TextMate

For those of you who are just getting started with programming or don’t know much about it a text editor is what a programmer uses to write lines of code that makes computers, websites and gadgets do what they do. The text editor to a developer is what a pair of shoes are to a soccer player, an instrument to a musician, and brushes to a painter. Developers spend a good majority of their time sitting in front of a text editor. Soccer players on a field. Artists in front of a canvas. Needless to say, finding the right text editor would prove to be a very important decision and investment of not only money, in some cases, but time adapting your typing habits to take advantage of all the possible features of the editor.

I want to tell you about my editor of choice. TextMate.

A Love Story

TextMate and I have been together since 2006 when MacHeist included it in their annual Mac software bundle. For $50 I got TextMate and a few other apps. An offer not many can refuse. A few weeks earlier I had been eyeballing the app while looking for a dedicated tool to help me become more efficient in typing code for websites. In high school I used Dreamweaver to develop websites but the more I created websites the more I wanted to write the code myself. I didn’t want to rely on at WYSIWYG to generate countless lines of code while I used a fancy interface to slide components around, changed fonts or even the layout of a page. I wanted to have full control of the code and that meant writing every character myself. It’s sort of like someone falling in love with cooking. The more they invest in learning how to cook the less likely they are to buy TV dinners. From scratch is always better.

Features

TextMate’s feature list seems endless. The following are a few of my favorite.

Syntax Highlighting

Do you remember what code looked like in The Matrix? All green with weird symbols. The same is true for a plain text editor. Everything is in black and white. Syntax highlighting allows a developer to distinguish various types of code at a glance. Look at the following samples code.

Multi-Line Editing

I’ve often find myself editing lists. And it can be a tedious task to wrap a lot of list items with code. With TextMate, formatting a list is done with just a few keystrokes.

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia

<ul>
  <li>Alabama</li>
  <li>Alaska</li>
  <li>Arizona</li>
  <li>Arkansas</li>
  <li>California</li>
  <li>Colorado</li>
  <li>Connecticut</li>
  <li>Delaware</li>
  <li>Florida</li>
  <li>Georgia</li>
</ul>

I won’t explain how to accomplish this but it really is just a few key combinations. See for yourself.

Themes

I don’t know about other developers but I can’t stare at white screen without getting a headache. How long can an ice skater perform when a their shoes are on too tight. It’s uncomfortable. TextMate allows developers to create and install themes. I use a theme called ‘railscasts’. It turns the background black and changes the text color. It’s a lot more pleasing on the eyes.

Snippets

Snippets is one of the best features a text editor can have. A snippet is a piece of text that you want to insert into your file. This comes in handy when you’re constantly typing the same things over and over.

Bundles

TextMate allows developers to build bundles that provide added functionality and code snippets for specific languages. This allows TextMate to be as robust as you want it to be or as simple as you want it to be.

To learn more about TextMate visit http://macromates.com/