I’ve made the switch to TextMate as my text editor of choice.
More than just using it for writing code, I’ve found that it’s intensely customizable, and insanely well thought out. I’ve heard lots of talk of TextMate being mentioned as the marriage of OS X’s gui w/ the fiercely defended text editors famous in the unix world. That’s pretty high praise, and a very high goal to live up to.
I’ve never taken the time to get to know any of the hardcore unix text editors (like vi, or emacs), so I was a little concerned that using TextMate might have a really steep learning curve, but as long as they stuck to the simple elegance that I regard so highly of many of OS X’s apps, I was certain I’d be able to determine if this app was at least worth my taking the time to get to know it.
Like most of you who’re likely to read this, I spend most of my day typing at a keyboard (either IMing, twittering, writing code or sometimes tapping out emails. Email? Who uses that anymore?); adopting a new text editor, let along a new IDE is a big deal. The reason I even considered TextMate was that I started reading Ajax on Rails recently. It seems almost every Ruby on Rails developer chooses to use TextMate. At roughly $65 USD (39 Euros), it wasn’t very expensive, and there’s a 30-day trial, so why not give it a spin?
The first thing I noticed about TextMate was that it’s UI is VERY clean. I <3 that! Ok — so clean UI doesn’t necessarily mean that app’s any good, but the next thing I noticed was that the menus were very tidy, as well.
Ok, so maybe this may not have the legs I need.
WHOA! What’s this Bundles menu thing?
Ok. Maybe there’s a lot more here than I thought.
Wow. There’s a lot in here.
When I found that TextMate supported subversion, I was reaaaally starting to get the picture.
18 days into my 30 day trial, I bought it. If you’re curious, I highly recommend the Screencasts available on their site. They’re really well done, if not a little quickly-paced.
Wow. Great job, guys. Amazing app.