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> Textmate is now just graphical Notepad on Mac I hope no one reads that and assumes that’s all TextMate is. TextMate is the godfather of all modern “smart” GU

> Textmate is now just graphical Notepad on Mac I hope no one reads that and assumes that’s all TextMate is. TextMate is the godfather of all modern “smart” GUI code editors — VSCode included.

batoure 7y ago
Agreed! anyone reading this who hasn't used TextMate don't pass it by it is an incredibly useful tool to have in your tool belt. It opens faster than just about all IDEs and is feature rich far beyond "graphical Notepad"
steve19 7y ago
Apologies that was in fact a typo.
klodolph 7y ago
Doesn’t BBEdit hold that position?
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  It does, and one can argue it's been maintained and updated much more consistently than TextMate. I still think BBEdit is the best "Swiss army knife" for text manipulation; I've used it for editing huge Markdown-based documentation sites in three tech writing jobs now.
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  I'm not sure, but I think the whole themes, expandability, multiple cursors thing was TextMate first. BBEdit magic was all through AppleScript, which was always inscrutable for me.
wayneftw 7y ago
Visual Studio released in 1997 pre-dates TextMate. There were also quite a few products based on Scintilla which came out in 1999. (And you could edit not just C++/VB/Microsoft-language files with Visual Studio back then. It was extendable to support many languages, which they did.)
- mantap 7y ago
  TextMate's key innovation was its method of parsing using regexes to build a syntax tree, which was extremely general while at the same time being approachable. This lead to a huge variety of grammars, more than any other editor and it became the standard for syntax highlighting in Sublime, Atom, VSCode, etc.
  - wayneftw 7y ago
    I hear you, but I think that if the only thing that VS Code did well was to highlight code, far fewer people would be using it because VS Code is not just a text editor. Far from it. Once you add panels and toolbars with all sorts of GUI tools, consoles, language servers, remote editing, debugging and built-in commands for common external tools like Git - you've got yourself an IDE in my opinion. However, aside from all of that, Microsoft's mastery of autocomplete - which they call Intellisense - is really what attracted people to Visual Studio and later VS Code. I know that's the reason I've always used it. Also, VS always had syntax highlighting before TextMate even if it was implemented differently than how TextMate did it. So, I don't think it's fair at all to say that TextMate is the godfather of VS Code assuming that by saying that, we're saying that it's the reason that we have VS Code or that it's the reason that people are using VS Code... I don't fully understand implication of the phrasing but my guess would be that TextMate is the godfather of the implementation of syntax highlighting that VS Code and many others are using. (I think if we changed godfather to grandfather, it'd make more sense to me because then you have lineage. A godfather is more there as a backup, to be your father in case your biological dad dies. But perhaps, like in the Godfather movies - you go to him for help and advice. So in that respect it sorta makes sense.)
    - TimTheTinker 7y ago
      > Once you add panels and toolbars with all sorts of GUI tools, consoles, language servers, remote editing, debugging and built-in commands for common external tools like Git - you've got yourself an IDE in my opinion. You can have all (or none) of those features in either an editor or an IDE. The core idea of an IDE was to provide a single UI for all aspects of development — which originally included source code editing, compiling, debugging, and testing. To handle all of these tasks within an IDE required the IDE to have a top-down configuration that would enable it to compile and run the project. Editors like VSCode don’t compile or run anything on their own (though doing so is possible via the integrated terminal). Editors thus normally don’t require a project file. They may use files like tsconfig.json to inform internal language services, but those config files are not specific to VSCode.

batoure 7y ago

Agreed! anyone reading this who hasn't used TextMate don't pass it by it is an incredibly useful tool to have in your tool belt. It opens faster than just about all IDEs and is feature rich far beyond "graphical Notepad"

steve19 7y ago

Apologies that was in fact a typo.

klodolph 7y ago

Doesn’t BBEdit hold that position?

chipotle_coyote 7y ago
It does, and one can argue it's been maintained and updated much more consistently than TextMate. I still think BBEdit is the best "Swiss army knife" for text manipulation; I've used it for editing huge Markdown-based documentation sites in three tech writing jobs now.
tambourine_man 7y ago
I'm not sure, but I think the whole themes, expandability, multiple cursors thing was TextMate first. BBEdit magic was all through AppleScript, which was always inscrutable for me.

wayneftw 7y ago

Visual Studio released in 1997 pre-dates TextMate. There were also quite a few products based on Scintilla which came out in 1999. (And you could edit not just C++/VB/Microsoft-language files with Visual Studio back then. It was extendable to support many languages, which they did.)

mantap 7y ago
TextMate's key innovation was its method of parsing using regexes to build a syntax tree, which was extremely general while at the same time being approachable. This lead to a huge variety of grammars, more than any other editor and it became the standard for syntax highlighting in Sublime, Atom, VSCode, etc.
- wayneftw 7y ago
  I hear you, but I think that if the only thing that VS Code did well was to highlight code, far fewer people would be using it because VS Code is not just a text editor. Far from it. Once you add panels and toolbars with all sorts of GUI tools, consoles, language servers, remote editing, debugging and built-in commands for common external tools like Git - you've got yourself an IDE in my opinion. However, aside from all of that, Microsoft's mastery of autocomplete - which they call Intellisense - is really what attracted people to Visual Studio and later VS Code. I know that's the reason I've always used it. Also, VS always had syntax highlighting before TextMate even if it was implemented differently than how TextMate did it. So, I don't think it's fair at all to say that TextMate is the godfather of VS Code assuming that by saying that, we're saying that it's the reason that we have VS Code or that it's the reason that people are using VS Code... I don't fully understand implication of the phrasing but my guess would be that TextMate is the godfather of the implementation of syntax highlighting that VS Code and many others are using. (I think if we changed godfather to grandfather, it'd make more sense to me because then you have lineage. A godfather is more there as a backup, to be your father in case your biological dad dies. But perhaps, like in the Godfather movies - you go to him for help and advice. So in that respect it sorta makes sense.)
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    > Once you add panels and toolbars with all sorts of GUI tools, consoles, language servers, remote editing, debugging and built-in commands for common external tools like Git - you've got yourself an IDE in my opinion. You can have all (or none) of those features in either an editor or an IDE. The core idea of an IDE was to provide a single UI for all aspects of development — which originally included source code editing, compiling, debugging, and testing. To handle all of these tasks within an IDE required the IDE to have a top-down configuration that would enable it to compile and run the project. Editors like VSCode don’t compile or run anything on their own (though doing so is possible via the integrated terminal). Editors thus normally don’t require a project file. They may use files like tsconfig.json to inform internal language services, but those config files are not specific to VSCode.