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Apple fan/dev here: he's an old school Mac influencer who got famous for writing the first popular Mac RSS client, and blind to the effects his particular narra

Apple fan/dev here: he's an old school Mac influencer who got famous for writing the first popular Mac RSS client, and blind to the effects his particular narrative would have on those numbers - it's the same 30,000 people who are hip to Mac blog culture, not independent discovery on two separate platforms

webwielder2 7y ago
The Venn diagram of people who use BBedit and NetNewswire is roughly a circle.
- oefrha 7y ago
  Pretty sure BBEdit has wider appeal than NetNewsWire. For one thing BBEdit is the only decent text editor on Mac App Store (not that it’s a high bar to clear).
  - wkearney99 7y ago
    It sucked less. Loved that tag line.
  - yborg 7y ago
    I've switched to CotEditor for lightweight text editing.
    - dclusin 7y ago
      Thank you for this. I've been using SublimeText as a text editor but always felt weird since its targeted as a more powerful quasi-ide... This fits the bill nicely for what I want.
    - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      The only thing that stops me from using CotEditor is the inability to open a directory rather than individual files.
- jolux 7y ago
  What am I missing about BBEdit? I’ve tried to get into it a few times and it just seems archaic and weird and less capable vs even my emacs setup, let alone something like Visual Studio Code these days.
  - mgkimsal 7y ago
    perhaps some weird nostalgia thing? I first saw it in... 1998? was at a web dev shop, and most of the Mac people there were all in love with bbedit. it seemed fairly odd and slow (as did most of the Mac stuff they ran), but it might have been one of the only decent text editors around at that time? I wasn't much of a Mac person then (as likely evidenced by my comments above).
  - adiabatty 7y ago
    I'm a fan of vim, BBEdit, and Visual Studio Code, but "less capable than emacs" describes just about every text editor. While I'm using VSCode a lot more these days, I still like BBEdit a lot. It's a Mac-native programmer's text editor that manages to remain performant on large files. I think part of the problem is that in order to make a good programmer's text editor, you need a large community of people who're able and willing to make good plugins for it, and any text editor with a userbase smaller than "half of all linux nerds" isn't going to have enough engineer hours put into all its per-language tooling. Visual Studio Code manages to attract enough developer attention to get people to work on compatible language servers and whatnot, but the granddaddy of all Mac text editors can't attract that much attention. Plus, I get a _lot_ of mileage out of multiple cursors. Way more than I'd have expected ten years ago.
    - josteink 7y ago
      > Visual Studio Code manages to attract enough developer attention to get people to work on compatible language servers Not to nitpick an otherwise good argument, but the whole point behind LSP and language servers are that they are completely editor-agnostic. A language server which enables great functionality in VSCode should be able to provide the same for other editors too.
- withakay 7y ago
  As, I expect, is the Venn diagram of those that use NetNewswire on macOS and those that use it on iOS.
Klonoar 7y ago
Ah, yes, the same crowd that wonders why people won't write native Mac Apps but then rarely acknowledges the documentation is utterly lacking in significant places. I say this as someone who writes those apps.
- coliveira 7y ago
  Not only documentation is lacking, but Apple has the annoying tendency to change their frameworks every few years. Writing a MacOS app is a fight against the constant changes.
  - sdegutis 7y ago
    Plus the experience of Electron apps is generally superior lately. Look and feel may not be as consistent as the ideal but it generally never was in the first place, even among native Cocoa apps. The web has won on desktop.
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      > Plus the experience of Electron apps is generally superior lately Uh, I'm going to hard disagree on that. They take longer to open, they're slower to use, they take up more battery, and they don't behave in a consistent way with the rest of the OS.
      - sdegutis 7y ago
        * I’m practically never so productive that I’m counting seconds for an app to open. * VS Code is just as quick to use as Xcode, actually more responsive in many actions, demonstrating effectively that it’s the algorithm which must change for a serious speed up * MBP batteries are laughable in the first place and they’re basically portable desktops that need to stay plugged in all the time * The rest of the OS hasn’t behaved consistently with itself the whole time I’ve been using it, just like every other OS I’ve used for the past 25 years; consistency was a pipe dream

webwielder2 7y ago

The Venn diagram of people who use BBedit and NetNewswire is roughly a circle.

