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Just too bad 2011 OS X is hurting even more than ever for a competent programmers editor. TextMate is dying by inches and it never really had the powers of the

Just too bad 2011 OS X is hurting even more than ever for a competent programmers editor. TextMate is dying by inches and it never really had the powers of the Unix ones anyway. As for BBedit, it's pretty much a HTML editor with syntax highlighting for some other things. You might as well use Dashcode. Yeah, Emacs blah Vim bleh, but those are not really OS X editors. I do be using Emacs, but I crave real Mac-iness and integration.

Pewpewarrows 15y ago
Alloy's MacVim fork aims for better OS X integration: https://github.com/alloy/macvim https://github.com/alloy/macvim You're not going to get a better editor than vim or emacs. If you really refuse to learn either, there's always SublimeText 2, which is in beta right now. It's what most imagine TextMate 2 would have been (and yes, I'm aware that TM2 is being developed, but it's nothing more than vaporware to me at this point).
- sigzero 15y ago
  I have no problems with the current MacVim and I like that it isn't "better integrated". I would rather it work the same on every platform that I use it on.
jshen 15y ago
aquamacs?
- mark_l_watson 15y ago
  +1. I find that Textmate and aquamacs in tandem provide enough coverage for different coding tasks. Also, I find IntelliJ, RubyMine, and PyCharm great when I need auto-completion and a full IDE environment. (Some of my Clojure using friends may laugh, but IntelliJ with the Clojure plugin is my favorite Clojure hacking environment.) Aquamacs is what I use for all Gambit-C Scheme and Common Lisp coding.
  - jshen 15y ago
    Wow, I do almost exactly the same thing. I thought I was weird cause I don't know anyone else that does it. But, I get frustrated with clojure in intellij because it doesn't understand leiningen. The clojure repl, for example, doesn't load the dependencies from lein.
    - sjs 15y ago
      If I'm editing in Emacs I often use something else for project wide search. Even TextMate's find-in-project is better than using grep in emacs. I think a better grep mode could be written but it doesn't exist yet afaik.
nzoschke 15y ago
Sublime Text 2 is hot. It's already gotten some Lion updates like Lion scroll bars and full screen support. It's cross platform (Windows, Linux and Mac), but still feels excellent on OS X. http://www.sublimetext.com/2 http://www.sublimetext.com/2
- strmpnk 15y ago
  It took awhile to warm up to but I think I'll be finally purchasing my license once the next update rolls along.
- theatrus2 15y ago
  It's interesting, but my hands keep trying to use emacs key bindings. Unfortunately, there are no pre canned settings and I didn't want to spend the time making an emacs binding override.
- msluyter 15y ago
  I really like Sublime Text 2. My only complaint thus far is that in order to change colors in themes -- in my case, I only change the comment color in Monokai Bright from grey to green -- you have to find and manually edit the config files. Which, honestly, is pretty easy. I like the fact that I can use it both at work on Win7 and at home on my macs.
po 15y ago
I felt exactly this way until a few months ago when I tried Sublime Text 2. Love it; keeps getting better every build (which actually happen quite frequently).
msie 15y ago
ActiveState Komodo is pretty sweet. Has nice code-completion. File browser on the left pane.
jcapote 15y ago
brew install emacs --HEAD --cocoa
sjs 15y ago
Honestly this gets me close enough: https://github.com/samsonjs/config/blob/master/emacs#L436-463 https://github.com/samsonjs/config/blob/master/emacs#L436-46... But I haven't used Emacs as my primary editor in Lion yet. In might feel more out of place once apps start supporting restore and all that stuff.
macrael 15y ago
Are there programmers editors for other platforms that are better than what is available on OS X?
plastics 15y ago
They're coming now - or at least soon - e.g. * Vico ( http://www.vicoapp.com/ http://www.vicoapp.com/ ) * Kod ( http://kodapp.com/ http://kodapp.com/ ) * Chocolat (Alpha) ( http://chocolatapp.com/ http://chocolatapp.com/ ) also don't forget SubEthaEdit ( http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit ) and Espresso ( http://macrabbit.com/espresso/features/edit/ http://macrabbit.com/espresso/features/edit/ ).
alwillis 15y ago
Just too bad 2011 OS X is hurting even more than ever for a competent programmers editor. Seriously? Mac OS X has the best of both worlds: vim and emacs come pre-installed and we have the best of the GUI editors like BBEdit, TextMate, Espresso, SubEthaEdit, Fraise, Vico, etc. As for BBedit, it's pretty much a HTML editor with syntax highlighting for some other things. BBEdit kicks ass. Yes, it has great HTML tools(http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/benefitsstandards.html http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/benefitsstandards.h...) which were updated and enhanced recently in version 10 (http://www.macworld.com/article/161180/2011/07/bbedit_10.html http://www.macworld.com/article/161180/2011/07/bbedit_10.htm...). But it can also handle the hairiest tasks you can throw at it. Being a hardcore text editor is great and all; where it has always shined is supporting Mac OS X technologies: AppleScript(http://macosxautomation.com/lion/applescript.html http://macosxautomation.com/lion/applescript.html) (scriptable, recordable, and attachable), Automator(http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/automator.html http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/automator.html) without sacrificing the Unix goodies--it's scriptable using Perl, Ruby, Python, etc. I don't know of another editor that has a document type (Unix worksheets http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/benefitsintegrate.html#worksheet http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/benefitsintegrate.h...) just for executing shell commands without leaving the editor itself. I would put BBEdit's feature set against any editor on any platform. I have no affiliation with BareBones; just a satisfied customer for many years.
- chico_dusty 15y ago
  Yeah, bbedit has tons of ways of running scripts and stuff. It just sucks at editing text. It doesn't know how to indent code, or even format stuff like bulleted lists in plain text. That's the problem with Mac editors, they have fancy sidebars and think opening a directory of files or running a Unix pile is hot stuff, but they're not much better than a text box in Safari at actually editing text.

