On Nov 10, 2006, at 4:59 AM, Andy Armstrong wrote:
I'd say this is way more telling: http://www.google.com/trends?q=textmate%2C+bbedit
Telling? Yes, but not about the relative popularity of the two products.
No more so than O'Reilly's book sales numbers (which are also available publicly) are a good indication of language popularity.
Something like "trends" for a product is often a more accurate indication as to the # of releases or the amount of "news" generated around the product, neither of which have any real indication as to the # of users or licenses. As well, the very nature of TextMate creates a much larger footprint on the internet than BBEdit as a result of the open bundle repository and "online-ness" of the primary user base.
This entire "editor war" is stupid.
Any long time user of a text editor is going to find a different editor implemented with a different philosophy to be painful to use. Just as long term BBEdit users don't find TM to be usable, neither can a long term emacs user find BBEdit to be usable (I tried to use BBEdit. Couldn't do it. Too alien to emacs.).
BBEdit is an amazing product. Experienced users of BBEdit can do things that completely run circles around TextMate. But that is because they are using BBEdit in a highly optimal usage pattern that efficiently uses the BBEdit core.
Same goes for TextMate users. There is an entirely different set of features for which an experienced TM user will blow the doors off a BBEdit user attempting to do the same thing.
The two products are different. At this time, neither is particularly better overall. Both have strengths and weaknesses and both are built such that a truly immersed user in one of the products is going to find the other product completely inferior.
Ultimately, so what?
b.bum