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Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

open.nytimes.com

121–130 of 176 posts

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#121
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Splitting editors into an abstracted structure for finer control over data and presentation is something that's been done for a decade now in various text editors. Sounds like Latex which has been around much longer.

Is there a web-based WYSIWYG editor?

Overleaf and Sharelatex have WYSIWYG Editors for latex, yes.

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#122
post #100
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the BBC sounds like it has a really good tech team too. wonder what it is about newspapers that leads to this sort of tech culture.

A desire to stay relevant. Print publishers often get criticized for being behind the curve, but a few like NYT and BBC have invested heavily in the technology of their business. Not sure how much it's paid off, but my impression is they aren't struggling as much as some. I hope they manage to find the right combination to stay around, I loathe the dystopian future where Buzzfeed and Breitbart are the only news outle…

The NYT fortunately seems to be transitioning moderately well to digital at this point. They seem to have the wind at their back now. There was a period of time, spanning a decade or so, where it was very questionable if they'd make it or could survive on digital.

Their stock is at an 11 year high. Sales are growing again. Profitability looks set to surpass where they were several years ago. If it weren't for some stray costs & adjustments in Q4, they might have hit $100m+ in profit in 2017, the highest since 2010. Their balance sheet is solid, long-term debt is modest ($250m), and they have plenty of cash ($490m). Overall, it should be a good decade coming up for the NYT.

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A word of unsolicited advice: Someone who thinks "I am a Python developer" is generally less useful to a team than someone who thinks "I am a developer who is good at Python."

Not all languages are created equal. While yes a developer with years of experience in python may have lots of transferable skills to other languages, my team arent going to hire someone for a mid level/senior position without a good knowledge of c++

C++ is somewhat of an outlier due to the sheer size of the spec(and getting bigger all the time). Not everyone will use the same subset of features either, which complicates things.

That said, aren't you using C++ as a proxy for other needed skills though? Many Python programmers are not exposed to concepts like vtables, or they do not know how a linker works(or why it is even needed). Heck, many won't have done manual memory allocation or manipulated pointers.

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most hiring settings this isn't true though. Language-specific skills actually do matter, for all but entry-level positions at massive tech companies. It's not like my 3 years of experience in Ruby is immediately translatable to Java/Python/whatever. Could I get up to speed in those languages in due time? Sure. But if you were on a hiring committee, hiring for a team that works mostly with Java (or whatever) would…

> It's not like my 3 years of experience in Ruby is immediately translatable to Java/Python/whatever. It should be. Picking up language X is very easy for most values of X (more esoteric ones excluded). After you know a few (and the more diverse the set, the less new concepts you'll see), picking up a new one is quick. If it is something like Go, it's a weekend's worth. Using the language in idiomatic ways and knowin…

> Picking up language X is very easy for most values of X

I disagree. If you know Y and you're learning X, it depends much more on the value of Y. If Y is Lisp you will be quite successful at learning any X. If Y is something like C or assembly language, then you will not (it's always easy to spot the C guy who just started using Python etc.)

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#125
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah thanks for dropping some deeply outdated impressions in here. (Also not even fair—the code was never a mess and at the time it wasn't clear how ES modules would be used so using CommonJS was a completely reasonable choice.)

Impressions matter, no matter how outdated they are. I also don't think the concept of fairness applies since I'm accounting the details of my personal experience and the conclusions I personally drew from it. Some of those are subjective (code quality) while others are purely objective (I got a lot of errors). What I infer from that may be entirely different from what you do, but that does not make your characteriza…

Does a review of Windows 3.1 give you any idea at all of how applicable Windows 10 would be to solving a given problem? At best, you’ve stated a bunch of nonsense for people to filter out once they eventually realise you’re talking about a version which bears little similarity to the current state of things.

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#126
post #96

I'm choosing an editor for my project right now. Can someone compare ProseMirror to Slate and Quill? What is the difference, which one is better? What do I need to know to choose one?

And couldn't find any info on the backend requirement. Do they require nodeJS or can any backend framework be used ?

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#127
post #40
post #36

I'd love to work for this engineering team. Their tech blog and github is full of interesting projects.

the BBC sounds like it has a really good tech team too. wonder what it is about newspapers that leads to this sort of tech culture.

Thanks. That's kind of you to say. We're also hiring. https://careerssearch.bbc.co.uk/jobs/search

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#128
post #40
post #36

I'd love to work for this engineering team. Their tech blog and github is full of interesting projects.

the BBC sounds like it has a really good tech team too. wonder what it is about newspapers that leads to this sort of tech culture.

It's a good melting pot for people who are passionate about writing, design, and ideas.

Kind of like how all of the best programmers have some kind of log or blog that they post in. While this could very well be some form of survivor bias, I think that just having to put effort into articulating your thoughts in a coherent way now and then improves other parts of your thinking.

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like my 3 years of experience in Ruby is immediately translatable to Java/Python/whatever. It should be. Picking up language X is very easy for most values of X (more esoteric ones excluded). After you know a few (and the more diverse the set, the less new concepts you'll see), picking up a new one is quick. If it is something like Go, it's a weekend's worth. Using the language in idiomatic ways and knowin…

> Picking up language X is very easy for most values of X I disagree. If you know Y and you're learning X, it depends much more on the value of Y. If Y is Lisp you will be quite successful at learning any X. If Y is something like C or assembly language, then you will not (it's always easy to spot the C guy who just started using Python etc.)

In my experience it is like learning a spoken language. If you know a language in the same family then learning the new language is relatively easier (e.g, Java -> Scala, Lisp -> F#). I also think the ease of learning a language is proportional to the ratio of expressiveness of the language you are coming from to the expressiveness of the language you are going to (e.g., Lisp to F# might have a much easier time than F# to Lisp).

Re: Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom

#130

Cool, but it's yet another case of re-engineering the same thing. (edit: its not entirely new). Splitting editors into an abstracted structure for finer control over data and presentation is something that's been done for a decade now in various text editors. Medium and Basecamp started similar projects and there's Mobiledoc which is trying to standardize the format. It'd be nice if all this effort focused on a singl…

There Is also Slatejs. We use it at work and it's really great.

https://github.com/ianstormtaylor/slate

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