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I have a combination washing machine and tumble dryer. It washes clothes fine, but I could dry them faster by breathing on them. But it's a convenience, as in my flat space is a premium. But two, three or even four is not better than one as I've found to my cost when using Coda 2.

I was quite excited about the release of this web development toolkit, and bought both the Mac and iPad versions. It combines a decent code editor, an FTP client borrowed largely from Transmit (which the company also makes), a basic user-interface to Subversion and a terminal. It also has a preview option, but why anyone would use it I don't know, as very few sites are built without content management systems in place. But without this you're left using separate apps. My personal choice is TextMate for code editing (the old warhorse that still works brilliantly and whose sequel will never see the light of day),Transmit for file transfer, Versions for SVN and iTerm as my terminal (although the Mac's built-in one is fine).

All of these tools work fine, but it means a lot of switching, so an app that combined it all seemed to make a lot of sense. Apart, that is, from the litany of bugs that have plagued it since release, and which haven't been fixed. Things like its sudden inability to connect to SFTP or SVN servers, its weird and uncustomisable key combinations, its regular crashes, inability to tab between files or handle any concept other than a website (I often work on other things like Python packages or WordPress plugins, and don't think I should have to use a different text editor because it doesn't fit Coda's paradigm).

Coda isn't a tool for novices or those trapped in WYSIWYG hell (like Dreamweaver or FrontPage), but it seems to treat me with kid gloves. Crashes I can deal with, but they seem to hold themselves up to such a high standard with Transmit that you'd think Coda would be as good as Panic, their creators think it is. (That's a dreadful sentence, but you get what I mean!)

So beware the all-purpose multitool. It may be more economical and space-saving, and it may save you time to begin with, but stick with it and you'll start to see the benefits of buying the stack separately. Which reminds me: whatever happened to stacker systems? Are they still a thing?