This is very good news, but I worry that it's too little, too late. For years, Sublime Text had no serious competitors. Then Atom came along. Don't get me wrong, Atom has significant drawbacks. But it also has advantages: it's open source, costs nothing, and has a couple dozen developers working on it. Sublime Text is closed source, costs $70 (totally worth it, IMO), and has two developers working on it.
The difference in staffing is the main reason I worry. I use Sublime Text far more than Atom, but the trend is unmistakable: Atom is improving faster than Sublime. The most recent stable release of Sublime Text is from 30 months ago. Atom was announced 22 months ago, and v1.0 was released 9 months ago. In those same 22 months, there have been zero updates to Sublime Text 2 and only four updates to Sublime Text 3 beta. That's some abysmally slow development. If these trends continue, there's simply no way that Sublime Text can stay in the lead.
The plugin ecology for Atom is also great. Sublime has an extremely limited API; I remember trying to implement a simple autocomplete-based window switcher, back in the day, and had to give up because was no way to programmatically switch to a new window.
With Atom, packages can manipulate the editor. For example, the Atom linter shows errors on the line where it occurs. It can do this because packages are allowed to hijack the editor's rendering, something Sublime packages can't do. (The only thing you can do in Sublime is to mark areas for colorization, and there are some things you can do with the gutter.)
There's also a neat package that turns Git's textual conflict markers into live markers [1] allowing you pick which side to use. It also displays a list of pending project-wide conflicts while you're working — also not something Sublime plugins can do.
The Markdown Preview package is also very nice [2]. It displays a preview window inside Atom. Not possible with Sublime's API.
With Atom, I can have the sidebar colorized based on Git status, for example (it's a built-in package), and the icons can be themed [2]. Sublime plugins can't modify the file sidebar other than add context menus.
In short, Sublime really needs to up its API game in order to compete with Atom.
> For years, Sublime Text had no serious competitors. Then Atom came along. Don't get me wrong
Let's also not forget:
o Brackets (which I do prefer over ST for Javascript and CSS),
o Visual Studio Code
o EditPlus (not so great with plug ins, but it's such a solid editor that this was my favourite for years before ST)
o Notepad++ (very popular text editor)
o Kate (KDE)
o Emacs (which has long since also had a GUI)
o Plus lots of environment specific editors and micro-IDE's such as:
. Aracnophilia (I used to swear by this in the 90s),
. Bluefish,
. LiteIDE,
...and so on.
I'm no doubt missing off dozens of popular editors, but bar VSC, all of the above have been around for longer than Atom has and many have been around even longer than ST. So it's been a crowded market for quite some time. Which often leaves me wondering why people make such noise about Atom when it always feels somewhat immature compared to any of the above (or at least has done for me whenever I've pulled an ArchLinux AUR package for Atom)
As a side note, it's a pity HN doesn't support an easier method for posting bullet points.
You shouldn't judge the progress on Sublime Text based on when the last "stable version" was released. They seem to be way too perfectionistic in deeming version 3 stable - the developer versions have all been more stable for me than any version of Atom ever has been. The Sublime Text 3 betas are production ready.
It's true that the development progress has been really slow/halted this last year, but it seems to have gotten back on track in the last month.
Don't discount the benefit of a few men, trying to build a business. Doing dedicated work for Open Source is amazing, and very honourable. However, as the ATOM team grows, so does the overhead, the documentation requirements, and group thought. Sublime going lean and closed source might make things more competitive then you think.
If your goal is to making a living writing a text editor, you can't do that with Atom. As long as Sublime remains a good choice for professionals, I'm sure they'll do fine.
Maybe development speed and release frequency aren't the best ways to measure the quality of software? Sublime Text is a solid product that has done well despite a slow release schedule.
Agree, up until Atom came out, Sublime had a virtual monopoly in the text editor space but now Atom has much more momentum and more importantly support from many thought leaders in the industry.
To me, Sublime Text was never made to last long. First of all, its not open source. Are Emacs and Vim closed source? No. Why are they still around? Because in addition to being great (Sublime Text is great too don't get me wrong), they are open source. That means people can adapt them to new computers, to new architectures.
