2 ms·

Just too bad 2011 OS X is hurting even more than ever for a competent programmers editor. Seriously? Mac OS X has the best of both worlds: vim and emacs come p

Just too bad 2011 OS X is hurting even more than ever for a competent programmers editor. Seriously? Mac OS X has the best of both worlds: vim and emacs come pre-installed and we have the best of the GUI editors like BBEdit, TextMate, Espresso, SubEthaEdit, Fraise, Vico, etc. As for BBedit, it's pretty much a HTML editor with syntax highlighting for some other things. BBEdit kicks ass. Yes, it has great HTML tools(http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/benefitsstandards.html http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/benefitsstandards.h...) which were updated and enhanced recently in version 10 (http://www.macworld.com/article/161180/2011/07/bbedit_10.html http://www.macworld.com/article/161180/2011/07/bbedit_10.htm...). But it can also handle the hairiest tasks you can throw at it. Being a hardcore text editor is great and all; where it has always shined is supporting Mac OS X technologies: AppleScript(http://macosxautomation.com/lion/applescript.html http://macosxautomation.com/lion/applescript.html) (scriptable, recordable, and attachable), Automator(http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/automator.html http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/automator.html) without sacrificing the Unix goodies--it's scriptable using Perl, Ruby, Python, etc. I don't know of another editor that has a document type (Unix worksheets http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/benefitsintegrate.html#worksheet http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/benefitsintegrate.h...) just for executing shell commands without leaving the editor itself. I would put BBEdit's feature set against any editor on any platform. I have no affiliation with BareBones; just a satisfied customer for many years.

chico_dusty 15y ago
Yeah, bbedit has tons of ways of running scripts and stuff. It just sucks at editing text. It doesn't know how to indent code, or even format stuff like bulleted lists in plain text. That's the problem with Mac editors, they have fancy sidebars and think opening a directory of files or running a Unix pile is hot stuff, but they're not much better than a text box in Safari at actually editing text.

chico_dusty 15y ago

Yeah, bbedit has tons of ways of running scripts and stuff. It just sucks at editing text. It doesn't know how to indent code, or even format stuff like bulleted lists in plain text. That's the problem with Mac editors, they have fancy sidebars and think opening a directory of files or running a Unix pile is hot stuff, but they're not much better than a text box in Safari at actually editing text.