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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

So I guess I used BBEdit for 28 years. I started on System 7? I think. And I finally stopped last year when I switched to CotEditor, wanting something more macOS native.

It's still installed, though. I was mildly annoyed that I paid for a version 14 license and then about 6 months later version 15 came out and my license didn't work in it.

It's probably still worth the money, but I'm enjoying CotEditor for my basic text editing needs.

Edit: My version numbers may be confused. Whatever they are, my license only worked for less than a year. I did ask support if I qualified for the next version, and they said no.

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> I was mildly annoyed that I paid for a version 14 license and then about 6 months later version 15 came out

The current version of BBEdit is 14.1. Maybe you're getting the version numbers confused here. (BBEdit 14 came out in mid-July of 2021, and while a version 13 license would indeed not work in it because new versions require new licenses, the web site clearly states you can upgrade from BBEdit 13 for free if you bought it on or after January 1, 2021. IIRC, Bare Bones has always been fairly generous in this kind of upgrade policy.)

> And I finally stopped last year when I switched to CotEditor, wanting something more macOS native.

BBEdit has always been a native Mac program, so I'm not sure what it is you're trying to get at here?

Mostly that CotEditor supports Versions, and BBEdit doesn't. I don't need to remember to save.

If you quit BBEdit it'll restore the state to where it was when you left. It recovers documents after crashes. You can even turn on an option that lets you recover "untitled" documents that you explicitly clicked the "Don't Save" button on. I suppose BBEdit isn't literally saving to the open file as you go, so if that's actually what you want, it's a strike against it. I'd have to put some effort into actually losing data with BBEdit, though, and I think on balance I'd prefer "don't let me lose unsaved changes unintentionally but still let me close a file without saving or revert to the version on disk if I confirm that's what I actually want to do".

By "Versions" I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but BBEdit integrates with the Mac's native file versioning at a level that I don't think I've seen any other editor do. You can select "Search > Find Differences > Compare Against Previous Version" and get a diff just the way you would if you were comparing versions in Git or Subversion.

I love CotEditor too, it has basic Markdown's syntax highlighting which is all I need to take daily notes. It also has a CLI with args to jump to specific line and column which I use in combination with FZF to search and jump to matches in my notes.

I'm amused that we've gotten to the point where BBEdit no longer feels native because it's so old and clunky and everything else has a more slick, modern design.

Any thoughts on using CotEditor vs Sublime as a Dev needing to open json,sql,log files etc?

My needs are very basic, so I didn't give Sublime much of a look. I specifically wanted something macOS native, and CotEditor was one of the few, possibly the only, that supports Versions. It does everything I need it to.

I’m going to give it a try tomorrow

I tried it briefly but found it too basic. The lack of tabs was the main problem.

Cot Editor has loads of tabs. Also supports ligatures and OpenType features.

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