I have to admit that when a reader wrote to me and said…

Every point release of BBEdit delights me. I live in BBEdit. It’s one of the few packages for which I read through the release notes every time (they often have spots of hilarity).

…I got a bit concerned. One thing that I hate more than wasted release notes (“Bug fixes and performance improvements”) is perhaps funny release notes – the ones where instead of actually conveying what changed, the text field is used for something, erm, “creative.” (Perhaps most infamously, Medium had had a spell of “fun” release notes about 10 years ago, to a mix of amusement and blowback).

But I needn’t have worried. The release notes of BBEdit are just plain old solid good work, with only a sprinkle of humor:

• The “Zoom” command makes a triumphant return to the Window menu.
• Fixed crash which would occur when displaying completions from language servers which violate the published specification and provide something other than a string for the details field of a returned completion item. (glares at Solargraph)
• SNUCK IN A SPECIAL FEATURE FOR CRAIG NO NOT HIM THE OTHER ONE I HOPE HE LIKES IT

It’s been a while since we looked at release notes, and these are a great example of something that can help you understand not just what an application is, but what it will become. For example, I saw this fly by…

• Made a change in the minimap so that punctuation isn’t greeked, which helps improve visualization.

…and even though I have never used BBEdit, I immediately started nodding. It made sense; greeking is helpful for letters, but I can see how it can do more damage than good for punctuation that has a pretty specific visual signature. BBEdit’s author knows what they’re doing.

Another person (whom you might recognize) chimed in to say:

Nothing in BBEdit is “abandoned.” Everything is on the table for possible improvements. Also remember that this is an app that was originally written for classic Mac OS!

This made me think about what separates apps that you’re excited to keep growing from the apps you’d rather see frozen in time.

The release notes of BBEdit made me trust it so, so quickly. Not just the pace of change and clarity of communication, but also indeed this certain feeling that the product is “alive” in all the right ways. Even if I don’t know or use the features, I quickly get a sense that the changes are for me, or at least other people like me, rather than serving unspecified corporate needs, chasing fashionable trends, or pursuing unnecessary pivots. Hell, even the ratio of changes – new features vs. quality-of-life fixes vs. performance improvements – seems good.

On top of all that, it’s fun to read good release notes, because you can learn something new. These, to me, were fascinating:

• “Entab” and “Detab” have had their names changed to “Convert Spaces to Tabs” and “Convert Tabs to Spaces”, respectively. This is more verbose but less abstruse.

Jargon!

• There is a new setting in the Keyboard preferences: “Enable macOS “Help” key”. This is off by default, so that pressing the “Insert” key which is present on some PC-style keyboards doesn’t open the in-application help. (This frequently happens accidentally.)

Keyboards!

• If an FTP browser window is active and disconnected, “Open from FTP/SFTP Server” will start its connection sheet, rather than doing nothing.

Determinism!