Ask YC: Mac Text Editors

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192058

by nomad • 18 years ago

15 71 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Is it worth paying for Textmate or can I find a free one that will do, like TextWrangler? I'm just starting to learn how to code so I think my needs are pretty basic.

ericmc• 18 years ago

While TextMate is nice, and I paid for it myself, I recently decided to start learning Vim because you can essentially use it on any platform. It may take some time to learn, but I believe it will be greatly beneficial in the long run.

I urge you to check out MacVim (http://code.google.com/p/macvim/).

You can add many of TextMate's features to Vim using plugins like snippetsEmu.

j2d23• 18 years ago

Install Emacs... It's free and every editor is trying to reinvent what this one already does.

jimbokun• 18 years ago

And if you don't know Emacs yet, start with Aquamacs. It has "normal" Mac keybindings set in addition to the Emacs ones for most operations, and comes with many of the best Emacs packages already installed.

Heck, even if you know Emacs well, give Aquamacs a try. All of the pre-installed packages can be a big time saver over downloading and installing each of them individually.

pfedor• 18 years ago

+1 for Aquamacs. Two years ago I tried several options, here are the screenshots if you care:

Aquamacs: http://www.mogiel.net/~pfedor/emacs/1.png Regular emacs, using mac's native UI with the pretties font I tried (and I tried quite a few): http://www.mogiel.net/~pfedor/emacs/2.png Regular emacs, using X, with the font I normally use on Linux: http://www.mogiel.net/~pfedor/emacs/3.png Emacs ran inside Apple terminal: http://www.mogiel.net/~pfedor/emacs/4.png

As you can see, (1) and (4) kicks (2) and (3)'s ass with respect to the looks of the font. (4) would be a good option, especially since it comes with the OS X, but you have to use ESC, key instead of meta+key (b/c of Apple terminal), which kind of sucks.

Plus, Aquamacs lets you set the color theme:

http://www.mogiel.net/~pfedor/emacs/default.png http://www.mogiel.net/~pfedor/emacs/black.png http://www.mogiel.net/~pfedor/emacs/classic.png http://www.mogiel.net/~pfedor/emacs/xcode.png

Aquamacs has some behaviors that I don't very much care for, like opening a new window every time you open a file, but it can be easily fixed in the .emacs file.

thingsilearned• 18 years ago

This article discusses your emacs options and some setup tips

http://thingsilearned.wordpress.com/2007/05/07/emacs-for-mac...

whacked_new• 18 years ago

Speaking of Emacs, I've recently started fearing whether it leads to excessive pinky usage. Has anybody had problems with this?

lbrandy• 18 years ago

It does greatly increase your pinky use. Don't worry. It can handle it.

mnemonicsloth• 18 years ago

If you haven't already, bind the Control modifier to your Caps Lock key. Emacs was developed on workstations with this key configuration, and a lot of key combinations make more sense for your fingers that way.

If you've already done that, I wouldn't worry too much -- there are plenty of programmers working now who've been using Emacs for more than 20 years.

ambition• 18 years ago

I'm already very familiar with Emacs, but I picked up TextMate anyway. I'm happy with my decision when working on a Mac.

TextMate has a free trial, and the Pragmatic book on it is a solid introduction. But since you're just starting, the price might not be worth it.

wandermatt2• 18 years ago

There is a free 30 day of demo of TextMate. Why not try it and then ask nomad whether it's worth it? The relevant thing is what works best for you - if you are a programmer then the price of any of these is inconsequential (yes, even BBEdit) given how much you will be using it. On the Mac, more so than on other platforms, you will find that shareware apps are frequently best-of-breed.

projectileboy• 18 years ago

Depends on what you're doing. I like WriteRoom if I'm writing prose. I like TextMate for generic code viewing and editing (e.g., random XML docs). I still prefer IntelliJ for Java or Arc coding.

ia• 18 years ago

smultron has been good for me, although i am not familiar enough with textmate to compare the two.

http://smultron.sourceforge.net/

justindz• 18 years ago

I'm a fan of Smultron as well. I've been using it for a few years. I don't maintain a large, complicated code base so I haven't felt anything lacking. The editor itself is nice, it handles multiple files and interacts with Finder pretty well and the syntax coloring works well. I created a syntax definition myself which was also easy.

