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BBEdit: Where Respect Is Due

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Re: BBEdit: Where Respect Is Due

#131

Post by eviks »

gattilorenz wrote: post #121
eviks wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's just your caricature of reality. Reality depends entirely on the reality of what the users asked for and the product.

I think you're reading this the wrong way, there's (literally!) decades of scientific literature about it, and it's not a problem of being condescending. For a gentle non-scientific introduction: https://www.forbes.com/sites/leoyeykelis/2018/05/10/why-its-... If you actually want to know more, a very accessible textbook: https://books.google.nl/books/about/Interaction_Design.html?...

Could you me just a tad more specific instead of sciencing around? For example, I've read your article and its argument is simply not relevant

> Good UX research, however, does not ask people what they want. That’s because people find it difficult to put themselves in imaginary situations, especially in cases where they need to picture a future with products and technology that do not currently exist.

But this is a text editor, gazillions of those exist, with various UI paradigms and features, it simply makes no sense to claim that all users, even those very experienced in alternative apps (so nothing imaginary about that), don't know better than BBEdit's small design team, thus it's ok to ignore their explicit asks because you know "what they really need"

Like in the example cited above with removing hard wrapping, the quoted argument "The two states (hard wrap while typing) and soft wrapping have the same visual result and would tend to cause considerable confusion. " is patently false as there exist editors with very clear separation of the two (and those being confused can always disable either). But then if you think you know better, you keep being "utmost-respectfully" wrong for years

Re: BBEdit: Where Respect Is Due

#132

Post by softirq »

aduffy wrote: post #8

BBEdit was my first text editor ~15 years ago! Back when I was really obsessive over the small stuff because I wanted to be like the cool kids. I then got into Text Wrangler, vim, emacs, nvim, etc. over the years. I was really into customizing my environment. Now I just use IntelliJ and VSCode. Don't really have to think about it, plugin system has grown enormously, and I rarely need to spend time futzing with my con…

I use vim and don't futz around with my config. I feel like this is a perpetual myth that vim or emacs requires endless tinkering. I maybe touch it once a year, and I still have:

- LSP support - code actions, hover, gotos, linting.

- Fuzzy finding with previews (with syntax highlighting thanks to bat)

- Integrated Git

- Integrated Terminal

- Integrated Debugger

It's a real shame that IntelliJ and VSCode users scare beginners off from trying out all the amazing editors like Vim, Barebones, Nova, etc. with this FUD that they won't get anything done. I've seen people swap between editors like SOs in high school and I've been able to consistently stick with Vim my entire career, so maybe the FOTM editor crowd are really not seeing the gains in productivity they believe they are getting by always picking the "out of the box" editor.

Re: BBEdit: Where Respect Is Due

#133

Post by tqwhite »

keyle wrote: post #17
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #15

That must be a few years old. It’s been more than 30 years, since BBEdit was released. I use it a lot. I never warmed to any of the alternatives.

I remember Coda was good when it first came out! ... and then, well, that went sideways. It really takes an exceptional product to last eons and remain relevant. BBEdit feels more like a product of love than oriented for-profit.

A few years ago I noticed that all the other editors seemed to have online enthusiasm. Having used bbedit for decades and having exchanged email as tech support many, many times, I asked Rich if bbedit was a thriving or if it was just hanging on. He assured me that thriving was the better characterization.

I would interpret that to say for-profit is applicable though, having had projects that lasted a long time (not thirty years!), I can say that sticking with it that long is always, also, a labor of love.

Re: BBEdit: Where Respect Is Due

#135

Post by metalliqaz »

ycombinete wrote: post #97

What is the analogue of BBEdit on Windows? On Linux I guess it’s things like EMacs, and Vim?

Back in the day it may have been UltraEdit, but these days I'm sure there's something else. I've been using Notepad++ because it's FOSS, but it is probably too quirky to be an analogue

Re: BBEdit: Where Respect Is Due

#136

Post by tqwhite »

I'm reading this thread and am, again, surprised by the fact of people changing editors willy nilly. I have customized my bbedit experience endlessly. I have text filters, dynamic snippets, script elements, 'text factory's and a zillion project files (I often have two or three for one project so I can open the configuration or the UI or the back end separately.

I can't imagine choosing to give up those decades of custom features I've built into my workflow. Nor can I figure out how I would work the practicalities. I would say that it is literally impossible for me to change editors at this point.

And, I consider this all to be a tribute to bbedit's flexibility, speed, and solid, hard core reliability. I love that program. If they offered a paid release every year, I would ante up happily.

Re: BBEdit: Where Respect Is Due

#137

Post by tqwhite »

And I failed to mention the one aspect where bbedit exceeds every editor I have ever tried (a few years ago, I actually did a half year where I tried everything): Search and Replace.

The Search and Replace feature of bbedit is absolutely the best ever. When I am forced to use another editor, I am appalled by contrast. Since I use this 1000 times a day, I will never change. bbedit forever!

Re: BBEdit: Where Respect Is Due

#138

Post by abhibeckert »

vlowther wrote: post #55

BBEdit is my weapon of choice for reading massive log dumps and database dumps for support at $DAYJOB. It does not seem to ever choke no matter how many hundreds of megabytes if text I need to plow through.

BBEdit was known for that in the past, but it's a weak point these days. It definitely has an upper limit on filesizes and will "choke" on large files (probably only slightly larger than the log files you're using it for).

Other apps are much better at large files. The APFS filesystem has a maximum file size of 8 Exabytes and plenty of other text editors can handle file sizes that large without any issues.

Re: BBEdit: Where Respect Is Due

#139

Post by aeyes »

tiffanyh wrote: post #34

UltraEdit I never understood why there was so much love for BBEdit on Mac and so little love for UltraEdit on Windows. They were both released around the same time, selling to the same audience just on different platforms. This was also during a time where there was many options.

I guess Mac users are more easily impressed because there is (was) less choice and UltraEdit(32) wasn't around on the platform at the time.

It's still my editor of choice but it's a shame that they switched to a subscription model.

Re: BBEdit: Where Respect Is Due

#140

Post by reaperducer »

tqwhite wrote: post #136

I'm reading this thread and am, again, surprised by the fact of people changing editors willy nilly. I have customized my bbedit experience endlessly. I have text filters, dynamic snippets, script elements, 'text factory's and a zillion project files (I often have two or three for one project so I can open the configuration or the UI or the back end separately. I can't imagine choosing to give up those decades of cus…

I'm reading this thread and am, again, surprised by the fact of people changing editors willy nilly.

Based on reading discussions on HN over the last decade or so, it seems that a lot of people on HN don't choose editors because it's the best tool for the job, but because of the same factors that affect the fashion world: Flash, style, color, trend, posturing, and peer pressure.

I've banged out code on everything from a green-screen Wyse terminal to Panic's Nova, and there's nothing better for reducing productivity than changing and reconfiguring your tools in the middle of a project.

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