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Nova 9

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Re: Nova 9

#12
I'm happy to see them try, but rationally, I just don't understand why Panic is even trying. The trade-offs are just too steep. They won't ever have the ecosystem of open-source, Electron-based editors. And whatever you gain from being mac-native is just not enough of a benefit for almost all development.

Re: Nova 9

#14

I'm happy to see them try, but rationally, I just don't understand why Panic is even trying. The trade-offs are just too steep. They won't ever have the ecosystem of open-source, Electron-based editors. And whatever you gain from being mac-native is just not enough of a benefit for almost all development.

Not everyone lives on the SV scale-at-all-costs treadmill.

Some people are happy building quality tools for a discerning audience.

That's pretty much what Panic has been doing for the last 20+ years.

Re: Nova 9

#15

Nova is absolutely gorgeous. I'm so done with Electron apps, even ones "done well". There's a lot to be said for fast, native apps that look and feel like they belong on the platform you're running them on. That said, Nova's Python support wasn't in the ballpark of VS Code's. But testing it for a while soured me on VS Code, and I ended up switching back to Emacs (which has outstanding Python support via LSP these day…

Unfortunately Nova didn't work on a large project for me with a lot of generated type definitions. It was a gigantic mobx project and that would make Nova really really slow to the point of being unusable. Somehow VSCode could still work with that.

Yeah this sort of thing was my experience as well. Despite being Electron, VS Code is faster and smoother for the main project I work on. Which sucks because I would love to use Nova more (I’ve owned it for over a year now).

Re: Nova 9

#16

I'm happy to see them try, but rationally, I just don't understand why Panic is even trying. The trade-offs are just too steep. They won't ever have the ecosystem of open-source, Electron-based editors. And whatever you gain from being mac-native is just not enough of a benefit for almost all development.

Not everyone lives on the SV scale-at-all-costs treadmill. Some people are happy building quality tools for a discerning audience. That's pretty much what Panic has been doing for the last 20+ years.

I understand that, and I've been buying their software for at least 10+ years, starting with CandyBar.

My point is, for the effort it requires, I don't see it paying off. I would bet money that Nova will be discontinued in less than 5 years, while VS Code will not.

Re: Nova 9

#17

Nova is absolutely gorgeous. I'm so done with Electron apps, even ones "done well". There's a lot to be said for fast, native apps that look and feel like they belong on the platform you're running them on. That said, Nova's Python support wasn't in the ballpark of VS Code's. But testing it for a while soured me on VS Code, and I ended up switching back to Emacs (which has outstanding Python support via LSP these day…

Unfortunately Nova didn't work on a large project for me with a lot of generated type definitions. It was a gigantic mobx project and that would make Nova really really slow to the point of being unusable. Somehow VSCode could still work with that.

I forget the exact details, but I also had problems getting things like Black, mypy, flake8, isort, etc. running. VS Code is really good about making that all work with minimal effort. Emacs is a bit more effort, but it's flawless with a tiny bit of tweaking. I never was able to get the same results out of Nova, and that's what ultimately pushed me away.

I don't have anything bad to say about Nova, except that I personally didn't find it to be a great Python environment. Maybe it's brilliant for other languages? I hope so, because it's really pleasant and I'd like to see it succeed!

Re: Nova 9

#18

I'm happy to see them try, but rationally, I just don't understand why Panic is even trying. The trade-offs are just too steep. They won't ever have the ecosystem of open-source, Electron-based editors. And whatever you gain from being mac-native is just not enough of a benefit for almost all development.

IMHO they should pivot it into a beautiful native or electron UI for neovim. Rebuilding all the LSP, task, etc. stuff in a bespoke editor is clearly a ton of work and maybe not paying off in the long run. Get all that stuff for free from neovim. Make a plugin that starts users off in a more familiar mode-less editing experience so the switch isn't noticeable.

Re: Nova 9

#19
post #7

I tried it and couldn't get into it, like opening files (command-p in VScode) didn't work as expected for me, and the file explorer wasn't there yet either. I'll check again in a couple years perhaps

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