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Nova by Panic

nova.app

291–300 of 549 posts

Re: Nova by Panic

#292

I see a lot of folks here comparing this to VS Code and asking "Why would I use this instead?" — I am exactly on the opposite side of that equation. Why would I use VS Code when I can use this? I've been using Atom for most of the decade (plus a bit of Sublime, and TextMate before), and I've loved being able to hack it to look and feel exactly how I want. There's a ton of custom CSS in my setup. Now, Atom is slow. Th…

> Atom is slow, VS Code is appreciably worse Honestly this isn't possible. VSC had better perf than Atom 4 years ago[1]. I say this as a long-time Sublime user, which is best-in-class[2] when it comes to perf. > I've loved being able to hack it to look and feel exactly as I want What is not customizable in VSC? When I first started using VSC, I installed an extension that made all my keybindings exactly as they were…

Since they wrote their own text rendering engine, maybe it does compete with Sublime?

Re: Nova by Panic

#293
post #22

I really like their pricing structure here. If you want updates forever, it's functionally a subscription (which makes sense - constant updates require constant dev work). The key difference is that if you stop paying, you keep everything you've paid for previously (the app and all past updates). That's a _great_ way to do a subscription.

I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about what I'd want for a subscription service. I've paid for subscriptions that allow you to continue to use the old version indefinitely, as well as subscriptions that completely turning off access to software at the end of the subscription. I think the "use the old version indefinitely" is actually irresponsible as soon as the application opens a network port: it's…

At that point, you're basically selling a freemium subscription, which is very hard to pull off properly for desktop software, and requires walking a very fine line: if too much of your functionality is paywalled, then the "free" version is useless and the whole exercise is pointless; but if too little of the functionality is paywalled, nobody will pay for your software. IDEs are a great example, because there is little functionality that is important enough to make users want to purchase a subscription, yet doesn't render the software redundant when a user stops paying and it's disabled. But I'd imagine there are also plenty of niches (like yours) for which this type of business model works incredibly well.

I hope it works out for you!

Re: Nova by Panic

#294

It's all well and good to strive to take advantage of a native OS but it should not come at the cost of platform exclusivity.

Why not? Most developers seem to work on one platform anyway.

It’s time someone built a good macOS-native editor. There are already plenty of non-native solutions out there.

Re: Nova by Panic

#295
post #46

> It's new, hyper-fast, and flexible, with all the features you want: [...] a Minimap Do people actually find the Minimap useful for coding? If so, how? And why is it better/different than just a scrollbar, or searching? I've always thought of Minimaps as a thing that seems like it should be adding something to the interface, but actually isn't at all. Seems like pointless eye-candy, to me. What am I missing?

I only use it to jump to sections that are modified from source control, flagged as FIXME/etc or have a compile/lint issue. Having the graphical representation of code density isn't helpful to me normally.

Re: Nova by Panic

#297
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I change platforms many times a day (macOS, Linux, occasionally Windows) and VS Code being cross platform is essential for my use of it. Being Mac-only is a complete deal-breaker.

I've been testing cloud-hosted VS Code (Codespaces) for the portability between platforms and I'm liking it so far. There are certainly drawbacks but running everything on the cloud allows me to code on a lightweight machine like MacBook Air or Microsoft Surface with extended battery life regardless of the workload. It also keeps the machine cool and silent.

That's pretty much my setup for the past few years. I find there's a significant productivity boost from being able to resume exactly where I left off hours or days ago, without having to depending on accessing with the same devices from the same location. For this, mosh + tmux are super lovely. I do use VS Code locally, but I export the filesystem, typically with sshfs.

Re: Nova by Panic

#298

Does anyone have React Native + TypeScript development/debugging experience with Nova? I'm currently using Vscode, and I'm wondering if I should have a look at Nova for this. (Nothing wrong with Vscode, I'm a bit into adventure)

I will be giving it a go for the next few days to see if it'll work for React Native development.

Re: Nova by Panic

#299
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of developers aren't hanging out on HN though. I'll wait till there are real benchmarks but I'd be very surprised if Nova is actually noticeably more performant than VS Code.

Just the fact that Nova is ~36MB and VSCode is ~3x that at ~95MB should at least point you in the right direction. Also note that Nova already includes features that are only available via separate plugins on VSCode.

But 95MB is small enough that it doesn't matter—1/3 the size of basically nothing is still basically nothing. Even in terms of memory or CPU usage, VS Code is relatively efficient compared to some other products on the market such as the JetBrains IDEs.

Say what you will about Electron apps in general, but Microsoft has done a great job in making VS Code not feel like a typical Electron app.

Re: Nova by Panic

#300

Looks like Language Server Protocol [0] support is on their list of features - awesome. Will definitely check out, I have a soft spot for native. [0] https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/

kinda wild that something so important is buried in a huge list of other things. LSP is critical for _anything_ that even _wants_ to compete with VSC.

If they did that part before their launch, they’d have a real launch.

Basically we are all going to be waiting for the ‘And now Nova can import all your VSCode stuff seamlessly’.

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