally use VS Code 98% of the time or something but I want companies like Sublime to continue competing and making better stuff. I also paid for Nova from Panic. I really, really want all of these guys to succeed and keep trying to innovate. I also want options that aren’t tied to Microsoft.

s17n2• 3 years ago

"More featured than emacs"?

nvy3• 3 years ago

The emacs out-of-box experience is notoriously poor, as evidenced by the rise and popularity of emacs starter packs, some of which have been on the hn front page of late.

I've been using emacs since 2002 or so and until very recently it needed a ton of third party config to approximate the ux and utility of what was available in other tools built in.

dralley• 3 years ago

I still like Sublime Text better for most day-to-day text editing. It's snappier, something about the text rendering just looks better to me, and it has more features w/r/t text manipulation, or at least I haven't been able to find equivalents for certain things in VSCode when I've tried to look in the past.

I like the Python support that Anaconda provides in Sublime better than the VSCode alternative I've tried.

I still use VSCode for Rust dev though, and merge conflict resolution, and certain kinds of debugging.

ben-schaaf3• 3 years ago

something about the text rendering just looks better to me

I speculate that this is due to Sublime Text using the native font rendering APIs of your platform, as opposed to chrome's font rendering.

unethical_ban• 3 years ago

I guess I haven't explored it well enough, but I have not learned how to get VSCode to operate properly with virtual environments with python. Am I not supposed to create/manage venvs myself, and point VSCode to the path?

dragonwriter2• 3 years ago

If you follow the convention of dedicated in-tree venvs in ./venv or ./.venv, VSCode discovers them fine.

If you do something else (like some workflows, including Poetry’s default, prefer) then its more work.

jwells89• 3 years ago

The "it just works" factor for extensions varies a lot depending on the language/ecosystem in question. For some things the store is littered with old broken extensions and figuring out which ones are "right" (if any are) can be a task.

I also think it tries to do a little too much and has too much in the way of modern UI-isms going on. Sublime Text is basically cross-platform TextMate, and I found TextMate more or less perfect in those regards.

seabrookmx• 3 years ago

The Remote extensions in particular have changed how I do development. I use VSCode for coding in all languages now and have micro set to $EDITOR for quick stuff in the terminal. It's the comfiest setup I've had in my career.

simianpirate• 3 years ago

I feel Nova is SO close to being exactly what I want and need on the Mac.

JohnBooty2• 3 years ago

I switched from Sublime to VS Code, but man, I find VS Code pretty ugly.

It's not the colors, because obviously there are a near infinite number of themes. It's just a mishmash of text of varying style, size, and spacing and it realllllly all runs together visually for me.

I know some of it is tweakable but a lot isn't and I'm not sure it can be fixed...

mardifoufs2• 3 years ago

For me it's the opposite. I literally can't use another editor for any extended period of time since I started using Shade Of Purple in vscode. I usually hate flashy stuff but man, pycharm is weirdly hard to use without it

It's such a stupid detail and ideally irrelevant to actual development too, but my brain just likes it too much.

muzani2• 3 years ago

Note taking. Quick edits. Plugins are easy. Just copy in a bunch of JSON > CMD+SHIFT+P > "pretty"

hakunin• 3 years ago

Copying my comment from another article:

This time I used VSCode for nearly 2 months. Thought it's the end of an era, I'm not coming back to Sublime Text. I decided to push through and customize the configs just right for me, it was really becoming comfortable. Main reason why I wanted to switch is more active dev, more active extension community, and well integrated modern (some ML-backed) code writing and navigation tools.

I was wrong. After all the painstaking customization to bring it close to my ideal experience, while also getting used to things I didn't want to fight, I still had a bad time.

For one, the tab/cursor focus keeps going into weird places. I press a button, like ESC to switch to normal vim mode, and instead it does nothing, or something different, because turns out I'm not in the editor anymore. Keeps happening, maybe my own fault. The nifty AI tools integration is more of a nuisance — they jump in at bad times (with a delay), and their tab/enter functionality is weird, can never get it right. Most of my autocompletes have been unintentional. Maybe my own fault again, but felt super awkward. There is still no good vertical align plugin, despite such an active community (Sublime doesn't have one either, although they have one that gets me a bit closer). The language server stuff that worked badly in Sublime for my language also works badly in VSCode. The extensions, while numerous, are of questionable quality. I tried to stick to just a few well known ones.