I also like the easy shortcuts for moving text blocks, commenting, chopping, conversion, etc. I'd say try it out, then buy TextMate if you don't get what you need from Smultron.

devilsenigma• 18 years ago

The learning curve for Vim, Emacs is much higher than textmate. If you can afford to buy Textmate, then do so. It is well worth the money and will increase your productivity.

j2d23• 18 years ago

Learning how the best tools (emacs or vim) work is also worthwhile, even if just for posterity.

maurycy• 18 years ago

It is a bad sign that such comment got so many upvotes.

Of course, it takes less time NOW to dig into TextMate, but VIm or Emacs changes your way of thinking. That's exactly why it makes sense to learn Lisp or C. Even if they're hardly usable in the current market, they make you a better programmer.

Oompa3• 18 years ago

What does Emacs or Vim have over TextMate? My friend was a hardcore Vim user but ended up switching to TextMate because it has enough keyboard shortcuts to make him happpy, but also has a nice bundle system that adds a lot of snippets.

jacobolus5• 18 years ago

It is a bad sign that such a comment go so many upvotes.

> Of course, it takes less time NOW to dig into TextMate, but VIm or Emacs changes your way of thinking.

That you think TextMate won’t change your way of thinking shows that you have not used it in any serious way. Several aspects of the TextMate approach, particularly its declarative language grammars and the use of css-like selectors for assigning commands, syntax highlighting, etc., are fundamentally more flexible and powerful than the pitiful equivalents in Emacs or Vim.

TextMate’s low floor, no ceiling approach has enabled some complete newcomers to create amazingly useful tools for themselves, which would have been all-but-impossible for them to create in Emacs or Vim. It slowly sucks users in, teaching them first to make simple macros, then to use regular expressions, then to write their own code, in a gradual process.

It takes less time to dig into because the software is better designed, not because it is less “thought-changing”, or because the digging can’t go as deep.

Hexstream• 18 years ago

If you can afford to learn Emacs, then do so. It is well worth the time and will increase your productivity.

jwr• 18 years ago

Emacs.app is your friend. Seriously.

antiform• 18 years ago

In my opinion, it would be a lot more productive to learn one of the "standard text editors," namely vi(m) or emacs. The learning curve is higher, but it will allow to be very productive on almost any Unix-based operating system.

Textmate is a great product with a lot of useful features right out of the box, and it very Mac-like with its UI and Apple-style keyboard shortcuts. It also has a lot of macros, and you can access a lot of shell commands straight from the menus. However, by hiding all of these details, it makes it more difficult to use a computer that does not have Textmate on it.

Thus, if the "Macness" of a program is very important to you, and you don't mind being dependent on one machine and one proprietary program, then Textmate is certainly worth the cost. If not, then I recommend you save the money and build skills for the future by learning how to work with vim or emacs.

wandermatt2• 18 years ago

Although most people who use these common programs have to customize them extensively. Using emacs without my .emacs file can be as disorienting as using another editor.

Not sure if you're thinking of TextMate or TextWrangler. TextWrangler does have a Mac-like UI and uses Apple-style keyboard shortcuts. TextMate's UI is not particularly Mac-like, it exposes shell commands quite directly, and most of the macros are shell/ruby/etc scripts.

To illustrate the difference, TextWrangler has a menu command to sort the current document, and a menu command to remove duplicate lines. TextMate has "Filter Through Command" which lets you apply arbitrary command like "sort | uniq" to the current document.

tlrobinson2• 18 years ago

TextMate is my first choice.

Also, SubEthaEdit is nice for collaborative editing.

j2d23• 18 years ago

What makes you choose TextMate over other editors?

cbryan• 18 years ago

I use TextMate because it just goes. The defaults work great for me and it has builtin support for 90% of what I want to do. I was a big Aquamacs user, but when I stupidly lost my .emacs I just couldn't justify the time it would take to rebuild it.

