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Nova by Panic

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Re: Nova by Panic

#221

Post by timw4mail »

natch wrote: post #116
crumbits wrote: post #108

I 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?

Coda still works, so what's the issue?

Re: Nova by Panic

#222

Post by saagarjha »

acdha wrote: post #219
cercatrova wrote: post #98

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 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 pl…

> 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.

Well, you specifically picked the most heavyweight experiences. The comparison was obviously against native text editors.

Re: Nova by Panic

#223

Post by saagarjha »

shaicoleman wrote: post #165
stephc_int13 wrote: post #83

Gorgeous design, I wish it would be available outside of the Apple ecosystem, I'd consider it even if I've been very happy with my paid Sublime4 license. I think Sublime HQ showed that making a multiplatform editor is not much more difficult, but hey...

> I think Sublime HQ showed that making a multiplatform editor is not much more difficult, but hey... The developers of Sublime have a different view on that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29638810

Indeed. If you ever poke around in the app you’ll spot platform-specific code all over the place. Sublime Text is one of the rare non-native apps that spends time caring about each platform, which generally gives them a huge boost when it comes to adapting to the platform.

Re: Nova by Panic

#224

Post by acdha »

saagarjha wrote: post #222
acdha wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pl…

> 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. Well, you specifically picked the most heavyweight experiences. The comparison was obviously against native text editors.

I was just pointing out that VSC is pretty far down the list of things where performance is something I notice unless I'm trying to do a benchmark of some sort. It's not quite as fast as, say, TextMate 2 was but it's pretty close on basic performance (e.g. when I measured keyboard-display latency it was within 20% of Text Edit or Terminal) and at some point the huge amount of additional functionality is a consideration. If the question is “what things slow me down at work”, it's close to the bottom of the list.

Re: Nova by Panic

#225

Post by reaperducer »

seumars wrote: post #207
eyelidlessness wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this is a new definition of “tech bro” to me. In my experience the people who either identified themselves or fit the stereotype preferred office life, and all of the social life it affords/requires. I’ve been remote most of my career and still prefer it despite difficulties posed by the pandemic. It’s quiet, I can focus on work goals without also accommodating a high school-like social atmosphere, and it’s… qui…

>accommodating a high school-like social atmosphere Social skills are an important work skill. Describing it as "high school like" is ironically childish I think.

Social skills are an important work skill.

This is so very important, and something that people who don't have a lot of experience in a professional work environment often don't understand.

It took me at least a decade of working in a suit-and-tie environment before I started to understand the reasons for what people who chatter on HN consider antiquated customs and ceremonies.

I have tremendous social anxiety, and hate being in an office. It's so bad that I ended up starting my first company years ago because I didn't want to deal with people. I learned that you can't run a real business without interacting with people and using social skills. Unfortunately, I ended up back in the office because I needed a company that pays me better than I could pay myself.

It's hard. We all have our social/mental problems. But you have to learn to work through those, or at least cope with them, and not dismiss them as "high school." You might get lucky to work at a FAANG with a playpen environment. But you're not going to be there forever. What about your next job? What are you going to do when the business environment changes, as it always does every couple of decades?

Re: Nova by Panic

#226

Post by Wowfunhappy »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #16
echelon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

From afar it seems their strategy is "make cool shit." They published Untitled Goose Game for the Nintendo Switch, and years and years ago made some official licensed shirts for the PS2 game Katamari Damacy. They really are all over the map and it's wonderful. I imagine part of their physical location requirement is their expensive custom office ( https://panic.com/blog/the-panic-office/ )... but they do a lot of cre…

> I imagine part of their physical location requirement is their expensive custom office.

I'm broadly in favor of the power of in-person collaboration, but I'd like to point out that this is a terrible reason to do anything. Sunk cost fallacy and all that.

Of course, Panic may have invested in an expensive custom office because they believe in its ability to enhance work.

Re: Nova by Panic

#227

Post by nsonha »

PebblesHD wrote: post #149
nsonha wrote: 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…

> I’d argue that at scale, those ‘efficient’ protocols waste probably 100x more developer time troubleshooting

In another comment you said there should be numbers to back this sort of claim

Anyway, the problem with our software stack is that there are so many layers, so if we get performance wrong at every one of them, it'll compound terribly at the top. We should have some sort of strategy to decide priorities at each layers, say, lower layers like OS, container, programming language, network protocols, should be about performance, then we can be wasteful at higher layers, the domain code, if that gives us better abstractions and maintainability.

Re: Nova by Panic

#228

Post by codeptualize »

I've been following it for while, I really wanted to like it but I just do not see it (yet).

It's a huge investment to switch, and maybe I'm missing something but the only advantage atm seems to be "it's native". I don't have issues with speed, VSCode is plenty fast. Otherwise it's probably just struggling with plugins, and tbh I also don't particularly like how it looks.

That said, I hope they keep at it and give me a reason to switch!

Which is not impossible btw; I didn't like VSCode to start either (I was using Atom for a long time), but VSCode just won on support and that made me switch. It has come a long way, and I have come to like it after spending lots of time tweaking and theming everything.

Re: Nova by Panic

#229

Post by kup0 »

acdha wrote: post #219
cercatrova wrote: post #98

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 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 pl…

The place I notice it most is when launching it. I don't keep it open all day, I open it periodically to work on this or that and close it when done.

Opening it feels like it takes forever (5-10s) compared to something like Sublime Text (<1s) and when there are a lot of launches throughout the day, that adds up.

Re: Nova by Panic

#230

Post by donatj »

dewey wrote: post #192
coldtea wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tried this out some months ago and had really mixed feelings, but I will give it another shot because generally speaking, Panic is awesome! Are they? They have a long history of getting bored with projects and cancelling them or letting them languish. Not the best assurance for a long term commitment like an editor...

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…

I was actively using Statusboard when they killed it... Yeah I've been using Transmit for 20 years but outside that they have a long history of releasing something awesome, rarely updating it, and killing it. Baby Google.

https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-status-board/

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