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Ask HN: How to hack textmate (free download)?

5 points by oldmanstan ↗ HN
I downloaded textmate's free trial but can't afford to pay for it. I'm learning to program and don't have a job yet.

Is there any way to hack it so that the free trial never ends? (And, of course, I will pay for it if and when I can afford it.)

5 comments

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sim1066
I really don't think you're going to get an answer on here, what you are suggesting is illegal! Use a free alternative like Textwrangler while you save up enough money to pay for Textmate.
ddagradi
Support independent developers. If you can't, that's okay – there's numerous free text editors to use. Try TextWrangler, or search the Mac App Store!
nuclearsandwich
http://redcareditor.com is a free and open source TextMate-like editor and worth checking out. If you really want TextMate specifically I would appeal to the developer themself. Many of us know how rough tight financial situations are but the amount of free (in speech and beer) editors out there makes piracy nothing but crass.
makecheck
Mac OS X comes with several editors of its own...I recommend picking up one of those built-in editors first.

The easiest is probably Xcode, since it requires only installing from the Mac App Store or the OS install CD (depending on the version of the OS you have). The Xcode editor isn't amazing, but it is still quite good for coding and if you're just starting it should be more than enough.

Most other editors included with the OS require a terminal; but that only makes them less pretty, not any less powerful. (I'm ignoring TextEdit because it is not a code editor.)

- "nano" is likely to be the simplest to use; it's a GNU emulation of "pico"

- "vim" is WELL worth the effort to learn as it is a truly superb programmers' editor once you learn it; but I'd suggest reading up on it first, as the commands can seem arcane at first until you learn them

- "emacs" is another excellent editor, that I personally don't prefer but it would be as worth learning as "vim"; there are religious camps in favor of both tools, so it may come down to whichever you like more

- there are still other editing tools that I won't mention because they're pretty obscure, but the Unix core has plenty