We’ve used BBedit since 2003 (version 7). But BBedit, even version 10, has some shortcomings for Rails… no parenthesis matching/highlighting, no HAML support (the one github repo we found doesn’t work with Lion or BBedit 10)

We used Komodo Edit for nearly a year, but both versions 6 and 7 began to crash frequently (hourly) on one of our larger projects.

We tried TextMate, and cannot fathom why so many Rails developers still use it. Even saw a bug where it renamed the wrong file after we did a save-as to a different folder, then renamed the original file (it renamed the new file instead).

So far, we’re liking Sublime Text 2. Highlights so far:

  • You can click on a file in the project pane and browse it WITHOUT cluttering up the “open files” on the tabs bar, a feature I don’t recall seeing anywhere else. (If you make an edit, it gets added to the tab bar. If you double-click it, it gets added to the tab bar. But single click and you can simply browse it and it disappears from the editor window when you select a new file. That is elegant.
  • The ONLY settings we had to tweak at startup was View > Indentation > Tab width:2 spaces
  • Out of the box it highlighted HAML syntax, HAML block comment/uncomment, and HAML snippets like ft creating a HAML form_tag
  • Bracket matching, vertical indentation guides.
  • I also like that their evaluation period isn’t fixed, and they don’t have an annoying nag screen (at least, not at first)