Sublime Forum

Returned to Sublime Text after 5 years, regret my decision

#1

I’m really just posting this for the community to improve their product. I am switching to VSCode, as I’m tired of wasting time trying to get off the ground. I only returned to Sublime Text because Atom reached end of life, and I wanted to resist Microsoft backed products. You’ve left me no option, I have work to do, shouldn’t take days to get setup in an editor.

Experience:

  1. Downloaded Sublime Text, easy install. Good.
  2. installed Package control, easy, but clunky. Should be a default package IMO, I’m sure you have your reasons, tiny point.
  3. Installed a few packages, everything went well.
  4. Day two, went to install LSP, “Package Control: Install” does nothing, “Package Control” window just disappears. No logs, nothing.
  5. Ok, maybe I can find the .sublime-package file for LSP, nope. Not on packagecontrol.io not on the project’s release page, nothing.
  6. Downloaded subl, horrendous install process. Compare Sublime’s CLI install process to Atom’s
  7. Ok, maybe I can install via subl like every other editor in 2022. Oh wow, the cli is basically a wrapper that requires internal knowledge of the editor, that’s kind of lame.
  8. Ok, maybe Sublime Text official docs have answers. Oh, nope, docs looks like they haven’t been touched since 2010. Maybe google has answers, an example CLI command perhaps. Nope, not a single one. Not even sure subl can install packages at this point. Starts to wonder if a single human even uses subl (I used apm several times a day… apm add {{package}} … easy. No clicks, no annoying menus to surf, behaves like every other package manager on the planet.)
  9. Downloads VSCode. In 5 minutes I’m setup, Sublime text time sink: 8 hours. I did in VSCode what I couldn’t in Sublime Text in 1% of the time. 1%

… No license nag on every save, either. TBH I’m not sure what your value add is in 2022. That said, I would still support you over Microsoft any day of the week, but not at the expense of my mental health, productivity and career.

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#2

subl is part of any sublime text setup by default and doesn’t need separate download or install.

subl is a CLI wrapper for sublime_text executable and not a package manager. Hence it’s not surprising not to be able to directly manage packages with it.

Whether packages create releases with ready packed sublime-package files is up to plugin authors. It’s rather uncommon though as Package Control handles everything.

How did you install packages at day 1 if “Package Control Install” does nothing?

Maybe you are on MacOS, which dropped OpenSSL 1.1.1 Unfortunatelly Package Control still relies on that library and therefore fails if it is missing. You should see error messages in ST’s console then.

Otherwise installing packages such as LSP and its helper packages is a task of 2mins and not of 2 days.

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#3

subl is part of any sublime text setup by default and doesn’t need separate download or install.

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#4

I am working with both Editors, with Sublime +10 years and VSCode since 4 years … Sublime for PHP and VSC for JS … It helps me to switch for the Syntax and Mindsetting between both workspaces …

After 10 Years i had the first issue yesterday with a Sublime Plugin and after 24H opening a ticket here inside the forum i had a solution … So is my experience with Sublime …

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