Best Text Editor For Ruby Mac

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If you are a developer or an entry-level programmer for Mac then text editor is a must for you. Nowadays, the necessity of text editor is essential for any computer user. Any OS has its own built-in tool but most of them have some limitations. If you want more functionality you need the best tool for your work done. Let us look at some of the best text editors for Mac.

Our number one recommendation is Sublime Text 3. It’s a speedy, attractive, full-featured text editor for the Mac, Windows, and Linux. It costs $80, but there’s no official time limit to the trial period, so you can get to know the app before purchasing. I wrote a lot of Ruby code on a daily basis. The best editor, in my opinion ( and for Windows/Linux ) is Komodo Edit. Notepad doesn't have great autocompletion, RubyMine is too slow ( and not that great ) and Netbeans/Aptana are too heavy. The only downside ( if you care ), is that it takes a bit more for the startup. After that, it runs great. As with all vi-like editors, Vim provides a modal paradigm for text editing and processing that provides a rich syntax and semantic model for composing succinct, powerful commands. While this requires some initial investment in learning how it works in order to take full advantage of its capabilities, it rewards the user well in the long run.

The Bluefish software suite is Windows, and Mac software. Bluefish is text editor software, and includes features such as API, Auto-Complete, code folding, column editing, customizable themes, debugging, formatting / table editing, keyboard shortcuts, Multi-Monitor editing, and syntax highlighting. TextMate for macOS Powerful and customizable text editor with support for a huge list of programming languages and developed as open source. Download TextMate 2.0 Requires macOS 10.12 or later.

Best Text Editors for Mac

1. Brackets

Bracket is the simplest and the most famous text editor for Mac. It is an open source and has been developed by Adobe. Bracket is unique from other text editors due to its interface and design. It consists a feature named “Extract” which permits you to take different fonts, colors and measurements. You can use these features and select them from a PSD file interested in a clean CSS file that is prepared to use for a web page. Bracket also consists some other features like extension support, previews and inline editors.

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2. BBEdit 11

BBEdit 11 text editor has to be on this list of best text editors for Mac. It is the most powerful text editor developed by the Bare Bones. It consists rich text and HTML editor which is specially designed for web designers. It also includes various features like searching, modification in text and advanced editing etc. This tool also permits the user to use command files, text, folders and servers in a single utility. The special feature of this Code editor for Mac consists “biggest syntax of text support” along with color coding which helps the user in a good vision of coding.

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3. TextWrangler

TextWrangler is the most popular text editor between Mac users after Bracket. Like BBEdit tool, it has also come from the box of Bare Bones. It is the smaller version of BBEdit. TextWrangler is used by most of program designers instead it is not designed for them. It is made for normal user as it can be used for general editing like you can perform the basic function change columns to CSV.

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4. TextMate

Text Mate is also a free tool for text editing which carries Apple’s tactic to Mac OS into the text editor’s world. This is the most powerful tool for UNIX command with a very interactive GUI. Basically, it is created for novice user and programmers. It consists various features, for example, it permits auto-indentation, word completion, column selection, regular expression support etc. Using this tool, you can build XCode projects. It also contains various themes to look nice.

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5. Atom

Atom is the latest text editors for Mac and it is a very advanced text editor from recent periods. Atom is open source and free tool for editing. It is maintained by GitHub. It contains a huge packaged library along with key features like fuzzy search, code folding, quick edition, multiple panes for editing, extension library etc.

6. Sublime Text

Sublime Text Editor is a famous and powerful text editor. It seems user-friendly and simple due to its remarkable interface. Sublime Text Editor supports the same style as code and markup. This best code editor for Mac consists a speediest search engine which offers many shortcuts and amazing features. The tool has a powerful API and a user can customize it as per his need. To use the full features of Sublime Text Editor you need to purchase the full version of it. However, if you wish to use limited functionality, you can use the free version.

7. Textastic

Textastic is a versatile cross-platform text editor for all the apple users. We called it versatile due to its availability for all platforms like Mac, iPhone and iPad. It consists a huge collection of features for coders like you can sync all your work done on the cloud, so it will help you to access from anywhere whether you work on iPad or Mac. It will help you for on-the-go edits for the real-quick fix. It is the most versatile tool which supports around 80 coding and markup languages.

