Sublime Forum

Jon what is the future of Sublime Text?

#41

[quote=“Kaniken”]So why the incredible amount of unanswered posts? Why all the complaints (surely not just from me…) about lack of communication? Why don’t I get e-mail replies?

Sublime is alive, but not so well.

[quote=“ntenney”]

…Long irrelevant rant…]

So, I looked through your posts, and the only “support” question you asked was regarding printing.[/quote]

My support questions were e-mailed since I was about to purchase. I got no replies. Also, I didn’t start this thread.[/quote]

First of all, I never claimed you started this thread. Second of all, let me spell things out for you, since you dismissed my explanation as a “long irrelevant rant”. Jon has to make a choice of how to spend his time. I have no idea how many support emails he receives a day, or how much time he spends scanning the forums. But in my opinion, it boils down to what moves Sublime Text forward the most. He could spend his day responding to every support email, searching the forums so he can point people to the exact reply, either by himself or someone else, that answers the support question, or he could expect the asker to do some of the leg work themselves to find the answer by searching the forums. He could go through the forums, thread by thread and answer every question, including the ones where a community member provides a possible answer/workaround. How much time would that leave in his day for actually coding the editor? You’ve obviously been monitoring this thread, since you replied to my previous post fairly quickly. How much time do you think it would take to monitor ALL the threads? That’s really what you’re asking Jon to do. It’s one thing to have these expectations of a large company like Adobe or Microsoft. You pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for their products, and support is explicitly mentioned as part of the purchase (not that I’ve ever gotten anything useful out of Microsoft or Adobe support). I don’t recall any support level being guaranteed for the $60 or so I paid for ST. Also, if you put that $60 into terms of an hourly rate, I essentially purchased around 1 hour of Jon’s time. How would I prefer he spend that hour? Answering my personal support emails, or making ST the best editor it can be?

Would I like the support to be better? Sure, but mostly so there would be less angst on the forums, and more productive discussions. I’ve honestly haven’t needed much support while using ST, though I have posted in support of some bug reports, mostly to confirm an issue and give the platform and ST version that I saw the issue in. I’d like to think that kind of thing is helpful, saving Jon some leg work by reproducing bugs on platforms so he can be reasonably certain that the bug wasn’t caused by environmental issues or is platform specific.

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#42

[quote=“ntenney”]

[quote=“Kaniken”]So why the incredible amount of unanswered posts? Why all the complaints (surely not just from me…) about lack of communication? Why don’t I get e-mail replies?

Sublime is alive, but not so well.

My support questions were e-mailed since I was about to purchase. I got no replies. Also, I didn’t start this thread.

First of all, I never claimed you started this thread. Second of all, let me spell things out for you, since you dismissed my explanation as a “long irrelevant rant”. Jon has to make a choice of how to spend his time. I have no idea how many support emails he receives a day, or how much time he spends scanning the forums. But in my opinion, it boils down to what moves Sublime Text forward the most. He could spend his day responding to every support email, searching the forums so he can point people to the exact reply, either by himself or someone else, that answers the support question, or he could expect the asker to do some of the leg work themselves to find the answer by searching the forums. He could go through the forums, thread by thread and answer every question, including the ones where a community member provides a possible answer/workaround. How much time would that leave in his day for actually coding the editor? You’ve obviously been monitoring this thread, since you replied to my previous post fairly quickly. How much time do you think it would take to monitor ALL the threads? That’s really what you’re asking Jon to do. It’s one thing to have these expectations of a large company like Adobe or Microsoft. You pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for their products, and support is explicitly mentioned as part of the purchase (not that I’ve ever gotten anything useful out of Microsoft or Adobe support). I don’t recall any support level being guaranteed for the $60 or so I paid for ST. Also, if you put that $60 into terms of an hourly rate, I essentially purchased around 1 hour of Jon’s time. How would I prefer he spend that hour? Answering my personal support emails, or making ST the best editor it can be?

Would I like the support to be better? Sure, but mostly so there would be less angst on the forums, and more productive discussions. I’ve honestly haven’t needed much support while using ST, though I have posted in support of some bug reports, mostly to confirm an issue and give the platform and ST version that I saw the issue in. I’d like to think that kind of thing is helpful, saving Jon some leg work by reproducing bugs on platforms so he can be reasonably certain that the bug wasn’t caused by environmental issues or is platform specific.[/quote]

Well said, I don’t know how I can do it with 3 platforms(lin, mac, win) on both architecture solo, let alone be “active” on a forum and replying email…

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#43

[quote=“Arjan”]

That probably explain why I have no answers on my support request mails and why there are 1000’s of unanswered posts on this forum.[/quote]

No, your attitude is probably why you have no answers.

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#44

[quote=“Vanishing”]

That probably explain why I have no answers on my support request mails and why there are 1000’s of unanswered posts on this forum.
No, your attitude is probably why you have no answers.[/quote]

I guess Dr Dobbs’ journalist is having an attitude too…

www.drdobbs.com/tools/review-of-two-edi … 033?pgno=3

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#45

[quote=“ntenney”]First of all, I never claimed you started this thread. Second of all, let me spell things out for you, since you dismissed my explanation as a “long irrelevant rant”. Jon has to make a choice of how to spend his time.
…another long rant…] [/quote]

You miss the point again.

Jon doesn’t have a choice of whether or not to spend time supporting his customers. Starting a company has implications and raises expectations. If a company doesn’t live up to those expectations, then the customers have a valid reason for telling the world about it.

As other have pointed out as well more eloquently than me…

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#46

[quote=“Kaniken”]
I guess Dr Dobbs’ journalist is having an attitude too…

drdobbs.com/tools/review-of- … 033?pgno=3[/quote]

Did I talk to you?

