Sublime Text 3.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-3-point-0 <comment><USER4> While I know it might be a little hidden, I'd just like to say I'm really glad Will Bond of Package Control[0] was able to join[1] the Sublime Text team. Having first class support for Package Control in ST is definitely one of the features I value the most out of Sublime Text and IMHO one of the things that still keeps it very competitive with Atom other text editors.

I use packages from ST almost every day and plus I wouldn't have gotten my first job without Will (thanks for hiring me even after seeing all that terrible code I wrote), so I can actually say my life would be a lot different without his influence. I'm really happy he's officially part of the team.

[0] [https://packagecontrol.io/](https://packagecontrol.io/)

[1] [https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime- text-3-bui...](https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime- text-3-build-3103)

<comment><USER5> Speaking of, the GitGutter plugin I use just broke on this update.

[https://github.com/jisaacks/GitGutter](https://github.com/jisaacks/GitGutter)

Doesn't even appear in the installable list now. Hopefully he'll get some of these hickups with package manager sorted.

<comment><USER6> If it isn't in the installable list, you may have it installed already.

Package Control is open source and contributions are welcome! We finally get to rip out support for ST2 and Python 2.6 now also!

<comment><USER5> Yeah that was a part of the problem.

[https://github.com/jisaacks/GitGutter/issues/444](https://github.com/jisaacks/GitGutter/issues/444)

It was still installed... but broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sublime is probably the first GUI text editor that left me satisfied. Everything else over the years was either non-portable, slow or lacking features. After two months of use I just had to buy it, it's worth the price.

\- It's fast and responsive, can handle large files and personally I've never seen it leaking memory or crashing

\- Love the goto anything and command palette, brilliant

\- Text editing is great and can be easily enhanced with existing plugins

\- Theming is great

\- Project handling is a bit weird, but once you get the hang of it it's fantastic

I don't do use IDE-like features (auto-complete, linting, compiling, etc.) nor integration features (version control for example) so I can't say how it fares in that aspect.

Recently I tried VSCode and Atom. They are portable and feature rich out of the box, but God are they slow and memory hungry. I can definitely see the appeal for web devs but it doesn't work for me, I value responsiveness above all else (that's the main reason I avoid dedicated IDEs)

<comment><USER8> First: I love ST. It is an amazing software that runs just as good on Mac/Linux/Win. In a pinch I will download and use it and never complain. Python extensibility is also great, since Python is the language I do best.

That said, and I hate to be this guy (not really), but... Emacs?

* Performance: Acceptable on modern day

* Goto Anything: Helm/Projectile, command palette = M-x

* Text Editing: It is what emacs does best as a program

* Themes: Yes

* Project Handling: Projectile

* IDE Features: These exist

* Source Control Integration: Many people use emacs purely because of Magit, it is a great git UI that people won't know about in general because it is runs on emacs

I copy my ~/.emacs.d to a server, literally my whole environment minus some tty nuisances just works. Everything. All my package versions. Emacs is stable enough that not many things break between big versions 23/24/25.

There are two areas ST wins: Out of the box configuration and performance on very big things. It is true the learning curve to settle all of these features I am mentioning is non-trivial, but Emacs is open source and, like I mentioned, very stable. It has gotten enough right in its initial concept that it will always be a fine environment to mangle up some text in files into whatever you want.

This brings me to my next point, there is nothing really new under the sun regarding text editing. Atom/VS Code/Eclipse/IntelliJ/Emacs -- you want to edit a bunch of files in a directory structure, navigate quickly and easily between files and get context important information about the code. Everything else is just flavors of those same chores, often specialized to a few programming languages or whatever new things are popular at the time (JavaScript / Can we build an editor in JavaScript).

I have seen very little innovation in the field of text editing. Light table was interesting, and its no surprise it is very Clojure/Lisp oriented. I am in a giant lisp machine when editing code in emacs, I can whack out a lisp expression anywhere and emacs will faithfully evaluate it for me.

Next point: If you work in a language or big project you need a way to navigate and generate lots of boiler plate in some languages (Java). IDEs help there, but...

Final point: The speed with which we write text as programmers is not the limiting factor of how much software we can produce and never has been.

My conclusion was to invest in one editor that has been around a long time and just not worry too much about it. I can use emacs in 20 years probably. Who knows about atom or vs code or whatever. So it isn't a pro emacs, you should use emacs reply to you, but that over the long run, using the same system to edit text is probably worth it. Stick with one thing and ignore everything else unless you are forced to use some IDE, and even then really try to avoid it. Even then I am pretty sure I could do my job with Gedit or Notepad without much of a productivity hit.

edit: formatting

<comment><USER9> I agree that finding an open source, well established and powerful editor is an investment worth making. That basically means vim or emacs. Once over the learning curve, you're setup for long term productivity gains and stability. Since neither editor is going anywhere and they run on pretty much anything.

But for many people, the initial learning curve just isn't worth it. Sublime, Atom and VS Code are all very popular because you just install them and start coding.

I'd love to see someone shake up the space with a "modern" take on emacs and vim: native, fast, powerful, very configurable, terminal based, but also with a conscious view on the initial learning curve and out of the box usefulness.

<comment><USER10> I think you should forget the whole "terminal based" thing. TUI text editors don't make much sense anymore. Native GUIs are much less clunky and much more discoverable.

<comment><USER11> I have my development machine at Digital Ocean. My local machine is an under powered macbook air (underpowered now that I use lots of docker for development). I'll probably just get a tiny chromebook next as I just want a dumb terminal.

I run emacs over ssh/tmux. I love it, emacs never shuts down, all my shells run through emacs as well. I can use any machine with my sshkey and be back to work immediately. I can increase the size of the machine, have public access to my dev box if needed. If I have a bad internet connection it doesnt matter since its just sending low bandwidth over ssh. All the real bandwidth comes from DigitalOcean and is super fast.

<comment><USER12> I do pretty much the same but using mosh instead of ssh. It's really stable even on low bandwidth of crappy mobile connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sublime Text is among the best pieces of software I've used. I bought the license a couple of years ago, and would gladly pay the same amount again.

I love its core functionality: speed and stability, search, command palette, file navigation, Goto. I've used a number of editors over the years, and none have felt as fundamentally sound as Sublime Text.

The best feature of all is the Python plugin API. Sublime lacks some OOTB functionality of newer editors, but the plugin ecosystem makes this a non- issue if you're willing to invest in extending your editor. If you write code 6+ hours a day, you should be. Git integration (GitGutter and GitSavvy) is awesome, as is linting (SublimeLinter) and project management (ProjectManager).

I wrote an HTTP client plugin for Sublime called Requester ([https://github.com/kylebebak/Requester](https://github.com/kylebebak/Requester)) in a few thousand lines of code. It matches Postman, Insomnia, Paw et al. on features, and in my opinion handily beats them on usability. It's the plugin API that makes this possible.

Here's my guess on what Jon Skinner set out to do with Sublime Text: build a rock-solid text editor and make it as extensible as possible. Until someone does this better, Sublime is the best editor out there.

<comment><USER14> Sublime just makes editing _fun_ for me. Especially with the ctrl+d multi- selection.

When it comes to editors, there's definitely a big spectrum of how much it does vs how lightweight/simple it is, and I think Sublime Text, for a majority of my usecases at least, is in the sweet spot.

Don't get me wrong, full fledged IDEs are useful sometimes too, but every time I go to use them, I always spend half my time searching and fighting the program instead of being productive. That's what I mean by Sublime making programming fun. Things don't get in your way and everything is very clean. Sure it may do less, but at least it doesn't drown you in features you don't use either.

<comment><USER13> I love Sublime for writing anything, not just code.

MarkdownEditing ([https://github.com/SublimeText- Markdown/MarkdownEditing](https://github.com/SublimeText- Markdown/MarkdownEditing)), optionally combined with Distraction Free mode, is my preferred setup for anything that's not code: docs, blog posts, prose, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >apt/yum/pacman repositories for Linux

Major kudos to these guys for distributing their software properly on Linux!

