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Ask HN: Coda, Textmate, or Espresso for development?

3 points by fourstar ↗ HN
I'm currently using TextMate, but I've heard good things about the other two. Particularly for being all-in-one development tools.

What are you using? Can you please tell me the pros/cons of each?

All comparison websites I've found are a bit outdated, so I'm assuming a lot of newer/wanted features have been released in each since.

6 comments

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soapdog
I have both textmate and espresso and tried coda for a while. I am staying with textmate and I am doing it not because textmate is better than the other two but because it does the job the way I expect it to. Even though I bought espresso, I never used it, it came with a bundle and I was very excited about it but in the end, my workflow is already working and instead of switching to a new app, I decided to learn emacs and slowly switch to it because it enables me to code on my mac and on my linux box with the same tools.

TextMate Pros: * if you need a text editor, you will love it * the bundles are great * works as expected * customizable

TextMate cons: * you need extra tools such as ssh, ftp and the like * it has no nice GUI for visually doing stuff such as css (the cons are rational cons but they don't affect my job)

fourstar
Thanks for the reply. I feel the same way with TextMate just working how you'd expect.

Maybe I'll pick up Coda one day, but it looks like I'll stay with TM for now.

terrellm
I really see Coda/Espresso and Textmate filling two different roles rather than competing head-to-head.

For Rails development and other scripting, I use Textmate. I appreciate the extensive syntax highlighting, extendability through bundles, and the wide selection of themes. The lack of FTP built into Textmate isn't really an issue as I use Capistrano for deployment via command line.

For editing my marketing websites, basic PHP scripting, or anytime I need to edit and FTP files, I use Coda. It's a great all-around solution and almost worth buying a Mac just for it (and Textmate).

I tried Espresso after having used Coda for a while and just couldn't make the switch despite being a big fan of their CSSEdit. I primarily blame that on me getting so used to working with Coda.

fourstar
I think I'll pick up Coda eventually, but for now, I really like how TextMate works.

Capistrano is new to me, albeit interesting. Thanks for the recommendation.

jeremyjarvis
Of course, it depends on what you're developing for/in. I used to really like skEdit, but it suffered from lack of development.
findm
I've used coda for awhile now i actually prefer the simplicity of textmate. Coda can lag when you get to a few hundred lines and mo code collapsing was always a pain for me.