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Nova by Panic
211–220 of 267 posts
Re: Nova by Panic
#212I 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…
Agree. This is one of the 1st thing I fix when configuring an IDE.
Re: Nova by Panic
#213Panic should pivot away from software and just make landing/product pages for software companies.
Re: Nova by Panic
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, e…
You say these things as if they're non-obvious... The fact of the matter is that VSCode's market share is massive, and expecting developers to port extensions solely because "it's a native macOS app" is not really a good pitch in 2020-2022. I would rather Panic suck it up and do the work to interop with the existing (massive) ecosystem so that those of us who like to run native apps can do so without it being a step…
I don't really see why Nova should attempt to be compatible with another editor just because they landed on JS as the integration language. It's doubtful that VS Code has the best API, and it's doubtful that VS Code's API is the best fit when the editor isn't primarily rendering HTML.
Because the editor works very differently, it's unlikely they'd ever manage to make the APIs completely compatible, and because of that it'd unlikely that you'd have much porting between the editors anyhow.
There are many editors out there with incompatible plugin APIs (sublime, vim, emacs, vs code, fleet etc.). There is room for Nova to do their own thing, and do their own thing better without catering to the crowd of another editor.
Re: Nova by Panic
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Abandoning projects is something I'd connect with other companies, not Panic. I'm using Transmit ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmit_(file_transfer_tool) ) for more than 10 years already. That at some point they have to sunset tools that are not used by people any more (Like the Newsnet client, from what I remember) makes sense to me. It doesn't feel like they are just abandoning projects because there's somethi…
Guess you weren’t one of the lucky people who bought and paid for Transmit on iOS… https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-transmit-ios/
I second the other commenter: this is very good form to copy — they explain the economics and getting partially superseded by new iOS features, offered a refund to recent purchasers, and gave clear expectations for the future. That’s way better than the Google-style neglect until the servers disappear or, worse, selling it to someone who’ll lard it up with ads and spyware.
For such a cheap purchase, that’s better than I’ve had with certain expensive enterprise software vendors who shall remain nameless.
Re: Nova by Panic
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't mind not having support for any given $POPULAR_LANGUAGE out of the box -- maybe there are license issues with that -- as long as there is a good extension and it was super easy to find. Easy to find means if I open a .go file or relevant directory, the app should ask me if I want to install support for Go files. And it should have One Approved Extension, the others should be available on request (as all ar…
I think they're just heavily and narrowly targeting webdevs. Python for Django, Ruby for Rails, PHP, then a whole bunch of CSS/React-y stuff I'm not too familiar with. I'm sure people use Go for back ends, but it's more for systems right?
> narrowly targeting webdevs
That’s the impression I get as well, but it’s a shame since MacBooks are super popular among back-end engineers.
I would even speculate that by now, Mac-centric web devs are handily outnumbered by non-web devs (plus web devs doing backend stuff in Go, Rust, whatever).
I get that maybe Panic just doesn’t see that as their natural market, but I really love the polish of their apps and do wish Nova (or back in the day, Coda) met my needs.
Re: Nova by Panic
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can get 10000 ft view of my entire code in the mini map without having to touch my keyboard or mouse. This is exactly what I'm trying to understand. Why? What *actionable* information does it give you that you can't get from a red bar next to the scroll bar or the error total on the status bar? > I don't want to touch the mouse or keyboard to know where the problem is. Or which part of the code I want to instantl…
To put it simply you have to use it to know it. Give it a couple of weeks. I have been programming for solid 14 years of my life now. Even before VS Code came out. I can't work with editors that don't have a minimap anymore. > Because that's the only mechanism that will take you to exactly where you want in the syntax tree hierarchy within the same file That's not true. The quickest way is to Cmd + R. It opens the Co…
That outline is hidden at the lower left in a small box collapsed by default. It's as if VS Code doesn't want you to look at it. In the case of breadcrumbs, clicking on it with the mouse is probably faster than searching.
I've been programming professionally since 2004, have tried the minimap on various editors since Sublime invented it, never found it useful.
As to tightly coupled code, well, ha, I don't know of a compiler/linter that won't spew 100s of errors because of one syntax error in a commonly used type.
I realize it's a unique workflow, that's why I want to know more why it's prioritized in every editor these days as I don't think this uniqueness qualifies it to ever become mainstream, much less prioritized.
Re: Nova by Panic
#218Seems like a nice editor, I would happily pay $10 for, but its not so much better then VScode or Sublime to be worth $100.
Re: Nova by Panic
#219I 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 is an inferior product in many respects, like speed and resource usage
This is a rote complaint but how often do you really notice it? Even on my ancient spare 2010 MacBook Air, VSC is responsive and it uses less RAM than other apps like Teams or Skype, or simply loading Gmail in Chrome. Yes, vim uses less RAM but it also has like 5% of the functionality.
Is it possible that this is specific to particular plugins or languages? I mostly use Python, JavaScript, Terraform, and Rust but I did notice that Java is, as always, a lot more demanding.
Re: Nova by Panic
#220A cursory look at the Ruby/Rails extensions for Nova indicates most of them were created 1-2 years ago and haven't received any updates. I will check the vibrancy of the ecosystem a bit more before giving Nova a renewed try (it could be, of course, that these extensions just work without a hitch and don't need any maintenance).