I was an avid Sublime Text user for versions 2 and 3. The speed and responsiveness kept me coming back.
Then over time computers for faster, VSCode got more efficient, and plug-in developers started paying less attention to Sublime Text because we all assumed development had stopped.
I started using VSCode because I needed a specific plugin that wasn’t available in Sublime Text. From there I got comfortable with VSCode and slowly stopped using Sublime Text. I think an active plug-in ecosystem and IDE-like features are necessary for text editors to stay relevant in 2021. Sublime Text’s long development hiatus may have stalled that process. Hopefully they can spring back.
This may sound weird, but I genuinely hope they don't "spring back".
IF we consider Sublime to be a text editor and not an IDE, then all I really want from the Sublime dev team is to fix problems if/when they arise. If there are no problems, then push feature development into the plugin ecosystem, but leave out-of-the-box Sublime mostly alone.
When I look at that preview video, I see a team that shares my values in a text editor. They've made updates to keep with changes to operating systems, a few features that would be universally useful in a text editor, but not much else.
For me and my idea of a text editor, that's perfect. It's stable. It's dependable. It's fast. I never have to worry whether the dev team is about to destroy the editor that I love, nor do I have to worry about it becoming obsolete.
Some people may feel it's already obsolete, but every complaint seems to be for IDE-like features, not for a better text editor. If that's what you want, then by all appearances, VS Code is the way to go.
That being said, I hear what you're saying about the plugin ecosystem. If plugin developers have interpreted the relatively quiet and deliberate release cycle of Sublime as "this is no longer being actively developed", then of course they won't develop their plugins for it. But if that's anyone's interpretation, I think they're wrong.
To put it another way, I think of Sublime's approach like Google's approach to their homepage (at least when Marissa Mayer was running things): Job #1 is to say no to scope creep. Keep it simple. Keep it focused. If you can make it better at the focused list of things it's meant to do, then great, do that. But don't add, don't clutter.
I use them the other way around - I do almost all my dev work in VSC these days, but I bought ST3 years ago (ST2 originally I think) and I still prefer it for opening huge log files, XML, etc. which bog down VSC.
Then over time computers for faster, VSCode got more efficient, and plug-in developers started paying less attention to Sublime Text because we all assumed development had stopped.
I started using VSCode because I needed a specific plugin that wasn’t available in Sublime Text. From there I got comfortable with VSCode and slowly stopped using Sublime Text. I think an active plug-in ecosystem and IDE-like features are necessary for text editors to stay relevant in 2021. Sublime Text’s long development hiatus may have stalled that process. Hopefully they can spring back.