We’ll try to steer clear of that battle and focus on what emacs does well.Įmacs is highly flexible. Its merits relative to vim are hotly debated among programmers, to say the least. MacVim is an amazing program for those willing to learn its ways.Įmacs is vim’s rival. It easily wins as my personal favorite text editor. That and some nice theme options make it a beautiful and fast way to edit code. Sure, it’s outside the terminal, but it’s easier to work with since MacVim supports standard OS X text-editing shortcuts like Cmd-Delete and Cmd-S. MacVim is the best implementation of Vim on OS X. Vim is fast, lightweight and as powerful as you can make it. The entire program runs on keyboard shortcuts which give it an insane amount of depth. It’s a better version of vi, a program written back in 1976 when computers didn’t use mice. Vim, or Vi Improved, is like nothing else. See Also: A Mac User’s Experience of Using Linux (Ubuntu) MacVim Coding on OS X can be even better with one of these text editors. Whether you’re learning Java or digging into low-level languages, there are options for every user.
The Retina displays on its high-end Macs don’t hurt, either.įor those of you looking to code, there are a lot of great options on OS X. You enjoy a Unix-based OS with native bash shell (and greater compatibility with Linux utilities) and the spit shine and polish Apple brings to all its products.
