I was doing a bunch of Flex work for the past few months, and get really comfortable with Flex Builder. There are so many awesome features to aid development it simply kicks ass.

However, my current project is Flash CS3-based, so I went back to TextMate, which I also love. There are many great features in TextMate which eclipse does not do that really make me miss working in it.

My main points of comparison:
TextMate:

  • Perceptual Bulk – TextMate feels so lean, where FlexBuilder just feels so heavy. Probably due to eclipse not being a native mac app, but still, I just feel ‘cleaner’ working in TextMate.
  • Tab Triggers – I can’t count how much typing I’ve saved using tab triggers in TextMate. Type in a few key strokes and hit tab, and some templated code gets placed…with tabstops mixed in so you can simply tab to the next appropriate place to type. I only pray that someone tells me you can do that in eclipse.
  • Column Selection – Another tool of TextMate that i find incredibly timesaving. being able to select a rectangular area of text, and have whatever you type repeated on each of the selected lines, is a blessing. Another thing I wish eclipse would support.

Flex Builder (eclipse):

  • Integrated debugger – That pretty much puts the smack down right there.
  • Code Sense/Code Completion – Another swift backhand. For being such an awesome text editor, why can’t TextMate handle this better? (yes I know about using the escape key for auto-complete, but that’s pretty weak compared to what you get in eclipse).
  • Find in Language Reference – I use this constantly, and as far I know it doesn’t exist in TextMate (for actionscript anyway)

There’s probably a few more but those are what jump out at me. If anyone knows how to get some of the features listed above into the other app, please do tell :)