Ask HN: Textmate Alternatives? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Textmate Alternatives?

7 pointsbarredo20 comments

I really like TM, but 2011 seems a nice year to try new alternatives.

Of course vim. You can view Vim Casts (http://vimcasts.org/episodes/archive) for easy migration from TM.

I chose Eclipse over Textmate earlier this year. As a user of mostly Python, Javascript, HTML and CSS, Eclipse has provided my ideal programming setup. All of my code, for all of my projects, resides on a development server of mine (Ubuntu). With Eclipse, I'm able to install the Eclipse software on my PCs and Macbook and am able to use the Remote System Explorer to edit my code over SSH. I then have the Aptana suite to provide the syntax highlighting and stuff. I close most of the unnecessary Eclipse GUI elements so I'm left with a very bare-bones feeling editor. So, my same editing environment works across all of my computers.

When I used Textmate on my Macbook and Notepad++ on my Windows PCs, I always had issues with indentations, and stuff from one editor to the next. I also used to have to setup Samba on my Ubuntu server to map the network drives, and edit them over a mapped drive.

Once I found Eclipse to be as awesome as it is, I don't think I'll ever look back. lol.

I'll second the Eclipse vote. Sure, it has plenty of Enterprise-y cruft, but if you peel off (close) most of it, you've got a really great editor with version control integration for all major flavors(svn,cvs,git,etc...) and you can probably find an editor plugin for any language under the sun that is half decent. I don't love Java, but I sure do like Eclipse.

How do you peel of the cruft? I've been using it for a while, if I can get rid of the extraneous stuff I'd be even happier.

I was going to go off on a tangent about how the GUI was pretty terrible due to Java, but it looks like it's being nicely Cocoa-ified by a fork since I last used it in 2007:

Since the OP is on a Mac due to TextMate, this link may be essential: http://www.mdimension.com/page/Maclipse

MacVim + PeepOpen (http://peepcode.com/products/peepopen) are a pretty decent alternative, particularly if you already have some experience in vim.

If you don't have a history of vim mastery, you should still think about it. Yehuda Katz wrote an interesting blog article[1] on his experience switching to MacVim as a vim beginner relying on OSX-isms.

1. http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convi...

FWIW, I just switched from Textmate to MacVim 6 days ago, and am already nearly as productive in it as I was on Textmate (no prior vim experience)

I personally found it best to just embrace the vimness (with cheat-sheets beside my monitor). I barely accomplished any work on day 1, but by the end of day 2 I was moving along pretty comfortably.

I switched some months ago and I'm not going back. Don't forget to install vimperator on firefox too.

I posted some screenshots of my setup here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2053516

Using tmux instead of normal terminal tabs is also a huge improvement.

For PHP I use phpStorm (http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/) it's Eclipse-like but fast.

>it's Eclipse-like but fast

It also costs $100 (though it is on sale right now) where Eclipse costs $0. Not an insignificant fact for many of us.

Not everybody can afford those 100 bucks, I know. A lot of people can but wont.

I don't mind buying good software. Unless you're developing OS without any benefits any speed increase would lead to benefits increase (well, not any, but you know).

http://textmate2.com ?

Try an IDE designed specifically for whatever language you're working in. Most will have key commands to do just about anything you can do with Textmate. Spend a little time trying to customize and learn the environment. This will give you a good experience to weigh a lightweight editor against a heavyweight IDE. Most people seem to just fire up Eclipse or Rubymine or whatever else, see it take 30 seconds to start, not bother to learn what sets it apart from a text editor, then swear them off because of bloat.

Kod (www.kodapp.com) looks like it has potential with a few features that TM doesn't have. It is currently in beta.

Downloaded it a few days ago. Seems nice. But still has a lot of things to accomplish

For a solid text editor, Vim (MacVim if you prefer).

For a solid IDE, Netbeans. I find it easier to use than Eclipse.

There is an OSX port of gedit that is similar in UI to TM and has lots of nice features.

Emacs.

UltraEdit

BBEdit

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