Posted by matt, Sat Oct 28 23:48:00 UTC 2006

My software/web development tool of choice is the excellent TextMate from Macromates. I am one of the contingent that bought a $2535 copy of TextMate: TextMate + the Mac to run it on. Of course I had other reasons for going to the Mac, but TextMate certainly helped!

I must admit, though, that after coming from my Visual Studio days, TextMate seems like a bit more work than I’m used to. Visual Studio has a wonderful (some would call it a crutch) feature called Intellisense™. Since Visual Studio is designed to work with a specific set of languages, it does so very well… The flip side is, it’s only on Windows, it’s not as customizable, it only does certain languages, and Microsoft makes it.

TextMate’s creator, Allan Odgaard, says that though TextMate isn’t an IDE, it does provide many features that most IDE’s do not. These include it’s powerful Bundle system, powered by Snippets, Commands, Macros, and Languages. That said, I’ve been using TextMate for several months now and I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve been using my development Lamborghini to drive around my subdivision…

I’ve been reading the TextMate manual out of boredom amidst a torrential downpour in Southland, New Zealand, and I’m absolutely shocked to see what I’ve missed. If TextMate was a musical instrument, I’ve been using it to play scales for the past few months and missing out on the amazing music that is possible with it. This brings us to the comparison in the title of this post…

I’m a drummer, and I’ve spent quite a few years practicing and trying to improve my playing… Playing a musical instrument is something impossible to do perfectly, as there are just too many techniques to master. However, practice does make “almost perfect”. Learning TextMate actually reminds me of learning to play a musical instrument. You can play a few basic tunes after just a few hours of practice, but it takes long hours (and a lot of talent) to truly master an instrument.

One of the most productive ways to improve your playing is to pick one aspect of a technique to focus on at a time. After practicing that one skill for a while it will become committed to muscle memory, and then it will be “second nature”. If you try to tackle too many elements at once, it will be difficult to remember them all, much less to do them well.

A tool like TextMate is really an extension of your mind, which means that the more it becomes second nature the faster and more efficient you become. This is opposed to the IDE, which can sometimes actually become a substitute for thinking by allowing you to forget how certain things are done.

So, as I have done many times in trying to improve my musical skill, I am going to choose one feature of TextMate a day to apply in my development process. The next day I’ll choose another, and so on. I’m hoping that by focusing on one at a time I will be better able to remember and apply all of them without having to open the bundle editor every time I’m wondering about a tab trigger or a hotkey. In fact, I would like eliminate the “what’s the hotkey again?” pauses that too often interrupt my workflow.

So, I’ll see how it goes. I’ll try to post updates on how it’s going, and see how much I’m able to improve my workflow. It should be an interesting experiment.

Filed Under: General Tech | Tags: development textmate