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Long-Delayed TextMate 2 Arrives as Public Alpha
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Name one. I have been looking, but I have yet to find anything that competes with TextMate on bundles. Beyond that it is a nice, clean editor.
BBEdit 10 is nice and a huge step up from a usability standpoint from BBEdit 9 (which felt like the interface hadn't been upgraded in 10 years), but it doesn't have a lot of the features that TextMate 1.5 handles through its bundles and the interface can feel downright clunky for a lot of smaller tasks. Writing plugin modules for BBEdit can also be an exercise in frustration. I do use BBEdit (especially for some tasks that it does exceptionally well), but it hasn't managed to fully replace TextMate for me.
TextWrangler certainly isn't it.
SubEthaEdit is fairly nice. It was what I used for a long time before picking up TextMate, but it isn't really there in comparison if you aren't using that feature.
The recent Mac release of Sublime Text 2 was talked about around my office as a possible contender, but the mac version just simply isn't there and feels too much like a ported app, rather than a native app.
There are others out there, most of which have steeper learning curves or don't integrate cleanly into your development flow unless you already are familiar with the underlying tool (e.g., MacVIM). It doesn't mean that it is the Only Text Editor Ever™, but it is a nice, usable, clean and feature-rich editor that does its job very well.
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If you're a serious developer, you're probably not using Javascript. (Well, unless you're Fabrice Bellard.)
I am a "serious developer" and I work in an office with numerous other "serious developers." There is a place in the world for both. If I were to ask around the server developers (my team), we'd see the following mix of editing tools in primary use:
- emacs
- vi
- Eclipse
- IntelliJ
- NetBeans
- TextMate
With a long list of other editing tools that get used for specific tasks (e.g., BBEdit).
Most are proficient in multiple items on that list and have set up their development environments accordingly. We have one guy who uses vi pretty much exclusively, and another who uses emacs pretty much exclusively.
If I want to write out a bunch of python code, I don't reach for Eclipse w/ PyDev or IDLE, but for a good text editor with syntax highlighting. When I work with erlang, I don't use the fairly obnoxious erlide plugin for eclipse. If I want to edit ant, ivy, or maven or other XML files I certainly am not going to load them up in an IDE. When I write SQL I'll frequently prototype it or write the files with a text editor, not an IDE. There's even a percentage of the time with Java code that I don't need or want anything as heavyweight as Eclipse--for example when resolving merges or rebases with git--and so out comes the text editor.
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Surely, this must be the end times. Seriously, Textmate 2 is the equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever. A tragically screwed-up dev cycle of a superb 1.0 product that long ago started showing its age.
Textmate is the go-to text editor for Ruby (a language) and Ruby on Rails (a server framework) coding. Textmate + RoR really started cementing the idea that it was "cool" for a developer to use a Mac. Its "bundle" system of allowing external components to extend the functionality was innovative, and is the only reason it has sustained such a lifespan.
I still use Textmate daily, sometimes for coding, sometimes for other writing. But it's way past due for an update, and sadly it looks like Allan is still far from done with 2.0. But damn it's nice to see this arrive.
Textmate is the go-to text editor for Ruby (a language) and Ruby on Rails (a server framework) coding. Textmate + RoR really started cementing the idea that it was "cool" for a developer to use a Mac. Its "bundle" system of allowing external components to extend the functionality was innovative, and is the only reason it has sustained such a lifespan.
I still use Textmate daily, sometimes for coding, sometimes for other writing. But it's way past due for an update, and sadly it looks like Allan is still far from done with 2.0. But damn it's nice to see this arrive.
Oh wow… I thought this day would never come! Off to check it out…
A Coda–TextMate hybrid would be awesome. I use Coda to do HTML, because I can more easily manage a site that way and preview pages in the same window, but not without some sense of loss in regard to TextMate's coding features.
A Coda–TextMate hybrid would be awesome. I use Coda to do HTML, because I can more easily manage a site that way and preview pages in the same window, but not without some sense of loss in regard to TextMate's coding features.
Uh ? You're using a Unix systems and you think Textmate is the only editor for developers ? I guess all of us VI and Emacs people just don't exist then.
I haven't heard of textmate, aside from pretty menus (which MacVim has), what does it really offer over MacVim or the command line options ?
Uh ? You're using a Unix systems and you think Textmate is the only editor for developers ? I guess all of us VI and Emacs people just don't exist then.
The editor flamewars used to be vi vs. emacs. Now it seems it's vi and emacs vs. everything else.
Never used MacVim (was always an Emacs kinda guy), but Textmate has a bundle system which allows 3rd parties to provide support for other languages. By support I mean code highlighting, hinting, macros, etc. Some bundles are better than others, as to be expected. Some bundles are geared towards generic text formatting. Textmate also allows you to do things like run terminal commands and pipe the output to your document.
