A few days ago I decided to start working on a school assignment; just some basic HTML stuff. My initial response to fire up Notepad++ proved useless, as I had moved to Mac OS X a few weeks ago. Unwilling to fire up my Windows emulation, I went looking for an alternative coding text editor.
The best free and paid text editor programs for Mac whether you're a web developer, programmer, technical writer, or anything in between! Text editors are an entirely different story. Text editors are much more helpful if you're editing code, creating web pages, doing text transformation or other things for which a word processor is just overkill. Mac text/code editor [closed]. Conversly, Mac users will find the normal Emacs UX odd. If you are planning to use Emacs cross-platform on Windows and Linux. Text editor allows user to edit text. One can use it for note taking or for coding. Almost every operating system has a pre-installed text editor.
To clarify, with code-writing applications, I mean (free) text editors that are willing to highlight your code – compilation and validation optional, but often included.
I discovered two things during that search. Firstly, Mac OS X has far less software alternatives than Windows, but second, nearly all of them are decent applications. Not having to sift through all that junk, I was quickly set up with a number of excellent coding text editor alternatives.
Komodo Edit
We’ll start out with a rather advanced application. If you want something lighter, check the application below, or scroll down to the bottom of the article for some additional recommendations.
Komodo Edit (based on Komodo IDE) is built on the Mozilla code base, and offers the same extendability. That’s right – you can download extensions for this one. Whatever the flavor, you’ll be able to fit Komodo Edit to your personal taste. Oh, and did I mention that it’s also available for Windows and Linux?
Komodo Edit offers syntax coloring and syntax validation, but the application also adds multi-language file support, autocomplete and Vi emulation to the package. If you’re a sucker for extra functionality, you’re right at home with Komodo Edit.
Smultron
The coding text editor I ended up using is Smultron. Now mind, there’s a reason why I didn’t start the article with it. The developer, Peter Borg, has discontinued the work on the application. For now, you are still greeted by a near-blank page with a short explanation and the download links, but there is no guarantee of how long the application will remain available, or supported.
For now though, Smultron remains a great coding application. Comprehensive and accessible for beginners (like me), but also housing a number of tools for the more advanced user. Included are HTML, plist and XML validators, Java compilers, and several converters. Syntax highlighting is of course included for most popular (and unpopular) programming languages.
MacVim
Vim is one of the older, and also more popular coding text editors in Linux. It’s open source and famous for being text-controllable. In other words, it hasn’t got a Graphical User Interface by default.
MacVim is a port of Vim to the Mac OS X platform. And yes, it does have a GUI (phew).
Since all the work on MacVim is done by ‘fans’, the application is usually a little behind on the official application. Just a little, though – MacVim tends to be quick on the ball, and is a rock solid text/coding application.
At the core, MacVim is very similar to the official application, save that it comes with OS X support, and a few added bonuses. It’s loaded with incredible features, but often needs a bit of trickery to get the most out of it. Learning to work with the application isn’t too hard, but its audience consists for the biggest part out of advanced users.
Also noteworthy is the license; MacVim is released as charity-ware. In other words, if you like the application, they encourage you to support needy children in Uganda.
Other mentionworthy coding text editor alternatives are jEdit and Aquamacs. What do you use to write your code? Let us know your preferred applications in the comments!
There is no shortage of options for text editors geared towards developers on the Mac, but TextMate is our top pick. It wins out thanks to its massive programming language syntax support, helpful code snippets, expandability, and integration with the OS X terminal.
TextMate
Platform: Mac OS X
Price: Free!
Download Page
Features
- Column Selections and Column Typing
- Expand Trigger Words to Code Blocks With Tab-able Placeholders
- Support for Darcs, Perforce, SVK, and Subversion
- Works As External Editor for (s)ftp Programs
Note: This feature list is borrowed from the TextMate site and the links will take you directly to TextMate's pages containing more info on each feature.
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Where It Excels
TextMate is excellent. It's as simple as you need it to be, providing only a single window for editing a single document, or it can expand to handling a large file structure. It supports syntax highlighting for practically any programming language you can think of, plus it contains code snippets. These things can be expanded by downloading third-party add-ons. TextMate has great code organization features. It updates frequently enough that you feel taken care of but not so frequently you want to smack it in the face (like with Evernote). You can even use TextMate as your text editor in the terminal with the command mate. If you're looking for a WYSISYG editor, TextMate—and this entire category—is not for you. If you just want to write code in a great editor, you've come to the right app.
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Where It Falls Short
Organizing the files you're currently working on could be a little more user-friendly, as it can be a little bit tedious if you don't open your entire work folder immediately at launch. The undo history is so detailed that you can find yourself pressing Command+Z a lot just to get back to the place you wanted. Generally it's just faster to retype it. Overall, though, there's very little to complain about. At one point we complained about its $58 price tag, but now that TextMate is open-source and free it's got almost everything going for it.
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The Competition
It's impossible to avoid mentioning SublimeText because it's so similar. It has almost the same support for language syntax as TextMate, and even has a Windows version as well (which is where the app originated, but that Mac version is still very Mac-like). Honestly, whether you use Sublime Text or TextMate is really going to come down to preference. They're both excellent and both, perhaps, a bit too expensive. They also both come with trials, so you can check them both out and decide for yourself.
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But maybe you're someone who doesn't want to pay for their programming-friendly text editor. If that's you, there are a couple of other alternatives that don't cost a thing. First, TextWrangler is a capable option with a loyal user base (if they haven't already upgraded to its big brother BBEdit), but it's a little low on capabilities and has an interface that feels pretty dated. Alternatively, there's Fraise (the successor to Smultron), which is another free, capable, but not-as-amazing-as-TextMate (and Sublime Text) text editor.
Linux C++ Text Editor For Coding
The other free option that's probably most like TextMate (and Sublime Text, for that matter) is Kod. It supports over 65 languages, is remarkably fast and lightweight, and only comes with one real disadvantage: it's in its early stages of development. When I checked it out earlier this year, however, it was pretty solid. Kod is very much worth a look, even if it hasn't been around for quite as long as the others.
Mac Text Editor For Coding
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