December, 2005. I had been kicking around the idea of a 3D accelerated text editor for some time. In my head I could see myself zooming in and out of files like I was in a movie. Gasps from the crowd at the smooth action! I could see myself cackling at the luddites with their tired old scrollbars.
I spent a weekend building a prototype that did just that. It zoomed! It panned! Only, it sucked. It turns out that you can't zoom very far out at all before the text becomes totally illegible. Working on files you can't read wasn't quite what I had in mind!
I did get some insight out of the prototype however, and it gradually morphed into what Sublime Text is today. You'll get to see what that is, when I finally get the bloody thing released later this year.