After all the effort, I slowly came to realization that I'm back to not really using anything unique to VSCode, sacrificing more than I gained, being surrounded by lots of small moving details everywhere in the UI that make my experience more awkward than helpful, and occasionally getting my cursor stuck in weird parts of UI. I went back to Sublime.

fiddlerwoaroof3• 3 years ago

Yeah, I almost switched from emacs to VSCode and then discovered that lsp-mode basically meant that there was no advantage to VSCode

dumpsterdiver• 3 years ago

I find Sublime useful because it doesn't try to be as "helpful" as some other text editors. It also makes problems stemming from non-printing character apparent. It works well for those one-off times when you need to view or edit some text outside of your normal IDE.

kstrauser2• 3 years ago

Not Sublime Text, but I prefer BBEdit these days. It's way more responsive that VSCode, trivially easily to extend with shell scripts, Python, or whatever other language you want to write, and has fine LSP support so it can do most of the magic stuff that VSCode can.

I used VSCode for quite a while. I like it. I just strongly prefer truly native apps with native user interfaces. Not having to build a JavaScript package to add any little bit of extra functionality is also pretty sweet.

thefz2• 3 years ago

Not Sublime Text, but I prefer BBEdit these days
Our software products are available only for macOS. There are no Windows or Linux versions.

Sublime is cross platform.

101011• 3 years ago

As a paid license Sublime user, years back, my biggest annoyance with VSCode was that regex pattern matching hit a limit to the matches it could find. At the time I believe it was around 1k, from some quick Google searching it looks like they may have increased the limit to 10k, which would have been right on the cusp of my use case at the time.

I could see giving VSCode another go in the future, but it's the 'if it aint broke' adage at this point.

buzer• 3 years ago

Curious, why Sublime Text in this day and age of VS Code dominance?

I don't know if it's still the case as I generally don't need to do it anymore but VS Code (and other Electron-based editors) used to struggle with large files.

I know it's not very common use case but I did need to open large log files (from 100MB to even gigabytes range) and such in the past and that's where ST really shined.

tw04• 3 years ago

Same on both fronts. Not sure if VS Code has improved but it was basically unusable for large log files that Sublime basically opened instantly.

Have not had a reason to do that in several years so I'm not sure if it's still the case or not.

soraminazuki• 3 years ago

more featured than vim/emacs

That's ... a bold claim.

tincholio2• 3 years ago

Sublime text was my first "in the middle" text editor, more featured than vim/emacs,

I've never used sublime, how is it "more featured" than either Vim, or (especially) Emacs?

thefz2• 3 years ago

Curious, why Sublime Text in this day and age of VS Code dominance?

In one word, comfortable multi-row and column editing. Can't go back to manually indent SQL.

GoblinSlayer• 3 years ago

You mean like "indent selected lines with tab key"?

globular-toast6• 3 years ago

Why would "VS Code dominance" have any bearing on one's own choice of text editor?

efxhoy• 3 years ago

Ive stuck with sublime text because it feels good when I use it, everything is fast and there is no clutter. For lack of a better comparison it feels like when you had just reinstalled windows XP back in the day. Fresh and snappy and clean. I’ve tried vscode but it felt like Windows Vista, a bit slower, a bit more bloaty, a bit less familiar.

The downside is I struggle with plugins.

gentleman11• 3 years ago

Way better on battery life, last I tested. Better ux. Not as worried about it spying

rubslopes3• 3 years ago

For me, the main one is multiple windows.

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

multiple windows?

steve_adams_862• 3 years ago

I think Sublime Merge is also deserving of the small chunk of cash they ask for it. I’m not embarrassed at all about it, sarcastically or otherwise. It’s great software and I hope they keep developing great things.

bradgessler4• 3 years ago

Agreed, I use it for committing specific lines of source. Atlassian SourceTree is also really good too.

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

Yes, it is a great tool too! If you have any questions or curious if the product is still developed, hangout on Sublime's Discord :D

urthor2• 3 years ago

Why is paying money for ethical, user-respecting software like Sublime Text a bad thing?

Sublime HQ the company maintains an excellent reputation, and does a wonderful job.

urthor2• 3 years ago

I think to add to this.

If you're a fully employed professional of some means, which a huge amount of folk reading this are.

Pay for your shareware software. Usually with independent SaaS software, after I've used software for 6+ months or more, I pay for the lifetime license.

It's just polite.

tellarin• 3 years ago

I don't have a problem with paying for software I use and like if the price and their terms are reasonable, which Sublime mostly is.

