--- title: They don’t make ’em like Sublime Text anyone | daily.dev description: A developer shares their return to Sublime Text after years of using VS Code and Zed, arguing that modern software is bloated and over-engineered. Sublime Text... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/they-don-t-make-em-like-sublime-text-anyone-odl3ghlom twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: They don’t make ’em like Sublime Text anyone | daily.dev og:description: A developer shares their return to Sublime Text after years of using VS Code and Zed, arguing that modern software is bloated and over-engineered. Sublime Text... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/they-don-t-make-em-like-sublime-text-anyone-odl3ghlom og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/odL3gHlOm.png og:image:alt: They don’t make ’em like Sublime Text anyone og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # They don’t make ’em like Sublime Text anyone **[dbushell](https://daily.dev/sources/dbushell)** · 2 min read · 51 upvotes · 16 comments ## Summary A developer shares their return to Sublime Text after years of using VS Code and Zed, arguing that modern software is bloated and over-engineered. Sublime Text is still actively maintained with a stable build from May 2025 and dev builds as recent as July. The post advocates for focused, single-purpose tools over feature-heavy, constantly-updating editors. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Is Sublime Text still actively maintained? Sublime Text is still actively maintained. The last stable build was released in May 2025, with dev builds as recent as July of the same year. Development continues quietly without the constant update notifications and release note churn common in editors like VS Code or Zed. _Developers weighing editor choices track tools like Sublime Text on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 32 comments across lobsters, hackernews (as of 2026-08-08). **TL;DR:** Commenters are broadly sympathetic to the "focused tools over bloat" sentiment, but the thread quickly pivots to alternatives like Gram, Helix, and Emacs, with some pushback on Sublime Text's specific limitations and the author's apparent aversion to LSP features. **Sentiment:** 45% positive · 40% mixed · 15% skeptical **The case for** - Sublime Text's minimal, distraction-free editing experience is genuinely valued by those who want a focused tool. - The post's framing of "main character syndrome" for feature-bloated apps resonated with several commenters. - The blog's visual design was praised as beautiful and well-crafted. **The pushback** - Sublime Text struggles with remote/SSH workflows, and sshfs workarounds cause indexing lock-ups. - The author's apparent rejection of LSP popovers conflates AI bloat with genuinely useful, pre-existing developer tooling. - Sublime Text is closed source, which matters to some commenters regardless of its quality. - Sublime Text's UI system was called inflexible, inconsistent, and not up to modern standards. - Plugins via Package Control can introduce their own changelog tabs and noise, undermining the clean experience. **By community** - lobsters (mixed): Broadly sympathetic to the anti-bloat thesis but the discussion quickly fragments into debates about Gram vs. Zed, remote editing workarounds, and whether the author is unfairly dismissing LSP features alongside AI bloat. - hackernews (skeptical): The single comment is lukewarm, characterizing Sublime Text as "just a better notepad" and noting that Package Control plugins introduce their own noise. **Hottest debate:** Whether Gram is a viable independent fork or merely a feature-stripping exercise that depends entirely on Zed's continued AI-funded development. **Open questions** - Does Sublime Text offer anything genuinely irreplaceable over well-configured Helix, Emacs, or Neovim for users who want minimal tooling? - Can Gram ever stand on its own if Zed changes its license or stops development? - Is the author's complaint really about LSP/tooling in general, or specifically about AI-driven intrusions into the editing experience? **Highlights** > >Do you know how relaxing it is without the daily “update available” and “view release notes” ritual? There is nothing I dread more than release notes. These days you can just auto-close them in VSCode, because you can be 99% sure it's more agentic stuff. I'm not sure when was the last time I've seen any feature that actually improved my workflow. Heck, we could even say "affected", because to me it feels like VSC hasn't meaningfully changed in years, besides what the AI craze brought in. >All I know is that I can place my text cursor and read the surrounding code without a bombardment of popovers, pop-unders, pop-left-and-rights, pop-inlines, pop-in-and-out-too-fast-to-sees. Odd to see the author seemingly being so averse to LSPs, they are useful and deterministic tools. I can totally understand being dismayed that your editor is slowly being turned into "a prompt with an editor tacked on", but not only do these popovers predate the whole AI craze, I can't personally imagine myself developing without them, it's so much smoother to see errors highlighted and signatures always available, than the old "make edit -> compile -> check errors -> fix errors -> recompile -> repeat" loop. > — [nemin on lobsters · 2 points, 1 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/uny1fo/they_don_t_make_em_like_sublime_text#c_c8jvgb) > Zed's AI features and subscription provide the means to afford development. I don't think it makes the editor any worse, regardless if you make use of these features. That means Gram is also made possible by Zed's AI features, because without Zed there's no Gram. Besides the "engineering effort" of Gram is just ripping out features. If you get a bug in Gram, where do you report it? And who will fix it? > — [Levitating on lobsters · 1 points, 2 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/uny1fo/they_don_t_make_em_like_sublime_text#c_fnxwuj) > One problem with this when used with Sublime Text, is that if you're mounting a remote directory with a significant number of