<comment><USER16> Let me rephrase that.

Major kudos to these guys for enduring distributing their software properly on Linux!

<comment><USER17> It's easy to write a PKGBUILD for Arch, and IDK RPM but writing a Debian package is not that hard too, I've written a .deb that installs all the software I use on Ubuntu Gnome and it's just a directory and two or three files. Its docs could use a bit of help though, the Debian handbook is sometimes very superficial.

<comment><USER18> Would you share how you made that deb? Sounds useful.

<comment><USER17> I just made a blog post on this: [http://www.gkayaalp.com/deb.html](http://www.gkayaalp.com/deb.html)

<comment><USER18> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "One of the areas I'm especially proud of in Sublime Text 3 is performance". I totally agree with this statement. Writing software in sublime has certainly made my life easier. Kudos to Jon and team.

<comment><USER20> I opened 70mb file on a macbook air the other day, and apart from around 7 sec loading time, i didn't notice that it is any more than a 100 kb just by the UI feel. Really great job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like Sublime Text, but one thing that has really annoyed me is the lack of support for font ligatures.

See [https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode)

It's a superficial reason, but I've gotten very used to them in Emacs, IntelliJ IDEA, VS Code and Atom, yes, I'm still using all of them interchangeably :-(

<comment><USER22> Supporting this is apparently requires major changes to their rendering engine so probably won't be added until at least version 3.1 or 4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Kudos to the ST team for never trying to patent or sue random companies for using the multi-select feature. That feature alone has helped improve so many editors.

<comment><USER24> Note that that feature was in TextMate, which was Sublime's inspiration.

<comment><USER25> No, it wasn't. I believe TextMate had a feature where you could edit multiple lines at once, but it was part of a column selection mode, it certainly wasn't free form multiple selections.

Multiple Selections were one of the earliest core features built for Sublime Text, and weren't inspired from other software. I don't think TextMate existed when I implemented this.

<comment><USER26> PC-Write had it, long, long ago and .. like ST .. this feature was the only reason I used that app.

<comment><USER27> I can't comment on how well it was implemented in PC-Write but it won't be far-fetched to say that Sublime made multiple-selections mainstream. I had seen some references to vim plugins that offered that feature but it had limited abilities. The three ways of doing multiple selections—selecting multiple instances of a word, placing multiple cursors downwards in succeeding lines, and using point and click—made Sublime's implementation vastly more powerful.

<comment><USER26> Back in the day (early-mid 80's), PC-Write was kind of like the SublimeText of the era.

Multiple-select was indeed one of the key reasons to use it, as a programmers editor, even though it was intended for more general-purpose word processing tasks.

Anecdotal experience: my first unboxing of ST2 led to the proclamation: "finally, someone has done multi-select cursors again, almost as good as PC- Write back in the day!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I honestly can't believe I'm saying this, but: can you please enable me to buy a new license for 4.0 even though it may not even be on the road map yet? Or switch to / enable a subscriber model which is paid yearly and gives access to all upgrades?

I rely so much on sublime for my day to day work and I fear the $80 or whatever I paid for it whenever ago is too cheap for the amount of value I'm getting out of it, and I'd hate to see this magnificent piece of software fall by the wayside because of an unsustainable business model.

Of course, if the business is perfectly sustainable then you know, carry on as you where.

<comment><USER29> Can someone please explain to me why $80 for Sublime Text is a good price for a text editor?

I'm not flaming, I genuinely want to know. I've tried Gedit, Atom, VS Code, Notepad++ and I fail to see what Sublime offers over those to justify the price.

<comment><USER30> It's highly likely that OP simply stumbled upon it, or someone recommended it, and now he learned it and is used to it and knows how productive it can be.

Thing is, same is true for any other good IDE, of which there are plenty.

Personally, it always blows my mind that people don't use VIM :) if they actually spent 5-20hours learning VIM correctly they would not touch these inferior pretty looking UIs

<comment><USER31> Whereas I view vim as simply a necessary evil and I mean "necessary" in the sense that I want to edit something over ssh.

Bret Viktor's oft-quoted "Inventing on Principle" talk touches on this subject where a lot of research has shown that bimodal editors are worse. While I can't argue for how true that statement is, it's certainly been my experience. I always find it jarring to think I'm in command mode but I'm actually in edit mode or vice versa. Any vim user has had the experience of pasting text in command mode. I just absolutely hate bimodal editors.

Additionally, staunch vim (and emacs) users I know seem to spend an inordinate amount of time screwing around with plugins to get some pale version of behaviour you get out the box on any halfway decent IDE or even text editor.

I feel the same way about learning yet another series of keyboard shortcuts for, say, tmux/screen.

You could argue the mouse is slower. I'm not sure if this actually holds up to empirical measurement (or at least not to the degree that's claimed) but the point is, the barrier for entry is so much lower. You can just click around and find things. If you find yourself doing something a lot, you can find out what the keyboard shortcut is.

Thus you don't need to spend 50 hours upfront on a GUI editor.

<comment><USER32> The 'micro' text editor is a fantastic vim replacement for SSH editing. It's a text-ui like vim, but it has mouse support (for selecting text, etc), and keyboard shortcuts that match bio stands, ctrl-s for save, ctrl-q for quit, etc.

<comment><USER33> Worth noting, Vim has full mouse support for scrolling, selecting text, resizing windows, etc. in the terminal and when working over SSH.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Still the gold standard as far as I'm concerned. It seems to be the only editor that focuses on my happiness by providing a flawless text editing experience. It feels like using a modern iPhone compared to a 2005 Android phone (and yes, the Android phone was probably more extensible).

<comment><USER35> A small correction: the first Android phone was released in 2008.

<comment><USER34> touché. Maybe OS X vs Ubuntu Desktop is a better comparison. (Can you tell I like Apple products?)

<comment><USER36> This is an interesting comparison. Curious as what you think makes OS X better. From what I understand Ubuntu is faster, uses less resources and is much more extensible. All things know to be Sublime-like.

<comment><USER37> *macOS ;)

For me, the UI paradigms are certainly more cohesive… but most importantly I don't think any platform has the quality software that OS X has when it comes to attention to detail/usability. Like many with Sublime, I'm happy to pay for other commercial software if its notably better than the free options.

Ubuntu is probably leaner, but in an age of i7s and 16GB ram not sure that matters as much. OS X is aggressive at using what you can throw at it, which generally has made things feel faster than me, but I came from Windows in 2004.

It generally strikes the balance of what I deem the finest commercial software, with a very great open source ecosystem 90% as good as Linux. Makes for a very good dev environment, and the hardware is unbeatable (which is made possible by the software integration)

<comment><USER38> I agree with all of this except

> the hardware is unbeatable

The new macbook pros are gobsmackingly expensive in much of the world, marginally less so in the US. Apple's obdurate refusal to use touch screens puts them far behind the mainstream leading edge now. I understand their reasoning, but haven't yet met anyone with a touchscreen laptop who would go back to using one without.

And the coup de grace is the new fake keyboard, which is unusable for all-row touch typists. My next laptop will most likely be a Dell XPS 15 with one flavour or other of Linux. I'd prefer macOS, but the hardware isn't worth living with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I see the author, jskinner, is hanging out on this thread!

Have you ever considered open-sourcing SLT? This is your only route to immortalize this amazing piece of software. I'm sure you'd receive immense community contributions and widespread support. If you switch to a donation model + enterprise support plans, I think you're likely to earn greatly more than you currently do.

I love SLT and have used it throughout my career, but I still feel more comfortable depending on Atom because I know it will be supported by the community in the event that something bad happens with the ownership. If you don't open-source SLT, I sadly believe that open alternatives like Atom will outlive it.

