When comparing SlickEdit vs Visual Studio for OSX, the Slant community recommends Visual Studio for OSX for most people. In the question“What are the best IDEs for C++ on Mac OS X?” Visual Studio for OSX is ranked 6th while SlickEdit is ranked 13th.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Extensive support for programming languages
SlickEdit supports over 50 programming languages on nine platforms.
Pro Built-in beautifier
The beautifier formats code as you type to help improve readability and consistency.
Pro Compiler tools
Pro Scriptable
Write custom macro commands, functions, dialogs and tool windows.
Pro Over 13 emulations
Choose from fifteen keyboard emulations, containing the key bindings and behaviors necessary to emulate other editors (e.g., CUA, Vim, GNU Emacs, etc.)
Pro Extensive configuration options
Pro Easy access to Visual Studio workspace
SlickEdit opens Visual Studio workspace with no conversions needed.
Pro Symbol analysis support
There are powerful symbol analysis features in SlickEdit, including context tagging and references.
Pro Integrated debuggers for multiple languages
Integrated debuggers for GNU C++, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, and PHP.
Pro Multi-Platform
Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris SPARC, Solaris x86
Pro Portable mode
Possibility to set up a portable installation, to run on a USB drive for example.
Pro Easy access to XCode projects
SlickEdit opens XCode projects with no conversions needed.
Pro Third party tool integration
Pro Popular version control system
Pro Free, and now with Xamarin support built-in to target most Oses.
Pro Visual Studio UI
Visual Studio set the IDE standard for most of the '90s. Although it has languished somewhat and some embarrassing UI defects remain in the Windows version, we can hope that Microsoft will deliver a fairly well-organized IDE for the Mac.
Cons
Con No command line option
This is a visual only editor
Con It's kinda slow
If you have a very large project or tag database, it can hang the UI.
Con Currently doesn't support C++
As of now, Visual Studio for Mac only supports .NET, C#, and F#.
Con VS doesn't support C11 for windows! mac will never ever see C support in there.
No wonder MS team hates C language - they've stolen from Unix so many things and Unix is still there :) Now mac 'borrowed'BSD - so for those stupid things buying mac ONLY, they will never promote free things.