TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac

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By admin ⋅ March 5, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

If you’re on a Mac and you are a developer of any sorts, you should be using Textmate. This lightweight editor puts you back in control of programming. TextMate is not an IDE but by using its powerful snippets and macros, it can often provide features that even a language specific IDE lacks.

What I love about Textmate is that it saves you a lot of time with a really low learning curve. You can open up any directory as a project and easily navigate through files and folders. Short-cuts let you clean-up code, insert snippets or duplicate lines etc.

Because Textmate is so powerful and versatile everybody uses it in their own way. You are not limited by its working methods. Use it for whatever you want: editing text, programming Ruby on Rails, building HTML etc.

Textmate has a really low learning curve. You can use it straight out of the box, but the more you learn about it, the more powerful it becomes. That is where this book comes in. It’s a great reference that lets you streamline your programming methods and saves you a lot of time on manual programming labor.

Did I mention Textmate has its own Ruby on Rails bundle? Mac + Textmate + Ruby on Rails = a lot of fun!

from the author:

TextMate is a powerful tool for programmers, web designers, and anyone else who regularly needs to work with text files on Mac OS X. TextMate focuses on pragmatic automation, which means it will save you time time that’s always in short supply. See how your lowly text editor can become a hard working member of your staff.

TextMate is a full-featured text editor available for Mac OS X that can greatly enhance your text manipulation skills. TextMate is actually a thin shell over a personalized team of robot ninjas ready to do your bidding. Let’s face it, who doesn’t want their very own team of robot ninjas?

With TextMate you can do your normal work, but signal the ever-watchful ninjas as you go. At your command, they will launch into action, slicing through text, building repetitive structures of data in the blink of an eye, and much more. They will even post to your blog, handle your IRC conversations, and read your email.

Inside this book you will learn how to teleport instantly to the exact line of the file you need to be on, edit the data with the briefest incantations of power, and banish the end result to the land of your choosing. It’s magic, as you can plainly see.

Leave the days of dull work behind. Learn your spells, gain access to your team of robot ninjas, and you too will be able to edit text so effortlessly that everyone watching over your shoulder will be forced to ask, “Wait, how did you do that?”

what others say:

“‘TextMate is actually a thin shell over a personalized team of robot ninjas ready to do your bidding.’

The funny thing is, to people who have never used TextMate for more than a few minutes the above phrase sounds like an exaggeration. It’s not. (As long as you can accept the analogy of “really awesome code running on a Mac” = “robot ninjas”…)

Anyway, this book targets a pretty specific market: 1) Humans, 2) who own Macs, 3) and use TextMate. I’m here to tell you that, if you’re human you should have a Mac; and if you have a Mac you should buy TextMate; and if you have TextMate you should buy this book. So there, now it covers everyone.”

By Decompiler on Amazon.com

“This book is the perfect primer for what I have found to be one of the most indispensible Mac OS X applications – TextMate. If you are a software developer or web designer or anyone else that edits text on a frequent basis and you have not already discovered TextMate, stop right now and visit http://www.macromates.com. ”

By Walz-Burkett on Amazon.com

“About six months ago I switched to using TextMate, a text editor with a clean and well designed interface that hides a great deal of power, replacing both BBEdit and vim. I felt like a baby duck that had been ripped away from its mother, but I was determined to switch to a single editor. I have since become familiar with the power of TextMate and it’s extensions. Getting a copy of “TextMate – Power Editing for the Mac” (TPEftM) made me feel like I’d gone from baby duck to Leo DiCaprio, dating a supermodel.”

By A. Williams on Amazon.com