Gratuitous appeal to emotion. Sublime is already paid software, they are already eating, the commenter wasn't asking for it for free. It is not on the cheap end either - I have paid less for way more powerful and man-hours-consuming image/vector editors. Everything is fine.

Well. As a long-time Sublime Text user who sort of drifted off to Atom and VS Code in recent times, here's the thing: ST really hasn't been continuously improved; the sole developer frequently goes incommunicado for months, and there have been long stretches when there weren't any builds released. There are certainly substantial improvements between ST2 and ST3, but it's been over five years between ST2's initial release and ST3's. This is--kind of a worrisome pace of development.

So, this leaves me of two minds about a hypothetical subscription model. If it meant that ST's developers had an ongoing income that allowed them to work full-time on the project, set a regular release schedule, and be more open with communication, it would be worth it. But if users had been asked to pay, say, $49 a year for the last five years with ST3 on an "um, they pop up once a year to say they're still working on it, I guess" schedule, I'm pretty confident it would have gone over even more poorly than what actually happened.

Yes. There are endless text editors doing the same for free.

I could never find one that is as well thought and as well written as Sublime, and I've tried many, many others before.

Switched from Sublime to VSCode a few months ago and I've found it better to my needs. It's free

I love Code. It's one of Microsoft's greatest masterpieces.

Not quite free – you're paying in ram. EDIT: I mean more ram than you would use in Sublime.

You already paid by buying a faster computer. Some don't want to upgrade their computer; in this case, sublime is well worth its price.

Well-written? I thought it was closed-source.

I assume he was talking about the lack of significant bugs.

> [...] that you probably utilize for thousands of hours over a given year

Assuming 4hs net per day, 20 days/month, 12 months .. thats 960 hours/year

And that's assuming that you spent all those 4 hours _entirely_ on your text editor; no cli, no browser, no nothing.. only text editor.

I'd say that on avg we should be doing ~200 hours per year.. Are there any study about this?

The average number of hours worked by a fulltime employee is approximately 2000.

Obviously not everyone will be using their editor more than half the time, but many do. And many often use their editor outside of work too.

Are you suggesting that everyone with an 8-5 job works in Sublime Text for at most 4 hours of the day?

I have a family and I have to eat, so give me your money and I'll give you a copy of VSCode that I worked on. I'll also give you the source code with that.

It's a way better deal (and arguably a better tool) than what you get with Sublime.

>For a piece of software that enables your career, helps you to provide for yourself and/or family, that you probably utilize for thousands of hours over a given year?

Speak for yourself.

He obviously speaks for people who use ST as their editor. The grandparent expressed his opinion as one, and the parent answered as another.

People who don't have no says whatsoever in this particular subthread discussion.

The first line is the part I'm quoting, which is obviously what I'm addressing. He's making assumptions about the commenter that are completely unwarranted.

So no, he doesn't speak for the people who use ST.

It's Hacker News. We're discussing a mainstream code editor. There are multiple discussions of code/libraries/engineering every day.

The generalization that implies that the OP is a person who codes for a living is far from "completely unwarranted".

There are plenty of students and hobbyists here. So again, take it easy on the assumptions.

If the description of the parent doesn't fit you then maybe you weren't his/hers intended audience?

No reason to tell everyone about it.

If someone comments: "It's not much to pay $70 for something you use professionally, and get value out of it everyday etc" -- it only adds noise to chime in "I don't use it professionally" or "I don't use it everyday".

It's a conditional sentence (even if implicit). If one is not on that category, then yes, obviously the argument doesn't apply to them.