Good news I love Sublime it's so fast and slick - I haven't used Atom because consensus seems to be that it's not as fast with multiple large files open.
Why is everyone obsessed about open source, yes nice to have but at the end of the day this is just a (very sharp) tool - what's your priority tinkering with your tools or getting the job done? 70$ is peanuts, speed and productivity gains way outweigh this.
ST is multi-talented, brilliant for SQL, runs huge Postgres queries directly and lightning fast with full feed back ( error messages line numbers etc) even multi million row result sets don't phase it , any other editor would just gind to a spluttering halt.
For me, the issue with Atom and speed has nothing to do with large files. It's that even with small files, it's often just slightly unresponsive--not that it freezes or anything like that, just that lots of things take a fraction of a second longer than they should, which becomes very annoying in the long run. In my opinion, this really shouldn't have to be a problem today... on the other hand, it seems like a lot of people just aren't bothered by this kind of thing.
This is very nice to see. Just last week Sublime started releasing new dev builds after close to a year of silence. Sublime is my favorite text editor and it seemed like it was going to drift off into obscurity but this will definitely inject new life into it. Sublime didn't just make a hire, they hired the guy responsible for an arguably large part of sublime's success.
I don't think money was an issue. Wes Bos gave some numbers on his Sublime Text learning course and extrapolated that the Sublime team had made a few million easily for what was a one developer operation.
He based his numbers on assuming that the people that paid for his course to learn sublime would only be a fraction of those that paid to actually use sublime, so I think that sounds reasonable.
Sublime Text user here, who switched to Atom a year ago and never looked back. Never had any of the issues others described having with Atom such as slowness, etc. What I love about Atom is that it's under active, fast-paced development, that it's super-easy to customize (first thing was to increase the font-size of the left-hand folder pane), and the available plugins are fantastic. It probably also helps that extending Atom is much more approachable given that it's all Javascript, rather than Python with ST.
Furthermore, as others commented, the plugins have much more reach into the editor and can do a lot more.
> It probably also helps that extending Atom is much more approachable given that it's all Javascript...
I've heard this said before, I've had the opposite experience. ST offers a small api and it was easy for me to make something work with a single .py file.
I gave up trying the same thing in Atom; the api is larger and lower-level. Admission: I don't know coffeescript.
ST of course isn't nearly as flexible, there are many things you just can't do.
Just chiming in to say that this agrees with my experience completely. I also shifted from Sublime to Atom about 18 months ago, and have no regrets. Atom improves at a steady clip, and the package ecosystem is great. Despite the sniffy negativity here on HN, I've never had trouble with Atom performance or stability. I do still use Vim on the console for some things, and that will probably never change, but Atom is has become my "daily driver" code editor.
I do kind of wonder if nearly all of the people using Atom are primarily web developers, and are already familiar with JavaScript and Atom's environment.
This and the fact that they just released a new version is very good news!
I've tried several other editors over the last 2 years or so, but I keep coming back to Sublime. I love many things about Atom, but janky scrolling on a 2 year old MacBook Pro is just unacceptable.
Another big advantage that isn't mentioned a lot is that Sublime is a lot lighter on CPU. Just for all the folks that are developing on battery power.
The title is somewhat like a garden path sentence [1], when I started reading this I thought it was a question about the future of a package manager called Bond. The title case doesn't make it any easier.
Very amazing news! I loved sublime text and kept holding onto it while everyone else was switching.
At some point I got really frustrated with the plugin API. Stuff like only 1 thing can write into the gutter at a time and that relative line numbers is close to impossible to implement (the package that exists is garbage) is just ridiculous.
That was the moment when I switched to atom and ported my sublimious plugin to atom (proton). I've since been using atom and am quite happy with it but now and then look back at the ST3 days and the incredible performance that ST3 offers.
I hope with Will on board, development will finally pick up again. ST3 needs excited developers that want to push it further and Will seems like that kind of person. I'd love to grab my old license out of the cellar and give it another spin.
