TextMate vs AptanaStudio

http://www.integratechange.com/2009/03/18/textmate-vs-aptanastudio/

by chazlett • 17 years ago

14 37 17 years ago

pclark• 17 years ago

i wish someone would make a really nice cocoa IDE for ruby (or make xcode work with rails) make it work nicely with Git, Rails, Terminal and auto complete: Sold.

Auto-complete is a lovely way to learn a new language.

Hates_2• 17 years ago

I'm totally of the opposite mindset. I think auto-complete is a terrible way to introduce someone to a new language.

Yes, you may see results quicker, but I've found all that happens is you become reliant upon auto-complete to do the thinking for you. All too often I have seen people use auto-complete as a tool to help them just mindlessly code away rather then taking the time to actually figure out what it is they are trying to achieve. Forcing yourself to actually look at the API and type out a function name cements a concept so much more then autocomplete.

old-gregg• 17 years ago

I'm totally of the opposite mindset. I think auto-complete is a terrible way to introduce someone to a new language.

Agreed. Back in college I remember reading a book about effects of various computer aids on our cognitive development [the users in question were mostly teenagers/students]. Programmers were mentioned too. Relying on compilers to catch syntax errors or auto-completing IDEs to suggest method names we're basically refusing to pay attention/memorize things, which ultimately leads to a much poorer skill quality. Ever since then I've been training myself to expect my code to compile at 1st try, i.e. I would do a quick reviews before hitting the "build" hotkey.

From my experience: I think most Microsoft developers will feel completely lost if left with a command line compiler and notepad.exe Even if you take coding out of the equation, many don't have a good understanding of what makes an executable, i.e. they wont' be able to build a project without an IDE.

carlosrr3• 17 years ago

I agree, seeing all of the documentation on the same page helps you learn other functions that you might otherwise not look at. Also, the higher level the language the less the programmer has to rely on autocompletion.

willwagner• 17 years ago

I agree that it's a terrible way to introduce someone to a new language, but I have to admit, when I have to help out on some Win32 C++ project, it sure is handy for helping to shake the rust off and save time. For me, it's not the language syntax as much as the Win32/MFC/ATL apis, and while I'm now a vim guy, Visual Studio is the one exception for me.

ohhmaagawd2• 17 years ago

This is silly. Auto-complete doesn't do any thinking, it's just presenting you options of what to do. You make the decision. You do the thinking.

evdawg• 17 years ago

I think it's funny that we do all these things to increase our productivity, and then some people use a text editor that hangs on loading files :P.

I would honest-to-god rather be using Notepad then Aptana. Being slow loading text files is just unacceptable.

axod5• 17 years ago

I'm still trying to get used to TextMate (Started using it 2 weeks ago).

It's a good enough editor, but I wish it'd just stop trying to do things for me (Inserting closing brackets/quotes, auto-indenting, etc etc). It's taken a long time to disable all these irritations and I'm not sure I have them all yet.

frisco• 17 years ago

> It's taken a long time to disable all these irritations and I'm not sure I have them all yet.

I feel like you're missing the point of TextMate. These things might seem like annoyances now, but they're there for a reason. Once you get the muscle memory for TextMate it'll become an extension of your body, like a prefix-keyless emacs or vi.

Your profile says you're not new here, so I have to assume you know what you're talking about -- I don't want to get the viemacstextmate holy war started, but if you're from one of the other editors, give TextMate a chance in terms of adapting to it, and I think you'll be surprised. Don't try and force it into the emacs mold; it's not emacs, it's TextMate, and it's loved widely for a reason.

axod5• 17 years ago

I'm coming from jedit, and before that any other basic terminal text editor. I've never been one for help/bundles/snippets/macros/etc

My gripes come for instance when I go back to do something, and TextMate adds in extra idiocy eg

  a = 9+6
  // Oops, need to double all that - (9+6)*2, lets bracket it up...
  a = ()9+6
  // WTF TextMate added a close bracket that is clearly useless

My remaining gripe with TextMate is that I have soft tabs enabled, so pressing tab inserts 4 spaces. But when I press left arrow, it skips over 4 spaces at a time, or sometimes just 1 space if it's not at a tab boundary! I want it to only ever move by one space... (Any ideas welcome on this one).

swombat• 17 years ago

TextMate has a steep learning curve? I can't wait till the author reviews Emacs and vi, the other two big(ger) boys in the eternal editor holy war.

chazlett• 17 years ago

I won't disagree with you on that.

moe2• 17 years ago

http://bc.tech.coop/blog/images/curves.jpg

marbletiles• 17 years ago

I know it's a joke, but those graphs are wrong, as is the way we talk about learning curves.

If something has a steep learning curve, it's easy to learn to use. Look at the vi graph: Assuming the x axis is time and the y axis is knowledge, according to its chart you know how to use virtually all of vi as soon as you start using it.

Things that are hard to learn have shallow learning curves: it takes a long time to become proficient.

khangtoh• 17 years ago

For anyone willing to experience, I would like to suggest Komodo edit, it’s the free version of Komodo IDE. There is great autocomplete for ruby, php and html/css. There is also a thing that does textmate bundle that Komodo calls it Abbreviatons but I never could get it working right with ruby/rails.

jamongkad2• 17 years ago

But Vim already has those features via omnifunc.

ohhmaagawd2• 17 years ago

I'd recommend trying Netbeans with the Ruby Plugin or Ruby Mine.

I've been using Ruby Mine some lately and am pretty impressed. Has a debugger that works well, auto-completion, rake integration, click thru to declaration, etc.

It's not going to be free ($79), but given JetBrains track record with IDEs I think it's a good investment.

I tried NetBeans last year and it seems promising, but haven't used it in 6 months.

latortuga• 17 years ago

It's interesting to see a comparison of apples to oranges (IDE to text editor) when you can very easily compare apples to apples - E text editor very closely resembles TextMate, works on Windows, and supports all (or almost all) of the bundles available for TextMate. It's even cheaper than TextMate.

Timothee2• 17 years ago

But did you want him to compare E with Textmate? His point was that he switched to a Mac and wanted to compare what's out there for RoR on Mac: in his case, Aptana, which he was already using on Windows, and Textmate. Two different things, true, but the former is what he was used to on Windows, and the latter a very common tool for RoR dev on Mac.

As he says in the post, that kind of decision ends up being very personal anyway. I settled on Textmate recently but I'm not sure that will be the case forever. (personally, I'd go for something in between: the speed and simplicity of Textmate with functions like the navigation between classes, auto-completion but without the slowness shown by Eclipse et al)

eli2• 17 years ago

E is compatible with Textmate bundles, but it is not the same editor. For one thing, it's got serious stability problems. TextMate doesn't handle big files well, but it very rarely crashes.

TextMate vs AptanaStudio

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