I may have spoken too soon about TextMate 2

http://www.marco.org/2012/09/03/textmate-progress

by shawndumas • 14 years ago

71 34 14 years ago

jasonshen• 14 years ago

Can someone explain what he means?

I didn't read whatever he's referring to either. It looks like Textmate is receiving regular (almost daily) updates so I assume his initial opinion of Textmate 2 was not very good.

colomon• 14 years ago

I don't know what he's specifically referring to, but there was a lot of talk that open sourcing Textmate 2 was a sign the project was basically dead.

gyardley• 14 years ago

TextMate 2 was just sent to retire on a farm upstate, kids.

http://www.marco.org/2012/08/09/textmate-2-open-sourced

uiri• 14 years ago

The screenshot isn't exactly readable, but it appears that TexMate2's source code was put on Github on August 10th. Since then, there have been substantial changes as evidenced by release notes for changes being made several times a week since the release of the source code. Most notable I think are the August 26th release notes for changes since the previous notes on the 22nd and the August 19th release notes for changes since the previous notes on the 15th. If this kind of activity continues, it will prove false his prediction when it was open sourced that it would be abandoned.

jfarmer• 14 years ago

I can't speak for Marco, but I suspect he feels a bit like I do.

I used TextMate for a long time. I switched to TextMate 2 as soon as the beta hit. Over the last year, more and more of my peers have switched from TM/TM2 to Sublime Text in large part because it's better maintained than TextMate.

When Allan announced he was open sourcing TM2 I thought the writing was on the wall: TM2 was all-but-dead. I even shelled out for Sublime Text, resigned to learning a new text editor.

Every so often I'd open TM2, though, and each time there were a handful of updates. There were at least 3-4 updates per week!

My expectations were totally dashed. Rather than spelling the end of TM2, open sourcing it resulted in a new-found momentum for the project. I've since switched back from Sublime Text to TM2, just to see how it'll shake out.

spdy• 14 years ago

Cant find the release notes he is referring but TM2 is highly active on github. https://github.com/textmate/textmate/commits/master

Will be interesting to watch how far this will go looks like TM2 gets a new upspring.

smashing• 14 years ago

He means that instead of becoming open-source and dying, it became a Mozilla/Firefox situation.

statictype2• 14 years ago

In total hindsight, it seems like this should have been expected.

For open source projects to succeed, it needs a strong, clear voice and leader and a large community of users (which results in a large enough group of developers willing to contribute).

TM2 has the bonus in that there's an extremely significant overlap between the user base and those who can and want to contribute to development.

The only question was whether there would be someone taking charge and pushing development forward, accepting patches etc...

It looks like that's very much the case.

timriley• 14 years ago

You can see these (frequently updated) TextMate 2 release notes here: https://github.com/textmate/textmate/blob/master/Application...

d3ad1ysp0rk• 14 years ago

No matter how popular your blog is, its important to at least link to the subject you're referring to if you're doing a follow up.

juniorer• 14 years ago

Is there a reason one must update to the latest editor or the latest version of the editor. I have been using Textmate for the past 5 years. It has served me really well. If it continues to work as it always does, upgrading is for better productivity?

d0m• 14 years ago

I'm happy I switched to cars even though horses served my ancestors quite well ;-) Still, I'll agree with you that not all releases are better. Let's hope that Textmate 2 will live up to its potential.

dantiberian• 14 years ago

The danger with using an application that is not current like Textmate 1 is that an OS update could majorly break it and you would be stuck between keeping the tool you know or upgrading and losing access to it.

bdcravens• 14 years ago

If an OS update breaks a text editor, pretty sure that a sign of an OS failure.

mcav• 14 years ago

Back when I used textmate a year or two ago, it would crash and hang frequently, especially when dealing with large files or folders.

Argorak• 14 years ago

TM 1 and 2 can be installed side by side. It's not like you have to switch immediately. So you can just try it out for yourself.

netghost• 14 years ago

Nah, Textmate 1.x is exactly as good as it was 5 years ago. Actually it's a bit better, the community has been releasing more bundles for it. TextMate 2 seems to have some better underlying architecture, but nothing better for productivity. Oh, except it's the new thing ;)

Derbasti• 14 years ago

You mean, no regex incremental search, single character undo and no split views? Yeah, works beautifully.

There are too many alternatives that overtook TM quite a while ago. Look at Chocolat for kinda Textmate-done-right, or Sublime Text 2 for something that goes well beyond Textmate.

But then, if you are happy with it, more power to you. It's not like it is broken...

kposehn• 14 years ago

I'm simply waiting - with baited breath - for one thing: split views.

This is all I need, but I need it _badly_ as it is one features that I use constantly. I've been tempted to try and code it myself, but I think I'm not really going to be able to do it nearly as well as other more experienced devs.

iopuy• 14 years ago

Today might have been a good day to go on Hacker News.

Evbn• 14 years ago

Is it worthwhile to have a arbitrary unrelated display ads on the blog of the proprietor of a commercial app? Seems bizarrely off-message. But I guess you could use instapaper to avoid the ad distraction.

statictype2• 14 years ago

It does seem like an curious decision coming from someone who, judging by what he says on his podcast, seems to hate ads.

navitronic• 14 years ago

Seeing as an aside/light hearted post like this makes it onto the HN front page, I'd say its a reasonable deal for the advertiser in terms of eyeballs/brand awareness, even if the HN audience is not their intended audience.

noirman2• 14 years ago

Anyone care to do a comparison (for now) between Sublime Text 2 and TextMate 2?

noirman2• 14 years ago

Open source might just be the cure for vaporware.

hardik988• 14 years ago

I really hate this fad of posting every single blog post of popular programmers (Redditors would call it karma-whoring). Once upon a time, Marco may felt one way about Textmate 2.

Can someone tell me how his change in opinion concern anyone else ?

edit: grammar

erikpukinskis• 14 years ago

Can someone tell me how his change in opinion concern anyone else ?

It's not his change of opinion which is newsworthy, it's his useful visualization of recent commits to TextMate.

It's newsworthy because many of us are programmers, and there was rampant speculation that the open-sourcing meant that it was being abandoned.

Every few months, there's another round of grumbles about some poster or another, and how they get upvotes just because they're "popular", but I don't buy it. Why would people vote up their favorite sources? It doesn't make any sense. What's more likely is that there are a bunch of people who are interested in the same stuff as Marco, and they just upvote everything that they like.

Occam's Razor, people.

jyap• 14 years ago

The problem is that certain Hacker News users are submitting stories from blogger X. No matter how relevant/irrelevant the story is to Hacker News. There is no curation. There is just a race to 1st submit to gain karma.

For Marco.org submissions:

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=mar...

Here's another example of Daring Fireball submissions. You may see a trend in the users performing the submitting:

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=dar...

bithive1232• 14 years ago

Hmm, it seems I may have been wrong about HN...

(Note: This is a meta post. Please interpret in proper context).

bithive1232• 14 years ago

Instead of downvoting, why not explain why this is an appropriate link for HN? It's not even an article, and has no context. Therefore seeing it made me question my assumptions about HN.

doktrin• 14 years ago

I didn't downvote you, but my hunch would be it was due to the somewhat snarky nature of your comment. The occasionally dogmatic enforcement of protocol can be grating, but it does serve a legitimate purpose.

For what it's worth, I also felt this post didn't deserve to be on the front page. I can't really remember the last time I clicked on a more uninformative link.

stuaxo• 14 years ago

What is this, a big jpeg of some text ?

I may have spoken too soon about TextMate 2

Related Stories