> I was mildly annoyed that I paid for a version 14 license and then about 6 months later version 15 came out
The current version of BBEdit is 14.1. Maybe you're getting the version numbers confused here. (BBEdit 14 came out in mid-July of 2021, and while a version 13 license would indeed not work in it because new versions require new licenses, the web site clearly states you can upgrade from BBEdit 13 for free if you bought it on or after January 1, 2021. IIRC, Bare Bones has always been fairly generous in this kind of upgrade policy.)
> And I finally stopped last year when I switched to CotEditor, wanting something more macOS native.
BBEdit has always been a native Mac program, so I'm not sure what it is you're trying to get at here?
If you quit BBEdit it'll restore the state to where it was when you left. It recovers documents after crashes. You can even turn on an option that lets you recover "untitled" documents that you explicitly clicked the "Don't Save" button on. I suppose BBEdit isn't literally saving to the open file as you go, so if that's actually what you want, it's a strike against it. I'd have to put some effort into actually losing data with BBEdit, though, and I think on balance I'd prefer "don't let me lose unsaved changes unintentionally but still let me close a file without saving or revert to the version on disk if I confirm that's what I actually want to do".
By "Versions" I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but BBEdit integrates with the Mac's native file versioning at a level that I don't think I've seen any other editor do. You can select "Search > Find Differences > Compare Against Previous Version" and get a diff just the way you would if you were comparing versions in Git or Subversion.
The current version of BBEdit is 14.1. Maybe you're getting the version numbers confused here. (BBEdit 14 came out in mid-July of 2021, and while a version 13 license would indeed not work in it because new versions require new licenses, the web site clearly states you can upgrade from BBEdit 13 for free if you bought it on or after January 1, 2021. IIRC, Bare Bones has always been fairly generous in this kind of upgrade policy.)
> And I finally stopped last year when I switched to CotEditor, wanting something more macOS native.
BBEdit has always been a native Mac program, so I'm not sure what it is you're trying to get at here?