[toastercat]

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.

[WD-42]

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.

[jonas21]

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.

[shawabawa3]

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

[ben-schaaf]

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.

[Ygg2]

Why would you stop developing for 5 years?

[jon-wood]

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]

Probably to write sublime merge

[spiderice]

If they were already having trouble keeping up, then perhaps taking years off and building Sublime Merge wasn't the right strategy.

[righthand]

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.

[agos]

even before VSCode Atom had started to eat their lunch