I'll go back to Aquamacs someday, but for now I'm a TextMate guy.

jacobolus5• 18 years ago

TextMate is significantly easier to customize than other editors, and those customizations are extremely powerful and flexible.

tlrobinson2• 18 years ago

It's simple and easy to use if you want it to be simple, but powerful if you need it to be powerful.

TextMate sort of embraces the Unix philosophy (like using filter programs), but in a native GUI application that just works really well with everything else on OS X (like seamlessly editing files on an SFTP server via Transmit, etc).

If I'm working on the command line and I want to edit a document I just type "mate filename". I can also get a file browser of a directory by typing "mate directoryname" or just "mate .", then open multiple files in tabs.

Syntax highlighting is excellent, and themeable. All the common languages are built in, and you can get bundles for nearly any other language. Bundles include a hell of a lot more than just syntax highlighting too.

You can set up shortcuts for snippets of code and templates, like typing "html" then <tab> could give you a standard skeleton of an HTML document, and other more powerful macros.

You can easily pipe any text through any command line program you want. Need to sort a list of stuff? Just filter it through "sort". Need the current date? Just run "date" and TextMate inserts the result. Or any other arbitrarily complex command.

Of course, emacs, vi, etc probably have many of these features, but lack the integration with OS X. And I simply don't have the time/patience to learn them.

Oh, and the only SubEthaEdit feature besides collaborative editing that I miss in TextMate is the ability to copy an XHTML representation of syntax highlighted code. Very handy for blog posts, etc. And the multiple regex implementations in find.

aneesh• 18 years ago

SubEthaEdit is great for multiple people editing the same file. Not like Google-docs' "save and refresh", it's truly real-time collaboration from anywhere you have an internet connection.

dnaquin• 18 years ago

I've been using vim for years, but I'm picking up Textmate after the free trial ends.

ivankirigin• 18 years ago

TextMate and BBedit are both highly recommended.

pixpop• 18 years ago

Cost is a lousy reason to choose something else over Textmate. It's high quality software, worth every penny.

Having said that, I paid for Textmate and used it for a couple of months before chucking it in favor of emacs. I'd never used emacs before, though my first editor was TECO for those who remember. I started with Aquamacs emacs, which I found no more difficult to pick up than Textmate. Ultimately, I switched to Carbon emacs, because it is more like the emacs I use on Linux and Cygwin.

cooldude127• 18 years ago

this sounds a lot like what I did. I own a license to textmate, but lately i have been using Emacs a lot more. I love it. Textmate still has a special place in my heart, but right now Emacs just supports more of what I need, and it works with all my platforms.

jacobolus5• 18 years ago

> Emacs just supports more of what I need

What, specifically?

maximilian• 18 years ago

I basically use TextMate for typing up Latex. It has all kinds of builtin goodness that makes everything easier. Its also easy to add your own ideas copying from what is already there.

Whats cool about textmate is that you can using any scripting language to write macros. Most of the ones that come with Textmate are written in Ruby, but you could use anything, which is pretty cool I think.

rmenke• 18 years ago

It really depends on the language you plan to learn. If the language has a de facto IDE, you would be best served by that. Otherwise, Emacs offers a number of language-directed enhancements that help a lot with boilerplate work.

(And c'mon, MacVim and Emacs.app? Just open Terminal.app and run Emacs or vim directly! Both are pre-installed on OS X.)

Jasber• 18 years ago

I actually really like TextWrangler.

It's close enough to BBEdit I don't mind the missing features for it being free.

If you're looking for "1 window development" try Coda: http://www.panic.com/coda/

Otherwise I concur with what everyone else is saying.

VIM/Emacs if you're willing to learn--otherwise TextMate is supposed to be good.

The best solution however, is the one that you feel most comfortable in.

Try each one for 2 weeks and see what happens to your productivity.

Personally, TextMate does wierd things for me, so I prefer TextWrangler.

When I'm not on my Mac, VIM all the way.

I really want to give Emacs a good run but I can't switch my key bindings on this computer, and the Control+Alt keys are killer on my fingers.

m0nty• 18 years ago

Komodo Edit: http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_ide/komodo_edit.m...