However, my personal issue with Sublime is the fact some basic requested editor functionality hasn't been implemented in years. You can see multiple such issues opened against it.

And I'm not talking about IDE-like stuff, just basic editor features, like having multiple rows of tabs when you have many files open.

maronato• 3 years ago

It isn’t a bad thing. The repo is sarcastic in a good way, making fun of how we take incredible software for granted.

It got me to pay for Sublime even though I haven’t used it in years. When I used it, though, it was the best thing since sliced bread and more than paid for itself.

TylerE• 3 years ago

It's especially ironic on a forum where at least 90% of the userbase...writes software for a living.

wryanzimmerman2• 3 years ago

I paid for it (and merge) even after I started using neovim full time, because I used it for years to learn to code before I got a paid job. Their license terms were kind enough to let me do that, so I honored the spirit of it and paid them once I got paid.

chii• 3 years ago

sublime merge looks pretty good and is worth paying for imho.

demondemidi3• 3 years ago

I paid for sublime. Used it for years. Then VSCode overtook it on so many levels.

I even used it for notetaking because it opened faster than vscode but then that was fixed. Good stuff but hard to avoid a solid ecosystem that is constantly evolving with the backing of big companies. kinda sad actually.

matthewtse3• 3 years ago

Yeah, when your competitor is one of the biggest companies in the world who's willing to light millions on fire to offer a COMPLETELY FREE competitor for the sake of "developer mindshare", it's pretty easy to see the end result.

I was really a skeptic for years, but Microsoft really threw money at this until it won.

fiddlerwoaroof3• 3 years ago

This is probably the main reason why I won’t use it anymore: Microsoft is repeating in VSCode all the things it did in the Windows/IE era.

cedws• 3 years ago

This. I absolutely love Sublime and wish I could go back to it, but the plugin ecosystem isn't the same. It's all community supported and feels like it's held together with tape. It doesn't "just work" like VSCode does.

And although I appreciate that Sublime is supposed to be a simple editor, not an IDE, it wouldn't hurt to add more IDE-like features. It's just too basic for development in 2023. Sublime has a really clean, performant, cross platform UI, why not take that and build the foundations of something more viable?

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

I wonder what's the last version you use? I do agree the plugin ecosystem is in shambles but they do have actively developed plugins. It's just not easy to discover.

The only significant thing that I think VSCode has over Sublime is the Live sharing stuff.

wryanzimmerman2• 3 years ago

Sublime with first-party, all-annoyances-smoothed-over LSP support would be an amazing product.

TheCapeGreek• 3 years ago

I evaluated Sublime vs VSC just for note taking, since I was on VSC for years but I felt the resource usage was too much for having some .md files open.

Sublime used far fewer resources yes, but as others have said the plugins just weren't the same. It also felt like a huge premium to pay just to take notes.

Tried Obsidian a few months ago, and it's roughly on par with VSC but much better geared towards my notes.

demondemidi3• 3 years ago

I've never had an issue with system resources since about ... 2003?

I think that argument is overblown. People don't LIKE seeing the resource bloat, but it has almost zero impact on today's systems. Maybe back when I was using a WD Fireball HDD for swap space, sure...

namuol• 3 years ago

Many years ago I bought Sublime Text minutes after using the plugin system to install some support for the languages I use.

This was a decade before VSCode took over, and at the time I was a Vim user for most of my career. It was a breath of fresh air compared to the Stockholm syndrome I had built around VimScript, and I never looked back.

We (people like me) owe ST for opening the door for innovation in the general-purpose IDE space that created what is frankly a golden age compared to the century prior. Heck, the command palette has bled into tools well outside the scope of developer tools these days and it’s probably my favorite UX pattern in modern complex software.

To any Vim users preparing to inform me about how much better Vim is these days, I’d argue that we still owe ST for raising the expectations that developers have of their editors.

muzani2• 3 years ago

I paid for it earlier this month. I have a "charity" budget. I didn't get any dialog. But like OP, it's something I used since my first job (if you count ST2 as the same). So I figured this time instead of building wells in some remote location, the money should go into legally paying for something that's I use.

It was second choice - first was Fork, which is even more embarrassing as it means I don't use the git CLI. But Fork rejected my card so ST it was.

