Because Grav is the CMS behind this blog, I’m always looking for tools that work well with it. Grav’s Admin plug-in has a more-than-passable plain-text editor and my web IDE, PhpStorm, has a not-so-good Markdown editor. So, if I wanted a first-class Markdown writing experience, what would be the “best” Mac tool for the job?

It turns out that there are a whole bunch of Markdown editing apps for the Mac, many with iOS versions as well. They share a number of features in common, most notably live previews of the rendered HTML. But Typora has a little something extra — it shows Markdown as WYSIWIG.

So many programmers’ text editors… I know; a first-class problem. But still, I waste too much time jumping from one to the other looking for the “best” text editor for me.

First it’s good old TextMate and then it’s high-powered Sublime Text; but what about the up-and-coming Atom? And aren’t the “real” IDEs such as Coda and PhpStorm the true answer for the developer?

Brackets (backed by Adobe) and Atom (backed by GitHub), are two open-source code editors vying for the spot that Sublime Text is leaving in the market due to its glacial development rate.

And they are both interesting in that each uses traditional web development languages (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) to both create the interface, and to provide an API for developers to use to customize. Do you need to modify or create a syntax color scheme? CSS. Do you care to create a plug-in? JavaScript. Use the languages you already know as a web developer.

Who in the Macintosh coding community has not heard of TextMate? And who is not aware that the long-awaited TextMate 2 has been out as an open-source beta for some time now? Probably no one.

The truth, at least for me, is that TextMate 2 is a fine coder’s editor right now, in its beta form. It does have a few awkward spots and some features still to be added, but it’s stable and very capable. And considering that the choices for powerful Mac-like editors are few, I’m warming back up to the idea of using it for my full-time editor.