They don’t make ’em like Sublime Text anymore

For years, developers have been bogged down by the overwhelming influx of bloated software, forcing them to endure incessant updates and release notes. This is precisely why the return to Sublime Text feels so liberating. The absence of daily update prompts and release note check-ins is nothing short of a breath of fresh air.

The author reminisces about the endless barrage of commit summaries from competing text editors such as VS Code and Zed, questioning whether any valuable information was ever gleaned from this deluge. Modern software, they argue, is plagued by self-proclaimed "engineers" who prioritize their chat room addictions over providing genuinely useful features.

Sublime Text, still thriving, has even released a stable build on May 2025, with dev builds as recent as July. It doesn't matter who develops this software; what matters is its ability to cater to the author's needs without intrusive popovers or other disruptive elements. Since returning to Sublime Text, the author finds it to be a perfect development environment.

The ideal development stack, as the author sees it, should consist of various tools, each performing a single function without the "main character syndrome." The author yearns for coding without having to make lifestyle choices, avoiding unnecessary bloated applications. They express disdain for the "unified toolchain" trend, challenging readers to show them a recent VC-backed build tool that outperforms simpler alternatives written in PHP. Ultimately, if fed up with the current state of software, Sublime Text remains a reliable choice.