Grateful for BBEdit

[Bruce Van Allen]

Hi Friends,

This week I’m announcing the v1.0 open source release of spinnerComponent.js, a small Javascript that creates a versatile and customizable “wait spinner” and adds it to the DOM as an inline HTML element.

This is a side project to my main work in research and data analysis, but it scratches the itch to finally be done with the limitations of graphic images as spinners on web pages.

I put a link below, but my reason for this message is to say how much I appreciate BBEdit for the several ways it assisted in this and most of my projects.

No question being posed - I just wanted a place to say this where people would know what I’m going on about…

So happy to use:

- Obviously, all the BBEdit text editing and processing tools;

- Language servers - what a great addition!

- HTML & Markdown previews

- Run…

- Scripting and Text Factories

- Worksheets - For my dozens of scripts and routines for data analysis, each one has its own worksheet or sheets, allowing me to maintain and adjust configs, save a durable record of output messages, more;

- Projects - I can organize all of a software project’s files in one on-screen place, including both working copies and their associated git repositories (all still in their respective locations on disk), plus in-the-box scratchpad, unix worksheet, & chat worksheet;

Now, lemme talk about BBEdit's new Chat Worksheets, and share a few suggestions:

I decided to dig into Chat Worksheet capabilities with this spinner project. Part way along my own learning curve in how to get the most out of them, I find chat sheets very helpful.

For this project, I needed to delve into HTML’s Shadow DOM and templates, and Javascript's class constructor, all of which I’d been ignoring, and brush up on my ARIA chops.

I have found that the ai bots, especially Claude, can be like having a non-judgemental coding instructor always available and usually able to help me find a solution. I learn just by having to formulate my question, and then by having to understand the suggestions or feedback the chat provides.

In some cases, I’m asking “What’s the best way to … in [programming language]?”

In others, I paste in a batch of code - sometimes hundreds of lines - and say “How can this be optimized?” or “Why do I never see xx expected output?” or “How could I now add capability for yy?"

If I don’t see obvious errors in the response right away, I try the suggestions; many times it takes several iterations of going back when it didn't work; the bot always apologizes and returns with another suggestion.

Sort of a stochastic socratic method that circles in on the optimal code.

Doesn’t always work. On this spinner project, there was one affordance I wanted the spinners to have, but the chat bot gave me four different answers, none of which worked, then it repeated one, so I gave up on it. A few days later the solution came to me, now “obvious” as such things are, with no help from Claude.

Working in languages I’m more deeply conversant with, I ask fewer “How do I …?” questions, but I do find chat worksheets helpful in writing tests - “can I be sure my tests for this subroutine cover input edge cases or bad/missing input?"

The chat sheet also remembers what’s been said from its beginning, so I can copy in a whole script at the start and then ask a series of questions about it without repeating the code.

Sometimes it’s clarifying to check how recent the bot’s knowledge base is. Some of the ChatGPT bots know nothing about software releases since 2021, when they were trained.

I could go on, but I especially urge BBEdit users to check out the chat worksheets for all kinds of questions. As long as you think of it as a source whose answers need to be verified or tested, and as an opportunity to learn as you do so, you’re good.

I’ve also asked about things like latitude-longitude alternatives, and gardening tips for transplanting a tree that sprouted in one of my containers.

It suggested the word I adopted for the moving part of the spinner: ‘rotor’.

Oh yeah, <https://bvadata.com/html_spinner_examples.html>

Keep (us) moving forward Barebones!

Many thanks,

— Bruce

_bruce__van_allen__santa_cruz_ca_

[Bucky Junior]

Hear. Hear.

I’m just a simple-minded, simple user of BBEdit (for about 10 versions now.) I’m not capable of a fraction of Bruce Van Allen does but BBEdit is my “always on” software. BBEdit seems to have the power to meet the needs of heavy duty users and the ease of use for some of the rest of us.

Cool beans Bruce.

Thanks BBEdit,

Bucky

[Marshall Clow]

On Jun 11, 2024, at 7:03 PM, Bruce Van Allen <b...@cruzio.com> wrote:

I put a link below, but my reason for this message is to say how much I appreciate BBEdit for the several ways it assisted in this and most of my projects.

I have been using BBEdit since version 2.5.

It’s the first piece of software that I install when I’m setting up a new machine.

Thanks to Rich and the rest of the crew for features in this “bare bones” editor.

— Marshall

[James Reynolds]

I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Several years ago I tried to switch to Linux but couldn't because I couldn't live without... BBEdit. And I'm pretty sure I only use a fraction of the features. I've just figured out how to use some unique features in unusual ways that make me hyper productive (IMO anyway).

James Reynolds
https://magnusviri.com

["Jan Erik Moström"]

On 12 Jun 2024, at 20:33, James Reynolds wrote:

> I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Several years ago I tried to switch to Linux but couldn't because I couldn't live without... BBEdit. And I'm pretty sure I only use a fraction of the features. I've just figured out how to use some unique features in unusual ways that make me hyper productive (IMO anyway).

One of the biggest drawbacks of getting into admin, instead of writing code, is that admin-people doesn't like text files ... so much less BBEdit for me, which makes me sad (and often frustrated).

= jem

[Massimo Rainato]

That’s a Barebones movie script. really!

> Il giorno 12 giu 2024, alle ore 04:03, Bruce Van Allen <b...@cruzio.com> ha scritto:
>
> Hi Friends,

[Alfredo]

That's an amazingly cool and useful idea. Well implemented with BBEdit. Thanks, Bruce and the BBEdit team.

Alfredo

[Johnny Ragadoo]

Count me in, too. BBEdit is my go-to for coding and I like it as an editor for desktop publishing. The notebook file format is an extremely useful organizational tool.

Three cheers!

[Marc Balmer]

Am 13.06.2024 um 06:13 schrieb Johnny Ragadoo <johnny...@gmail.com>:

Count me in, too. BBEdit is my go-to for coding and I like it as an editor for desktop publishing. The notebook file format is an extremely useful organizational tool.

BBEdit has been my main development driver for years.  Commercial and open source products/projects.  I usually run a virtual machine on my Mac, that runs Linux (Fedora and AlmaLinux mostly) and has a Samba Server running.  I then access the files over a file share.  Works great and BBEdit is a faithful helper.

I tried different editing systems like e.g. Visual Studio Code, they are not bad either, but I always came back to BBEdit in the end, because in the end, what I need is a „bare bones“ text editing solution (no pun intended…).

The only thing I really miss in BBEdit is Lua scripting capabilities using recent and modern Lua (Lua 5.4.6 atm).  And since BBEdit is not open source, I can not add it on my own.  But that’s the only downside (for me) (I am heavy user of Lua.)

- mb

[Charlie Meyerson]

AMEN

--
This is the BBEdit Talk public discussion group. If you have a feature request or believe that the application isn't working correctly, please email "sup...@barebones.com" rather than posting here. Follow @bbedit on Mastodon: <https://mastodon.social/@bbedit>
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BBEdit Talk" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bbedit+un...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bbedit/EA58D422-224B-4E53-B1BC-D65F5F0B438F%40cruzio.com.