2 ms·

I’m a bit of a stickler for trying to stick to default apps and tools wherever possible, and Xcode is so close to being serviceable as a general text editor wit

I’m a bit of a stickler for trying to stick to default apps and tools wherever possible, and Xcode is so close to being serviceable as a general text editor with its vim mode and “External Build System” (Makefile) support, but has a pretty limited list of languages it can do syntax highlighting for, and the smart indentation seems broken for unsupported languages. BBEdit seems like a good second choice. Does it feel as native as it looks? Any rough edges that bother you?

kstrauser 3y ago
It’s the smoothest, nativest programming editor I’ve tried on a Mac. It ruined VSCode for me. While VSC is a marvel in its own, it’s the least Mac app I regularly used. BBEdit feels like home in comparison.
klodolph 3y ago
BBEdit, if anything, feels more native than the rest of the OS. A lot of bundled apps are kind of converging towards a coherent mobile / desktop UI with “screens” that you navigate between, or just giving up and embedding a web view. BBEdit remains desktop-native. It’s nothing at all like Vim out of the box. I haven’t tried using any Vim compatibility stuff with BBEdit.