files in it, Sublime Text will basically lock-up while it tries to do whatever internal indexing stuff that it does (which you cannot disable). The extra file I/O latency (even when it's just a few milliseconds) ends up being far too much for Sublime Text in my experience. > — [gered on lobsters · 1 points](https://lobste.rs/s/uny1fo/they_don_t_make_em_like_sublime_text#c_ztsbc7) > If that were the author's argument, I'd agree, I also don't like being knocked out of focus by over-eager tooling. But the OP isn't arguing for configuring your editor to be less nosy, rather: > It’s been a few weeks since I returned to Sublime Text. It does everything I need. There is not a single “feature” I’ve missed from VS Code or Zed. Many I’m glad to see the back of. > >The perfect dev stack is a collection of software that each does one job and doesn’t suffer main character syndrome. I want to code, I’m not looking to make lifestyle choices. I don’t want a bloated everything app. Don’t get me started on the “unified toolchain” plague! Show me the latest VC-backed build tool and I’ll show you ten lines of PHP that does a better job. This to me implies that the author wants their text editor to be strictly a text editor (perhaps with syntax highlighting) and nothing more. > — [nemin on lobsters · 1 points](https://lobste.rs/s/uny1fo/they_don_t_make_em_like_sublime_text#c_6euvs6) **Source threads** - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/uny1fo/they_don_t_make_em_like_sublime_text) · 50 points · 30 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49209354) · 11 points · 2 comments ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@cimarronmirage96** · 3 upvotes > you meant to say 'anymore' right? **@akkitto** · 3 upvotes > How is Visual Studio Code without any extensions "bloated"? This article stinks like a hard nostalgia filtered eyes view ... **@agustinbarrientos** · 1 upvotes > Honestly, I want my editor to edit text and let the terminal handle the rest. Sublime can stay boring **@mallowigi** · 1 upvotes > Even though I rarely use it, Sublime is still always installed in my machines. It's the Notepad of MacOS. > > I no longer use it for anything but it's always the first choice when I need to open a file without having to wait for Obsidian/VSCode/IntelliJ's boot **@johndk4** · 1 upvotes > Wait until they hear about vim ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [VS Code is no longer the default for me – here is the tool that finally broke the habit](https://daily.dev/posts/vs-code-is-no-longer-the-default-for-me-here-is-the-tool-that-finally-broke-the-habit-i0zxbligz) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Is anyone still using Emacs?](https://daily.dev/posts/is-anyone-still-using-emacs--h5edbbhim) · Lobsters · 10 upvotes · 2 comments --- Tags: [#devtools](https://daily.dev/tags/devtools), [#vscode](https://daily.dev/tags/vscode) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/they-don-t-make-em-like-sublime-text-anyone-odl3ghlom) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"They don’t make ’em like Sublime Text anyone","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/they-don-t-make-em-like-sublime-text-anyone-odl3ghlom","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/they-don-t-make-em-like-sublime-text-anyone-odl3ghlom"},"datePublished":"2026-08-07T09:44:13.888Z","dateModified":"2026-08-08T19:17:15.181Z","description":"A developer shares their return to Sublime Text after years of using VS Code and Zed, arguing that modern software is bloated and over-engineered. 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This article stinks like a hard nostalgia filtered eyes view …","datePublished":"2026-08-08T09:14:47.699Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/odL3gHlOm#c-mGRMHMf4e","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Daniel","url":"https://daily.dev/akkitto","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--FtwJqX4c--/f_auto/v1754900041/avatars/avatar_29TCpY2hJR72V3BlxPXzX?_a=BAMClqZW0"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Honestly, I want my editor to edit text and let the terminal handle the rest. Sublime can stay boring","datePublished":"2026-08-08T00:58:43.503Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/odL3gHlOm#c-LyzeShiqO","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Agustin Barrientos","url":"https://daily.dev/agustinbarrientos","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--5ayxQnqn--/f_auto/v1788281802/avatars/avatar_wQYYVe5Tbj0NJ7C7qPoa8?_a=BAMAMicg0"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Even though I rarely use it, Sublime is still always installed in my machines. It’s the Notepad of MacOS.\nI no longer use it for anything but it’s always the first choice when I need to open a file without having to wait for Obsidian/VSCode/IntelliJ’s boot","datePublished":"2026-08-08T07:48:58.029Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/odL3gHlOm#c-fiRsXNBDo","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Elior Boukhobza","url":"https://daily.dev/mallowigi","image":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/5015756?v=4"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Wait until they hear about vim","datePublished":"2026-08-07T20:24:42.895Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/odL3gHlOm#c-zmwCDWUny","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"John","url":"https://daily.dev/johndk4","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocKNfVa9rjZUceWB909xVH_cznBqt6sWGEEypB-BFPECoE3RYg=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/they-don-t-make-em-like-sublime-text-anyone-odl3ghlom#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Is Sublime Text still actively maintained?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Sublime Text is still actively maintained. The last stable build was released in May 2025, with dev builds as recent as July of the same year. Development continues quietly without the constant update notifications and release note churn common in editors like VS Code or Zed. Developers weighing editor choices track tools like Sublime Text on daily.dev."}}]} ```