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8. CodeRunner 2

It is a good choice for the hardcore programmers as it offers more than prose writing. However, it does not have a free version, you need to pay some amount to use this tool. It offers the variety of features like autocomplete for words, symbol navigation, argument execution with input sets, bracket matching, an impressive console, and much more. It is the best tool for Mac which you can use for coding.

9. UltraEdit

UltraEdit designed by IDM Computer Solutions, they have their established reputation in the market as they have already developed many more user-friendly utilities from the past years. The main strength of the company is for HTML, JavaScript, PHP, C/C++, Python, Perl, and many more other programming languages. This tool also consists of the variety of features like you can highlight the syntax, file/data sorting, column/block editing etc. It also supports SSH/telnet. It is a paid utility.

10. MacVim

MacVim is version of popular Vim text editor for Mac OS X. It is a tool with a full bundle of features and it has the primitive graphical interface. The most important feature of the MacVim is standard shortcuts of OS X keyboard. It has a are transparent backgrounds along with full- screen mode which is very helpful for distraction-free coding. It is the tool which supports tabs and multiple windows with ODB.

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11. Emacs

Emacs is powerful text editor which consists of an effective file manager and customizable keyboard for editing. It includes various specifications with an extension language called Emacs Lisp. File manager of Emacs permits you to distinguish between two files. It also gives you the visual selection and text objects. It is a very good text editor with perfect features.

That’s all folks! These were our best 11 picks in text editors for Mac OS X. We hope this post will helps you decide one from the list of best text editors available for mac. If you have any comment or suggestion you can write in comment section below.

What Do You Think?
Responses

You’re going to spend a lot of your time as a developer inside the editor, so it important to use an editor that you’re comfortable & productive with.

In this article:

I want to help you choose which Ruby IDE / Editor is right for you!

You don’t need to stress over this decision, just pick one, give it a try for a few weeks & see how it feels. You can always change your editor later.

Here are a few things to look for:

  • What Ruby-related plugins are available to make things easier for you
  • Whether the editor is open-source or not
  • Built-in features that improve your productivity (like code snippets, auto-complete, clean design that doesn’t get in your way)

All of these editors support Windows, Linux & Mac.

Let’s get started!

Atom Editor

Atom is an open-source code editor from Github. It supports many programming languages including Ruby.

Pros:

  • Git integration
  • Good support for code snippets (time saver)
  • Allows you to run code directly in the editor (with plugins)

Cons:

  • Can be slow when opening really big files

VSCode Editor

VSCode is an open-source code editor from Microsoft & it’s based on the same GUI technology as Atom.

Pros:

Best Text Editor For Ruby Macbook

  • Terminal integration
  • Debugger integration & other IDE-like features (needs language support via plugins)
  • Under active development

Cons:

  • Ruby language plugin doesn’t get many updates, but it works 🙂

RubyMine IDE

RubyMine is a closed-source code editor from JetBrains. It’s the most complete IDE in terms of features, but it’s also not free.

Pros:

  • Refactoring support
  • Integration with testing frameworks, bundler, rake, terminal, etc.
  • Intelligent auto-completion

Cons:

  • Closed source
  • Can feel “heavy” in terms of performance & UI design

VIM Editor

VIM (VI iMproved) is an open-source editor that has been around for ages, the most striking characteristic is that it’s terminal based, unlike the other editors which are GUI-based. It has countless plugins that you can install to add new features.

Pros:

  • Many keyboard shortcuts & plugins
  • You can do everything you need without leaving the terminal & without your mouse
  • Powerful editing features (delete inside quotes, regex replace, block selection, etc.)

Cons:

Ruby
  • Initial setup takes some time (.vimrc file & installing plugins)

Other Editors

Best Text Editor For Ruby Mac Os

While these four editors are what I think the most popular in the Ruby community, there are still others that are worth a mention.

Here’s the list:

Best Text Editor For Ruby Machine Learning

  • Sublime Text
  • Emacs
  • Cloud9 (online editor)

Feel free to give these a try.

Personally, I use Atom for most of my Ruby development & writing, for quick edits (like configuration files) I use VIM.

Summary

You have learned about a few Ruby editors that can make your work easier, which one are you going to pick?

Let me know in the comments 🙂

Best Text Editor For Ruby Mac Download

Thanks for reading!