[TxMt] How can TextMate be so popular???

[Brian Landau]

On 3/6/07, tlm <tlm1905 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you telling me that every time I want to open a new file I have
> the choice of either using the GUI or switching to a Terminal window
> so that I can use the CLI?  I certainly prefer the latter over the
> former, but it is awkward at best.  Sheesh...

OMG, you mean I have to use the CLI!!!! Holly SHIT BATMAN!!!! It's the
command line I'm so scarred HELP ME!!
I thought you bathed in the Command line for breakfast Tim!
As an example, let's say most of what you do is in the terminal
(a.k.a. the shell, you do know what a shell is, right Tim?) well then
type mate -w ~/path/to/project
And vola it opens in TextMate and you know what? When you finish and
close the project it returns you to the shell! WOW just like it
SHOULD!

> As for the Help business, for those who dare to see how much your
> beloved TM's Help sucks, try this.  Switch to the Finder, invoke Help,
> in the search box enter anything you like, for example "preferences",
> click on the first result, and now use Cmd-F to search for occurrences
> of a particular word in that page.  Pick a word you know is there.
> Success!  (So don't blame the OSX Help system for TM's developers'
> incompetence.)
>
> Now try exactly the same thing with the TextMate Help.  For added fun,
> put "project" in the search box, and pick the top hit "Working with
> multiple files".  Now do Cmd-F and search for the word "project".
> BONK!  BONK!  BONK!  Awesome, innit?  And one can't blame it on OSX;
> the Help pages for Finder, Safari, Mail, etc., don't have this
> problem.

I tried this and it worked just fine for me, it did the find just fine
and selected the first instance of project, what a load of rubbish.

> In my original post I wrote that to design software to beep without
> giving the user an error message is an inexcusable bit of software
> engineering malpractice.  Sure enough, out of all the copious rebuttal
> attempts I got, not a single one even tried to excuse it, so I guess
> my assessment was correct after all.  I guess we only differ in that I
> have higher standards for software than you all, especially if I'm
> expected to pay for it.

You do realize that the developer of TextMate along with TextMate won
an Apple Developer Design Award recently. And it's well regarded
throughout out the development/programing communities on both Mac,
Windows, and Linux, just look at the TextMate clones popping up. Like
http://www.e-texteditor.com/.
Not to mention the error you're talking about is a MINOR error and
should not get a dialog box every time it happened. That would be way
too annoying. And plus you KNOW what is causing it a syntax error your
JavaScript, is causing a problem with the folding!

> To the responder who protested that I had not taken the time to learn
> about TextMate, I just want to point out that I ran into all these
> problems in literally less than 2 minutes of use.  Well-designed
> software doesn't perform so poorly even when the user is starting out.

Ummm… TextMate is "power user" software it's not like iTunes for
wana-be-programmers. If you're not going to take the time to
understand how it works you won't be able to use it. The same thing
can be said of Emacs of Vi (and that's not a diss to Emacs for Vi).
The point is every text editor has a learning curve. If I tried to use
my TM methods in Emacs I'd quickly find I couldn't do anything! I
would NEED to learn how Emacs works!

> But I'm glad you all love your TextMate.  Standards for software are
> very low I suppose.  And paid software to boot!  Too bad.

Now let me be as polite as I can:
Stop trolling and go away, or start learning!!!

-Brian