It's another tool in the box, but it's a pretty versatile one.
Sounds like VIM to me.
:syn-file
:r!<command>
So really, people saying "this is the only option for Mac!" are being quite naive. Sounds like a nice overall text editor, unfortunately, I spent years getting good with VI/VIM, so I don't really need to pay for this.
Well, I'm certainly not saying that. Text editors are very personal things, and we all have our own requirements and skills. But Textmate is a clean, fast editor with a lot of extensibility and more arcane features. It's a welcome respite from the deluge of laggy, Eclipse-based IDEs with their nonstandard Mac UI.
For the record, it's possible to use vi bindings in Textmate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2251455/vi-bindings-for-textmate
And there's a free trial, if you ever feel like checking it out.
Why, MacVim does all I need apparently, as no one has yet convinced me to something useful Textmate does over it.
Since I'm already over the learning curve for VI, there's really no good reason to change it out.
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I use TextMate every day at work. I'm really excited about this, as a lot of the new changes sound like huge time savers.
I hope the new version delivers, otherwise I may have to defect to Sublime Text.
I use TextMate every day at work. I'm really excited about this, as a lot of the new changes sound like huge time savers.
I hope the new version delivers, otherwise I may have to defect to Sublime Text.
Why, MacVim does all I need apparently, as no one has yet convinced me to something useful Textmate does over it.
Since I'm already over the learning curve for VI, there's really no good reason to change it out.
Hey man, that's cool. Just letting you know. I'm not trying to sell Textmate, I just use it sometimes. Glad you're happy with MacVim!
Well this is how i feel...
I just don't like emacs, I'm sorry, i just don't like it.
TextMate to BBedit or any other software (I've never used coda so rule that out) is just better, I'm not sure why i fell its better, it just feels better. Sure you can do everything with other editors, maybe even more than TextMate, but I fell happier ith TextMate, i feel like the guy who wrote the TextMate, made it specifically for me..
Or let me put it another way, Explaining to you why i love TextMate so much more even though it lacks some of the features to other is like explaining why i love Macs so much even though it lacks some of the software available to PC's
I just don't like emacs, I'm sorry, i just don't like it.
TextMate to BBedit or any other software (I've never used coda so rule that out) is just better, I'm not sure why i fell its better, it just feels better. Sure you can do everything with other editors, maybe even more than TextMate, but I fell happier ith TextMate, i feel like the guy who wrote the TextMate, made it specifically for me..
Or let me put it another way, Explaining to you why i love TextMate so much more even though it lacks some of the features to other is like explaining why i love Macs so much even though it lacks some of the software available to PC's
If there's room in Unixdom for both Vim and emacs, then I'm sure there's room on the Mac for both TextMate and BBEdit (And Vim and emacs and Nano and....jEdit? [size=-2]And there's a Mac version of UltraEdit now?! What's next, Notepad++? TextPad? Sheesh.[/size])
Just like Quicksilver, good things never die, no matter what people say. I always had faith that there'd be a TextMate 2, just like I knew Quicksilver would stick around
- The interface is nice. Feels a little more like BBEdit in some (good) ways without going overboard.
- The project sideboard is significantly improved.
- The bundle manager is very nice, and some of the bundles are ones that I didn't know existed for TextMate (e.g., ant) which make working with those files much easier.
- By default it sets a series of variables to where it thinks various things might be (e.g., git). It's guesses are wrong if you aren't using macports. These can be configured from the Variables tab in the preferences, but it'd be nice if it made more intelligent guesses.
- It has significantly improved support for foreign keyboards, but has some bizarre behavior around them.
- As expected, there are lots of things that are poorly documented or possibly just flat not implemented yet. There aren't error messages telling you when a feature hasn't been implemented yet, so you sort of get to guess.
Actually, that's one of the few reasons I still use it. Other editors are way better at auto indenting, bracketing, and otherwise predicting what you're trying to type, but the infinite (as far as I can tell) single character undo and block selection that actually behaves in a sensible way are two of the reasons I'm not about to give TextMate up.
Right no serious developers build websites or web applications. Javascript is barely used these days. HTML5 is a myth
Those just fall from the sky from some very serious C++-developer up in the clouds using Text Mate. Right?
Very well said.
I routinely work in "major coding languages like C, C++, Objective-C, Ruby, Python and Pearl" a series of languages that I find TextMate a very useful tool for.
As far as those bashing the developer for the delay, perhaps there's a good reason that does _not_ include being lazy. Not everything goes perfectly or according to plan. I live in the present & welcome this news.