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Textmate2 Goes Open Source

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Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#231

Post by dasil003 »

andybak wrote: post #37
SmileyKeith wrote: post #14

Well TextMate was cool while it lasted. Good thing I switched to Sublime Text 2 a week ago.

So you think open-sourcing is a death sentence? Care to share your reasons? (genuine question)

Not at all. If something is open-sourced at the height of its power that's an incredible development.

TextMate is dead simply because everyone's already written it off. Some people are still on TextMate 1.5 because of the strength of the product, but it's been hemorrhaging users for years, and the TM2 alpha has been underwhelming to say the least.

I mean it's really hard for someone who wasn't around at the time to grok how amazing TextMate was at its release. I first saw it in the Rails demo and was like "what is that, I've got to try it right now". For all the build-up that TM2 had, after that long a wait it needed to pack a serious punch like that to reinvigorate people. Instead it just seemed buggy and slow and not something you'd want to do serious work in.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#232

Post by theshadow »

techiferous wrote: post #229
hyperbovine wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The early and enthusiastic support of DHH / the Rails community had a lot to do with the initial success of TextMate. Whether this was 'deserved' is too subjective to be worth debating. It happened, and TextMate took off as a result.

Community effects can never bring a poor technology to the top. They can keep a great technology from overtaking a good technology, though. But TextMate's success was not only from the community support, but also from its capabilities. Snippets were one of its cool features, for example, that helped it gain success.

Vim has snippets too. I'm sure there's an Eclipse/Visual Studio plugin that provides the same functionality. There's really nothing revolutionary in here.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#233

Post by techiferous »

theshadow wrote: post #232
techiferous wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Community effects can never bring a poor technology to the top. They can keep a great technology from overtaking a good technology, though. But TextMate's success was not only from the community support, but also from its capabilities. Snippets were one of its cool features, for example, that helped it gain success.

Vim has snippets too. I'm sure there's an Eclipse/Visual Studio plugin that provides the same functionality. There's really nothing revolutionary in here.

Thanks for pointing this out, and I don't disagree. It's debatable whether TextMate was revolutionary or a huge leap ahead of the competition at the time. But batista claimed that "Textmate was always a sub-par editor" and implied that its success was due to hype, not its capabilities, which I find hard to accept as true.

I'm not claiming that TextMate was the best choice, just that it's unfair to call it a bad choice or sub-par. It was a very solid, decent text editor.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#234

Post by anthonyb »

motiejus wrote: post #214
kennystone wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won so many adopters because it was simple and pretty. The advanced features are great, but TM won because it didn't have Emacs/Vim learning curve, and it mostly just worked.

VIM learning curve.. It takes 2 hours (at least it did for me 8 years ago) to go through vimtutor, which means you can do all the basic stuff like with any editor. That's it. From that point you can stay or go how ever far you want. From using the editor "the notepad level", go nuts by building a database of key shortcuts and commands in your head. Is 2 hours a considerably "steep learning curve" for the thing you ar…

Compared to zero hours for a more traditional editor like TextMate or Sublime Text 2 that has command-S as save? Sure is.

Also, at the point that you first pick up an editor like Vim, you have no idea whether it's going to work for you, so the 8 hours/day is a furphy.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#235

Post by hexagonal »

grandalf wrote: post #224
benihana wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think Textmate deserved all that success --it should have happened to a better editor. This doesn't make much sense. You say it appeared at the right time and was pretty and native on OS X. What better editors deserved the success it had that were available when TextMate was popular? Which editors were available on OS X that weren't giant IDEs or VIM and Emacs style editors that have a ridiculously steep le…

Two points worth mentioning. Emacs 2.4 comes with many features by default that shrink the learning curve. And most importantly, check out Technomancy's emacs starter kit. It even comes with a package that lets Textmate users keep using their familiar keyboard shortcuts if they want.

Not 2.4. 24.