<comment><USER40> Sometimes I wonder why there isn't a model, where its Author put up after Number of Copies sold, it will be open sourced.

Of Coz it wont be a small amount. It could be 25,000 copies. But then lot of companies, whom may like Sublime, could spend and join the race.

<comment><USER41> If you spend years taking the risk and building a piece of software; why give it away once it's successful?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> ST2 was the first text editor that really caught my eye. They have also been great with allowing users to permanently "trial" the software. I moved to ST3 beta as soon as it came out and the transition was mostly smooth.

Then VSCode came out and I loved every second of it. It does take more up more memory and is a bit slower but they are quality software and the difference to me is negligible. I cannot see myself going back. SublimeHQ lost me when they stopped updating the software regularly. I know it was rock solid software but the project seemed to be a standstill and VSCode grabbed my attention. Now it has many more features and better support from MS. I cannot imagine a reason to switch unless ST3 gets the same level of love.

</comment><comment><USER43> I gotta say their new homepage looks like eye candy:

[https://www.sublimetext.com/](https://www.sublimetext.com/)

<comment><USER44> On my iPad however the text is so large as to be difficult to read.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately I don't have an iPad to test with. Is it zooming to 480px wide?

<comment><USER45> Indeed it's quote large: [https://i.imgur.com/6vNoC2d.png](https://i.imgur.com/6vNoC2d.png)

If you have a Mac laying around the office install Xcode and the Simulator to test and debug iOS devices.

<comment><USER46> I have no idea why you got the downvotes. Also, you can check it out with the device emulator in chrome devtools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Heh, I was confused at first before remembering that what I have been using for these past years was a "beta". Unfortunately, I guess that means all these great new features in the announcement are ones that I'm already completely familiar with. But I suppose I should still go and upgrade my license. It's been my daily driver editor for more than 5 years now, and it's easily worth the $30 to upgrade my ST2 license!

</comment><comment><USER48> Bar none, my favorite editor. I try to use Vim only sometimes to make sure I keep those commands in shape, but Sublime remains for hardcore work. It breaks my heart that it's closed source.

I do wonder sometimes how much the app makes and/or how much someone would have to pay the developer to open source it.

<comment><USER49> There is "VIntage Mode" for ST, but unfortunately it's not entirely accurate and also doesn't support some commands. VSCode's VIM plugin is more complete.

<comment><USER50> There's also the new Sublime Six which is very promising: [http://www.sublimesix.com](http://www.sublimesix.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think they finally faced the truth that over 90% of users was using "beta" version (actually their words and stats) and listened to some comments on HN. Good job guys! I'm glad that my favourite editor is finally out.

EDIT: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14424220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14424220)

<comment><USER52> There is more that goes into declaring a release as "stable" than just having it not crash.

For example, take the updated homepage, the licence upgrade process, the proper integration into linux package managers and more.

Couple that with the perception of users of things being "stable" having more reliability and them more likely trying it out and finding rare bugs or issues. Just looking at the forum today revealed a couple issues that nobody on the dev releases has discovered or reported.

That said, you still have to release a stable version every once in a while and they knew that. Unfortunately it took longer than anticipated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I bought ST2 in 2013, and I'm a littled bummed they pushed the "your license works for ST3" back that far. They deserve more; I might buy another copy anyway.

(My favorite editor is an Emacs clone called Epsilon. It hasn't been updated in a decade, but it still works great. On the other hand, it hasn't been updated in a decade and I think the writing is on the walls, and I'll have to move to something else. 25 years of muscle memory are hard to deal with, though. I'd definitely throw some money the author's way if he ever decided to do a new release).

<comment><USER54> As per [http://www.lugaru.com/](http://www.lugaru.com/), they released an evaluation version of epsilon on 2017-09-01, so just 12 days ago.

<comment><USER53> Steve refreshes the monthly eval (I assume it's got a time-based fuse baked in). So we know he's still alive :-)

Epsilon is still a fantastic tool and you can customize the crap out of it, but there are some things (like multiple native windows) that you can't do, that I'd really like to have. Ah well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I primarily use VSCode as my editor but I used Sublime back in the days.

I haven't touched it in a while. How do these two editors compare lately?

<comment><USER56> I'm in the same boat, though I find it unlikely that I would go back to Sublime at this point.

VSCode is free, (mostly) MIT, has a unified debugger, great git support, integrated terminal emulator, and a nice healthy extension community.

Sublime is cheap for how often you'll use it, but not free. It's proprietary. Git support even with paid plugins is lacking, especially compared to VS Code.

I'm glad I bought Sublime when I did, but I'm also glad I found VSCode when I did. If there's a choice between FOSS and proprietary, and the FOSS project already works better, the proprietary option is unlikely to make a comeback for me.

<comment><USER57> Same here. I switched from Sublime to VSCode a few weeks ago after reading some comments here on HN. I don't think I will go back to Sublime for the reasons you mentioned. I also have the feeling that thanks to a fast increasing community the extensions are more polished (in particular, I like the vim mode better).

Sublime is indeed faster and more lightweight but that's not enough for me to keep using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Love Sublime Text. Haven't been able to switch to any of the Electron editors because of the horrible font rendering on Mac(Chrome issue). One note: Jon needs to show the new adaptive theme with matching title bar for MacOS on the main page.

<comment><USER59> > One note: Jon needs to show the new adaptive theme with matching title bar > for MacOS on the main page.

Wow, that's nice! Since it's not the default, if you hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't even know about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> What with being in beta for so long, I expected the actual 3.0 to be much like the (last beta) that I had been using. But there are significant changes to the UI, that I'll have to get used to or figure out how to customize (or wait for plugins to customize).

What's with the "/ _" 'icon' next to many files? I'm not sure what it's supposed to indicate. As you can see in the screenshot in the announcement, some files have a rectangular 'document' icon (unrecognized format?), some have a '<>' icon (html/markdown-type format?), and some have a '/_' icon... no idea? Is that supposed to mean "source code"? I am not a fan.

<comment><USER61> > What's with the "/" 'icon' next to many files?

Hah. Just noticed that myself. It's the icon for "shell script", I think, which includes a wide variety of file types. If you cmd-shift-p and pick "install package", and then install "A File Icon", then that peculiarity is instantly and permanently replaced with meaningful icons (for all the types that I happen to use in my dayjob, at least).

<comment><USER60> Thanks! I think I already had A File Icon installed, but somehow it broke on upgrade to 3.0, I'll try reinstalling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Thrilled to finally see ST3 out of beta, it's like Christmas in September. I've used ST3 beta for literally thousands of hours since 2013, and ST2 before that. I've tried many newer options (Atom, VSCode, etc) but nothing has come close to matching the stability, speed, and reliability. I echo the other comments that I would gladly pay far more than the $70 I spent 5 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER63> May this be a thread where people post their favorite ST tweaks. Things that really make a difference day to day.

I for one swapped the mapping of paste and paste and indent because I want the latter's behavior to be default.

I also use a proportional font and love it. Something I can't get vim to do.

I like gitgutter though it doesn't refresh properly always.

What are your favorite plugins?

<comment><USER64> Material Theme. Best UI Theme in my opinion.

[https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Material%20Theme](https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Material%20Theme)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I'm surprised the "minihtml" HTML/CSS engine is buried in the release notes. That sounds like an amazing little component and something that would be extremely useful for projects that don't want to embed an entire browser engine. Even if Sublime itself remained closed, I would love to see minihtml open sourced!

</comment><comment><USER66> I've been using ST 3 long enough that I forgot it was still technically beta.

<comment><USER67> I found an old laptop I hadn't used in about 3 years, fired it up and quipped to my friends "Hah, this thing is so old it's still running the beta of ST3!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I'm a daily user since 2012, and I'm glad they made me pay for the upgrade. Best editor ever.

Sublime makes cross-platform development easy, and it's so much faster than the alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER69> 500+ comments and no mention of the touch bar support?