It does feel weird. There's no satisfaction. I don't use it that much these days; it's just a text editor that I paste logs into. It's pretty damn expensive for a text editor.

nerdponx2• 3 years ago

I feel a small amount of satisfaction every time I open Sublime to take a random note, knowing that 1) once upon a time my work depended on it, and 2) I did my part to support its development.

emacs4evr• 3 years ago

Use emacs

pb060• 3 years ago

Emacs has such a steep and long learning curve that I couldn’t justify learning it while doing actual work. Still attracted by it, any suggestion for a smoother adoption?

tincholio2• 3 years ago

The learning curve is not so steep, as long as you don't try to learn ALL OF EMACS upfront. Just start using it for your basic editing, learn how to open/save files, how to navigate, buffer management, as you go. When you need something more specific, you can easily look it up in the great in-built documentation. You can also use something like Doom, which simplifies more advanced setups, and adds to discoverability (press the leader key, and you get a set of options for what else you can do from there).

It's the same with Vim, if you learn how to do basic editing, the rest comes along easily, as you need it. (remember "ESC :q!", though :) )

globular-toast6• 3 years ago

I like "emacs bedrock" config to start with. And use magit (can be enabled in bedrock). You'll save so much time using git which means a) you'll never go back and b) you can use the time saved to get better at emacs.

I won't lie to you, though. Emacs is the single greatest source of yak shaving there is. It becomes your passion project as you try to craft your ultimate editing experience. It's so cool to be able to use your own passion project for work every day.

eviks4• 3 years ago

It's too sluggish on Windows

hirvi74• 3 years ago

I still do on occasions, but I can't at work. I miss it all the time, but in someways, and I hate saying it, but I have been more productive. I spent too much time changing my config, QoL improvements, and breaking things. The sick part is that I miss it sometimes. I thinks is due to Emacs being the only software I have worked[1] on that actually meant something to me.

[1] Worked on in the since of configurations, my own modes, packages, etc.. I have never contributed to Emacs the project.

iambateman• 3 years ago

TBH, I did pay for Sublime but lost my license key years ago.

Ever since, I’ve been mired in the dialog pop up because I don’t want to buy it again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ben-schaaf3• 3 years ago

If you have access to the email address you can easily recover the key here: https://www.sublimehq.com/store/retrieve_key.

nerdponx2• 3 years ago

I paid for it and feel no shame. The core editor still beats VS Code by far, even though its plugin ecosystem really died off in the mid-2010s when the devs went nearly silent, and sadly never recovered.

zaphod420• 3 years ago

Sublime Text is a great text editor. It opens huge files quickly. It has all the features I need for programming via LSP packages. It just feels comfy to use.

I happily paid for sublime text.

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

btw, if you need help with issues or just curious whether Sublime is dead or not, head over to their unofficial Discord server -> https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu

waynecochran• 3 years ago

You could have just used emacs and simply passed on a thank you to RMS.

tekla• 3 years ago

Its a very high quality piece of software that is fast, light, and has a rich plugin system, and it gets out of the goddamn way.

This is such a weird insecurity to have. Are people so insecure that they have to be ashamed for buying a product?

26fingies• 3 years ago

I paid for sublime 3. I should pay for 4, but I havent yet.

anthony_romeo2• 3 years ago

I think their license works for the current version at time of purchase and next version, so you’re good to go till version 5

ben-schaaf3• 3 years ago

The licensing used to be for a single major version. This was changed with Sublime Text 4: A license is permanently valid for any versions/builds released within 3 years of the purchase. See https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-4

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

Sublime 4 is like a different world. There might be hiccups with moving to different versions but you can always ask at the discord server.

andrewstuart• 3 years ago

I happily pay for Jetbrains Pycharm and Clion.

I'm a professional developer so the price is easily justifiable.

SanjayMehta2• 3 years ago

I paid for Textmate on macOS which now seems to be in perpetual beta and free.

I still prefer vi/vim for speed, and use Textmate only for restructuring code.

VSCode is great for reading other people’s code, IMHO, but gets in the way while writing new code.

Different tools for different tasks.

WhereIsTheTruth• 3 years ago

I bought a license a while ago, but I found myself using it less and less.. why? I couldn't tweak something that was bothering me (file preview as you fuzzy search your file, causing ton of screen flickering, and is quite slow on my raspberry..)

I now mostly use vim..

I'm pretty sure they'll never do it, but I think Sublime should embrace open source, or perhaps open more components of the editor..

tombert• 3 years ago

I don't use Sublime, but I have tried to get into the habit of donating "roughly how much I would pay at the store" for some of the open source software I use frequently, now that I make yuppie money. Stuff like ffmpeg or NeoVim or tmux are tools that I have become so dependent on, and they're all given away for free.

