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TextMate finally gets an update

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Re: TextMate finally gets an update

#41

Post by mkramlich »

gaoshan wrote: post #31

The market must be pretty small for Mac native text editors (and they must be difficult to implement on a grand scale). Otherwise some company would have walked into the gaping void that has been the delay to release TextMate 2.0 and released something by now. The door has been wide open for some time but no one is able or willing to step through it. Oh well, helps explain the Vim goldrush of the past few months.

The limiting factor is not people seeing a market opportunity or not but in the availability and interest of requisite software talent. To a lot of developers, text editing is a solved problem. To really talented devs? Also, mostly solved. Enough. Perfect? Maybe not. But what's available now goes so far that there's not a lot of draw to taking a whack at making the next Better Mousetrap.

Also, the market is probably not large enough. Paid market. There are lots of free editors, and commercial editors, already available, and there's a skill learning curve required to switch editors, that I think all of this adds up to explaining the unexploited "gap" you described.

Re: TextMate finally gets an update

#42

Post by jshen »

noarchy wrote: post #30
jonpaul wrote: post #27

I'm really interested in the TextMate hype as I haven't used it myself. But, it's concerning that updates rarely come. Wasn't a 2.0 version suppose to come years ago? It leads me to believe the developer(s) lost interest.

I've used it, but I still don't get the hype. It does seem to be a handy, lightweight editor with decent features. But you can get that for free in other editors. That said, you can't underestimate the power of the attachment that people get to their editors/IDEs of choice. I personally know a few TextMate devotees.

I'm that weirdo that uses a different editor every couple of years.

I used tm for a few years and the reason it's popular is that it does most of what a programmer wants out of the box without any hassle. Drag the folder of your rails app onto it and your good to go.

I can do a lot more with emacs but it took a serious investment of time to get up to speed with it and to configure it in a sensible way.

Re: TextMate finally gets an update

#43

Post by mwmanning »

tres wrote: post #36
gaoshan wrote: post #31

The market must be pretty small for Mac native text editors (and they must be difficult to implement on a grand scale). Otherwise some company would have walked into the gaping void that has been the delay to release TextMate 2.0 and released something by now. The door has been wide open for some time but no one is able or willing to step through it. Oh well, helps explain the Vim goldrush of the past few months.

I think it's more that the audience for a TextMate type editor is extremely small. On one side, you've got all the IDEs, like NetBeans, IntelliJ & Eclipse (not to mention XCode) that go far beyond TextMate, really making the cost of TextMate seem ridiculous. On the other side you have free products that offer almost everything TextMate does for very simple editing. Textmate was a good idea back when support for inter…

I can't speak for other communities, but all of the developers I who work with Ruby use TextMate. It may not be the majority, but the Ruby (and Rails) audience is certainly not "extremely small."

A clean, extensible editor like TextMate that gets out of your way is all you really need when you're working with tools that don't require an IDE. I think the main reason we haven't seen a major update yet is that so many people are happy with the current TextMate and are still willing to pay for it. I don't think we'll see a major upgrade until people start voting with their (lack of) dollars, rather than just complaining on forums.

Re: TextMate finally gets an update

#44

Post by ryanpetrich »

haribilalic wrote: post #33
gaoshan wrote: post #31

The market must be pretty small for Mac native text editors (and they must be difficult to implement on a grand scale). Otherwise some company would have walked into the gaping void that has been the delay to release TextMate 2.0 and released something by now. The door has been wide open for some time but no one is able or willing to step through it. Oh well, helps explain the Vim goldrush of the past few months.

There's TextWrangler (free, http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ ), Smultron (free, http://smultron.sourceforge.net/ ) and BBEdit ($125, http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.html ). They're all popular. I'm a Textmate user though. I don't mind that there have been delays in releasing 2.0, because it doesn't make 1.5 any less useful — it does everything I want it to do and it's still supported.

Fraise is a continuation of the now abandoned Smultron.

Re: TextMate finally gets an update

#45

Post by simonw »

xtacy wrote: post #5

This doesn't seem to be that much of a change. Is there a wish list that people loved to see?

I use TextMate as a scratch pad for small pieces of code / temporary clipboard storage quite often - and occasionally lose them when my computer crashes. Auto-save of untitled new documents would make life more pleasant.

Re: TextMate finally gets an update

#46

Post by mwmanning »

mishmash wrote: post #14
xtacy wrote: post #5

This doesn't seem to be that much of a change. Is there a wish list that people loved to see?

