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Comment by TylerE | Hacker News Reader

Sublime Text, is native, isn't?

Sure, much of the API and all the plugin stuff is in Python, but the core is all native C++ AFAIK.

Its native but cross platform so many Mac purists don’t consider it as “native” as TextMate, which is built specifically for the Mac and doesn't compromise on standard Mac UI idioms.

Having said that, if they had known all the modern alternatives were going to be even less “native” amd run in a browser engine, they'd probably have been less nitpicky.

Eh, as a macOS user until recently, I found Sublime Text to be a very integrated application. Appearance and behavior was exactly as I'd expect from modern macOS applications.

It may not be heavy on archaic Mac features such as AppleScript integration, but I hope we can all agree to ignore those technologies.

TextMate just brings memories of the 10.4 Tiger days.

Right. I’m referring to 5 to 7 years ago when Sublime 2 was still young.

I personally liked ST2 but I know that some people held their nose.

TextMate never had AppleScript integration, AFAIK.

Also, I'm not convinced we should ignore those "archaic" technologies, at least in the abstract. Applications can provide "dictionaries" of commands that, when implemented well, provide GUI applications with the kind of "snap together for amazing effect" you get with shell scripts and a host of well-written CLI tools. You arguably can't script the AppleScript-intensive BBEdit to the same level that you could, say, Emacs or Vim, but imagine the possibilities of a suite of apps from different makers that all had complete scripting dictionaries that could all be woven together with a deep system-wide scripting language.

I actually think it's a shame that AppleScript has been kicked to the curb. I don't think we have a "modern" replacement yet -- certainly not in the Apple ecosystem, and I'm not sure anywhere else. (Shortcuts on iOS is trying, but it's not on the Mac yet, and it gets pretty clunky if you start doing overly complicated automation bits with it.)

AppleScript is a great idea in how everything is scriptable.

Unfortunately, the language itself is a horrible abomination from the wild 1990s days of Mac OS... sorry, now macOS... and writing absolutely anything in it is painful.

I feel like Apple introduced Automator to overcome the pain of AppleScript, but it never really caught on (I don't even know if Automator is still on macOS.... yep it is, still with the cute Aquaesque icon)

Nowadays everything is Electron anyway and those are not that well AppleScript-able, but what to do, that's life

"AppleScript" can do JS now, but it's so clunky and badly documented that it's barely worth it.

JXA, like Scripting Bridge before it, was shipped crippled and buggy and abandoned once it was out the door. Apple finally disbanded the Mac Automation team and fired the PM responsible a couple years ago.

In fact, there are several production-tested Apple event bridges that totally wipe the floor with Apple’s failed attempts, but caveat emptor as I don’t do support:

http://appscript.sourceforge.net https://www.npmjs.com/package/nodeautomation https://hhas.bitbucket.io/welcome.html

We’ll see what happens when Shortcuts lands in 10.16, but I’d say the chances of Apple event automation having a long and healthy life ahead are 50/50, at best.

I think AppleScript and Automator is/will be deprecated and the replacement would be Shortcuts present on iOS.

I think the main developer of AppleScript left Apple last year.

I think I read something on these lines on HN, I may be remembering things slightly wrong

The language itself is pretty bonkers, to be sure. I think the Amiga probably did this better with ARexx, simply because Rexx was much better for "friendly scripting language." I was going to say I'd made my peace with AppleScript, but it'd be more honest to say "I've gotten better at beating AppleScript into submission."

iOS Workflow/Shortcuts is what Automator should have been in a lot of ways. If Automator was superseded by a macOS version of Shortcuts, I'd actually love it, as long as it didn't lose any of Automator's functionality. (All they'd really need to do is add Shortcuts that run AppleScripts and shell scripts, I think, and be able to use automator actions exposed by applications.)

Expect Shortcuts to land in 10.16. Most of the plumbing’s already in 10.15; it’s just not public yet.

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/11359563313603461...

I love Applescript. Not necessarily the language but what you can do with it is great. It's one thing that's keeping me on Mac--there's no Windows equivalent, much less a Linux equivalent. You can kind of hack stuff with Autohotkey but that's not the same thing at all.

>Eh, as a macOS user until recently, I found Sublime Text to be a very integrated application. Appearance and behavior was exactly as I'd expect from modern macOS applications.

Compare the file browsers and find dialogs and the difference is night and day.

Yes! Sublime Text certainly has the functionality, but the search/replace UX is a big part of what keeps me going back to BBEdit for technical writing.

TextMate is native and modern.

Depends on what you mean by "native". The core is compiled to a native binary. But it doesn't use macOS native text editing or UI idioms beyond the level of windows and menus. If you don't want to use TextMate, you might as well use Visual Studio Code instead, which is closer in spirit to the native Mac idioms and is easier to configure.

I'm not well versed on the specific implementation details of ST, but whatever the ST team does on macOS yields a result that is much closer to a native application than VSCode does through embedded Chromium. The difference in text rendering is particularly noticeable on a non-hidpi display.

Sublime Text is C++ expect for the plugins part. And they have put years to optimize it. It beats everything when it comes to performance, memory, and power consumption.

The only fight it can't win over VSCode is the extensions and ecosystem.

It’s also declining according to the chart, but you’re right that it’s both native and way more popular than TextMate.

I found that ggl trends graphs for tech topics usually decline over time and I attribute it to more non-technical crowd becoming netizens and thus technical topics will usually seem declining.

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