Not really surprised, after 6 mos I don't think I've used the touch bar for anything other than mute / volume.

<comment><USER38> Perhaps because so many developers avoid the touch bar macbooks? Everyone I know here has been buying 15" mbpro refurbs to forestall the dreaded day (ie. touch bar or just abandon macs?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> $80 for something we make a living on is very reasonable.

<comment><USER18> There's a real danger I think in relying on a proprietary software program for something so key as text editing. For many developers, their editor will be with them for their whole career. Proprietary software has a tendency to not stick around.

I hope to see Sublime eventually released under a free software license. I'd donate to that project.

<comment><USER71> It's not that hard to switch, especially for a developer that lives in the software. It might take a few days, but if your brain is still fairly plastic, you will adapt.

If you are like my parents that can't get on the internet if the browser icon disappears from their desktop, then there might be a problem.

<comment><USER18> I must be like your parents. My brain feels hard wired to Emacs.

<comment><USER71> Just out of curiosity, are you okay with that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> In my experience, the beta had been stellar for ages. But now I can finally drop the money on them ;).

Purchased the upgrade license at and incredibly modest price of $30.

<comment><USER73> Just checked and my upgrade cost is only $11 which I can't really argue with ;)

<comment><USER74> My upgrade was $11 also, which seems way too little.

Unless I'm way underestimating the subscriber base and associated economies of scale, and they really can afford to drive the upgrade rate by making it this cheap, seems like they're leaving a lot of cash on the table. That's actually a touch worrisome, naturally, because it reduces their ability to fund the business through downtimes and make investments into the product (etc). I depend on their product enough that I want their company to be robust and healthy, even if I have to pay more for that to happen. I know they only have a few people to pay today, and I could be wrong about my core assumption, but I don't think they're anywhere near what the market will bear.

I would have paid almost four times as much without thinking myself poorly used. I originally bought sometime in late 2012 and used version 3 since sometime in 2013... which means I've been getting many of the benefits of the upgrade for close to four years. To be honest, I would have even understood if I had been asked to pay the full license fee again and would have done so without pause.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> One of the reasons I still use both Emacs and Vim (yes I strangely use both) is because I can go execute them on a terminal (terminal, tmux, screen, etc).

There are just so many times I need to SSH into a machine. I know Emacs has some remote file editing capabilities but for some reason I never liked it (I can't recall why now... I think it was the need to sudo).

So I'm wondering what sublime text fans do for remote editing?

<comment><USER76> > I know Emacs has some remote file editing capabilities but for some reason I > never liked it (I can't recall why now... I think it was the need to sudo).

Tramp ([https://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/tramp- emacs.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/tramp-emacs.html)) enables seamless remote editing over ssh/scp. By default it asks for your password all the time but you can cache that. Add to your ~/.emacs

      (require 'tramp)
      (setq tramp-default-method "scp")
      (setq password-cache-expiry 1800)

<comment><USER77> You probably should use public key authentication and ssh-agent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Finally! I was using Build 3126 just about 2 hours ago and thinking that I haven't seen an update in a looong time. And there it is now. Congratulations to the team at Sublime HQ. Keep up the great work!

</comment><comment><USER79> Finally bought a license a week ago - happiest I've been to spend money in a long time. Every other editor I use, I end up doing a bunch to try to make it more like Sublime. Congratulations to the team!

</comment><comment><USER80> Tangential, but is everyone using Sublime comfortable with the sidebar on the left? Moving the sidebar to the right is the first thing I do in every editor, and the few times I tried Sublime I was surprised that for all its customizability that option doesn't exist. I was skimming through the changelog now and it seems like this is still true today.

<comment><USER81> What do you use the sidebar for?

With Ctrl+P I've never needed the sidebar. Also I like it better if the entire screen is dark. So I'm always in fullscreen with the sidebar hidden.

<comment><USER82> To browse my application's directory structure and optionally open a file to edit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> imagine living in a world where a good software like sublime text was free software...

i know i know, to monetize selling free software is impossible (when people say they're monetizing selling free software they're actually selling services related to that free software, not the software itself), but one can dream...

edit-> some people are confusing the term "free software", i'd like to clarify that i mean free as in free speech, not free as in free beer.

<comment><USER23> I honestly don't see any reason for Sublime Text to ever be more free than it is. The unlicensed version works as well as the paid version. The only real usability difference is that it asks you about a license every so often. If that reminder starts to annoy you it likely indicates that you are using ST often enough that you should pay for it.

I don't understand why so many developers are willing to pay thousands to upgrade their hardware frequently, but then aren't willing to pay $80 (or $30 to upgrade) once every what, 5 years?, for software that they use in the realm of 30+hrs per week. Sublime text has easily saved me enough time to earn that back.

<comment><USER84> OP means free as in speech as opposed to free as in beer. He would like the source to be available and to have the freedom to alter or redistribute it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> I bought my Sublime Text 2 license in 2012. 5 years later and its the best $80 I've ever spent. I'm so pleased Jon finished 3.0. Subscription upgraded.

</comment><comment><USER86> Looking at the screen shot, I still find it odd that, they use a white background for the file panel on the left. This has the effect of drawing the eye to it, making it the focal point of the window.

That's the least important part of my editor honestly. Would expect it be a lot more low-key.

<comment><USER87> i had a similar complaint when the github navigation bar turned grey, but I just don't even notice it anymore. hard for me to discern UX principles here from user familiarity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> I love Sublime because it's rare example of quality linux app.

</comment><comment><USER89> I bought my 2.0 license in 2011. Penciling in 4.0 for 2023 :)

</comment><comment><USER90> I took a dive away from Sublime Text over to Atom a few years ago because I was starting up some contract work, didn't want to pay for a copy, and didn't want to continue doing the hokey thing of using a friend's license for work purposes. So I got use to Atom just fine, plus the UI is nice.

I mean, Atom is nice. The package management is all there and frequent updates are great, but...I don't write JS/HTML/CSS/PHP. I typically write Python, Go, Java, and heck even Prolog. Reading the changelog you can clearly see that they have a target audience, and I am not in it.

On the performance side (you knew it was coming!) I am mostly fine except for opening a project directory. I swear Atom has a coded in `sleep` whenever you try to open a file explorer. At first, I thought that this was a cute little quirk that would disappear after an update one day. But that update never came.

So I'll download Sublime again. Spend a morning to get it "just so" for, at the very least, Python and Go. I can easily see Sublime winning me back if I reinvest in it.

<comment><USER91> I'm always bemused by software developers who are unwilling to pay for software. Especially software they actually use.

If software developers don't value software, there is something very wrong with our industry.

<comment><USER92> > _If software developers don 't value software, there is something very wrong > with our industry._

Oh, they _value_ it, all right. They just don't want to _buy_ it, at least not in the customary fashion. They're more than happy to pay for software using bug fixes, feature contributions, community engagement, or even their own software. Maybe, just maybe, software for software developers isn't a good product to be sold the way software is usually sold?

<comment><USER71> The developer giving free licenses to big contributors is a very solid plan. It's an inexpensive way to reward the most valuable members of your community and keeps them engaged.

However, most people just _use_ Sublime Text. If the software were expensive I probably wouldn't feel so strongly. Looking for and fixing bugs in Sublime Text would be a terrible use of my time. For many of us, $80 represents an hour or two of work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Note: if for some reason your b3126 doesn't work properly after running b3143, I found that deleting _just_ the Packages folder from my data folder [0] was enough to get b3126 back to normal.

[0] [https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/revert.html](https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/revert.html)

</comment><comment><USER94> Sublime's startup time (even before 3.0) never failed to amaze me, especially compared to Atom and VSCode.

And now it starts even faster.

</comment><comment><USER95> wow, congrats Jon and Will, this has been a long time coming. I can not think of more than maybe one other piece of software I _gladly_ pay for and look forward to new releases.

