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Nova 9
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Re: Nova 9
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It seems pretty likely they will either continue to develop Nova, or replace it with a newer app, indefinitely. They’ve been consistently shipping a code editor (Coda until 2020, now replaced with Nova) since 2007. Apart from uncharacteristically losing interest, I think the only reason they’d stop developing Nova or some spiritual successor is becoming unsustainable as a business. Fortunately for Panic, there are still a lot of Mac users who are happy to pay for quality native apps.
Re: Nova 9
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Perhaps you and the people at Panic have different definitions of "paying off." Keeping a company afloat, bring proud of your work, working with a good group of people, and providing for one's family sound like pretty good payoffs to me. Much better than obsessing over all the things that FAANG-types talk about on HN: What "level" engineer I am, pre-counting stock options (fake money) before vesting, or worrying abou…
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Re: Nova 9
#44Deal breaker for me (last time I checked it out) was the lack of a built in git diff. I don't need anything fancy, but I can't live in an editor without it. Does anybody know if this is planned or workable in later versions?
I swear by the native version of the GitHub app. It’s now unsupported but does everything I need and is stable. I prefer it over anything in app, personally.
Re: Nova 9
#45I 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
This is exactly backwards, IMO. Command-P is "print" on the Mac, and always has been; Command-O is open. This is the kind of thing that makes non-native apps stand out as poor platform citizens.
Re: Nova 9
#46I'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.
i find electron-based editors to be subpar compared to an IDE like intellij idea. if nova's target is a full blown IDE like idea then for sure there's a market.
Re: Nova 9
#47I'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.
I want this to be wrong so badly , but I grudgingly admit it to be true. I want the native app from a boutique software shop to somehow be better than the open-source alternatives.
> I want the native app from a boutique software shop to somehow be better than the open-source alternatives.
In a very loose sense, it already is. The apps I’ve seen it compared with in this thread are VSCode and Emacs. The former has the backing of onenof the largest corporations in the world, and the latter has 40 years of development time put it it. That you can even use Nova, Emacs and VsCode in the same sentence, despite Nova being two-four years old and only have a small core dev team is really impressive.
Re: Nova 9
#48I 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
This is exactly backwards, IMO. Command-P is "print" on the Mac, and always has been; Command-O is open. This is the kind of thing that makes non-native apps stand out as poor platform citizens.
It is "p" for pallette IIRC. Same as in Chrome devtools and others.
In a development context, I do not want platform-specific quirks. Consistency is really important for me otherwise it is a jarring context switch when e.g. copy-paste changes when moving between OSes (which I do hundreds of time a day - laptop is Mac, developer workstation is in the office and is Linux, so I remote desktop into it for code, but "office productivity" stuff is on the mac). MacOS is really irritating in this regard (different keyboard layout for fundamental things (copy paste etc) compared to Linux/win, different physical key layout compared to every other physical keyboard in the UK, different functions for home/end compared to Linux/win, different position of window controls compared to Linux/win, different position of menu bar compared to Linux/win etc)
I look on with confusion when I see people ranting about wanting more native UI elements - I want the opposite! VS Code & Chrome look and act identically on Linux and windows and Mac (more or less) and that's how I want it to stay! And indeed I would encourage further abstractions away from OS-specific allowances (e.g. position of window controls is still wrong on Mac)
Re: Nova 9
#49Nova 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…
Agreed
Re: Nova 9
#50Nova 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…
Emacs with EVIL? If so, do you like the integration?
Nope, regular Emacs without EVIL. Nothing against vi, and I use it regularly for tweaking files on remote machines, but I prefer the native Emacs experience.