Why TextMate is So Awesome

It seems TextMate has become quite a popular editor as of late. Some even say it is the best editor on any platform which is quite a bold statement, indeed. Cheat sheets such as this one might give you some idea of the breadth of features available at the tap of a key, but allow me to attempt a bulleted list of my favorites:

• Yes! There are hotkeys for everything! I almost don’t even miss vim at all! Hotkeys to navigate around and manipulate your text are essential, and TextMate doesn’t let you down.
• Moving around couldn’t be easier. Cmd+T brings up a dialog that intelligently figures out what file you’re looking for in your project from what you type. This lets you open up a file with the quickness. Cmd+Shift+T is similar, but you’re jumping to a symbol (class, function, etc) in the current file instead. Bookmarks let you cycle through important lines of code.
• Snippits are amazing. Type a snippit keyword and hit tab. It will be expanded to the full snippit with the first modifiable area selected. Type to replace it with something new, and hit tab to move to the next “hot” spot. With “smart typing” automatically closing my quotes and brackets, the code practically writes itself!
• You can execute a line of code as ruby and insert its result. You can commit code to versioning systems. You can …
• Extensibility. You can add third party bundles such as the that include new commands, macros, snippits, etc.
• It is a native cocoa application with predictable keybindings (Cmd+w closes, etc) and snazzy-clean mac-friendly interface.

People use this editor to maintain their todo lists and weblogs.

My biggest and nearly lonesome gripe with TextMate is how it freezes for a couple seconds when it comes to focus when you’re working on remote files (nfs, samba, etc). The upcoming version 2.0 will fix this issue as well as bring numerous exciting improvements.

Serious respect goes out to the mighty Allan Odgaard of Denmark for this incredible editor.

3 Comments to Why TextMate is So Awesome

1. 

   Nice write-up. TextMate looks good. I’d try it out, but it’s only for the Mac. Bummer I don’t have one!!
Dennis on July 6th, 2006
2. 

   AFAIK, scribes [http://scribes.sourceforge.net/] is supposed to be a similar recreation of textmate although not the same. Can’t say I’ve ever tried.

   It always seems textmate is geared towards ruby programming, but I’m sure it works for everything else.. same how scribes seems geared towards python. Two languages I don’t use :)
Dave Foster on July 6th, 2006
3. 

   Yeah, it is even the Apple recommended editor for RoR [http://developer.apple.com/tools/rubyonrails.html], and I can say from first-hand experience that RoR development could not be made simpler.

   I have also been using it for PHP development, though, and I can honestly say I prefer it over Zend, which my workplace has been recommending to me. Zend is a pretty powerful IDE for PHP, but I’ve just come to be more comfortable in TextMate.
thread on July 6th, 2006