Dr. StrangeUnix Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mac

Dr. StrangeUnix Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mac:

But what the fact that “It’s just UNIX now” got us was the ability to create an X11 application that would run on the Mac.  So we did that – and customers loved it.  Well, that isn’t exactly true.  They acted more like we gave them a new BMW but first used it for one of those things you see at the county fair where you pay a dollar and get to hit a car with a sledgehammer (granted they usually do this with demolition derby cars, not new BMWs).  It was SlickEdit – it worked, but it just didn’t look or feel like people expected it to. Hardcore SlickEdit fans were happy… ish.  They were happy to have SlickEdit, but they missed all the Mac-isms, and were a little perturbed by SlickEdit’s menu being attached right to the top of the application window.

(Via “Hello World” – The SlickEdit Developer Blog)

When I switched to Mac from Windows, I left SlickEdit behind . . . and missed it terribly. I tried a number of Mac editors — you can see a recent writeup at http://www.grailbox.com/2011/08/mac-os-x-programming-editor-roundup/ — and use MacVim almost exclusively (and viPlugin http://www.viplugin.com/viplugin/ when doing Java in Eclipse). Now a real Mac version of SlickEdit is available, and kudos to them for giving it free to anyone who bought any X11 Mac versions. I’m buying it today!