I have also tried to be in compliance with "free for personal use" licenses; I pay the fee for business use of Obsidian now, because I do use it a lot for work.

MangoCoffee• 3 years ago

I paid for Sublime Text version 2 and 3 but stop at 4 because VSCode is good enough for coding.

nkantar3• 3 years ago

Ha, amusing read—thanks for the chuckle.

I paid for Sublime Text 3 while I was still using it. Even though I switched away (to Vim/Neovim, then Kakoune, then Helix), I don’t regret it at all. It was a fantastic tool I used for about two to three years, and it brought me far more value than the $70 it asked for in return.

In fact, I’ve since bought a ton of other software when it’s proven useful more than the free alternatives. I’m particularly happy when it’s sold by a small team, just like Sublime. Some favorites I currently have installed: Acorn, Fantastical, Ivory, Monodraw, Things, Transmit, and Tweetbot (RIP).

bradgessler4• 3 years ago

Fantastical is awesome. I wish Flexbits make a macOS email client, but they don’t seem interested.

nkantar3• 3 years ago

I had this exact thought when I first started using Fantastical a bit over a year ago. Would 100% be interested, even for my relatively easy needs.

nicwolff• 3 years ago

I bet you'd like Bean:

Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor that is designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. Bean is lean, fast and uncluttered. It starts up quickly, has a live word count, and is easy on the eyes. Also, Bean is available free of charge.
Bean has some limitations: it doesn't do footnotes or use stylesheets and is only partially compatible with Word's file formats. Also, it allows in-line graphics, but not floating graphics.

https://bean-osx.com/Bean.html

nkantar3• 3 years ago

That’s pretty cool, thanks for sharing!

tshirttime• 3 years ago

The guilt-trip business model is a shitty one. How I miss the days of shrink-wrapped diskettes when the software, and not the customer, was the deliverable.

kristianp• 3 years ago

I feel bad now. I've been using sublime for years and still use it all the time. (F@#$ Microsoft and vscode basically).

I'm gonna buy a license, just as soon as I have the time.

pupppet• 3 years ago

I still love and use sublime text. It has an SFTP package that knocks the socks off anything available on VScode.

Plus I find the way it manages the search results screen far superior to VScode.

aidog• 3 years ago

I used that plugin extensively to develop PHP websites 10 years ago. Great feedback loop

pentagrama• 3 years ago

Not a developer and I use Sublime Text everyday as a local note taking app. Is so so snappy, and the UI/colors are calm and attractive. I love Sublime Text.

I guess I don't get the license message as the op because I don't save the tabs, all catched.

I tryed obsidian for some time and was cool, but was miles behind in snappiness and wasn't worth it.

sharts• 3 years ago

You’d think by now editor configs could be easily migrated/translated between products.

ivanmontillam2• 3 years ago

I remember back in the day purchasing 5 years for WhatsApp and I convinced a few friends to do so after a lot of convincing.

It felt great even though I was being laughed at by many. I contributed to the great work these guys pre-Facebook were doing.

To me it felt like buying me some good karma for when I sell my software.

Now I pay for Telegram and I only have WhatsApp out of network effects.

below43• 3 years ago

For me it was a BB Edit license. Despite using VS Code for 90% of my projects, I still found myself using it for quick edits, or viewing of files.

james2doyle• 3 years ago

I've paid for all of the Sublime versions since 2. I even paid for Sublime merge. I like supporting the team because they have consistent patches and really have built an excellent tool that I used for hours a day.

There are a lot of people talking about the VSCode plugin ecosystem but I've never lacked any plugins from Sublime. I just prefer the experience.

Once you have LSP setup it sings. There are also some underutilized features like workspaces and build systems that are really handy when you set them up. The snippets and macros system is also really nice.

I should also add that it is easy to build plugins for. The docs on plugins are a bit rough but there are lots of examples out there.

It is overall a really good editor experience

jiehong• 3 years ago

Speaking of which, I’ve found that the api doc is getting better since Sublime Text 4. Not crazy better, but that’s something.

I’d also enjoy some typing stubs for their API to import to help with autocompletion of their API, though.

fragile_frogs• 3 years ago

I have been using Sublime Text for about 8 years now, I have tried multiple different editors in the mean time including VS Code, Atom, Fleet and I always went back to Sublime Text.

