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PSPad: A freeware programmer's editor for Windows

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Re: PSPad: A freeware programmer's editor for Windows

#31

Searched for "LSP" and "Language Server Protocol" and did not find any mentions. Unfortunately, I think the programming languages are getting too complex for an editor to try to maintain smart browsing, smart formatting, code completion, etc. Language Server Protocol allows this language work to be done once by people who are generally actively tracking the language. I think in 2021, a programmer's editor without Lan…

My experience with LSP (gopls specifically) in Emacs has been abysmal. It makes navigation even slower, opening files sometimes takes a second or two, but the worst issue is frequent crashing. lsp-mode with gopls is the only plugin I've used that crashes Emacs altogether. I've never lost much work thanks to autosave, but to say it was annoying is an understatement. Since I disabled both a few weeks ago, crashes stopped entirely.

I probably should open an issue about it, but with the complexity of the entire stack I'm not sure what component is responsible, and frankly didn't have time to dig into it.

So I'm glad that simple editors still exist that don't have LSP integration. There's a lot that can be accomplished with plain old ctags and grep.

Re: PSPad: A freeware programmer's editor for Windows

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These days I use Notepad++ (doesn't everyone on Windows?) In terms of souped up text editor, the exact transition that "everyone" made since: Notepad++ > Sublime Text > Atom > VSCode

You're not wrong; my only regret there is Atom, which never got the performance right when I used it. VS Code is not great in performance compared to ST either, but it does more and it's got a much bigger ecosystem and developer activities. ST feels more like a black box, irregular updates, vague provenance, etc. It works, and it worked really well for me back when (in the days when Javascript didn't have proper modu…

Sublime is still the most performant text editor I use. Its plugin ecosystem is not particularly healthy, but LSP helps bridge the gap with more advanced code editing tools. I mostly use it for quick edits, configuration files, etc. Sometimes I just want a break from Neovim I guess.

I don't regret buying Sublime at all, but I do feel like some potential was wasted there.

Re: PSPad: A freeware programmer's editor for Windows

#33
One of the good things about Windows is the backwards compat.

I know this particular code has been updated in 2021, sure, but in general, you can take binary from early 2000s and it will run on Windows 10 most likely. (OK, games and rich "multimedia CD-ROMs" from that era have problems, but it holds in general.)

In linux, it kinda holds, because everything is open-source anyway, but binaries in general are not compatible.

In macOS, it really really doesn't hold, Apple likes to move fast-break things. They changed just the architecture like 4 times, and macOS and OS9 are entirely different. (They did things like Rosetta 1, Rosetta 2, Classic, Carbon, but they never maintain them for long.)

Windows is rock solid in this way. Windows 10 still has 32-bit version, and it can still run MS-DOS code apparently. (Although 64-bit Windows apparently cannot.)

Re: PSPad: A freeware programmer's editor for Windows

#34

One of the good things about Windows is the backwards compat. I know this particular code has been updated in 2021, sure, but in general, you can take binary from early 2000s and it will run on Windows 10 most likely. (OK, games and rich "multimedia CD-ROMs" from that era have problems, but it holds in general.) In linux, it kinda holds, because everything is open-source anyway, but binaries in general are not compat…

Just because you can doesn't mean you should run something that old. I would not want to run a 21 year old native application written in C or C++ from a different era of security consciousness on any modern machine. Certainly not anything connected to the internet--remember that was the hey-day of massive worms that crippled entire networks of machines. If the source hasn't been touched in decades, treat it like an antique and keep it in a museum of a virtual machine.

Re: PSPad: A freeware programmer's editor for Windows

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong; my only regret there is Atom, which never got the performance right when I used it. VS Code is not great in performance compared to ST either, but it does more and it's got a much bigger ecosystem and developer activities. ST feels more like a black box, irregular updates, vague provenance, etc. It works, and it worked really well for me back when (in the days when Javascript didn't have proper modu…

Sublime is still the most performant text editor I use. Its plugin ecosystem is not particularly healthy, but LSP helps bridge the gap with more advanced code editing tools. I mostly use it for quick edits, configuration files, etc. Sometimes I just want a break from Neovim I guess. I don't regret buying Sublime at all, but I do feel like some potential was wasted there.

For me, ST is still the only editor in the world that works with really, really large files.

Re: PSPad: A freeware programmer's editor for Windows

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by 'design language'? It was a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, at least as far as I know. What 'design language' are you speaking off? It was supposed to be HTML in the end (well whatever that meant in those editors :D)

Examples: Microsoft's current design language is called Fluent Design. Google's is called Material Design, and Apple's... idk, their old one was Aqua and their current one is referred to as Cupertino I believe? Not sure if they even gave names to designs back then though, I believe it only became a thing during a design transition era some time ago (moving away from 'skeuomorphic' to 'flat design').

Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, XP, etc. There wasn't a cohesive design language it was just referred by the OS name. You had garish colorschemes (remember hot dog stand?... yeah) and lots of silly things. Win32 programming back then was barely one step above pushing pixels on a canvas and it showed. VB and OLE, then COM started to standardize prebuilt components like dialogs and such that could be shared and used between apps but it was still a wild west of design. Into the 90s it got worse as Windows 98 gave more control over rendering to apps and we had things like Winamp skins that looked like a modern stereo, or a (thankfully) brief period where non-square windows with ovals, curves, and all kinds of junk were in vogue (track down an old copy of Bryce 3D if you want to see something really wild). It's an era of computing that's probably best left forgotten. :)

Re: PSPad: A freeware programmer's editor for Windows

#39

I wish there were apps like PSPad and Notepad++ on MacOS. I really did not like any editor I used on this OS. Same with MS paint and the windows calculator.

For a text editor, what's wrong with any of TextMate, BBEdit, ubEthaEdit or CotEditor, to name but a few.

Literally the only thing I've ever seen anyone in a professional setting use MS Paint for, is pasting the result of a screen dump, because apparently capturing to a file would have made it to convenient for the user.

What exactly do you see missing from the macOS Calculator, that Windows has?

Re: PSPad: A freeware programmer's editor for Windows

#40

One of the good things about Windows is the backwards compat. I know this particular code has been updated in 2021, sure, but in general, you can take binary from early 2000s and it will run on Windows 10 most likely. (OK, games and rich "multimedia CD-ROMs" from that era have problems, but it holds in general.) In linux, it kinda holds, because everything is open-source anyway, but binaries in general are not compat…

Just because you can doesn't mean you should run something that old. I would not want to run a 21 year old native application written in C or C++ from a different era of security consciousness on any modern machine. Certainly not anything connected to the internet--remember that was the hey-day of massive worms that crippled entire networks of machines. If the source hasn't been touched in decades, treat it like an a…

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