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Nova by Panic

nova.app

151–160 of 267 posts

Re: Nova by Panic

#151
post #38

I will reiterate my chief complaint with this: it should have just copied the VSCode extensions API from day one and relied on easier porting of them.

The problem with doing that is that you've now created a substantial dependency for your commercial product, and not a dependency that's merely the "requires npm package foo" kind of dependency. Because Nova is not VSCode, being compatible with Code's extensions API means:

- committing to implementing every new documented Code API function as quickly, completely, and transparently as possible, because if you don't, extensions will break;

- resolving mismatches between how Electron apps do things and how AppKit apps do things, which may be easier said than done;

- possibly choosing not to support functionality in extensions that Code doesn't have;

- putting control of your flagship product in someone else's hands.

So I'm not really surprised Panic hasn't done that. If there were a way to create a basic converter that takes a Code extension as input and spits out a likely-needs-work Nova extension, kind of like there's a converter for TextMate syntax definition files to Code's format, that would be great, although that would almost certainly be easier said than done.

Re: Nova by Panic

#152

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…

What plugin(s) exactly are you using in VSCode for Python support?

Re: Nova by Panic

#153

I 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…

VSCode’s speed and resource usage are not best class, but – on my relatively modern machine – are definitively good enough.

Yeah, with 32GB of RAM I'm not so worried that my text editor is taking up a gig of memory TBH

Re: Nova by Panic

#154

Another interesting competitor: https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/ Previous discussion on Nova https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24495330 (Sept 2020) [542 comments]

I’m a longtime php dev using php storm on Mac. Php storm is ugly but the Symfony plug-in is great. My pain points are around local dev versions of different projects (never seem to get docker running) and running tests and setting up deployment pipelines. Nova doesn’t seem to move the ball in any of these areas

Re: Nova by Panic

#155

>> Nova requires macOS 10.15.7 or later. It is not possible to run Nova on earlier versions of macOS. I can't run it on my old, BUT STILL HIGHLY USABLE Macbook Pro 2011, OSX 10.13.6.

>> Nova requires macOS 10.15.7 or later. It is not possible to run Nova on earlier versions of macOS.

Nova 7.5 (edit: previous release series) runs just fine on my 10.14.6 Mac mini from 2012.

Re: Nova by Panic

#156
No LISP syntax support, I see. Now that I think of it, I don’t believe Panic’s previous editor(s?) had it either.

Re: Nova by Panic

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What plugin(s) exactly are you using in VSCode for Python support?

You only really need the official one (which bundles the language server and interpreter detection).

Re: Nova by Panic

#158

>> Nova requires macOS 10.15.7 or later. It is not possible to run Nova on earlier versions of macOS. I can't run it on my old, BUT STILL HIGHLY USABLE Macbook Pro 2011, OSX 10.13.6.

To be fair, expecting software to work on a decade old machine is not what macOS is about, that which killed all 32 bit programs recently.

If you're looking for compatibility, stick with Windows and perhaps Linux.

Re: Nova by Panic

#159
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair this "worse is better" thing permiates all aspects of tech: c++, java, python, wasteful text based protocols...

> wasteful text based protocols… Until you’re the unfortunate person trying to debug an API deployment where the team behind the API decided to use ‘much more efficient protobuffs’ making them entirely unreadable and impossible to troubleshoot. Modern processors and networks are fast enough to allow us to spend a few extra bytes making protocols easy to work with as well as ‘efficient’, and I’d argue that at scale, t…

This sounds like a tools problem though. Bytes and hex aren't readable until you decide then to characters and use a text renderer to display the.

I can't imagine this isnt possible with protobuf and the right debugging tools (though it's not my area of expertise)

Re: Nova by Panic

#160
post #140
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the case of python: "better is better" ;)

As in "very slow though flexible is better".

I get why you are saying an interpreted language is slow but given that people use python to orchestrate most compute intense (AI) and data-heavy (data science) work, it obviously does a pretty excellent job of being pretty 'fast' in practice - ie offloading the 'slow' bits to dedicated code.
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