After years of using ST for free, I finally bought a license about two years ago when ST 4 came out, I am also a paid user of Sublime Merge, which is the best git client I have tried.

aragonite2• 3 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but I find the process of developing/modifying an extension such a PITA on vscode. In sublime it's frictionless, all you have to do is to save some python files in your user folder, then sublime will find them automatically, and hot reload them when you modify them! In VSCode, I have go through a whole build process, generate some .vsx and then manually install it. The tiniest modification to the code requires me to go through this whole process again. Am I doing something wrong here?

Dayshine• 3 years ago

Funny, I had the opposite experience. Typescript has perfect language server support, the vs code api docs are very good and you can always just look at the source. Plus debugging vs code extensions is easy.

Porting the same extension to sublime text was a nightmare. Python has poor language support in all ides, the docs were lacking, there was no good debugger and I couldn't just check the code.

jayemar• 3 years ago

You didn't really answer their question, you really only said that you find it more comfortable working with Typescript than with Python. Are you aware of a way to install custom Typescript code as an extension without needing to go through the build and install process in VSCode, similar to the way a Python file can be pulled in by Sublime if placed in a specific folder?

aragonite2• 3 years ago

I can certainly imagine developing a complex extension intended for publication in the marketplace can involve a very different experience.

I had in mind only the kind of extension a user might write for personal use, which may often involve adding some simple functionality (usually some event listener, e.g. intercepting auto-completion to do some filtering). I find it very convenient to be able to change the code and have the changes instantaneously reflected in the editor itself (rather than some sandboxed environment) and wish it were possible to do the same in VSCode

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

I wonder what extensions you tried to port or the ones you can't live without. I want to try to port it

tantalic• 3 years ago

As someone who almost always has a text editor open, I have paid for many over the years. In particular multiple versions of TextMate and multiple versions of Sublime Text. I have also been responsible for getting licenses for my team(s) at work.

I now find that the editor I am happiest with is VS Code, not because it's free but because of the extensibility and community support it brings. I'd happily pay for it - but I think the nature of it being free is what has brought so much community support to it.

xiaodai• 3 years ago

lol

ElectronBadger• 3 years ago

I paid for SublimeText and SublimeMerge and will happily pay another time, when my v3 license expires. While I'm mostly in the FOSS camp, Sublime software, together with Bitwig Studio (https://www.bitwig.com) and Reaper (https://www.reaper.fm), are the pinnacle of commercial products in their categories.

bigstrat20032• 3 years ago

I finally made an account just to say: I also bought Sublime Text, and I'm happy to do so. I'll pay for it again when my license runs up, most likely.

Lots of people saying they use VSCode, and I can't blame them. It has a lot going for it. But when I recently tried each for a while, Sublime does everything VSCode does just as well. Even plugins - there's nothing I want (with one exception) I can't get in Sublime. So the calculus basically comes down to this:

VSCode: the remoting feature is great, and Sublime currently can't match it (rsub is a poor substitute at best).

Sublime: it's not an Electron app, and therefore uses a fraction of the resources. Working with the same set of files open, VSCode uses hundreds of MB of memory while Sublime uses 100 or so.

So either way I have to give something up, but ultimately the massive bloat of VSCode bothers me more than the lack of good remoting functionality in Sublime. So I'm using Sublime for the foreseeable future.

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

btw, if you need help with issues or just curious whether Sublime is dead or not, head over to their unofficial Discord server -> https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu

the community is very much active in there!

blindriver• 3 years ago

I've paid for it twice now, once for version 2 and once for version 4 (I think that's the current version).

ghusto• 3 years ago

Love it :) Sublime Text is exactly the type of company I can support. Honest business, making a good and honest product. Unfortunately it's not _quite_ good enough for me :(

I wish there was a viable alternative to VSCode. For a clue as to where that's headed, take a look at any free tool with heavy investment by a large corporation. Chrome is good case-study.

VSCodium is ... I can't put my finger on it, but it doesn't cut it. Maybe death by a thousand cuts, many small things that don't quite work as cleanly as they should.

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

I wonder what made you feel that Sublime is not good enough. Vent it out on me :D

Brajeshwar• 3 years ago

Been a paid user and happy customer since 2009. I have paid for every paid upgrade it asked. I've stopped coding for quite a while and now uses it to write mostly Markdown, and some others here and there. Sublimetext is worth it and (I believe), it is not even yearly but you pay once every 4th year (current license model).

