BBEdit 9.5.1 out now

I'm pretty sure computers are still "best at editing text quickly and well."

If there was BBEdit for the iPad, I would be very happy

Great editor, the best in fact. They have very sound and thought through ideas about the programme, I just wish they would lighten up a bit and include HTML5 tools directly.
Apart from that I never found a tool that could do the job half so well.
Using the Mac was always a head start and longstanding programmes that do 'a best in class' job like Scrivener, BBEdit etc mad it more a choice of the head rather than just the heart..
As someone said earlier, if you don't like the price, try TextWrangler (which is also really good).

I prefer Coda

I've been using and still have been using BBEdit and Fetch for my websites for 10 years.

Kids and their lousy Flash websites....

I obsessively try every promising plain text editor out there, but always seem to find myself using BBEdit in the end.

Bare Bones Software's freeware editor, TextWrangler is also fantastic.

"The upgrade to 9.5.1 by current users is, of course, free."

This is a bit mis-leading. I'm a current user, of version 8.7.2. Here's what the Bare Bone's website says: "BBEdit 9.5.1 is a free update for all customers with BBEdit 9.0 through 9.5."

"You lousy kids, with your iPhones and iPads and iGadgets! Back in my day, we worked on real computers, with real keyboards, and mice with one button, and we liked it!"

Hilarious!

Now get off my lawn.

As a developer, I have just never been able to justify that price tag, its just insane. Especially since so many of the top IDEs and editors today are either open source (Eclipse, VIM), or more or less free (XCode, Visual Studio Express), and are more actively maintained and modernized.

What's comical is that there is no way in hell that is even close to the most profitable price point they could sell that app at. I mean, I am definitely a target demographic, and can easily *afford* it, I just won't.

If they at least matched TextMate's (which for an editor is still pretty expensive, and I own) pricing, I would have to think they would make more money on volume - maybe not 'back in the day' - but now that MacOS is exploding development platform, absolutely.

I think that company shorts both it's customers and itself in its lack of marketing skills. Not only in pricing, but also in advertising and promotion. That is no reflection on the quality of the software.

If I had ever received just one $99 promotional offer by email for BBEdit, I probably would have bought the damn thing years ago.

I don't get why you make it sound like a relic of the past. BBEdit is still widely used for coders, not just a small niche.