Vim vs Textmate [closed]

Question

Is text mate really worth it? When there is Vim which is free. I've heard that the Vim learning curve is steep but vi(m) is in almost every *nix os. Which is more powerful and is text mate worth the price tag

Answer 1

Vim is more powerful, and textmate is worth the price tag.

I am pretty convinced that vims modal editing and text objects is the most efficient way to accomplish the task of doing raw text editing. It also take an extremely long time and a lot of effort to get to the point where you are able to say that for yourself. Once you are at the point where the modality is a joy instead of a chore, and you think in terms of text objects, learning things feature by feature is easy. But to get there, I would say 2-3 months if you are putting effort specifically into learning vim, 6-8 months if you are just using it as a normal text editor and absorbing stuff as you come across it. That is an incredably steep investment, and something that a lot of very capable and professional developers don't want to do, which I think is fine. But a certain type of brain actually ENJOYS doing it, and for that kind of person, vim is pretty unbeatable.

Textmate is incredably powerful, with a much more graduated learning curve. So you can start out using it like notepad, and gradually learn more and more shortcuts and more powerful techniques. Someone who is an expert at textmate is extremely fast, and the editor really is a joy to use. It also looks fantastic, even on macvim, I am so jealous of the way code looks in textmate. That being said, 2.0 has been promised for years now without delivery, which has caused a lot of disgruntlement in the textmate community. I would also check out sublime editor on osx if I were in youre shoes and making this choice, not as many people using it, but heard very good things.

TL;DR: vim is amazing and worth the investment, but the investment of your time is pretty substancial. Textmate is worth your money and is an amazing editor that is easy to pick up and learn as you go.