Comment by keb_
4 days ago
Yeah, as others already mentioned, I think they sat on their laurels for a bit too long and let VSCode overtake it.
For what it's worth, I went from ST3 -> VSCode -> ST4, and have been happy since. I've found that I prefer my text editor with minimal extensions, and with Sublime Text's LSP Plugin, I'm pretty content. The performance and customizable UI make it more worth it to me than VSCode.
It's the LSP plugin that finally drove me to leave ST4 for Zed. Language integration is table stakes for an editor now. The fact that ST support is behind a volunteer plugin instead of integrated directly in the editor just means it's never going to be as good as a editor that does have first class support. The ST devs need to actually improve the editor, but I haven't seen any material updates in years.
I think it's less that they sat on their laurels and more that a team of 2 had trouble keeping up with the dozens of well-paid folks working on VSCode. Which suggests that perhaps a shareware model did not work out so well for them.
They literally stopped developing for about 5 years, it wasn't just about the team not keeping up
I don't think development actually stopped. ST3 was in a quiet public beta for a long time, but you can see builds of ST3 from 2013 to 2019: https://www.sublimetext.com/3.
Why would you stop developing for 5 years?
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Agreed, LSP has replaced Linter extensions and the TabNine LLM which is nice (and snappy). Even if some of the lsp servers are clunky to use.
even before VSCode Atom had started to eat their lunch