As others mention, these are amazing news. The last months were void of communication from Jon and the forums were in a constant state of spam+complains, so hopefully this (and the recent updates) signals something is changing :)
..and you can also have a different set of files/folders ignored than those in .gitignore, AND it's customizable per project with Project Manager. Huge plus for me too!
i really like Sublime. i've used it personally and professionally for years. but it's also the only piece of software that i use, the source code of which i don't have access to. i definitely would prefer something i can hack on for my own pleasure and profit, and my appreciation for FLOSS software has only grown and grown throughout my career.
how's atom doing these days? can Sublime HQ really compete in the long run?
Fairly well, IMO. The editor itself has caught up with Sublime for at least everything I care about, the community is very active, and they release updates pretty regularly.
Unfortunately, although performance has gotten noticeably better, it's still way behind Sublime. Opening a new editor window takes about three seconds on my MacBook Air, vs. less than a second for Sublime. I find myself opening new windows pretty often as part of my workflow, so I really, really hope they can cut that down. Also, Atom still struggles with large (>2MB) files, but I don't work with those often enough for it to be a big deal.
I'm curious if any one remembers SlickEdit. Circa 2000 I had an internship and SlickEdit was the Sublime Text at that time.
SlickEdit for some reason went into complete obscurity though and I can't recall why. I'm not saying this will happen to Sublime (as I'm not even sure what happend to Slick) but I do wonder if it will as TextMate seems to be going down the path of long term obscurity.
[+] [-] ggreer|10 years ago|reply
The difference in staffing is the main reason I worry. I use Sublime Text far more than Atom, but the trend is unmistakable: Atom is improving faster than Sublime. The most recent stable release of Sublime Text is from 30 months ago. Atom was announced 22 months ago, and v1.0 was released 9 months ago. In those same 22 months, there have been zero updates to Sublime Text 2 and only four updates to Sublime Text 3 beta. That's some abysmally slow development. If these trends continue, there's simply no way that Sublime Text can stay in the lead.
[+] [-] lobster_johnson|10 years ago|reply
With Atom, packages can manipulate the editor. For example, the Atom linter shows errors on the line where it occurs. It can do this because packages are allowed to hijack the editor's rendering, something Sublime packages can't do. (The only thing you can do in Sublime is to mark areas for colorization, and there are some things you can do with the gutter.)
There's also a neat package that turns Git's textual conflict markers into live markers [1] allowing you pick which side to use. It also displays a list of pending project-wide conflicts while you're working — also not something Sublime plugins can do.
The Markdown Preview package is also very nice [2]. It displays a preview window inside Atom. Not possible with Sublime's API.
With Atom, I can have the sidebar colorized based on Git status, for example (it's a built-in package), and the icons can be themed [2]. Sublime plugins can't modify the file sidebar other than add context menus.
In short, Sublime really needs to up its API game in order to compete with Atom.
[1] https://github.com/smashwilson/merge-conflicts
[2] https://github.com/wyze/seti-icons
[+] [-] laumars|10 years ago|reply
Let's also not forget:
o Brackets (which I do prefer over ST for Javascript and CSS),
o Visual Studio Code
o EditPlus (not so great with plug ins, but it's such a solid editor that this was my favourite for years before ST)
o Notepad++ (very popular text editor)
o Kate (KDE)
o Emacs (which has long since also had a GUI)
o Plus lots of environment specific editors and micro-IDE's such as:
...and so on.I'm no doubt missing off dozens of popular editors, but bar VSC, all of the above have been around for longer than Atom has and many have been around even longer than ST. So it's been a crowded market for quite some time. Which often leaves me wondering why people make such noise about Atom when it always feels somewhat immature compared to any of the above (or at least has done for me whenever I've pulled an ArchLinux AUR package for Atom)
As a side note, it's a pity HN doesn't support an easier method for posting bullet points.
[+] [-] kristofferR|10 years ago|reply
It's true that the development progress has been really slow/halted this last year, but it seems to have gotten back on track in the last month.
