5 ms·

With the amount of muscle memory and (deeply personalized) customization that goes in to getting comfortable with an editor, it seems like the hardest place to

by leif 15y ago

With the amount of muscle memory and (deeply personalized) customization that goes in to getting comfortable with an editor, it seems like the hardest place to attract users, and since vim and emacs have already done everything worth doing in an editor (except flashy buttons I guess), it seems like the hardest place to innovate. textmate, bbedit, kod, coda, sublime text, and now this What is interesting about this space that makes people think they can make something better than vim and emacs, in fact, so much better that they can overcome the inertia that comes with being a vim or emacs user? I get that you can maybe grab a few notepad/textedit people, but you're never going to attract serious developers. If you are someone who pays for one of these editors, please help me understand and explain why, unless it's "someone told me about it before I knew any better and now I'm stuck with it for the same inertial reasons". (ides are different, I do get that, I don't get it when it's a "swiss-army knife" style of text editor)

cdcarter 15y ago
Well, since TextMate 2 still hasn't come out yet, and this seems to appeal to a very similar aesthetic, I could see this taking over that market. I'm definitely very interested to try it out.
- leif 15y ago
  what do you use now, and why?
- Cushman 15y ago
  Don't lie— we're all gonna buy TextMate 2 anyway.
  - exDM69 15y ago
    Yeah but the game here is about TextMate 3 vs. Chocolat 2
  - frou_dh 15y ago
    TextMate 2 will be a free upgrade
    - sxtxixtxcxh 15y ago
      i fear that might not be the case if/when it ever comes out. i have a sinking feeling textmate 2 will end up as a mac store only app, and there's no way to provide free licenses to previous owners of non-mac store licenses.
      - frou_dh 15y ago
        If he is interested in putting it on the App Store, I doubt such an established developer would sweat maintaining a parallel standard version. Although the free upgrade promise is/was rash, I think it's too late to go back on it.
        Cushman 15y ago
        Probably— although I just googled 'textmate 2 free upgrade' and the top hit is a blog post from 2006 titled "[TextMate] 2.0 Will Require Leopard". It's possible he might just be able to walk that one back a little.
    - sxtxixtxcxh 15y ago
      i fear that might not be the case if/when it ever comes out. i have a sinking feeling textmate 2 will end up as a mac store only app, and there's no way to provide free licenses to previous owners of non-mac store licenses.
  - generalk 15y ago
    If it really does end up being a free upgrade I'll download it and give it a shot, but Textmate really soured me on paying for a closed-source editor. TextMate was the best editor I'd ever seen on a computer lab Mac, and when I finally bought my own one of the first things I bought was a TM license. Now there's been two years and three major Mac OS X revisions with almost no real news or updates except an id Software style "working on it." In the interim I've become proficient with both vim and emacs, preferring console vim + tmux for now. A new editor would be hard-pressed to win me away from that, especially if they're asking for money.
neutronicus 15y ago
Programmer's editors are the kind of product that has enthusiasts. They're like wine. There'll always be a market for them, innovation or no.
frou_dh 15y ago
I don't choose vim or emacs for the same reason I don't choose Linux. The appeal of OS X is that it's a pleasant place to spend time, full of well crafted GUIs specifically for it, while retaining a good amount of Unix power.
- alextgordon 15y ago
  Yes. We don't fool ourselves into thinking we can convert hardcore Vim or Emacs users. If you love Vim or love Emacs, then you should just use Vim or Emacs! Personally, I desire a better UI. The number of good, actively developed text editors on the Mac is actually remarkably small. There's TextMate 2, which has become a synonym for vapourware. Kod's future seems uncertain now that Rasmus got his job. Coda and Espresso are good in their niches (of web development) but they're not general purpose editors. So we're just left with BBEdit and Sublime. I think there's room for one more :)
  - leif 15y ago
    well, I tried text wrangler which was supposed to be bbedit but free, and I definitely did not like the UI (even though I do like lots of the mac UI) this thing looks exactly like emacs to me but with tabs and a comparatively pathetic engine under the hood
  - tincholio 15y ago
    What exactly do you mean by a better UI? The fact that it's Cocoa? Admittedly, I haven't tried your editor (and most likely won't), but can you briefly tell how the UI is any better than that of Emacs or Vim, other than being "shiny"?
    - jordanlev 15y ago
      I can't speak for the developer, but as a TextMate user who has dabbled in vim/emacs over the years, my take on this is it's about "polish". Like MacVim is line-based, and when you scroll or resize the window, it moves in "chunks" of one line instead of whatever pixel-precise position you drag the mouse to. And using mac-standard "command" key shortcuts instead of different modes (for vim) or control-key ones (emacs). [Yes I know that can all be customized in vim/emacs, just talking about out-of-the-box]. Also the "project pane" in TextMate is very mac-like, whereas in Vim you have NerdTree which is totally text-based (in the sense that it's like "curses" graphics-via-ascii-characters as opposed to icons and lines and non-monospaced-fonts), or emacs which gives you the buffer list at the bottom (if I recall). And I was never able to figure out how to get a project-wide search going in Vim. Also, the window chrome, which I guess you could classify as "shiny", but little things like that do appeal to a lot of people -- same reason people like the shiny and smooth macbook hardware vs. more boxy windows laptops. Not saying this is objectively better, just trying to answer your question. And of course I understand there are tradeoffs between polish versus flexibility. For example, the Mac editor Coda is super-duper shiny and maclike, but it's way too inflexible for my personal tastes, so I wouldn't use that. But something like TextMate seems to hit the sweet spot for me and a lot of other people.

