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Nova by Panic

nova.app

41–50 of 267 posts

Re: Nova by Panic

#42

I really wanted to like Nova. I paid for it (and used it) for a year. In the end, though... I switched back to VS Code. Native apps like this are much faster than such things, but I had too many use cases for the plugins. Kind of the same experience as Sublime Text. It's _really fast_, but I just rely too much on plugins when the experience requires something more than vim.

About a year ago I decided it was time to finally modernize my Python coding setup.

I really, really wanted to use Nova, would have paid full price no problem, but for some reason the one main Python plugin was extremely flaky for me. Linter highlighting would sometimes work and sometimes not, unaffected by the plugin settings, and the primary Python plugin I was using was based on somebody’s github repro that hadn’t been touched in a year or two.

I spent a bunch of time but couldn’t figure it out. So I ended up going to VS Code. It works well. The Python plugins work well. It’s a pain in the behind to configure, and it’s not the prettiest thing to look at. But I can grind out working code fast, partially because those plugins catch problems almost as fast as I can type them.

I would try Nova again in a heartbeat if the Python support improves.

Re: Nova by Panic

#43
I wish there were more companies like Panic. Looking from the outside, it gives me the impression I got from pre 2004 Google and pre 2010 Valve. It seems like the primary focus is making cool stuff, and money is just a way to keep the lights on.

Re: Nova by Panic

#44
post #32

I don't understand why every editor these days come with a minimap, and many of them turn it on by default. I know Sublime introduced it but what does it do exactly? Why is everyone copying it? It just shows you the shapes of blocks of texts of a long file from ten meters away. It doesn't tell you what they are or what they do, or even how to get there. Every IDE since at least the early 2000s gave you an index or a…

In xcode if you put your mouse over a function it highlights the function, and puts a tooltip with its name next to your mouse. It's sometimes useful to quickly see what a given class contains and see how complicated it is (based on lines of code and number of indentations).

You could argue it's highly situational, but IMO it's nice to always be able to see how complicated your codebase is getting, tech debt is no joke

Re: Nova by Panic

#45
post #32

I don't understand why every editor these days come with a minimap, and many of them turn it on by default. I know Sublime introduced it but what does it do exactly? Why is everyone copying it? It just shows you the shapes of blocks of texts of a long file from ten meters away. It doesn't tell you what they are or what they do, or even how to get there. Every IDE since at least the early 2000s gave you an index or a…

It can be very useful when the work you're doing requires jumping between 2-3 different parts of a file. Yes, you can probably do the same with ctrl-f, but for many people it's more intuitive to have the visual representation.

Re: Nova by Panic

#46
post #32

I don't understand why every editor these days come with a minimap, and many of them turn it on by default. I know Sublime introduced it but what does it do exactly? Why is everyone copying it? It just shows you the shapes of blocks of texts of a long file from ten meters away. It doesn't tell you what they are or what they do, or even how to get there. Every IDE since at least the early 2000s gave you an index or a…

With my workflows, I really don't need that inch of my editor. The minimap is useful because it lets me instantly go anywhere in the file using visual cues. Some minimaps show you details when you hover or click and drag. Anyway, I have a hard time being productive without it.

Re: Nova by Panic

#47
post #31

Highlighting support is bad: > For the curious, Nova has built-in support for CoffeeScript, CSS, Diff, ERB, Haml, HTML, INI, JavaScript, JSON, JSX, Less, Lua, Markdown, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Sass, SCSS, Smarty, SQL, TSX, TypeScript, XML, and YAML. Youre supporting stuff like Diff and Haml, but not stuff like Go or Rust?

Their ecosystem seems very web-centric.

Re: Nova by Panic

#49
post #12

I've admired Panic for the entirety of my career, they're always doing really nice work, and I'm glad they're still going strong in a time where native desktop apps aren't really the du jour.

Quoted post unavailable.

Lifestyle business. Do what you want, not what investors necessarily want.

Re: Nova by Panic

#50
post #32

I don't understand why every editor these days come with a minimap, and many of them turn it on by default. I know Sublime introduced it but what does it do exactly? Why is everyone copying it? It just shows you the shapes of blocks of texts of a long file from ten meters away. It doesn't tell you what they are or what they do, or even how to get there. Every IDE since at least the early 2000s gave you an index or a…

Its mostly useful to me if I’m scanning a longer file for merge conflicts. By clicking the minimap I can get to an error easily enough. It’s also a literal bird’s eye view when I’m reverse engineering something. YMMV
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