[+] [-] chrisblackwell|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forrestthewoods|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] welly|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheez|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlunkr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hbhakhra|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arc0re|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garyclarke27|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klum|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnDoe365|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wbond|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s9w|10 years ago|reply
And does this mean there are now more planned features and a more stable future for sublime? You know the burning questions of the community.
[+] [-] polshaw|10 years ago|reply
(also, congrats!)
[+] [-] carterschonwald|10 years ago|reply
And for me and other st3 users :)
[+] [-] hbhakhra|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nodesocket|10 years ago|reply
Congratulations Will, check out his super useful sftp package as well: https://wbond.net/sublime_packages/sftp.
[+] [-] hbhakhra|10 years ago|reply
He based his numbers on assuming that the people that paid for his course to learn sublime would only be a fraction of those that paid to actually use sublime, so I think that sounds reasonable.
[+] [-] fredleblanc|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lobster_johnson|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielsamuels|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moonlighter|10 years ago|reply
For example, the new block decorations coming in 1.6 are going to be an awesome API for plugin authors! http://blog.atom.io/2016/02/03/introducing-block-decorations...
[+] [-] modulus1|10 years ago|reply
I've heard this said before, I've had the opposite experience. ST offers a small api and it was easy for me to make something work with a single .py file. I gave up trying the same thing in Atom; the api is larger and lower-level. Admission: I don't know coffeescript.
ST of course isn't nearly as flexible, there are many things you just can't do.
[+] [-] cortesi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daemin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] softinio|10 years ago|reply
The community, plugins available and ease of making plugins is phenomenal. Add to that its open source.
In my opinion as a sublime license holder who have used it for years, atom has defintely over taken it without doubt.
And yes, sublime is the new textmate :-)
One thing for sure is, with Atom around, if you do not already have a sublime license it certainly is not worth paying $70 for it today.
If u insist on paying for an editor or IDE at least go for a Jetbrains IDE.
[+] [-] ossreality|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sbaum|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] provemewrong|10 years ago|reply
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence
[+] [-] dvcrn|10 years ago|reply
At some point I got really frustrated with the plugin API. Stuff like only 1 thing can write into the gutter at a time and that relative line numbers is close to impossible to implement (the package that exists is garbage) is just ridiculous.
That was the moment when I switched to atom and ported my sublimious plugin to atom (proton). I've since been using atom and am quite happy with it but now and then look back at the ST3 days and the incredible performance that ST3 offers.
I hope with Will on board, development will finally pick up again. ST3 needs excited developers that want to push it further and Will seems like that kind of person. I'd love to grab my old license out of the cellar and give it another spin.
[+] [-] muhic|10 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-3-bui...
[+] [-] zzleeper|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nicksil|10 years ago|reply
Very glad to hear such a staunch supporter of Sublime Text joining their team. Congrats and good luck, Will!
[+] [-] cpfohl|10 years ago|reply
Or more like, Congrats Sublime HQ.
[+] [-] wkirby|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustinAiken|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danharaj|10 years ago|reply
how's atom doing these days? can Sublime HQ really compete in the long run?
[+] [-] profmonocle|10 years ago|reply
Fairly well, IMO. The editor itself has caught up with Sublime for at least everything I care about, the community is very active, and they release updates pretty regularly.
Unfortunately, although performance has gotten noticeably better, it's still way behind Sublime. Opening a new editor window takes about three seconds on my MacBook Air, vs. less than a second for Sublime. I find myself opening new windows pretty often as part of my workflow, so I really, really hope they can cut that down. Also, Atom still struggles with large (>2MB) files, but I don't work with those often enough for it to be a big deal.
[+] [-] demarq|10 years ago|reply
Anyway I love sublime, and really hope the API keeps growing! It's also nice to see Will Bond becoming "official" :) congratulations!
[+] [-] agentgt|10 years ago|reply
SlickEdit for some reason went into complete obscurity though and I can't recall why. I'm not saying this will happen to Sublime (as I'm not even sure what happend to Slick) but I do wonder if it will as TextMate seems to be going down the path of long term obscurity.
[+] [-] jamesfzhang|10 years ago|reply