oefrha 7y ago
Pretty sure BBEdit has wider appeal than NetNewsWire. For one thing BBEdit is the only decent text editor on Mac App Store (not that it’s a high bar to clear).
- wkearney99 7y ago
  It sucked less. Loved that tag line.
- yborg 7y ago
  I've switched to CotEditor for lightweight text editing.
  - dclusin 7y ago
    Thank you for this. I've been using SublimeText as a text editor but always felt weird since its targeted as a more powerful quasi-ide... This fits the bill nicely for what I want.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    The only thing that stops me from using CotEditor is the inability to open a directory rather than individual files.
jolux 7y ago
What am I missing about BBEdit? I’ve tried to get into it a few times and it just seems archaic and weird and less capable vs even my emacs setup, let alone something like Visual Studio Code these days.
- mgkimsal 7y ago
  perhaps some weird nostalgia thing? I first saw it in... 1998? was at a web dev shop, and most of the Mac people there were all in love with bbedit. it seemed fairly odd and slow (as did most of the Mac stuff they ran), but it might have been one of the only decent text editors around at that time? I wasn't much of a Mac person then (as likely evidenced by my comments above).
- adiabatty 7y ago
  I'm a fan of vim, BBEdit, and Visual Studio Code, but "less capable than emacs" describes just about every text editor. While I'm using VSCode a lot more these days, I still like BBEdit a lot. It's a Mac-native programmer's text editor that manages to remain performant on large files. I think part of the problem is that in order to make a good programmer's text editor, you need a large community of people who're able and willing to make good plugins for it, and any text editor with a userbase smaller than "half of all linux nerds" isn't going to have enough engineer hours put into all its per-language tooling. Visual Studio Code manages to attract enough developer attention to get people to work on compatible language servers and whatnot, but the granddaddy of all Mac text editors can't attract that much attention. Plus, I get a _lot_ of mileage out of multiple cursors. Way more than I'd have expected ten years ago.
  - josteink 7y ago
    > Visual Studio Code manages to attract enough developer attention to get people to work on compatible language servers Not to nitpick an otherwise good argument, but the whole point behind LSP and language servers are that they are completely editor-agnostic. A language server which enables great functionality in VSCode should be able to provide the same for other editors too.
withakay 7y ago
As, I expect, is the Venn diagram of those that use NetNewswire on macOS and those that use it on iOS.

Klonoar 7y ago

Ah, yes, the same crowd that wonders why people won't write native Mac Apps but then rarely acknowledges the documentation is utterly lacking in significant places. I say this as someone who writes those apps.

coliveira 7y ago
Not only documentation is lacking, but Apple has the annoying tendency to change their frameworks every few years. Writing a MacOS app is a fight against the constant changes.
- sdegutis 7y ago
  Plus the experience of Electron apps is generally superior lately. Look and feel may not be as consistent as the ideal but it generally never was in the first place, even among native Cocoa apps. The web has won on desktop.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    > Plus the experience of Electron apps is generally superior lately Uh, I'm going to hard disagree on that. They take longer to open, they're slower to use, they take up more battery, and they don't behave in a consistent way with the rest of the OS.
    - sdegutis 7y ago
      * I’m practically never so productive that I’m counting seconds for an app to open. * VS Code is just as quick to use as Xcode, actually more responsive in many actions, demonstrating effectively that it’s the algorithm which must change for a serious speed up * MBP batteries are laughable in the first place and they’re basically portable desktops that need to stay plugged in all the time * The rest of the OS hasn’t behaved consistently with itself the whole time I’ve been using it, just like every other OS I’ve used for the past 25 years; consistency was a pipe dream