“RE: TextMate's Undo, and the New Editor Wars”

On 11/10/2006, Kerri said:

Speaking of coding monkeys and language modules, there's something I find awfully bothersome about the whole TextMate thing (and I'm speaking as someone who employs students and pays them for their hard work as programmers). Macromates charges $50 for software that would, frankly, be all but worthless without the work of third-party developers. As far as I can tell, these third-party developers work for free, while Macromates keeps the whole license fee.

I hear you, Kerri, but I spent years living on the Frontier, starting when it was an expensive product of UserLand Software. Dave was the undisputed master of the free workforce, so what Allan is (allegedly!) pulling off there seems like kid's stuff in comparison.

Plus, the developers who contribute code modules to TextMate surely know in advance that they're not going to be paid for it. Since TextMate is a religion for some of these people (which keeps with the tradition of text editors!), many of them believe they're "working for a cause." While it's certainly difficult for any business to compete with a free labor force, it's difficlt to blame Allan for *allowing* people to volunteer free code.

I don't think there's any denying that TextMate's extendibility through bundles is very cool and well done. But my own use of the software and the comments seen in that thread on Erik's site strongly suggest that if he wants to have a really great text editor, he should start sweating the pixels. BBEdit has less flash, but the low-level, work-a-minute stuff is virtually perfect. IMO.

[SNIP]

Contrast that with Smultron or emacs' F/OSS pricetag and the same level of support, or BBEdit's professional development and support of modules for more than two dozen programming languages. At least in these latter examples, you get what you pay for.

I totally agree.

Seth