Simpltry

A couple of days ago a little surprise came in the mail. It was the [TextMate](http://macromates.com/) book written by [James Edward Gray II](http://blog.grayproductions.net/) titled [TextMate -- Power Editing for the Mac](http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/textmate/). As a web developer I believe all information can be found on the internet, cheaper and more up to date. This sentiment explains why I haven’t purchased a programming book for several years. This is probably true of the information in this book also. TextMate is a tool that has saved me hours upon hours of my life. So it is only natural that I would buy a book about TextMate saving me hours upon hours of time learning about TextMate. Ok, I admit it is a stretch, but I like the book so much that I feel I have to justify its purchase. This book is obviously the most comprehensive resource for any TextMate user, I only hope it gets quickly updated when TextMate 2 comes out later this year.

The shining star of the book is James’s ability to make difficult concepts reasonable. He is also very active in the Ruby community, he gives you some good Ruby related examples in this book. If you don’t use Ruby this book is language agnostic.

I particularly like the way he explains defining your own languages. It is an important feature for super advanced automation, however it is kind of complicated. There are also great references that are invaluable for day to day text editing automation.

This book will serve as a great reference for anyone trying to become a TextMate super star. But, more importantly this book will show basic TextMate users what they have been missing. If you are a TextMate user pick this book up it will save you seconds each day. The seconds you will save are typically the most tedious part of your day. As a TextMate user obsessed with automating his life, let me tell you it is ok spending 2 hours trying to automate a task that only takes 15 seconds. And if you are not a TextMate user WTF? And don’t give me that I use Windows crap either, buck up and [switch](http://www.apple.com/getamac/).

As proof of the greatness of TextMate, I write all my blog entries in TextMate. Unfortunately, TextMate won’t make good your writing quality :). You need to proof read without automation.