Also, Will: I apologize for being one of those assholes with a moderately popular plugin that still hasn't updated the thing to follow Package Control best practices.

I'm sure you guys have discussed it somewhere in the past, but would you comment on where you see Sublime heading feature wise now that there is, arguably, some competition in the same general editor market (vs code, atom, etc...)? I don't like comparing stuff and saying "why can you just do that" but some of those editors, even with all their shortcomings, have massively benefited from good debugger support (vs code), and a pretty well though out set of features to support plugin developers (dependency management, testing, etc...).

</comment><comment><USER17> As an enthusiastic Emacs user I can say that Sublime Text is one of the best text editors out there, together with Emacs and Vi-family. I've only sporadically used it but it's really nice. If I was using my "text editor" only for text-editing (I use _Emacs apps_ like Gnus, Elfeed and Org-mode, and really enjoy Elisp and the programmable environment it provides), I'd definitely use it.

One thing that I don't understand is though, when I buy ST, what do I buy? I've only seen others use full versions but as far as I can tell it's only the [UNREGISTERED] bit in the titlebar and the random "please buy me" popup. It's understandable that one would pay merely to sustain its development but is there any actual differences?

<comment><USER96> With a license, you get access to the dev builds[0].

Most, if not all, of the new features of the 3.0 release were present in the latest dev version (the dev builds get updated much more frequently, as opposed to the public build, which was last updated Sep 2016).

[0] [https://www.sublimetext.com/3dev](https://www.sublimetext.com/3dev)

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> ST is the only editor with non-insane indentation controls: it's right there at the bottom of the window (want to start using 4-space indent in a JS file in the middle of a project full of C++ code that's tab indented? In a project where some C++ devs wrote 4-space indebted JS, when you normally prefer 2, but what to stay consistent? No problem, it's a click away). IntelliJ enforces per-language indentation (what if you have multiple projects with 2 or 4 space indent? Tough luck) and IIRC Atom requires you to download a barely-maintained plugin just to get something even resembling indentation control (and you have to edit a config file to change it - on the fly this ain't!)

<comment><USER98> Using a .editorconfig file solves this problem in many text editors. [http://editorconfig.org](http://editorconfig.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> I love Sublime. Tried Atom, but too slow on my 2012 Macbook Air.

One question: How is sublime sustainable economically? I mean alternatives like Atom is free & open source, supported by a big company. With a infinite free trial model, how can sublime survive?

<comment><USER100> Many people buy it. It's expensive, too...

<comment><USER101> It's cheap. I use it ten hours every day. It costs less than I would charge for an hour of consulting. Ok so I do live in one of the most expensive countries in the world but even in a developing country a developer don't have to work long to pay for this license for a tool they would use a lot every day.

<comment><USER100> It's not cheap compared to other software, and not cheap compared to most text editors and even most IDEs.

I didn't say it's not worth it, I said it's not cheap. It's not.

<comment><USER101> Less than one hour working time for the core software used when developing is cheap.

A lot of software is very under priced in terms of value. The App Store and SaaS copycats pricing doesn't reflect the value or the cost of software - <USER2> need big volumes and many go bust due to no profits.

I paid for ST2 in 2012. Five years later the upgrade price is only $30. Should have been more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> Can any active users comment on the package ecosystem. Active? Running into any problems?

<comment><USER103> Very active. I use a fair share of them, and they are updated regularly.

On the rare occasion that something breaks (Seti_UI theme, mostly. But to be fair, I installed it when it wasn't stable yet), fixes are often published the next day or at most in the next handful of days. In the meantime you can just disable a plugin and go ahead. But again, it happened rarely to me.

The only problem (that I'm aware of, correct me if I'm wrong) they ran into was the whole deal with Kite basically paying some plugin devs to hide spyware into their code. But that has been handled and solved, and lead to the creation of basic guidelines for plugin developments and extensive discussion of the forum. Devs were very responsive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> I have used Sublime for many years, but had to switch to Atom for a large mono-repo codebase, because there is no decent plugin on Sublime to exclude Git-ignored files from search. The only one available froze my computer every minute.

</comment><comment><USER105> Just adding my voice to the chorus of users that love sublime text so much that we are begging you to take more of our money. I cannot live or function without it, I use it for everything I do.

Discovering sublime text was crucial to my early development as a programmer, I can easily see myself losing interest in it without having such a powerful, efficient, intuitive, and FUN tool at my fingertips. Yeah I said it: fun. Sublime text is fun for me. I even type my emails and web form responses in it, just because.

Anyway, congrats on the release, I love sublime text, you already have my money but seriously, I'll give you more

</comment><comment><USER106> Finally! Congrats devs! :-)

</comment><comment><USER107> Unfortunately the macOS version still has really annoying issue for virtual desktop users: the editor windows are not restored to their previous virtual desktops after restart/reboot. Instead, all windows will open on the current desktop.

If you wish this to be fixed, please comment the related forum post: [https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/macos-window-restoration- to-...](https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/macos-window-restoration-to-correct- spaces-on-restart/24884)

</comment><comment><USER108> I think Sublime is a great editor.

I enjoy a lot of the nice UI based workflows Sublime provides - but always felt that mastering VIM / emacs would provide me a far better pay out. Does any body else agree ?

<comment><USER109> I haven't used Sublime much but I get the impression I'm far faster in Emacs than work colleagues etc. are in Sublime or the latest flavour of IDE. That is after at least a decade and a half of learning and configuring Emacs to my preferences though.

At least part of that efficiency (apart from Emacs being awesome) is that I've been able to keep getting better at using my editor rather than having to change tools every so often as less configurable editors get overtaken by ones with new features.

Emacs is pretty deep (I keep discovering new things) and configurable in the extreme. I think it's very likely that it will last for decades yet - <USER3> killer innovation that another editor comes up with is likely to be quickly copied into Emacs.

<comment><USER109> Downvoted by a vi fan?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> These news was a good reminder that I still used the trial version of the app. I somehow managed to getting used to all those "on-save reminder" you'd get every now and then.

Just bought it.

</comment><comment><USER111> I was wondering in the afternoon about when the next sublime would be released and what it would contain. Flabbergasted to see it trending no 1 in HN!!

</comment><comment><USER112> Sublime is so good, I just started using it to replace my Note Pad app for non-dev related stuff. For example shopping lists, meeting notes, and to do lists.

I found it was just easier to have one app to do everything.

Even though I don't have certain nice text formatting features, I use Code Comments to make certain lines distinct.

That's how you know you LOVE a product, when you still prefer to use it even for things it isn't designed for.

</comment><comment><USER113> Thank you for your hard work! THIS is the editor I use on Windows, Linux, and OS X. You will not find a box that I work on without Sublime running.

</comment><comment><USER114> Thanks guys for a solid piece of software.

After using ST for five years I felt like I should probably purchase a licence :) I feel guilty for not doing it sooner.

</comment><comment><USER44> I use Sublime mostly for large files and it's awesomly quick and useful search. I've switched to VSCode for most other tasks however.

</comment><comment><USER115> I moved from Vim to ST around 2012, I missed the textmate hype, and never looked back.

Since then it has been my main editor, cross platform for php, then python, then ruby, to java (...yup), and now clojure and racket. And of course all the SQL, shell scripts, and config file munging in between.

Maybe one day I will learn emacs, but for the meantime I am happy and productive.

</comment><comment><USER116> > Startup is faster, opening files is faster, and scrolling is more efficient.

This is a big reason why I still use sublime over atom.

</comment><comment><USER117> Amazing, I don't think i've ever used "beta" products for so long. Glad it's finally official!

<comment><USER118> I think I played Minecraft just before it went into beta and stopped playing it when it "came out". I don't know how long that was, but Sublime Text 3 beta certainly felt even longer.

edit: correction, the beta of minecraft lasted only a year, so it definitely felt longer to me. Weird memory tricks eh.