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#47

[quote=“Vanishing”]

[quote=“Kaniken”]
I guess Dr Dobbs’ journalist is having an attitude too…

drdobbs.com/tools/review-of- … 033?pgno=3[/quote]

Did I talk to you?[/quote]

No, but the reply is relevant.

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#48

A 1 user license of SlickEdit is $299. About 4x the price of Sublime.

I’m sure if he charged that much he could pay for support staff. :smile:

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#49

[quote=“Kaniken”]

[quote=“Vanishing”]

Did I talk to you?

No, but the reply is relevant.[/quote]

It is irrelevant, unless you are implying “Dr Dobbs” is Arjan.

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#50

Again you miss the point. It’s irrelevant who you talked to. This is a forum, so I can reply to whatever and whoever I want in whatever context.

Whatever.

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#51

I think that much of this could be solved if Jon show up once a month, reply a couple of question and write just a paragraph blog post with a status update.
All we agree about his technical skills, but he is laking some community skills, and this is not less important for the future of the project.

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#52

[quote=“thecrumb”]A 1 user license of SlickEdit is $299. About 4x the price of Sublime.

I’m sure if he charged that much he could pay for support staff. :smile:[/quote]

Correction. A 1 user licence on a SINGLE PLATFORM is $299. If you want to run SlickEdit on 3 platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux, as I do), you need to pay $649.

I’ve already posted my thoughts on the Dr Dobbs article elsewhere on the forums (https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/comparison-of-sublime-to-other-editors-like-slickedit/11807/1#p55752), so I won’t go into that here. I will say that even though the author mentions the support or lack thereof of both editors, he didn’t let that keep him from recommending a purchase of Sublime.

Once again, I’ve failed to get my point across. Let me sum it up. I believe certain peoples expectations to be unrealistic and without base. They keep trying to compare the support efforts of a single man shop with that of a well established, multi-national company such as Microsoft, Adobe, or even SlickEdit. I’ve had dealings with most of these types of companies in their infancy, and few of them did a good job of support (some much worse than Sublime). When you purchase a product from Microsoft, Adobe, or SlickEdit, support is explicitly called out and that expectation is set by the company themselves. Sublime gives no such guarantee. A purchase of Sublime is as is. You get an editor. Period. Some may say this is a bad business practice. I can’t argue about that. It appears to me that Jon feels that the best place for him to put his efforts is on the editor itself. It actually gives a good indication of his focus. He’d rather lose a potential sale than compromise or slow the work on the editor itself.

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#53

Well said…I also believe this to be the case.

I also get the impression that Jon likes to spend the majority of his efforts on things that interest him rather than things that the community deems important. Some people may have issues with this approach but I figure that it has resulted in a pretty amazing product so far (and there’s no reason to believe that this will change).

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#54

Wow, are you really THAT dense? What does the EULA have to do with anything?

Every company has a no-warranty clause. That’s no excuse for not behaving like a real company and answer customer mails and maybe even requests like the original poster of this thread made.

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#55

[quote=“thecrumb”]A 1 user license of SlickEdit is $299. About 4x the price of Sublime.

I’m sure if he charged that much he could pay for support staff. :smile:[/quote]

$70 isn’t exactly chump change when it comes to a text editor. That’s pretty premium/niche product there.

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#56

In the world of developer tools, $70 is chump change.

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#57

[quote=“Kaniken”]Wow, are you really THAT dense? What does the EULA have to do with anything?

Every company has a no-warranty clause. That’s no excuse for not behaving like a real company and answer customer mails and maybe even requests like the original poster of
this thread made.[/quote]

Let’s not devolve into name calling. Yes, most companies have the no warranty clause, but in the cases of the companies I’ve mentioned, they also specifically call out the support model, either as part of their EULA, on their website, or included in the purchase page. No such verbiage is given in the case of Sublime, therefore, expecting platinum level support (which is what many companies call being able to directly email a developer and receive a response in 1 business day) is unrealistic.

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#58

What about ever ?

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#59

I bought ST2 a few years back when I switched from BBEdit. As a paying customer, I’m going to offer my opinions.

Whenever I pay for a software product I expect it to be supported. If I send an email to support, I expect to receive a response within a reasonable time frame. (48 hours is reasonable). Why should I spend $70 on a product that may not be supported in a year?

When I tried out Brackets.io, I hopped on the Brackets #irc and had an answer to a question within minutes. Another time, I posted a note on twitter and within 24 hours had a message from one of the developers. Impressive for open-source!

While I use the ST3 beta or Brackets, depending on my mood, on Windows. On the Mac I’m back to BBEdit. It doesn’t have some of the nifty features ST does but it makes up for it in other areas.

ST has a great community, lousy customer service, and questionable future.
Brackets has a new, growing community, and great customer service. (I’d pay for it if I could)
BBEdit has a great community, great customer service, and fantastic documentation.

ST ought to support the users of the product. A simple blog update would answer the question of whether it’s abandon ware or not. Personally, I feel like it’s headed in the same direction as TM.

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#60

[quote=“Kaniken”]

[quote=“somedude”]
For fuck’s sake, didn’t you read the EULA[/quote]

? If you don’t agree with it, just don’t buy the product and go find another editor. It is that simple.

Wow, are you really THAT dense? What does the EULA have to do with anything?

Every company has a no-warranty clause. That’s no excuse for not behaving like a real company and answer customer mails and maybe even requests like the original poster of this thread made.[/quote]

The real question is, are you that dense, if you don’t like it, use some other editor. Good luck.

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