TextWrangler is also good. Can't understand why Textmate is so highly regarded, but editors are a very personal thing.

elagothro• 18 years ago

Personally, I use jEdit for the majority of my web programming unless I need to do a lot of FTP and site-structure related stuff, then I will use Coda.

For my non-web programming, I use jEdit or Emacs, depending on the situation.

kirubakaran• 18 years ago

Investing your time in Emacs is a good idea in the longish term. Also learn VIM if you can.

http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/effective-emacs

(I use both Emacs and VIM, for different purposes)

mtts2• 18 years ago

It depends. If you pay in dollars, Textmate is fairly expensive, yes. If you don't, its about 25 glasses of beer in a pub. No big deal. For that money you get the text editor with the largest community of developers on the Mac platform which in itself is worth paying for. Textwrangler, on the other hand, is dead (or rather, it's a stripped down free version of a dead editor called BBEdit) so investing time to learn it isn't worth it, IMHO.

If the price bothers you, use vi or emacs. Neither of those integrate too well with the rest of the OS X environment (though they're getting better) and learning them will help you on other unices as well. That is especially true for vi - no matter how poorly endowed the unix, there's always a vi to work with (on the other hand, bash uses emacs key bindings by default, so it doesn't hurt to learn those as well)

lux2• 18 years ago

How is BBEdit a dead editor exactly?

I've used BBEdit for about 8 years now, since it was pretty much one of the only kids on the Mac block for a long time. But I never felt limited by that choice, I felt quite good about it compared to what was out there in the Windows world (I'm also a regular vim user too).

BBEdit is a powerful and stable editor that handles all my needs well, including integration with external scripts (shell, etc) and integrates nicely into OSX as well. It doesn't have nearly the current popularity of TextMate nor pre-installed script library for everything under the sun, but it seems far from dead from my perspective. I've tried TextMate several times now. Maybe old habits die hard, but I honestly didn't find a compelling reason not to stick with BBEdit.

As a mature product in a fairly mature industry, how much activity is really needed as far as new releases/features go? I know I have my personal wish list, but I'm a pretty happy BBEdit user, and wouldn't consider it anywhere near a dead product.

mtts2• 18 years ago

Of course it can handle your needs. It's no match, however, for the community around Textmate that provides all sorts of bundles and snippets that may come in handy (and most of which you will never ever use).

For example, if a new web application framework comes out tomorrow, you can be fairly sure someone will create a Textmate bundle for it the day after. Somehow I don't see that happen for BBEdit.

rw• 18 years ago

Vim. It's Vi-iMproved. Once you know a vi clone, you will be able to hack fast, and on any unix machine. Very valuable.

Recently, this was posted to HN (and I quote from it): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=151637

"Paul Graham still uses it for his lisp and arc hacking, Tim O'Reilly is a confessed vi-er, SlickEdit and Crisp have vi emulation..."

nostrademons• 18 years ago

How well does vim work on a Mac? I'm a regular (g)vim user on Linux, but am thinking of getting a Mac for my next computer. I'm a little wary of using standard *nix tools on platforms they're not native to, though, because I tried emacs + GHC on Windows in college and found that Windows did things differently enough that all the normal help resources online didn't really apply (emacs users tend to laugh at you when you say you're using Windows anyway ;-)).

Is the Mac/vim combination better in that respect? Things reasonably similar to how you'd use gvim on Linux?

Oompa3• 18 years ago

I know that regular vim is available for OS X, and I also know that a special "MacVim" also exists. MacVim is more integrated with OS X as a whole, and has a gui like gvim.

giles_bowkett• 18 years ago

I use TextMate but frequently threaten to switch back to vi, or learn emacs.

command-line emacs and vi come pre-installed on OS X boxes, and you can download excellent GUI versions free (MacVim and Aquamacs).

On the general topic what I would really like to do is have strong customized versions of each. only way to be sure.

SwellJoe• 18 years ago

I never understand these text editor questions that come up every few days on every site about hacking.

There are two text editors: vim and emacs

Editing text is a solved problem. Pick one, and get back to work.

PI• 18 years ago

I use BBEdit, it's expensive but It's the only text editor I feel comfortable using.

bprater• 18 years ago

Coda is smexy if you need to do alot of FTP related hacking.

