Torn Between Text Editors

|

I am continually torn between TextMate, Sublime, and BBEdit. I've ruled out the other possibilities Here are the big pros and cons.

BBEdit

Pros

  • Very well supported, a solid company behind it.
  • Can open huge text files.
  • Best search feature.
  • Great diffing included.
  • Extremely stable
  • I trust it wholeheartedly
  • Text Factories
  • Very Mac-ish
  • Easy to AppleScript-hack
  • A warm and fuzzy OS 9 feel, in a good way
  • Serviceable clippings feature
  • Excellent attention to detail
  • It's not going anywhere, has a long history
  • Nice auto-save feature
  • Top-notch and friendly support

Cons

  • Lacks basic modern text editor features, such as multiple cursors and bracket completion.
  • Limited plugin and scriptability. For example, cannot have a running lint process that highlights errors as you type.
  • Unintelligent code hinting
  • Not the greatest syntax highlighting
  • Smaller user-base.

TextMate

Pros

  • The most Mac OS X-like
  • Amazing sidebar with most Finder features. This my favorite part of TextMate.
  • Git integration in the sidebar is seamless.
  • rmate is amazing.
  • Bundles are available to install right in the app.
  • Open source with a rapid pace of development.

Cons

  • Sometimes there are hangs.
  • No split-screen editing.
  • The wait for TextMate 2 destroyed most of the userbase. As a result, some key bundles are very old.
  • Auto-complete isn't smart and relies on toggling through options by pressing escape

Sublime Text

Pros

  • The best syntax highlighting.
  • Package Control, an awesome package manager keeps everything up-to-date
  • With a few packages, it becomes one of the best Markdown editors.
  • Cross platform
  • Has all the modern features expected in a text editor.
  • The most extensible and hackable of these 3 editors.
  • A huge and active userbase.
  • An unlimited trial with occasional nags, a perfect way to kick the tires before commiting.
  • The command palette allows me to forget every keyboard shortcut
  • The best split screen implementation
  • Super speedy and efficient interface

Cons

  • A one-man operation in which the developer disappears for long periods of time
  • Even with extensions, the file browser is pretty weak
  • Can't open huge files
  • I strongly dislike the search implementation, which spits out a difficult-to-grok text file with all the matches.

In conclusion

Right now I'm using mostly TextMate 2 for my JavaScript programming, but I find myself switching to the other two at various times. The file browser is just too good as I manipulate the folder structure, but I miss Sublime's superior JavaScript support and syntax highlighting. In other cases, I need to open BBEdit to manipulate text. I think in the end I should eliminate TextMate or Sublime and keep BBEdit for specialized use cases.