Text editors I no longer use
Updated on .
These are all the text editors that I’ve tried out and why I’m no longer using them. More bullets doesn’t mean I had a worse time with them – just that I used them for longer or have a more complex rationale for not using them. Italics indicate the final straw.
Acme
- Crashes cause data loss unless files are saved manually.
- It’s not possible to change text styles.
- New features are no longer being accepted for the editor.
- Line wrapping is not sensitive to word boundaries.
- It’s difficult to use with a trackpad, and I typically write for fun on a laptop.
- Live resize is not supported – the screen’s contents just stretch and only redraw when the resize ends.
BBEdit
- It lacks support for bold, italics, or background colors in themes, which makes editing Markdown unpleasant.
- Scrolling is discretized on lines, like a terminal program.
- The preferences are not organized well.
- Browsing files like notes leaves a trail of currently open documents in the sidebar. It would be better if only files that were modified were marked as open, like Nova’s italicized tab to temporarily view files.
- Lines only break at whitespace, instead of logical points like punctuation or symbols, leading to a difficult reading environment for inline links in Markdown.
Atom
- Editing felt a little sluggish.
- I couldn’t find a theme that I liked and the UI felt a bit alien on macOS.
SubEthaEdit
- Lacks a file browser and an open quickly palette.
Textmate
- Has an uncertain future and plugin development has petered out.
- Default color schemes aren’t to my taste.
- No Rust LSP plugin.
Vim
- Despite using vim for a decade, holding the archaic movement and editing commands became too cumbersome for my flow.
- I know enough Vimscript to be dangerous and had a predilection for endlessly tinkering with the editor.
- I couldn’t find a suitable GUI version for macOS and lost interest in using a TTY for an increasingly-complex interface.
VSCode
- The UI used too many Windows-derived elements and didn’t feel like it fit in with macOS.