Here’s the Deal

Textadept vs BBEdit

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When comparing Textadept vs BBEdit, the Slant community recommends Textadept for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” Textadept is ranked 16th while BBEdit is ranked 31st. The most important reason people chose Textadept is:

Both text and GUI versions behave mostly the same, just the way notepad users would expect it to. Like shift+arrows - select, Ctrl+c - copy, Ctrl+o - open a file.

Specs

PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux, BSD

PlatformsMac

Collaborative editingNo

LicenseProprietary

Supported remote file editing protocolsYes

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best programming text editors?

What are the best open-source text editors for programming?

What are the best GUI Sublime Text alternatives?

Pros

Pro
Has both GUI and TUI

Both text and GUI versions behave mostly the same, just the way notepad users would expect it to.
Like shift+arrows - select, Ctrl+c - copy, Ctrl+o - open a file.

Pro
Cross-platform

It's available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Pro
Easily written plugins

You can write plugins pretty easily.

Here is the API doc, quite compact.

Here is a module which adds a support for ctags.

Pro
Small and portable

Has very few dependencies, and very small footprint. Can be copied to a new system in a moment, unpacked and be at your service.

Pro
Scriptable

Has a built-in lua engine.

Pro
Stable development, been around for decades

BBEdit is commercial software, the paid counterpart to their free application Textwrangler. Though BBEdit comes off as pricey, this allows for stable and consistent updates from the developers. BBEdit has been around since 1992.

Pro
Can open very large files

Pro
Just about every feature is already built in

No searching for plug-ins that may or may not work.

Pro
Great customer support

The developer is very responsive to bug reports and feature suggestions.

Pro
Native application

Follows platform standards.

Pro
Built-in FTP/SFTP browser

BBEdit can open files directly from, and save them to, any available FTP server. It can also open and save files directly via SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol).

Pro
Great JAMStack environment

You can build the static site of your dreams without needing any external assistants. Although it does not process LESS, SASS, or SCSS files, BBEdit's includes are very powerful.

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Cons

Con
Community

Does not have an IRC channel or some kind of forum where a community of developers/plugin writers could evolve around. Has a mailing list which is said to be active but that does not feel that attractive.