<comment><USER119> I was going to say maybe you mixed up the alpha and beta version, but turns out Minecraft was only in alpha for six months. Weird, felt much longer for me too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER120> I don't like the Touch Bar support in the way they made in. How to disable: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46218557/how-to- disable-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46218557/how-to-disable- touch-bar-in-sublime)

</comment><comment><USER121> Do they support "virtual cursor" yet? (that is where you can move the cursor up/down/left/right over "empty" space and not have the cursor "hug" the text...I really miss this feature and didn't see it in Sublime or VSCode (never tried Atom)

</comment><comment><USER122> Reading the article it feels like they raised the major number for no reason. But actually if they changed the API a lot and have rewritten parts, then it's really valid. Maybe they should hire a real marketing person, or at least pay for some marketing consulting here and there.

</comment><comment><USER123> This week SourceTree also changed its icon, two favorite developer tool icon changes confuse me all day.

</comment><comment><USER124> Is Sublime super good for webdev or something? Does it have a bunch of indespensible plugins for webdev? I cant see upside when comparing it to Vim, but I see lots and lots of folks rave about it so im willing to admit I'm wrong but would like to know why people love it so much.

<comment><USER125> For me the killer feature of ST is multiple cursors. Despite being relatively fluent in vim, that one feature has always prevented me from switching.

<comment><USER124> Are "multiple cursors" in ST the same as "visual blocks" in Vim?

<comment><USER126> Visual mode is slow and awkward compared to what ST can do with cmd+D, for example.

IME, vim actually loses in performance too when editing multiple lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER127> As a try-hard wanna be-learning-programmer. ST leaves me very satisfied and very thankful for the autocomplete feature (im sure more experienced programmers can see the flaws here though).

I work in XML and SQL in my everyday work activities and its highlighting features are stupid good.

</comment><comment><USER128> A little late to the party, but I'm glad to see folding code doesn't happen at a new line.

Although there is still no blinking block caret. The size can be changed but it's a solid color, not transparent.

Also I wonder if I could change the background color of the brace matching highlight.

</comment><comment><USER129> I switched to JetBrains IDEs quite some time ago, but Sublime is still my favorite scratchpad. What make sublime so much better than other editors is how fast and usable it is. I don't want it to be as fancy as VSCode, I just want it to be fast.

</comment><comment><USER130> What theme Are They using in the screen-capture [0] of sublime text?

[0] - [https://www.sublimetext.com/screenshots/3.0/linux.png](https://www.sublimetext.com/screenshots/3.0/linux.png)

<comment><USER6> That is the new Default theme with the Mariana color scheme.

<comment><USER130> Thanks you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER131> If anybody is looking for a more "pro" ui theme, try monokai.pro/sublime-text. You have to buy a license though. It's actually made by the same guy who created the original monokai theme. There is a vscode version as well.

<comment><USER132> what does a "pro ui theme" even mean?

<comment><USER131> More elegant, discrete, well-thought-out, carefully crafted, developed with design rigor?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> Is there an option to print yet?

<comment><USER134> Not easy for an editor to support. There are much better tools available to print code or reflow plaintext into a .ps or .pdf.

Enscript[1] is my (the?) preferred way and a plugin would be a fine tay to achieve this. Will format code in almost any way you could ever imagine.

1: [https://www.gnu.org/software/enscript/](https://www.gnu.org/software/enscript/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER135> Can't imaging going back to Sublime after switching to VS Code a few months ago.

</comment><comment><USER136> Does anyone knowledge of what version 3 is written in, still C++ as version 2? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822114)

</comment><comment><USER137> As someone who greatly under-utilizes Sublime, I'm still amazed at the ease with which it handles crazy, large files. I never even notice it until someone remarks on how I'm able to open a ~20 Mb file without hassle.

<comment><USER138> But it's not that great at several GB :(

<comment><USER139> I'd guess most editors do. Have you found an editor that doesn't?

<comment><USER140> I open multi-GB files often enough in VIM. Just make sure that you've disabled any plugins, as _those_ will often crush under large files. The `-u NONE` option will disable `.vimrc` and thus all plugins as well.

See relevant discussion on Stack Exchange: [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/139254/why-cant- vim...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/139254/why-cant-vim- open-a-100-mb-text-file-when-i-have-16-gb-ram/139286#139286)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER128> It's even faster than before... Atom has more catching up to do...

</comment><comment><USER141> It's just $11 to upgrade from version 2... that's a steal

</comment><comment><USER142> How learnable is Sublime?

\- Is there a way to lookup documentation while using the editor (contextual help)?

\- Is there a way to access most features without key bindings and to learn the key bindings while doing so?

</comment><comment><USER143> One of the best software purchases i have done. But damned be me for purchasing it 25th of Jan and not qualifying for free upgrade. Oh well, the upgrade price isn't that bad.

</comment><comment><USER144> I've been a loyal user of Sublime until a few years ago when I switched to Vim. Still have this beauty in my computer because of how happily it handles large files <3

</comment><comment><USER145> For people on Mac, which plugins make Sublime better than current Textmate? I've never switched from it just because, but wouldn't mind switching or paying.

<comment><USER146> SublimeGit is fantastic. Incremental find (I think it's Ctrl+D) is like multicursor, but it selects the next occurrence of a string, so the cursors don't have to be on adjacent lines. It's been so long since I've used TextMate that I don't remember all the differences, but those two alone are worth switching for.

I also have SidebarEnhancements, Calculate, Alignment, EditorConfig, and Default File Type installed. None of them make a major impact, but they all make the experience a tad nicer.

<comment><USER145> Thanks. I don't think it has incremental find. Just same point in lines but I'm not sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER147> Does Sublime come with a Git integration like Atom does?

<comment><USER148> There are Git plugins, but Git is not integrated into Sublime itself. There are many many Git plugins though, all great ones :)

<comment><USER149> I've found GitSavvy to work quite well: [https://packagecontrol.io/packages/GitSavvy](https://packagecontrol.io/packages/GitSavvy)

<comment><USER131> GitSavvy + GitGutter + GitCommitMsg

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER150> Looks like the download page has not been updated. It still says - "Sublime Text 3 is currently in beta. The latest build is 3126"

</comment><comment><USER151> I don't know how often I type 'subl3 -n' every day. One of my all-time favorite tools. I'm happy to pay for the upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER152> Long-time ST2 and ST3 user. I think I've more or less moved to VS Code but wanted to chime in: Great website! And loads super fast.

</comment><comment><USER153> I just updated my Sublime and switched to the new layout. Woa! Once again I'm happy I invested in this beautiful piece of software!

</comment><comment><USER154> What is the message behind the showing tensorflow cpp codes on the update image? Even cpp programmers can code on the Sublime Text?

</comment><comment><USER155> I'm curious how the language support works? There is apparently a plugin for language server protocol, but it's in beta.

<comment><USER156> In stock form, Sublime does not have much "real" knowledge of the code. The syntax highlighting and autocompletion are powered off of surface-level text analysis rather than any hooks into toolchains.

There are numerous 3rd party packages to improve on this for specific languages. Hopefully the Language Server effort takes off and reduces the rampant duplication of effort between them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER157> No matter how many other editors or IDEs I tried, I always went back to Sublime. It's much faster than Atom, VSCode, etc.

</comment><comment><USER158> I love it! Sublime Text is an excellent editor and I use it every day. It's worth every penny for a paid license.

</comment><comment><USER159> I bought a Sublime license about 2 years ago and to my surprise it is valid for 3.0 as well! Thanks Sublime folks!

</comment><comment><USER160> Has anyone tried both Sublime Text 3 and Atom 1.20? I'd love to see a compare/contrast

<comment><USER161> I casually switched to Atom for a week or two and although i think it looks a lot prettier out of the box, it just feels HEAVY. Launching can take awhile and it freezes up a decent amount. I've also seen it suck up quite a bit of memory at times. Atom has made some strides in the past couple releases but I'll be sticking to Sublime for the time being.