I tend to open directories/folders of projects and Sublime text is the only one that I can zip around while still being visually informative and beautiful.

Thank you Sublimetext.

btach• 3 years ago

...#sublimeshame? I don't understand what is shameful. Nor do I see anything to be proud of either. It's a fantastic tool. I used Sublime Text for quite a while at version 2 and eventually bought a license. Later upgraded to 4. Still using it almost daily. It's a staple in my workflow and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Other tools would probably be just as good, but whatever, it is valuable to me.

ilrwbwrkhv• 3 years ago

Sublime Text was the last piece of daily software that I really enjoy. Since then nothing else has given me that feeling. I bought it a long time back of course.

This is how Sublime Text started: https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/2007/11

klntsky• 3 years ago

It is rarely good to have that much emotional investment in software (or in the money that would otherwise be spent on donations to software devs). Most of us are fairly uninvolved: you either pay or not.

This must be Sublime PR department psyop. A brilliant one, I must admit.

lycopodiopsida2• 3 years ago

I've had a personal license, but barely used it, because vim & emacs. But in the end, the problem with license is that I can't use it @myWork. There is plenty of outstanding editors these days - neovim, emacs, vscode for those loving to click around so that it would be difficult for me to argue why I do need a license for sublime. But I've had no problems to get my employer to pay for JIdea Ultimate, because the value of an IDE to vscode is pretty obvious.

galleywest200• 3 years ago

But in the end, the problem with license is that I can't use it @myWorK

Per the website: https://www.sublimehq.com/sales_faq

As licenses are per-user, you're welcome to use your license key on all computers where you are the primary user, including at work.

lycopodiopsida2• 3 years ago

Not allowed, sadly, employee insists that all licenses used have to be bought ob their name. Legal something yada yada… I can’t just bring in my personal license.

8bitsrule• 3 years ago

Over here on Linux, I tried Sublime this summer for a couple months. Compared to Kate (which has grown a lot over the years), it had a couple of better options, but about the same number of strange oddities. And then I saw what it takes to modify some of the theme choices... ay yay. Back to Kate's well-known oddities.

larodi• 3 years ago

I love Sublime Text. It is actually Microsoft who should've paid for it, because they adopted what was done in Atom and Atom is direct attempt at opensource rewrite of Sublime Text. Sublime showed what a fast editor could look like, and it basically brought to the GUI world the long-overdue search-in-all-menus functionality which is really everywhere these days. Yeah, sure vim does it for ages with commands, no disrespect, but only 1% of baby devs would land vim in their first years.

Even though I appreciate opensource for many of its benefits (not quality, but mostly the community), there are dark sides to opensource that few mention. And one of it is the absolutely insanely negative view of anything that is closed-source software and needs to be paid for. Totally disregarding the qualities of product. This is so wrong on so many levels.

Whats more - a company which builds its services on opensource very seldom open sources its own code. What a hypocrisy! I'm not even going to go into this discussion of Amazon vs Elastic. It is shameful that users of opensource so much under-appreciate the authors' work while doing thousands, if not millions, on top of it. But then it is even more shameful to deny the right of authors of great software such as Sublime Text to proudly collect money for their work. After all - these service companies which are 99% opensource based, do whatever they do, for a profit, right?

And if we put this in perspective - whats the combined that you pay for Apple Music, Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Google Drive... whatever? Why not pay for the editor you are using on a daily basis, when its created by a hard-working professional. I'm not saying you have to pay for VSCode - its a marketing thing, very different. But people actually pay for Visual Studio, right?

So nothing shameless in buying Sublime Text, in fact - it is commendable.

pjmlp4• 3 years ago

I also paid for it.

When people like to be paid for their work, they should consider how the authors of their work tools pay for their living as well.

throwaway_4638• 3 years ago

The main thing that actually convinced me to pay for Sublime a few years ago was a bug (or dark pattern?) in that very nag window: if it would pop up just as I clicked something, it would move to the background. Normally not an issue, but for some reason the area where the nag window is will block Sublime from registering scroll input. It was driving me crazy until I finally figured out what was causing it.

I'm not sure if it still does this, but I have experienced this on multiple systems at the time.

Happy I paid for it though, the sluggish VSCode bloatware is not doing it for me.

transportheap• 3 years ago

i would consider buying if they stop shipping eol software. they ship py3.3 which is eol of 10 years! seems like a wont fix too

https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/5984

https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/1163

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

Yeah this sucks. Afaik, they're debating about this and from what I read removing 3.3 means killing the plugin ecosystem.

anarticle• 3 years ago

What the heck, am I the only one who doesn't feel bad about paying for a text editor?!

