Alternative to Coda 2

[theluggage]

Oh yeah Visual Code is actually pretty good!

VSCode, does everything you would want from a text editor and more.

Been playing with various options, but VSCode has Typescript/Javascript/HTML support baked in (they're plugins, sometimes third-party in some of the others) and looks like it might be the winner if you're doing TypeScript.

(Note: Visual Studio Code has nothing to do with Visual Studio apart from being from MS)

Overall, it looks like there are 3-4 main "schools"

Apple school:
Coda (& others?) - polished, Mac-like. Only tried the demo briefly so don't take this too seriously but I found it a bit "closed" - e.g. it didn't like the way that the files were organised in some of my old projects (OK, they were a bit convoluted). Looked like quality software, though (I bought Transmit from the same stable).

Java school:
Eclipse, Netbeans, and the IntelliJ (PHPStorm/Webstorm etc.) family.
These are more like the traditional "Visual Studio (not code)" IDE-style - they'll create your new project from a template and automate the build process pretty much by themselves. Mostly started as Java IDEs but have acquired plugins for web development - and offer a web-development "bundle" pre-loaded with the relevant plugins. A bit "clunky" on the Mac because they're all written in Java.

Netbeans (which I've been using as my main IDE for a while) feels like a less clunky and bloated version of Eclipse, PHPStorm (I tried the demo) felt like a more polished version of Netbeans (although I don't think they're related).

Javascript School:
Atom, Brackets, VS Code and Sublime Text (I know that Sublime isn't written in Javascript - but methinks the other three drew more than a little bit of inspiration from it).
Minimalist interface - they've got rich features, mainly via a searchable pop-up palette of named commands, but you're liable to find yourself editing config files to set preferences and "manually" configuring various tools to automate your build. Huge catalogues of plug-ins that, frankly, could use a bit of curation to weed out the half-baked, abandonware, and 'to use this: guess what was in the author's head' options. Atom and Sublime, particularly could really do with following the Java School idea of offering pre-bundled editions configured for web development.

All potentially very good once you've put in a bit of work configuring them and learning them... but it does seem like a huge amount of duplicated effort to produce 3-4 such similar (in terms of design philosophy) products.

 

[supremedesigner]

Coda 2 is nice but it's "closed source". I like Sublime 3 and I used Transmit a lot.

 

[762999]

Coda 2 is nice but it's "closed source". I like Sublime 3 and I used Transmit a lot.

Sublime and transmit are closed source also! At least they don't have a telemetry agent like Visual code

 

[iPaintCode]

A direct competitor to Coda 2 would be Espresso 2 and now they just put out an Espresso 3 public beta: LINK

The one drawback of these 2 "pseudo IDE/Text Editors" is the lack of a big package/plugin community with Coda 2 having the bigger upper hand to Espresso. Sublime Text 3 has still kept afloat even due to the guy who created Sublime has been somewhat dormant, but still top notch app for coding. Atom, on the other hand, shook up the Text Editor scene with its free hackable Text Editor built on web technology and the package community has flourished. It's not quite as speedy as Sublime but is the bit more modern of the two.

Far as VS Code from Micro$oft, that Text Editor is built upon Atom Core but they've done a lot of their own tooling to make the editor feel more like a lightweight/agile Visual Studio and has awesome NodeJS debugging features. The package community has started to expand and M$ has been pretty active with updates. oh and it's free. With that said you really have to try all of them (the paid ones use the trials) and see which one works best for your workflow.

 

[ErikGrim]

I just started using the Espresso 3 beta and I am really loving it.

 

[MobiusStrip]

I just started using the Espresso 3 beta and I am really loving it.

Cool. Any remarks on new features or what you like about it? I remember finding its "syncing" (moving files to and from the server) UI to be heavily flawed, but the rest of it was decent.