My biggest gripe with TM 1.5 is how Find in Project still beachballs on a new 3.33 6-core Westmere RAID 10 setup. Even after hearing everyone else's problems with FiP, I thought it might have been the slow HD in my last iMac. It's not. ;)

Don't search your logs http://railspikes.com/2007/11/13/textmate-rails-remove-vendo...

Re: TextMate finally gets an update

#47

Post by tres »

jshen wrote: post #40
tres wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that the audience for a TextMate type editor is extremely small. On one side, you've got all the IDEs, like NetBeans, IntelliJ & Eclipse (not to mention XCode) that go far beyond TextMate, really making the cost of TextMate seem ridiculous. On the other side you have free products that offer almost everything TextMate does for very simple editing. Textmate was a good idea back when support for inter…

IDEs have a high cost (learning curve, complexity, etc) that is not worth the benefit for dynamic languages. I'm not sure what the gaping hole is the op is talking about. Textmate is an awesome editor and it doesn't matter that there hasn't been an update in a while. The only thing I really miss with text mate is good git integration.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind about TextMate; it does just what a bunch of people want it to. That's awesome! I used it for quite a while. Heck, I still use it for simple editing.

Personally, once I tried an IDE with integrated context sensitive help, inline syntax checking, real indenting, etc. TextMate didn't seem to solve the problems that I needed it to solve. It just became a fancy notepad app with some extra macros.

I'm not trying to put anyone's choice down. If TextMate works for you, then great! I'm very happy that you've found the right editor for you; however, the point of my post was that there are many other choices out there that confine the usefulness of TextMate to a very specific audience.

And personally, I feel like the cost/learning curve arguments are not really valid. Eclipse and NetBeans cost nothing. And ultimately, I found that getting what I needed out of NetBeans was much more intuitive than getting what I needed out of TextMate.

Re: TextMate finally gets an update

#48

Post by tres »

mwmanning wrote: post #43
tres wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that the audience for a TextMate type editor is extremely small. On one side, you've got all the IDEs, like NetBeans, IntelliJ & Eclipse (not to mention XCode) that go far beyond TextMate, really making the cost of TextMate seem ridiculous. On the other side you have free products that offer almost everything TextMate does for very simple editing. Textmate was a good idea back when support for inter…

I can't speak for other communities, but all of the developers I who work with Ruby use TextMate. It may not be the majority, but the Ruby (and Rails) audience is certainly not "extremely small." A clean, extensible editor like TextMate that gets out of your way is all you really need when you're working with tools that don't require an IDE. I think the main reason we haven't seen a major update yet is that so many p…

This is interesting because it was NetBeans' Ruby and Rails support that led me to try it out in the first place.

I could take this further, but it's not really germane; I think I wasn't very tactful in expressing my idea in my original post; the response is quite understandable. I'm not trying to state that TextMate is the wrong editor, or that there aren't a bunch of people who love it. I just personally think that it occupies a space between an IDE and a editor where a relatively(!) small audience exists.

Re: TextMate finally gets an update

#49

Post by sjs »

tres wrote: post #36
gaoshan wrote: post #31

The market must be pretty small for Mac native text editors (and they must be difficult to implement on a grand scale). Otherwise some company would have walked into the gaping void that has been the delay to release TextMate 2.0 and released something by now. The door has been wide open for some time but no one is able or willing to step through it. Oh well, helps explain the Vim goldrush of the past few months.

I think it's more that the audience for a TextMate type editor is extremely small. On one side, you've got all the IDEs, like NetBeans, IntelliJ & Eclipse (not to mention XCode) that go far beyond TextMate, really making the cost of TextMate seem ridiculous. On the other side you have free products that offer almost everything TextMate does for very simple editing. Textmate was a good idea back when support for inter…

Just like Emacs and vi eh?

TextMate is pretty extensible. Extensible enough anyway, and you don't have to commit to a single language for extension, which is pretty cool. I like Lisp and hate vimscript, but when extending TextMate I can use shell, Lisp, Ruby, Python, or JavaScript, depending on the task at hand or my mood.

I still hate TextMate. And Emacs. They all stink, but less than IDEs.

Re: TextMate finally gets an update

#50

Post by sjs »

noarchy wrote: post #39
j_baker wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when said editor costs only $55. That's nothing compared to the cost of a lot of other commercial editors.

There are also editors that do far more, for free. That's not to belittle TextMate users. I'm just saying that when it comes time to making decisions about spending money, it may be difficult to convince some managers to want to fork over the cash for something like this.

There's a lot of value in how easy TM makes snippets and all that. Yes a lot of free editors do more but it often requires more effort too. TM is well worth the money for that reason.
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