Developer criticizes modern IDEs, returns to Sublime Text over bloat
A programmer abandons VS Code and Zed for Sublime Text, citing bloat and unwanted AI features in contemporary editors.
Conversation activity · last 3 days peak 8/hr
Summary, timeline and people extracted by Claude from 47 items across 2 sources · 10h ago. Quotes are verbatim.
A developer published a blog post expressing frustration with modern IDEs like VS Code and Zed, praising Sublime Text for its simplicity and lack of constant updates and intrusive features. The post sparked discussion on Lobsters about editor bloat, AI features, and whether lightweight tools are preferable to feature-rich platforms.
- Developer criticizes modern IDEs (VS Code, Zed) for bloat, constant updates, and unwanted AI features; Sublime Text praised for simplicity and stability.
- Debate in community over whether lightweight editors are preferable to feature-rich platforms or whether AI/LLM integration is inevitable and desirable.
- Practical tradeoff identified: Sublime Text lacks remote development features (SSH, containers, WSL) that users rely on in VS Code.
- Zed's pivot toward LLM features seen by commenters as financially motivated and coming at the expense of bug fixes, affecting all users.
How it unfolded
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Analysis Zed's pivot to LLM features at cost of bug fixes
User PuercoPop analyzed that Zed's shift toward LLM integration was motivated by funding rather than user demand, and deprioritizes bug fixes, affecting all users regardless of LLM adoption.
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Reaction Historical context: Sublime Text's creation
Commenter cryptocode recalled following Jon Skinner's blog nearly 19 years earlier when he quit Google to develop Sublime Text, noting it became a paid product appreciated for features like multiple cursors.
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Reaction Language servers vs. UI pop-ups debate
User chrismorgan clarified that the criticism is not about language server protocol features, but about unwanted automatic UI elements like inlay hints and tooltips.
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Reaction Discussion of AI feature bloat in Zed
Commenter conartist6 raised concerns that avoiding editors with AI features might backfire by encouraging more AI development, and mentioned Gram as an alternative fork.
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Reaction Commenters identify missing features in Sublime
User linkdd noted that remote SSH, WSL, and container support—available in VS Code—are features they cannot live without, highlighting practical limitations of Sublime Text.
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Reaction Post reaches Lobsters, gains traction
The article was posted to Lobsters discussion forum where it achieved a score of 103 and 53 comments, indicating significant audience interest in the sentiment.
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Report Blog post: Developer returns to Sublime Text
David Bushell published a blog post on dbushell.com describing his switch back to Sublime Text after using VS Code and Zed, praising Sublime for lacking constant updates and pop-up notifications.
What people are saying verbatim
“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.”
David Bushell · dbushell.com blog post · Aug 6
“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.”
David Bushell · dbushell.com blog post · Aug 6
“The perfect dev stack is a collection of software that each does one job and doesn't suffer main character syndrome.”
David Bushell · dbushell.com blog post · Aug 6
“I wish to reward the people who build for me, so that they will build more for me. The pitch behind Gram is that it's a hard fork where all the engineering effort still is focused on human use.”
conartist6, Lobsters commenter · Lobsters · Aug 8, 9:15 AM
“They are now adding more LLM features in the hopes to secure more funding. But the bulk of the work was not payed by money given them to them to develop LLM integrations.”
PuercoPop, Lobsters commenter · Lobsters · Aug 8, 1:30 PM
“I'll surely be reusing "main character syndrome" to characterize single-window apps that want to be platforms.”
kevinc, Lobsters commenter · Lobsters · Aug 8, 9:35 AM
Voices from the web unedited
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>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…
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> If you get a bug in Gram, where do you report it? And who will fix it? You can report it at codeberg.org/GramEditor/gram. It’s true that the editor is provided as-is and there are no warranties. You are of course welcome to try to fix any issues you encounter yourself. Anyone is welcome to submit patches to Gram.
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Wouldn't that just incentivize them to keep building more and more and more and more AI features? I wish to reward the people who build for me, so that they will build more for me. The pitch behind Gram is that it's a hard fork where all the engineering effort still is focused on human use.
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Personally, the contrast is close to ideal, text is easy to parse, the varying sections are well distinguished, and the color scheme pops in a way that’s fun and not distracting.
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The one feature I can't live without is: remote ssh, remote wsl, remote containers. The ability, from my desktop, to open code from any of my machines, and drag'n'drop files or copy/paste code between them as if they were all on my local machine? It's very valuable to me.
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Well I can't speak for the other person, but I am actually building my own IDE because I feel like neither VSCode nor Zed fully captured the dream behind Atom. I'm trying to build the hackable IDE of the future
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I'll surely be reusing "main character syndrome" to characterize single-window apps that want to be platforms.
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I remember following Skinner's blog (almost 19 years ago, jeez) where he describes quitting his cozy job at Google to work on a new editor called Sublime Text. Multiple cursors and other niceties quickly turned me into a paying customer to support the effort. Still use it occasionally (without the unregistered version nag dialog you sometimes see…
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I don’t see any aversion to Language Servers, only to having the editor move things around and pop things up by itself all the time. Turn off things like inlay hints and inline colour swatches and automatic tooltips and only activate them manually, then there’s no problem.
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For something a lil more mac-assed there's also the nimble