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

[tlm]

On 3/6/07, Michael Gregoire <mgee at gwi.net> wrote:

> Again dipsh*t...


Now, THAT hurt.



> in CLI:
>
> mate .
>
> mate ~/project
>
> mate whateverdamnfolderyouwanttoopenasaproject
>
> click that Enter key and you have yourself a project sans drag/drop
>
> Oh I forget, you don't like to have Terminal open at the same time as
> TextMate... you call yourself a developer?

You have a curiously limited view of the possibilies available to an
application like this.  Here's my preferred one (which TextMate,
AFAICT, does not have):

Hit a key and you get a command-line with completion with some
halfway-intelligent choice for the desired path (minus the filename)
already filled in, which disappears if one hits another key.  Every
texteditor worth its salt that I know of has this option (along with
the sillier ones you seem to like so much).  (Yeah, TM has something
like this for the files that are happy members of one's cute little
project, but that's too limited for my taste.  This projects business
is the dumbest idea I can imagine...  How about a "dollhouse" option?
Wouldn't it be a whole lot purtier to have one's files in a
*dollhouse*?  *blink* *blink*)

> Terminal is always open with my workflow anyway...

Mine is too, running screen and zsh full blast all the time baby.  I
just think it is supremely inelegant and cumbersome to require the
user to switch to Terminal just to open a friggin file via the
keyboard (and in the process creating a new friggin' window to boot).

As to the other replies: yes, as a few of you figured out, the problem
with the folding has *nothing* to do with the syntax in the code I
posted, but rather with a very faulty regular expression in TextMate's
code, written by someone with a very weak grasp of regular
expressions, I might add.  (I can think of a ton of common situations
that those regular expressions would miss.)

To the fellow who wanted to see an example of my software: I hate to
burst your bubble kid but not all the code written out there in the
big wide world is in the form of GUI-driven consumer-oriented apps;
the code I write is proprietary custom software for financial data
analysis; no GUI's in sight (thank god).  That said, even though the
number of users for this code is very small and its shelf-life
measured in weeks or at most months, I spend a great number of brain
cycles on the problem of producing useful error messages and
diagnostics.  In fact, I'd say that this activity consumes a
surprisingly large fraction of my coding time, and error handling is
one of the yardsticks by which I judge the quality of software, my own
and anyone else's.  Software with poor error reporting is just shoddy
software in my book, I don't care what other bell and whistles it
claims on its glossy webpage.

Maybe TextMate will eventually grow to fill its oversized, but
undeserved, reputation, and to actually EARN the price on its tag
(especially in the face of the extremely high quality of existing free
alternatives).  That would be great, but it ain't there yet, boys and
girls, not by a long shot.

And, yeah, remember: QUIT FEEDING THE GODDAMN TROLL!  Dammit.