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BBEdit 16

barebones.com

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Re: BBEdit 16

#31

Post by kennywinker »

bellowsgulch wrote: post #27
kennywinker wrote: post #19

In 1998 bbedit 5.0 cost $120 usd. Adjusted for inflation that would be about $245 usd. Today an individual license costs $60. Wild how software pricing and sales models have changed, and good on bare bones for staying away from subscription pricing.

I would rather software companies sell at more realistic prices so that they have a sustainable business, and signal to others in the industry that it's still possible to build a sustainable business. No, we should not praise software companies for hobbyist practices like selling $1 app on the App Store, which say, 30% goes to a digital distribution store, and then of your after distribution fees, about 20%+ percent…

Implying that one of the oldest still actively developed commercial text editors is not doing sustainable business practices kinda misses the mark. They’ve been at this since 1992, 34 years ago. I think they know their business.

Re: BBEdit 16

#32

Post by kstrauser »

skydhash wrote: post #28
kstrauser wrote: post #13

I use Zed more now, but BBEdit's still pretty great. I love, love , LOVE that I can extend it with shell scripts or Python tools or Rust apps or whatever else I have laying around. Sometimes I don't want to write a whole plugin, let alone in JavaScript or whatever. I just want to say "process this text with this tool" and have it work. BBEdit's second to none for that.

That’s the power of vim, emacs, nano, and I think Kate too. Piping the current text and/or collecting the output of a given comment. Another nice thing is the ability to collect paths, line and column numbers from the output for navigation.

For sure. I use Emacs regularly too, and of course it supports this kind of thing. BBEdit makes it flat out pleasant though. I appreciate how well the new additions melt into the UI.

Re: BBEdit 16

#33

Post by kennywinker »

factorialboy wrote: post #21
kennywinker wrote: post #19

In 1998 bbedit 5.0 cost $120 usd. Adjusted for inflation that would be about $245 usd. Today an individual license costs $60. Wild how software pricing and sales models have changed, and good on bare bones for staying away from subscription pricing.

The pie (market) has also vastly expanded since 1998. Need to factor that, and not just inflation.

I assumed that was implied pretty heavily by what I said. Either they were overcharging in 1998, or the market got bigger.

Re: BBEdit 16

#34

Post by kstrauser »

bellowsgulch wrote: post #27
kennywinker wrote: post #19

In 1998 bbedit 5.0 cost $120 usd. Adjusted for inflation that would be about $245 usd. Today an individual license costs $60. Wild how software pricing and sales models have changed, and good on bare bones for staying away from subscription pricing.

I would rather software companies sell at more realistic prices so that they have a sustainable business, and signal to others in the industry that it's still possible to build a sustainable business. No, we should not praise software companies for hobbyist practices like selling $1 app on the App Store, which say, 30% goes to a digital distribution store, and then of your after distribution fees, about 20%+ percent…

No other professional field I know of lets workers invent and alter their own tools, collaboratively, for free, and share them for free with all their colleagues.

If surgeons could wiggle their fingers and make a better scalpel, at no cost, and give a copy to all their friends, also at no cost, I bet they'd have some pretty spiffy scalpels going around soon and many docs would stop paying for them.

Re: BBEdit 16

#35

Post by skydhash »

kstrauser wrote: post #32
skydhash wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the power of vim, emacs, nano, and I think Kate too. Piping the current text and/or collecting the output of a given comment. Another nice thing is the ability to collect paths, line and column numbers from the output for navigation.

For sure. I use Emacs regularly too, and of course it supports this kind of thing. BBEdit makes it flat out pleasant though. I appreciate how well the new additions melt into the UI.

I won’t disagree with that, but my daily driver is OpenBSD. Emacs is what I got ;)

Re: BBEdit 16

#36

Post by browningstreet »

bellowsgulch wrote: post #27
kennywinker wrote: post #19

In 1998 bbedit 5.0 cost $120 usd. Adjusted for inflation that would be about $245 usd. Today an individual license costs $60. Wild how software pricing and sales models have changed, and good on bare bones for staying away from subscription pricing.

I would rather software companies sell at more realistic prices so that they have a sustainable business, and signal to others in the industry that it's still possible to build a sustainable business. No, we should not praise software companies for hobbyist practices like selling $1 app on the App Store, which say, 30% goes to a digital distribution store, and then of your after distribution fees, about 20%+ percent…

Customer acquisition and retention is so very hard and expensive. It’s a tough equation.

Re: BBEdit 16

#37

Post by kstrauser »

submeta wrote: post #22

BBEdit used to be my text-transformation tool. Happily paid for every update for years, even when I used Emacs, I kept BBedit in reach. For quick text edits/transformations (because Regex in Emacs is hard to use). But with LLMs + nvim I hardly start bbedit anymore. So now with LLMs, I tell them what I need and they write a shell/Perl/Python script to make the craziest transformations.

This really resonates with me. I feel ya. And yet, now those pre-existing tools can make fantastic user interfaces for the new AI-developed things. I just wrote a command line tool to do a thing I needed done, and used Alfred to make a GUI for it. Now it feels like a full-blown GUI, although I just wrote the CLI bits and wrapped them in Alfred.

In BBEdit's case, I could see adding all your new tools as text filters to have a standard way for executing them, either through scripting or in a text window.

Re: BBEdit 16

#38

Post by kstrauser »

skydhash wrote: post #35
kstrauser wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. I use Emacs regularly too, and of course it supports this kind of thing. BBEdit makes it flat out pleasant though. I appreciate how well the new additions melt into the UI.

I won’t disagree with that, but my daily driver is OpenBSD. Emacs is what I got ;)

Right on! I have much love for Puffy.

You'll never hear me speak evil on Emacs. It's one of mankind's greatest software accomplishments. But I spend most of my days and nights on a Mac, and when in Rome...

Re: BBEdit 16

#39

Post by doublerabbit »

kstrauser wrote: post #34
bellowsgulch wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather software companies sell at more realistic prices so that they have a sustainable business, and signal to others in the industry that it's still possible to build a sustainable business. No, we should not praise software companies for hobbyist practices like selling $1 app on the App Store, which say, 30% goes to a digital distribution store, and then of your after distribution fees, about 20%+ percent…

No other professional field I know of lets workers invent and alter their own tools, collaboratively, for free, and share them for free with all their colleagues. If surgeons could wiggle their fingers and make a better scalpel, at no cost, and give a copy to all their friends, also at no cost, I bet they'd have some pretty spiffy scalpels going around soon and many docs would stop paying for them.

> No other professional field I know of lets workers invent and alter their own tools, collaboratively, for free, and share them for free with all their colleagues.

Blacksmithing, metal working?

Re: BBEdit 16

#40

Post by hgs3 »

pokstad wrote: post #26
kennywinker wrote: post #19

In 1998 bbedit 5.0 cost $120 usd. Adjusted for inflation that would be about $245 usd. Today an individual license costs $60. Wild how software pricing and sales models have changed, and good on bare bones for staying away from subscription pricing.

The software world is different today. People expect you to release security updates as vulnerabilities are discovered. They expect you to fix your application so that it works on the newest macOS that deprecated and broke the old APIs you used (or switch architectures). We expect continuous maintenance for a fixed price. I wish Textmate had a yearly charge to keep their team running instead of the one time purchase…

I think there is one major difference that separates the two eras: in ye olden days you bought software for a fixed price and while it's understood you might only receive updates for a limited time, you could continue using it so long as you had the ability to run it. For example, you didn't have to upgrade to Windows XP if you were satisfied with Windows 98. With subscriptions, it's a recurring fee to continue accessing the software at all.
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