by leif 15y ago

cdcarter 15y ago

Well, since TextMate 2 still hasn't come out yet, and this seems to appeal to a very similar aesthetic, I could see this taking over that market. I'm definitely very interested to try it out.

leif 15y ago
what do you use now, and why?
Cushman 15y ago
Don't lie— we're all gonna buy TextMate 2 anyway.
- exDM69 15y ago
  Yeah but the game here is about TextMate 3 vs. Chocolat 2
- frou_dh 15y ago
  TextMate 2 will be a free upgrade
  - sxtxixtxcxh 15y ago
    i fear that might not be the case if/when it ever comes out. i have a sinking feeling textmate 2 will end up as a mac store only app, and there's no way to provide free licenses to previous owners of non-mac store licenses.
    - frou_dh 15y ago
      If he is interested in putting it on the App Store, I doubt such an established developer would sweat maintaining a parallel standard version. Although the free upgrade promise is/was rash, I think it's too late to go back on it.
      - Cushman 15y ago
        Probably— although I just googled 'textmate 2 free upgrade' and the top hit is a blog post from 2006 titled "[TextMate] 2.0 Will Require Leopard". It's possible he might just be able to walk that one back a little.
  - sxtxixtxcxh 15y ago
    i fear that might not be the case if/when it ever comes out. i have a sinking feeling textmate 2 will end up as a mac store only app, and there's no way to provide free licenses to previous owners of non-mac store licenses.
- generalk 15y ago
  If it really does end up being a free upgrade I'll download it and give it a shot, but Textmate really soured me on paying for a closed-source editor. TextMate was the best editor I'd ever seen on a computer lab Mac, and when I finally bought my own one of the first things I bought was a TM license. Now there's been two years and three major Mac OS X revisions with almost no real news or updates except an id Software style "working on it." In the interim I've become proficient with both vim and emacs, preferring console vim + tmux for now. A new editor would be hard-pressed to win me away from that, especially if they're asking for money.

neutronicus 15y ago

Programmer's editors are the kind of product that has enthusiasts. They're like wine. There'll always be a market for them, innovation or no.

frou_dh 15y ago

I don't choose vim or emacs for the same reason I don't choose Linux. The appeal of OS X is that it's a pleasant place to spend time, full of well crafted GUIs specifically for it, while retaining a good amount of Unix power.

alextgordon 15y ago
Yes. We don't fool ourselves into thinking we can convert hardcore Vim or Emacs users. If you love Vim or love Emacs, then you should just use Vim or Emacs! Personally, I desire a better UI. The number of good, actively developed text editors on the Mac is actually remarkably small. There's TextMate 2, which has become a synonym for vapourware. Kod's future seems uncertain now that Rasmus got his job. Coda and Espresso are good in their niches (of web development) but they're not general purpose editors. So we're just left with BBEdit and Sublime. I think there's room for one more :)
- leif 15y ago
  well, I tried text wrangler which was supposed to be bbedit but free, and I definitely did not like the UI (even though I do like lots of the mac UI) this thing looks exactly like emacs to me but with tabs and a comparatively pathetic engine under the hood
- tincholio 15y ago
  What exactly do you mean by a better UI? The fact that it's Cocoa? Admittedly, I haven't tried your editor (and most likely won't), but can you briefly tell how the UI is any better than that of Emacs or Vim, other than being "shiny"?
  - jordanlev 15y ago
    I can't speak for the developer, but as a TextMate user who has dabbled in vim/emacs over the years, my take on this is it's about "polish". Like MacVim is line-based, and when you scroll or resize the window, it moves in "chunks" of one line instead of whatever pixel-precise position you drag the mouse to. And using mac-standard "command" key shortcuts instead of different modes (for vim) or control-key ones (emacs). [Yes I know that can all be customized in vim/emacs, just talking about out-of-the-box]. Also the "project pane" in TextMate is very mac-like, whereas in Vim you have NerdTree which is totally text-based (in the sense that it's like "curses" graphics-via-ascii-characters as opposed to icons and lines and non-monospaced-fonts), or emacs which gives you the buffer list at the bottom (if I recall). And I was never able to figure out how to get a project-wide search going in Vim. Also, the window chrome, which I guess you could classify as "shiny", but little things like that do appeal to a lot of people -- same reason people like the shiny and smooth macbook hardware vs. more boxy windows laptops. Not saying this is objectively better, just trying to answer your question. And of course I understand there are tradeoffs between polish versus flexibility. For example, the Mac editor Coda is super-duper shiny and maclike, but it's way too inflexible for my personal tastes, so I wouldn't use that. But something like TextMate seems to hit the sweet spot for me and a lot of other people.