TY• 18 years ago

Agree, Coda (http://www.panic.com/coda) is one very slick application for web related work where lots of FTPing is required. It also supports syntax highliting for most popular scripting languages (Ruby, Python, Perl, PHP, JavaScript and others) and has a great CSS editor AND integrated Terminal.

Plus you can choose to preview how your web app looks like in various browsers from Coda.

There are many more features, it's one very useful and slick app for web development work - HTML/CSS and lightweight scripting.

For heavier jobs (Lisp and non-web based Python programming) I use Aquamacs - definitely check it out.

cpr• 18 years ago

Yes, definitely just use the built-in Emacs from the command line. Less flash & less Mac integration, but it works the same whether running on your system or running ssh'd into a Unix-based server. (But be sure to (10.5) use "Preferences > Settings > Keyboard > Use option as meta key".)

Also, note that you can customize the Cocoa text environment to be pretty much straight Emacs keystrokes (it's already there, but you have to configure it). See http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/Cocoa%20Text%20System.... for a wonderful set of tips and hints.

It's heaven having Emacs editing commands in any web-based text widget (like this one), and everywhere else that's Cocoa-based text.

MaysonL• 18 years ago

This is the most informative and helpful comment in this whole thread! Thank you!

nomad• 18 years ago

Seems like there's good community support behind VIM/Emacs and TextMate. Though mainly I get a sense that many try a few and settle into one. I think my strategy will be to try VIM or Emacs or both, and if I find the learning curve too high, switch over to TextMate. Thanks!

geuis2• 18 years ago

I am really surprised only 2 other people have mentioned Smultron. At least to me, it is by far a superior application to textmate, text wrangler, and bbedit. I have not used emacs and coda, but will be trying them when I get home.

I work in both windows and mac worlds. By far, textpad on windows is the #1 text editor I've ever used. Last year I started doing web development on macs and quickly got frustrated nothing was available that would do everything textpad does. I even tried running it in emulation but some wierdness didnt leave it as a functional option at the time.

I tried various text editors until I found smultron. Easily the best little text editor ive found for mac so far, and I can't recommend it enough.

geuis2• 18 years ago

I tried various text editors until I found smultron. Easily the best little text editor ive found for mac so far, and I can't recommend it enough.

gtani• 18 years ago

Well, if you become the type where it really bothers you if you have bugs in yoru code, your needs won't be basic for long. I'm of 2 minds on this. I love Textmate, and Gray's Pragmatic book is superb. It just flows from my brain. My only complain is working the key combinations on a macbook keyboard (which i suppose is also true of emacs )

But I have to work on Linux and Windows boxes, too. So, either look into the various packages for remote editing in textmate, or, more simply, vim. You can also look at eclipse and jedit as cross-platform editors. I think it's really useful to get adept at 2 editors, thothere's a 15 minute transition each time you have to switch. The upside is that you periodically get the "I wonder how you do this in textmate/eclipse/emacs" lightbulb.

There's a couple others i've really liked, while i'm at it, Komodo and Wing IDE for python work, but they're kinda expensive.

uniwiz• 18 years ago

Komodo edit is really good. I had a tough decision between TextMate or to use free alternative (komodo edit). Only problem with komodo is the anti aliasing that is on by default and cannot be turned off in the application. One option is to recompile whole komodo (including mozilla) and to disable AA, or do this in terminal:

defaults write com.activestate.Komodo AppleAntiAliasingThreshold 20

shiranaihito• 18 years ago

TextMate looks pretty nifty when someone can use it well.

I've used it briefly, but didn't look at the 'extra' functionality.

It might be quite alright for a casual coder.

sunkencity• 18 years ago

Major reason to use TextMate is that it's got a good file tree overview, like eclipse. I find that working with rails and constantly looking around and inspecting the file tree is very pleasant in textmate. I like emacs, but not for jumping around between files, and the speedbar is horrible. On textmate if something happens in the file system it's instantly reflected when you switch back into textmate. I wish the speedbar would recieve a good rewrite in emacs.

Otoh, development on textmate seems to be pretty slow or nonexistent, it would be nice if split view would have been implemented by now.

Ask YC: Mac Text Editors

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