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.

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WD-42 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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jonas21 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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shawabawa3 4 days ago | parent [-]

They literally stopped developing for about 5 years, it wasn't just about the team not keeping up

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ben-schaaf 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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Ygg2 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Why would you stop developing for 5 years?

	▲	jon-wood 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Maybe they just wanted to do something else. Sometimes people just don't want to grind on endlessly for theoretically more money when what they've got already is enough for them.
	▲	WD-42 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Probably to write sublime merge

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righthand 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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agos 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

even before VSCode Atom had started to eat their lunch