Pewpewarrows 15y ago

Alloy's MacVim fork aims for better OS X integration: https://github.com/alloy/macvim https://github.com/alloy/macvim You're not going to get a better editor than vim or emacs. If you really refuse to learn either, there's always SublimeText 2, which is in beta right now. It's what most imagine TextMate 2 would have been (and yes, I'm aware that TM2 is being developed, but it's nothing more than vaporware to me at this point).

sigzero 15y ago
I have no problems with the current MacVim and I like that it isn't "better integrated". I would rather it work the same on every platform that I use it on.

jshen 15y ago

aquamacs?

mark_l_watson 15y ago
+1. I find that Textmate and aquamacs in tandem provide enough coverage for different coding tasks. Also, I find IntelliJ, RubyMine, and PyCharm great when I need auto-completion and a full IDE environment. (Some of my Clojure using friends may laugh, but IntelliJ with the Clojure plugin is my favorite Clojure hacking environment.) Aquamacs is what I use for all Gambit-C Scheme and Common Lisp coding.
- jshen 15y ago
  Wow, I do almost exactly the same thing. I thought I was weird cause I don't know anyone else that does it. But, I get frustrated with clojure in intellij because it doesn't understand leiningen. The clojure repl, for example, doesn't load the dependencies from lein.
  - sjs 15y ago
    If I'm editing in Emacs I often use something else for project wide search. Even TextMate's find-in-project is better than using grep in emacs. I think a better grep mode could be written but it doesn't exist yet afaik.

nzoschke 15y ago

Sublime Text 2 is hot. It's already gotten some Lion updates like Lion scroll bars and full screen support. It's cross platform (Windows, Linux and Mac), but still feels excellent on OS X. http://www.sublimetext.com/2 http://www.sublimetext.com/2

strmpnk 15y ago
It took awhile to warm up to but I think I'll be finally purchasing my license once the next update rolls along.
theatrus2 15y ago
It's interesting, but my hands keep trying to use emacs key bindings. Unfortunately, there are no pre canned settings and I didn't want to spend the time making an emacs binding override.
msluyter 15y ago
I really like Sublime Text 2. My only complaint thus far is that in order to change colors in themes -- in my case, I only change the comment color in Monokai Bright from grey to green -- you have to find and manually edit the config files. Which, honestly, is pretty easy. I like the fact that I can use it both at work on Win7 and at home on my macs.

po 15y ago

I felt exactly this way until a few months ago when I tried Sublime Text 2. Love it; keeps getting better every build (which actually happen quite frequently).

msie 15y ago

ActiveState Komodo is pretty sweet. Has nice code-completion. File browser on the left pane.

jcapote 15y ago

brew install emacs --HEAD --cocoa

sjs 15y ago

Honestly this gets me close enough: https://github.com/samsonjs/config/blob/master/emacs#L436-463 https://github.com/samsonjs/config/blob/master/emacs#L436-46... But I haven't used Emacs as my primary editor in Lion yet. In might feel more out of place once apps start supporting restore and all that stuff.

macrael 15y ago

Are there programmers editors for other platforms that are better than what is available on OS X?

plastics 15y ago

They're coming now - or at least soon - e.g. * Vico ( http://www.vicoapp.com/ http://www.vicoapp.com/ ) * Kod ( http://kodapp.com/ http://kodapp.com/ ) * Chocolat (Alpha) ( http://chocolatapp.com/ http://chocolatapp.com/ ) also don't forget SubEthaEdit ( http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit ) and Espresso ( http://macrabbit.com/espresso/features/edit/ http://macrabbit.com/espresso/features/edit/ ).

alwillis 15y ago

Just too bad 2011 OS X is hurting even more than ever for a competent programmers editor. Seriously? Mac OS X has the best of both worlds: vim and emacs come pre-installed and we have the best of the GUI editors like BBEdit, TextMate, Espresso, SubEthaEdit, Fraise, Vico, etc. As for BBedit, it's pretty much a HTML editor with syntax highlighting for some other things. BBEdit kicks ass. Yes, it has great HTML tools(http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/benefitsstandards.html http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/benefitsstandards.h...) which were updated and enhanced recently in version 10 (http://www.macworld.com/article/161180/2011/07/bbedit_10.html http://www.macworld.com/article/161180/2011/07/bbedit_10.htm...). But it can also handle the hairiest tasks you can throw at it. Being a hardcore text editor is great and all; where it has always shined is supporting Mac OS X technologies: AppleScript(http://macosxautomation.com/lion/applescript.html http://macosxautomation.com/lion/applescript.html) (scriptable, recordable, and attachable), Automator(http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/automator.html http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/automator.html) without sacrificing the Unix goodies--it's scriptable using Perl, Ruby, Python, etc. I don't know of another editor that has a document type (Unix worksheets http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/benefitsintegrate.html#worksheet http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/benefitsintegrate.h...) just for executing shell commands without leaving the editor itself. I would put BBEdit's feature set against any editor on any platform. I have no affiliation with BareBones; just a satisfied customer for many years.

chico_dusty 15y ago
Yeah, bbedit has tons of ways of running scripts and stuff. It just sucks at editing text. It doesn't know how to indent code, or even format stuff like bulleted lists in plain text. That's the problem with Mac editors, they have fancy sidebars and think opening a directory of files or running a Unix pile is hot stuff, but they're not much better than a text box in Safari at actually editing text.