Sublime text is very clunky and has that very weird "UI app written in a scripting language feel" to it. I know that's not a value which is easy to quantify, but I think it's down to a slightly weird architecture and latency because of its heavy dependency on python.
The dependence on Python for configuration is for me a decisive objection. My copy of Textmate has little scripts buried all over it in several languages but with Sublime Text I am completely frozen out, or so it seems.
Actually, Python isn't used for configuration at all, just for writing plugins. JSON is the configuration language. You can even change the menus in the app by editing the Main.sublime-menu.
The reason Python is used for the API is because the editor is cross-platform, and Python is the best choice for such a situation. If you want to run other scripts or programs, you can use the python subprocess module.
Yes, exactly, what are called plugins in Sublime Text jargon can only be written in Python. Thus for example, the illustrations of things you can do with the exciting plugin facility -- duplicating the selected text, or encoding the selected text with rot13 -- involve composing things in Python, of all things, else you are completely disabled.
Actually when I first tried TextMate, in the low 1.x versions, it felt like watching the grass grow between each character press and the glyph appearing on screen.
Probably a multi-ms delay due to regexes for syntax highlighting.
And TextMate is not designed like a standard OS X app, either.
I really hate ST2's handling of project-wide file system controls on the left. Renaming a file keeps the old buffer open and I've been caught a few times re-saving under the old name. I've yet to figure out how to open a project directory from the GUI, too.
I always liked the file browser column in TM better.
