Sublime is the better Textmate. What would you do to subl to make it more like mate? I used textmate for years and years before switching to ST and it was a drop-in replacement.
Not that this was necessarily better in terms of capabilities, but TextMate had a very pleasing Unix-style extension model where there was no mandated language and extension commands used scripts/executables written in any language. There was even a nice graphical editor for fine-tuning exactly what input they would be given and how their output would be acted upon.
TextMate was very much "Mac OS X UI sensibilities combined with Unix power", whereas ST pretty much has its own self-contained philosophy that's then brought to Mac/Windows/Linux in a slick way.
The two are pretty close, but between the two TextMate feels more like a golden era OS X desktop app thanks to several small differences and tiny Mac-isms, and I'd like Sublime to have that feel too.
I also feel TextMate had the nicer overall UX. When I first tried Sublime, TextMate had the better text rendering (IMO). Sublime has more features but still doesn’t feel as slick somehow.
I’ve recently returned to Sublime from VSC. I prefer VSC’s UI for following links to definitons/references, but in most other ways I prefer Sublime’s nimbleness.
TextMate was very much "Mac OS X UI sensibilities combined with Unix power", whereas ST pretty much has its own self-contained philosophy that's then brought to Mac/Windows/Linux in a slick way.