</comment></comment><comment><USER162> Thanks for building a great editor that just works and is fast enough. It has the lowest barrier to entry and is mostly free due to unlimited trial. 5 years ago, when I started writing code professionally, Sublime made things so easy because I didn't have to learn an IDE to write code.

Many kudos and one day I will definitely buy a LICENSE.

<comment><USER163> You don't make enough after 5 years as a coder to justify an $80 expense?

<comment><USER162> I make enough to buy any damn License I want. I never said it was not justified. I don't use Sublime these days. I had fond memories of starting with Sublime and so I said and for the nostalgia sake, I will fucking buy the license as well. So stop assuming things and judging people, alright?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER164> my second fav. text editor after vs code. I gotta say tho, VS Code did get the plugin story better - they don't seem to clash/conflict with each other and with global settings the way they did (for me at least) with sublime.

</comment><comment><USER135> Can't imagine going back to Sublime after switching to VS Code a few months ago.

</comment><comment><USER165> Is it just me or does the new logo look a lot like Winamp's logo?

</comment><comment><USER166> Just curious, how would this Sublime compare to the latest TextMate?

</comment><comment><USER167> Does it support printing?

</comment><comment><USER168> Congratulations on the release, getting a new license later on.

</comment><comment><USER169> I don't understand that a product oriented for software engineer use sentence like "Significantly improved startup time" instead of real numbers. What does that mean "significantly"? 10%...50%?

<comment><USER95> like lots of software, a lot of that can depend on plugins, themes, how many buffers are getting re-opened from the previous editor state, etc.... I imagine it makes it hard to produce meaningful numbers outside of extremely controlled test cases, and might be misleading to some people.

<comment><USER170> > I imagine it makes it hard to produce

They should just compare the startup time of stock versions of 2 and 3 and post those.

<comment><USER95> That would probably be a good middle ground. You will still get people saying "what the hell, mine take 3 seconds to start up with 10000 plugins and 20 1MB files open, but you say 350ms?" But, can't please everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER171> can you guys share what you LOVE about sublime? I mostly just use it as regular editor with Command P to open other files. I know I can do more than this...

<comment><USER172> \- CMD + Shift + P for command platter \- Column select \- Speed

</comment></comment><comment><USER173> Woo hoo! I love ST. I think the biggest thing lacking now is a solid package manager. I like how on VSCode and Atom you can kind of see the "stars" or popularity of the package before you install it.

<comment><USER174> [https://packagecontrol.io/](https://packagecontrol.io/)

<comment><USER45> Still no way to learn about the extensions from within the editor itself. VSCode has the edge here, this is one of those things that really makes sense to have a UI for (beyond ST's Command Palette)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER175> Too late ! I m a spacemacs user now !

Seriously, this release took ages...

</comment><comment><USER176> Is it open source?

</comment><comment><USER177> I love this program. Will buy another license.

Thank you for it.

</comment><comment><USER178> wow!! just ended my evaluation with this release and purchased the license...

</comment><comment><USER142> Why Sublime over other text editors or IDEs?

What are the deep conceptual differences, the strongly held opinions?

</comment><comment><USER150> Finally it has arrived :)

</comment><comment><USER179> Linux finally has a decent text editor!

<comment><USER180> Vim has been on Linux for years now

<comment><USER181> and emacs (I use both) but not everyone is able to see how good they are, unfortunately.

<comment><USER182> Just curious, how can you use both? Isn't muscle memory an obstacle when switching between them?

<comment><USER181> I mostly use emacs (having moved to it relatively recently) but fall back to vim when editing/viewing a small single file. On the odd occasion I do hit the wrong keys from misplaced muscle memory (and in vim a bunch of things could happen quickly) but usually I still have the Vim muscle memory and can manage. My main driver is emacs though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER183> ligatures?

</comment><comment><USER184> Is it still proprietary nagware?

</comment><comment><USER100> Touchbar support? Does it still sort files in the tree view with folders first on Mac?

</comment><comment><USER185> Does anyone else see the old icon when pinned to the taskbar?

<comment><USER186> Same here after the update. Just do a restart and you should see the new icon in the taskbar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER187> Best editor out there. Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER188> Oh shit! It come back

<comment><USER118> There's always been updates :/

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sublimetext.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sublimetext.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER189> It came out of beta? It came out of beta!!1!11111

</comment><comment><USER190> is everyone just going to ignore that awful tab bar at the top?

<comment><USER191> Considering that if you really dislike it you can apply a different theme in about 10 seconds, probably.

Personally I'm not too big of a fan of the styling there, but it's far from a critical issue.</comment></comment>


Consciousness as a State of Matter (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.1219 <comment><USER2> From my really ignorant, but introspective, point of view, this notion that life and consciousness somewhat escape from the physical rules that govern rocks, air and the rest of the universe seems like holding onto the theist idea of soul after the decline of religion.

I think the universe doesn't care about us, we are just the natural result of the fundamental interactions of matter, the same interactions that burn stars. We are complex automatons.

<comment><USER3> The way that non-dualists (those that see a single consciousness of which our own awareness is an aspect <\-- not a great definition) approach this is from the basis that consciousness is primary and the physical manifestations that exist around that flow from consciousness. So, from that perspective, physical rules that govern rocks are actually subordinate to consciousness.

Non-dualism doesn't make any sense to the rational mind, non-dual realization usually arises in someone that has explored the realm of their own personal consciousness very deeply (meditation, contemplation, psychedelics, hypnosis, lucid dreaming, etc).

<comment><USER4> I would claim a materialist perspective that views the mind and consciousness as arising out of material processes is also a non-dualistic (monist) perspective just as much as an "everything flows from consciousnes" (idealist monist) perspective.

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/)

Quote: "Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the 'default option'."

<comment><USER5> I think the non-dualists in the parent comment here would agree, saying something vaguely Alan Watts-y along the lines of "consciousness and matter are merely two sides of the same coin and imply each other mutually."

Come to think of it, "does consciousness arise from matter, or does matter arise from consciousness" is a modern Koan par excellence. FWIW, the last time I grooved on that for a while while on a psychedelic, the answer I came up was...decidedly spiritual. Caveat lector ;)

<comment><USER4> OP: _" Non-dualism doesn't make any sense to the rational mind"_

Well, someone seeing consciousness arising from matter (materialist monism/non-dual) isn't impelled to say anything like that. I mean, I'd view the forms of consciousness the OP describes (acid, meditation, hypnosis) as a being experiences where immediate language-generating mediation is suspended, "direct experience" but one shouldn't confuse those sort of sensations with an experience being beyond relation analysis. There are lots experiences where you can't think about what you're doing at the point you are doing it but you can certainly think before and after.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I'd have to dive in more on what "relation analysis" is (you probably mean "relational analysis"?). I guess what I'm saying is that you're unlikely to get push-back from the monist crowd on the materialist front, and we're also unlikely to get "experience" (direct or otherwise) into our scientific crosshairs anytime soon. But we should certainly keep trying!

<comment><USER4> I meant "rational analysis" \- looking at a situation with the tools of logic, science and related approaches. It's past edit time on my original post, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting questions. It makes me think of some things I read about how the brain integrates different sensory information into a seamless experience. I don't have a source for this, but the idea I remember is that nerve impulses from different sense organs arrive at different times due to the physical mechanism of propagation of the nerve signals. So the brain has to do a fair bit of post-processing to make our conscious experience seem fully integrated. That's why the sensation of touching our own finger and _seeing_ ourselves touch the finger seem to correlate with the same moment in time. If our brains didn't do this, then things would seem all disjointed or perhaps entirely incoherent.