I use it, it is nice and I enjoy, so I pay person some money. I figure I'm not buying some millionaire another boat.

I have definitely spent more on worse / dumber things.

Re: VSCode, I liked it more when MS stayed on their side of the fence, producing megacorper dev tools. This allowed smaller companies to flourish and create useful things and wild features. Now those same smallcos are relegated to the marketplace which is ruled by MS whim. I'm sure you can sideload etc, but I danno. Something about the freedom of Sublime plugs felt nice. Also what a great license scheme compared to all the other subscribeware we see anymore.

Maybe I'm just a sucker, I pay for my own JetBrains sub lol.

stemlord• 3 years ago

Just went back to sublime from Obsidian for note taking. Nothing beats the speed of sublime (aside from CLI text editors). Obsidian is cool but too slow and filled with micro-annoyances that I just dont experience with sublime.

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

Looks like I'm not the only one experiencing this with Obsidian. I have been trying to incorporate it with my flow but it feels clunky? I guess those are the micro-annoyances you are talking about?

Thanks for this. I got a new plugin idea!

for_i_in_range3• 3 years ago

It's sad. Sublime would be 20x better with a 2x better revenue model.

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

Curious, what kind of revenue model do you suggest?

for_i_in_range3• 3 years ago

$12.95/mo. Or $120/year

rixtox• 3 years ago

I shamefully paid for both Sublime Text and WinRAR

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

my man!

fleeno2• 3 years ago

I've also paid for Sublime, TextMate, and now, Nova!

Nova is wonderful.

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

Nova? Whoa! I will try this!

btw, if you need help with issues or just curious whether Sublime is dead or not, drop by their unofficial Discord server -> https://discord.com/invite/D43Pecu

fleeno2• 3 years ago

Nova is worth a try if you're a Mac user!

On Sublime, it's a great editor, and being cross platform is really nice. They really do need to update the web site to reflect that it's not dead. The "see what's new" link is dated 2021.

kemko• 3 years ago

Once upon a time, I used Sublime Text, Sublime Merge, and paid for them.

But one day, I realized enough was enough. Sublime Text 2 was worth its cost, and so was Sublime Text 3. But when we were introduced to Sublime Text 4 and its license with an annual fee, we were told that it was to avoid holding back significant features for the next major release to boost its sales. The annual fee would allow them to release new features just after done - that's what they said. But where is it? Sublime Text, previously stagnant, continued to stagnate in its fourth version.

Recognizing this, I moved on to other solutions.

kapitanluffy22• 3 years ago

Ah that is unfortunate. If I can say one thing against Sublime HQ, it is that they are bad at communicating. I assume you are on a business license (thus the yearly) and you expected that there will be releases. Not as frequent but something that will signal you that they are active.

As a "dev" user (the unstable version), I can say that they are active. They have 6 builds just this year. 4 of which are large ones. Unfortunately, they just released those in "stable" last Aug 2.

Previous years are also bad. They released to "stable" mostly before the year ends while "dev" has builds almost every month.

If I were them, I would leverage the "we are so quiet" and provide exclusive access to frequent builds to paying customers. Sure they might be "unstable" but as a paying customer, I would rather have an unstable product than not hear from you the whole year.

Anyway, going back to my point, they are active. I can vouch for that. They are just really bad in doing "company" things. In my purely honest opinion, it is not enough for a business to have a great product if you can't appeal to your target market. They are lucky enough that there are people who fell in love with ST and stuck around.

sebiw• 3 years ago

Absolutely not connecting with the message. I happily and proudly bought Sublime Text after some time because it's a tool I really like and use pretty much daily. Thanks to the devs for a solid product.

IronWolve• 3 years ago

hey, I paid for winrar too. Paying people for their work is a form of respect and enriches society. Karma is real.

hatsune• 3 years ago

As much as I respect the authors and their opinions, it feels terribly wrong to put that on Github. This is not a personal blog. There are no codes, no licenses, no whatever contribution or forks ever possible for the lack of meanings.

Why?

It does not take a body part to host a server or buy a VPS, or you can even use wordpress parts. If the only thing they are looking for is opinions (or, mainly similar opinions), they could go subreddits or forums like HN. Why Github?

I paid for Sublime Text

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