I made the full switch from Xcode to TextMate a few weeks back and have been generally fairly happy with it. On the whole, TextMate is a better text editor. There are, however, a few things about Xcode that I really, really miss. Sure, there’s tons about TextMate that more or less make up for it, but I still miss these things. 1. Code Sense - Well, of course. Xcode’s code completion is much more intelligent than TextMate’s. I appreciate that TextMate tries but it still doesn’t hold a candle to Xcode. This is number one with a bullet on just about everyone’s list of things that Xcode just does better. I’m sure TextMate will catch up eventually.

1. Command-click - This was my second favorite thing about Xcode. If you command-click on anything in a source file, Xcode will pop up the header file where it is defined. This is great for figuring out what an UInt32 is (unsigned long) or simply digging around. I’ve found a lot of great stuff by rooting through header files. On some days, I miss this more than Code Sense. I’m sure I could write up a script or something that did this for me. There’s an idea…

2. Documentation viewer - Part love, part hate, I miss Xcode’s documentation browser. Sure, TextMate has one that’s fairly serviceable, but it’s way too bare bones. Something as simple as a back button goes a long way. TextMate’s doc browser is as underpowered as Xcode’s is overkill. Since TextMate presents everything in HTML, I really don’t understand why documentation doesn’t just open in a web browser by default. Sure, there’s the argument that people want to stay within TextMate but I retort that pressing cmd-Tab is slightly easier than pressing cmd-`. There’s a few other arguments that can be made but I think that having a full browser with history, buttons, and a larger window outweigh keeping it in the app.

3. Run Log - I miss Xcode’s built-in debugger and its version of the build results window (especially the detail view; it’s really handy if something goes wrong that isn’t immediately obvious) but I miss the run log most of all. I really don’t like having Console running when I use TextMate’s build and run. I still use Xcode for all the stuff I just mentioned but it’d be useful to not even look at Xcode for a while and still be able to do basic debugging from within TextMate.

4. The Project Browser - I’m going to give this one a bit of a pass. Xcode is a project manager more than anything else and the browser rocks. TextMate is a text editor and its project support is more a convenience than anything else. Still, I miss Xcode’s browser when I’m using TextMate’s.

Okay, so the last two items are a bit outside of TextMate’s general goal. TextMate integrates with Xcode so I leave that stuff to Xcode. I still miss them. Since I can work (fairly seamlessly) with Xcode, I can do without the last two items. The top three, however, bite me every day. Allan Odgaard, the creator of TextMate, is on vacation until February so these complaints will just have to sit. I’m hoping they get ironed out eventually.