That got me thinking: if our brain constructs that portion of reality, perhaps it actually constructs the entire conscious experience of reality down to the minutest detail. So we're never "directly" experiencing reality but only our brain's constructed (and evolved) representation of it. Perhaps _that_ is the explanation for why the universe appears to have four dimensions in our day to day experience: because that's the most advantageous representation of reality by some evolutionary metric. So the process of biological evolution has crafted the brain and the brain crafts the experience of reality which includes all the rules of logic, laws of physics, and perceived physical phenomena.

You could go out on a limb and perhaps even say that this explains how advances in pure mathematics often turn out to have some use in physics and vice versa; because mathematics (logic) and _perceived_ physical processes are both rooted in the structure of the brain and are therefore rather intertwined even though the physical world appears to be separate from the mental world.

These ideas seem remotely similar on some level to what Dr. Tegmark is proposing: that the observer (or, the evolved observer as I'm saying) plays a much more significant role in the structure of the universe than anyone has admitted up to this point.

<comment><USER7> Welcome to the world of Immanuel Kant and George Berkeley. Yo have exceptional intuition to arrive at these conclusions independently.

Current natural science is practiced abhorrently in that it ignores such philosophical understandings of human knowledge which is over two centuries old and presupposes the subject has a 1:1 correspondence with the object - this a century after the double slit experiment!

I'm a bit more downstream and conceive of conscious activity more mathematically formally as a power-limited digital filter of sensory motion, which includes the discrete-time sampling of its action ("motion") upon the body. Consciousness then is the quantization of the motion perceived.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Offtopic, but I really hate arXiv's page layout. Nowhere else is the link to primary content sequestered off to a sidebar. The abstract isn't that important and web pages aren't modern index cards with limited space. Horrible ergonomics with this site.

</comment><comment><USER9> When I see a title with possibly overblown philosophical implications, I get cautious. When I see "Max Tegmark", it is a sign to close a tab.

While science, in general, suffers from overblowing implications (as in promising that given research revolutionizes everything, etc - to get credit and the next grant), he is an ace of that.

To contrast it with "YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement" [https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.02767](https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.02767) in which the author goes to the other extreme, being bluntly honest.

</comment><comment><USER10> A computer running pre-programmed processes wouldn't be said to have consciousness. But what if one of the pre-programmed processes was for the computer to monitor all its own sub-processes, and dynamically re-direct them as necessary relative to pre-programmed higher level goals? Couldn't that machine be described as conscious?

<comment><USER11> Maybe, but imo there's an infinitely-recursive (up until hardware or wetware limits) nature of introspection to consciousness. I can reflect on reflecting on reflecting on reflecting etc etc, until I stack overflow. But on each level of reflection, I can do something useful wrt adjusting the processes that I am reflecting on.

I'm not sure how you could program this recursive nature unless you generalized what it means to be introspective. But by definition, introspection defines itself. The process of introspection has to also be aware of itself in order to "break out" to the higher level.

<comment><USER4> _Maybe, but imo there 's an infinitely-recursive (up until hardware or wetware limits) nature of introspection to consciousness. I can reflect on reflecting on reflecting on reflecting etc etc, until I stack overflow. But on each level of reflection, I can do something useful wrt adjusting the processes that I am reflecting on._

I don't see why one couldn't write program to do something - a subroutine that called-itself and analyzed some of the contents on up the stack in some vaguely useful way. One can pretty easily write a program that approximating satisfies most vague descriptions of consciousness. It doesn't "feel" like "real consciousness" but that brings up other questions.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. But to your last point, what are feelings if not data? For example, if the system was programmed to interpret feedback threatening its higher level goals as negative data (anxiety, fear) and feedback supporting its goals as positive data (happiness, joy), then feelings can very much be represented in the model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "So, what about consciousness? As defined above, it is in fact the most certain knowledge there is. Pure awareness is not even possible to deny, since the very act of denial takes place in and as an activity of awareness. You can not escape or avoid it. Thoughts can of course imagine a brain that existed in the past without awareness, but that itself is a thought in awareness. One can doubt whether the thought refers to something true or real, but the awareness is unavoidable. This suggests that consciousness, not matter, is fundamentally real." \-- Tom McFarlane, B.S. Physics, Stanford University

Ref: [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-basis-of-reality-matter- or...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-basis-of-reality-matter-or- consciousness-Why#)

</comment><comment><USER13> Scott Aaronson has a good critique of s Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory. Very short version: [https://youtu.be/cscRdv57oRQ?t=849](https://youtu.be/cscRdv57oRQ?t=849)

IIT is basically just hypothesis that defines consciousness by identifying it with certain information processing abilities that have lots of integration and can't be 'divided'.

When Aaronson points out some peculiar things having these abilities (like error correcting codes) Tegmark doubles down and says they are conscious and human intuition is wrong.

IIT explains very little, it just defines consciousness to be something.

</comment><comment><USER14> 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192946](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192946)

2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024651](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024651)</comment>


Ethical Code - <AUTHOR> http://ethicalco.de/

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree with the overall message, but don't you think they're kind of overreacting about profanity in Github repos?

What's worse is most of these are profanity filters. So what are they raging against specifically again? I've never seen a single high-profile project being sexist or racist - so enlighten me (really! I'd love to see one!)

[https://github.com/search?l=java&p=1&q=faggot&ref=searchresu...](https://github.com/search?l=java&p=1&q=faggot&ref=searchresults&type=Code)

[https://github.com/search?l=python&p=1&q=nigger&ref=searchre...](https://github.com/search?l=python&p=1&q=nigger&ref=searchresults&type=Code)

</comment><comment><USER2> Discussion at: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7411307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7411307)</comment>


Google Street View car crashes into parked vehicle – driver runs off - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/09/14/google-street-view-car-crashes-into-two-minivans-and-a-parked-vehicle-driver-runs-off-photos/?fromcat=all

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking at his smashed windshield - it appears to me that somebody tried to attack his vehicle after a first accident (a bus driver?) with a stick of sort...since the driver had a broken windshield - he could not see anything and he was mad scared - thats why he drove into other 2 cars. Just my vision of this story.

<comment><USER2> Its on tape what ever the case. NSA has probably had a couple of chuckles over the driver running off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The accident was slightly irregular, but I don't think it's "deeply interesting" to hackers. Did upvoters mistakenly presume this was a self- driving car?

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like the driver got scared and tried to run away. I think the media is making a bigger deal of this than they should.

<comment><USER2> A hit and run is a hit and run.

<comment><USER5> surely not if you fear for your life?</comment></comment></comment>


The Next Generation Cloud: Unleashing the Power of the Unikernel - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/AllThingsOpen/the-next-generation-cloud-unleashing-the-power-of-the-unikernal <comment><USER2> Docker is not the last word in Linux containers. Generalising from the limitations of Docker to all container implementations is unfair (compare Garden, for example); and the Docker team are slowly coming around to heed the voices of their critics.

Unikernels mostly still require per-stack implementation. That's a lot of engineering effort right now. There are halfway-houses like OSv (mentioned in the slides), but they weaken the case.

I'm still bullish on Unikernels. With some work Garden's API could be adapted to run unikernel binaries. That means the ecosystem for Cloud Foundry would work almost "out of the box", as it already does for Garden droplets, Docker containers and .NET applications.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ooh, last time I read into unikernels there wasn't a JavaScript one, but now there is!

[http://runtimejs.org](http://runtimejs.org)

</comment><comment><USER4> We've done a fair amount of work with, and are using, these. If you're into this, say "hi" \-- my username at Google's mail.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if this is how AWS Lambda is implemented?</comment>


Web 3.0: When Web Sites Become Web Services - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/web_30_when_web_sites_become_web_services.php <comment><USER2> Hopefully the concept of the web as a data source will push more content creators toward open content licenses (or at least more openness toward their content), even making it a requirement for those who wish to be competitive at all. Of course people will still sell things to make money, but this will just mean the products will have to be that much cooler.</comment>