Love the apps that Panic makes, they are great on the UX front. But I'm still a bit hesitant to try/buy this. VS Code's rich extension marketplace has sorta 'locked me in' to their product.
Nova by Panic
111–120 of 267 posts
Re: Nova by Panic
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
different strokes for different folks. I don't mind cross platform, but I find Electron unacceptable in any year as a massive step backwards in UI and usability. (Not that you mentioned any Electron-based competitors by name, but a lot of cross-platform big-name competition in the text editor space does use Electron, like VS Code, Atom, and Brackets.)
The competition they have to beat is VSCode and JetBrains - nothing else compares. Yes, VSCode is based on Electron but it shows that it can work well. That's the competition they have to beat. If I can't use an IDE because it's locked to a proprietary OS that requires me to buy specialty hardware to run it then it loses by default.
To echo what GP said, different strokes for different folks. For me I love that it's Mac native (whereas VSCode and JetBrains aren't, and it shows). I use nothing but Macs, and that isn't changing any time soon. Nothing but great for me.
Re: Nova by Panic
#113Another interesting competitor:
https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/
Previous discussion on Nova
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24495330 (Sept 2020) [542 comments]
Re: Nova by Panic
#114I 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…
I’m still using it for Python, but I agree, its support for the language is incredibly flaky
Re: Nova by Panic
#115I 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.
Things like jump to definition and references exist for this reason.
Re: Nova by Panic
#116I just can’t support Panic after they burned me and so many other Mac users with Unison.
Same with Coda. I used it maybe four times, forget the price I paid but let’s say $40; probably came out to $10 per use. It was nice. I was happy with the purchase, or thought I was until they pulled the rug out. I thought it would have long term value. Planned to use it much more in the coming years when I get into some web projects. And now it’s orphaned. Why did they ask for my money if they were going to do that?
Re: Nova by Panic
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Over time you learn what the various shapes in the minimap represent. It helps you generate an intuitive awareness of your location and what kind of content or data precedes and follows it--which in turn gives you more of an idea of what you're currently looking at.
You don't edit more than one file? Why would the shape meanings in one file carry over to another? Generally, the only signal that may carry over is the indentation levels. For the intuitive sense you speak of to develop, your file structures have to be highly regular across the board. TBH, I haven't even seen conventional Ruby on Rails code bases that can give me that.
Some shapes do carry over, e.g. in SQL dumps for certain types of applications. Spending a lot of time in one file, e.g., a large Rails controller, also confers the benefit. These are just two examples.
Overall I would say that trying to notice and measure the effect isn't productive. It's just a bit of extra context I realized in retrospect.
Re: Nova by Panic
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly what came to my mind as well. https://medium.com/project-tinker/mailchimp-just-screwed-ove... https://slashdot.org/story/21/11/11/1634237/intuit-slashes-p... https://www.businessinsider.com/insider-weekly-mailchimp-ube... Similar situation with Epic and other firms taking on lots of investment, but freezing employees out of any gains.
That employees are "screwed over" is always a weird argument to me. Presumably these employees are free to choose the company they work for, and so they could've chosen companies that provide equity over those who don't. I was under the impression that Mailchimp paid well through salary and bonuses. To be compensated for many years and then cry foul when the founders exit and the employee having gotten nothing (becau…
The founders repeatedly promised (and in at least one case I know of, convinced someone to work there based on that promise) that they would not sell. Perhaps the implication is that we should not believe the promises of founders.
Re: Nova by Panic
#119I tried Nova when it first launched and again recently, and I switched back to VSCode due to the numerous plugins and prodigious output of its creators every month. In my opinion, Nova (through its lack) shows the true power of network effects, even in code editors, because even though VSCode is an inferior product in many respects, like speed and resource usage, it still wins due to its sheer popularity and extensib…
To be fair this "worse is better" thing permiates all aspects of tech: c++, java, python, wasteful text based protocols...
Re: Nova by Panic
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
That employees are "screwed over" is always a weird argument to me. Presumably these employees are free to choose the company they work for, and so they could've chosen companies that provide equity over those who don't. I was under the impression that Mailchimp paid well through salary and bonuses. To be compensated for many years and then cry foul when the founders exit and the employee having gotten nothing (becau…
The founders repeatedly promised (and in at least one case I know of, convinced someone to work there based on that promise) that they would not sell. Perhaps the implication is that we should not believe the promises of founders.
Promises don't mean anything unless contractually obligated. One should always look out for oneself in terms of what's actually written down, not what's said or implied.