You're 22 and a half version numbers short. Emacs is more than 30 years old, remember.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#236

Post by dasil003 »

batista wrote: post #89

If we are completely honest, Textmate was always a sub-par editor. No Vim or Emacs style brilliantness, no BBEdit style tons of features and mature engine, no IntelliJ like, er, intelligence, no ST2 comprehensiveness, etc etc. Plus, the Textmate 1.x text engine was probably a mess too -- I remember the very first versions being laggy (and that's coming from someone who doesn't find even Eclipse laggy). That he couldn…

TextMate lacked polish, I think that is the fairest indictment you can make of it. It really did bring some awesome features and customizability to the table with probably the lowest difficulty-of-customization to flexibility ratio in the history of editors. It's easy to dismiss how impressive it was in 2004 because so much of it has trickled down to other editors. It really goes hand-in-hand with Rails which people are so quick to criticize today because of how much improvement it spurred in the competition.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#237

Post by shurane »

batista wrote: post #93
shurane wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there is still enough interest in the app where people will contribute all of the community's desired changes -- I hope there is. I don't get what you mean by "if there is still enough interest". If you wanted a particular feature or change, couldn't you just fork Textmate and then implement it? That's the advantage of it going open-source. We are not at the mercy of some developers who don't think our re…

> I don't get what you mean by "if there is still enough interest". If you wanted a particular feature or change, couldn't you just fork Textmate and then implement it? No, I could not. 1) I have other things to do than building my own tools. I work creating _stuff_, not creating tools. 2) You assume I have spare time to delve into the code of a project, understand the whole structure and add a feature --which might…

Sorry, I didn't mean to attack you or anything. I'm just praising the model and abilities of open-source and how much power it gives to the user.

I'm extending this idea of rolling your own code to anything/everything open-source, not just text editors. If you're playing a game, or using a webapp and there's some feature or pain point you want to add... well now writing it yourself is an option!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you have to write it because you have a thousand other things to focus on or that the reward/effort ratio isn't worthwhile or whatever reason. But you can.

But you can't tell me that having the option to do so isn't so freaking awesome. Would you prefer abandonware instead? Or seeing where Textmate 2 was going (evidently, nowhere) if it wasn't open-sourced?

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#238

Post by humblepie »

niels_olson wrote: post #82
humblepie wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think one person would make a case study. Whatever his reason is, it would be a very specific personal reason. A case study of this will be just be like profiling a patient in a lab.

> I don't think one person would make a case study Actually, that is the definition of a case study.

Of course we're talking about case study in terms of a group of developers with their own dynamics, not the mind of a single person.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#239

Post by shurane »

xutopia wrote: post #108
batista wrote: post #89

If we are completely honest, Textmate was always a sub-par editor. No Vim or Emacs style brilliantness, no BBEdit style tons of features and mature engine, no IntelliJ like, er, intelligence, no ST2 comprehensiveness, etc etc. Plus, the Textmate 1.x text engine was probably a mess too -- I remember the very first versions being laggy (and that's coming from someone who doesn't find even Eclipse laggy). That he couldn…

I disagree with your assertion. TM 1.x was an amazing piece of software and way better than numerous text editors out there at the time. Usability wise it was impressive, keyboard shortcuts made sense, creating your own snippets and extensions was a breeze, block mode was simpler than on any other text editor out there and there was support for most programming languages out of the box. Consider for a moment that Ged…

But gedit is pretty impressive, still! It's extendable too, maybe just not to the extent of Textmate.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#240

Post by wahnfrieden »

theshadow wrote: post #232
techiferous wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Community effects can never bring a poor technology to the top. They can keep a great technology from overtaking a good technology, though. But TextMate's success was not only from the community support, but also from its capabilities. Snippets were one of its cool features, for example, that helped it gain success.

Vim has snippets too. I'm sure there's an Eclipse/Visual Studio plugin that provides the same functionality. There's really nothing revolutionary in here.

They came built-in with TextMate - big difference to be a first-class member of the editor.
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