macOS Favorite Text Editor MBP

[simplebeep]

Because it is faster in general and allows you to do things that are simply just not possible in GUI applications.

Yeah. Ideally, these capabilities and speed would be brought to a GUI Cocoa app. It should also be easier to show hidden system files in the Finder.

Oh, well.

 

[Cromulent]

Yeah. Ideally, these capabilities and speed would be brought to a GUI Cocoa app.

Unfortunately it simply is not possible to express some of the expressive commands that the command line allows in a GUI form. Not without a huge loss in efficiency anyway.

 

[Not Available]

Once you get your feet wet with the CLI, some things are way easier or faster to do in the Terminal. For example, searching. The GUI search is a pain in... wherever you want. In the Terminal I only write locate FILE and there you go. You get its path. If you wanted to find and edit your php.ini in the GUI, you'd have to type the name in the search bar in Finder, edit some stuff around there, edit the permissions (which also means editing them back when you're done), and then open it in your editor of choice. Inside the Terminal, it's as simple as locate php.ini, and then sudo vim /etc/private/php.ini.

Some things are easier to do the obscure way. For example, I like the Windows search better, because I can just type * in the Search... application select the "image" file type and boom, there's all the images in my computer. In OS X, I have to go through a lot of idiot GUI and dropdowns to get the same result.

 

[Stella]

joe for terminal
bbedit ( though I don't really like it , slow start up times etc).

 

[mags631]

TextMate -- and I like it for python programming.

 

[talmy]

Epsilon -- a friendlier to use variation of EMACS. I've used it for nearly 25 years. It has implementations for every OS I use now (OS X, Windows, Linux) as well as those I used in the past (OS/2, MSDOS, Unix). If forced, I use vi. Because I use multiple platforms, I gravitate toward editors that can follow me everywhere.

 

[mward333]

simply put: emacs!

 

[fwhh]

Smultron plain and simple, and it has useful features, too.

 

[elppa]

If you wanted to find and edit your php.ini in the GUI, you'd have to type the name in the search bar in Finder, edit some stuff around there, edit the permissions (which also means editing them back when you're done), and then open it in your editor of choice.

.

Have you ever actually tried the double click to open option with TextMate/TextWrangler? Or are you just assuming that you need to change permissions first.

You may be surprised how smartly they handle it.

PS: A lot of good GUI editors have CLI hooks, so you can say “mate httpd.conf”, “coda php.ini” etc.

I think this should be split into GUI and CLI editors. Some people just don't get on with CLI editors. For my money TextMate takes some beating as a text editor.

 

[liquid stereo]

Since 1996

BBEdit. Because it doesn't suck.

Whats everyone favorite? mac osx snow leopard....

 

[dmr727]

vim if at the command line or TextWrangler otherwise.

 

[miles01110]

BBEdit. Because it doesn't suck.

I never understood why BBEdit takes so long to load compared to Textmate or of course emacs / vi.

 

[Quetsche]

I use an old version of SubEthaEdit.
Not sure it still exists…

 

[sammich]

I'm wish I could use CLI based text editors except, I occasionally watch in envy as people fly through making adjustments in their code, and I'm stuck with pageup/pagedown, and scrolling and clicking.

TextMate was my mainstay for the first 3 years of CS but I've stumbled into using XCode, now I can't get away from it. Building/running in C/C++ is so much more streamlined.

---

Any idea when TextMate 2 is coming out?

 

[AlmostThere]

TextMate really struggles with even medium sized files, open anything over a few Mb and it just locks up. I have really tried to like it but I can't cope with the poor performance.

 

[nanocore]

If you are coding, and a touch typist, the only answer is vim.

 

[Cromulent]

One of the reasons I've been using Vim much more than normal really is because you can have work flows like the image shown.

In a GUI editor the space required on screen is too large to be able to fit all the windows on screen that I need to get work done.

I think you really need to use Vim all the time to get the most out of it. If you only use it occasionally you'll always be referring to your reference sheet of commands. If you use it regularly you'll be able to learn them all. Bit like programming really. You'll never get anywhere if you only do it once a month.

 

[mward333]

If you are coding, and a touch typist, the only answer is vim.

There are two camps of people, the "vi/vim" people and the "emacs" people. Both will swear that their editor is better than the other type of editor.

For instance, I write a ton of code, and I'm a touch typist, and I prefer emacs... but that's probably just because I was trained on emacs many years ago. My wife always preferred vi. There are pros and cons of both.

I'm willing to respect the differences between these two campus of people. The vi versus emacs comparisons have been going on since the beginning of time....

 

[talmy]

There are two camps of people, the "vi/vim" people and the "emacs" people. Both will swear that their editor is better than the other type of editor.

It's really a question of "mode" versus "modeless" editors. Vi/vim has modes much like the older UNIX ed, TECO, and the editors in MSDOS and CP/M. EMACS is modeless, and as far as I know was the first widely used modeless editor. At first it was big and slow, but far more configurable/programmable than other editors. But computers have gotten so much faster that speed and size are no longer issues. Virtually all editors now are modeless.

I'm an EMACS fan, but I was big on TECO back in the 70's and early 80's.

 

[angelwatt]

I never understood why BBEdit takes so long to load compared to Textmate or of course emacs / vi.

It only takes 3 or 4 seconds to load for me (and that includes opening a few files from my last run), not very slow compared to most applications.

 

[miles01110]

It only takes 3 or 4 seconds to load for me (and that includes opening a few files from my last run), not very slow compared to most applications.

But...it's a text editor. 3-4 seconds is just kind of "wtf" ??

 

[Cromulent]

But...it's a text editor. 3-4 seconds is just kind of "wtf" ??

BBEdit is one of the oldest programming text editors on the Mac. I'm not surprised it is not as efficient as some of the newer entrants. Given that BBEdit does have tons of useful features if you want a no fuss text editor. Plus the new project stuff is useful.

Their Python syntax highlighting sucks though. In fact most of the default syntax highlighting is pretty plain which kind of defeats the purpose of making different parts stand out.

 

[AlmostThere]

BBEdit is one of the oldest programming text editors on the Mac. I'm not surprised it is not as efficient as some of the newer entrants.

Hmmm, the alternatives being discussed are Vi and Emacs ... I think BBEdit is very much one of the trendy youngsters

 

[tkingart]

Smultron

or BBEdit

 

[winninganthem]

But...it's a text editor. 3-4 seconds is just kind of "wtf" ??

Agreed lol.

Hmmm, the alternatives being discussed are Vi and Emacs ... I think BBEdit is very much one of the trendy youngsters

Haha yeah.

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I like TextMate when I'm too lazy to type 'e' 'm' 'a' 'c' 's' into Terminal. All of that C-x'ing gets annoying after awhile too, but... I really don't think anything beats Emacs for Lisp programming.