Pulsar: A Community Effort to Revive the Atom Text Editor • Hacker News Board

Re: Pulsar: A Community Effort to Revive the Atom Text Editor

#21

Post by dehrmann » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 7:42 AM UTC

MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #14

lalaland1125 wrote: post #2

What does Atom offer over alternatives, in particular Visual Studio Code?

I really miss Atom. I'll enumerate some items here, since you asked, but all of them really just boil down to personal preference: * Atom was hackable from the ground-up. I use a VS Code extension called Customize UI that allows me to write custom CSS, but Atom supported custom CSS as a first-class feature. * Nostalgia: Atom was the first text editor I used, and so it has a certain friendliness than other editors can…

> Nostalgia: Atom was the first text editor I used, and so it has a certain friendliness than other editors can't match.

Can't say I felt this way about qbasic.

Re: Pulsar: A Community Effort to Revive the Atom Text Editor

#22

Post by vijaybritto » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:20 AM UTC

Wishing good luck with the efforts. This shouldn't be looked at as a competitor to VScode cause it would decimate Pulsar. I hope they have unique features that actually matter to the end user

Re: Pulsar: A Community Effort to Revive the Atom Text Editor

#23

Post by apendleton » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:23 AM UTC

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #20

bmitc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that offer to it as an editor? And Visual Studio Code is open source as well. https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/wiki/How-to-Contribute

Atom doesn't have a corporation trying to slowly and quietly strangle the open source python language server to gain market share for their proprietary one.

Atom and VS Code are literally owned by the same corporation, though, since Microsoft bought GitHub.

Re: Pulsar: A Community Effort to Revive the Atom Text Editor

#24

Post by pgeorgi » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:39 AM UTC

apendleton wrote: post #23

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atom doesn't have a corporation trying to slowly and quietly strangle the open source python language server to gain market share for their proprietary one.

Atom and VS Code are literally owned by the same corporation, though, since Microsoft bought GitHub.

The difference is that Atom is spun down by the owner, so this fork doesn't compete against the corp's version.

Re: Pulsar: A Community Effort to Revive the Atom Text Editor

#25

Post by redrobein » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:44 AM UTC

homero wrote: post #13

Are there screenshots

It's just a fork of atom so it pretty much looks like atom. Seems like all they've done is update dependencies and move to a new db, but they have some interesting changes in the works https://github.com/orgs/pulsar-edit/projects/2

Re: Pulsar: A Community Effort to Revive the Atom Text Editor

#26

Post by rzzzt » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:53 AM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #21

MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really miss Atom. I'll enumerate some items here, since you asked, but all of them really just boil down to personal preference: * Atom was hackable from the ground-up. I use a VS Code extension called Customize UI that allows me to write custom CSS, but Atom supported custom CSS as a first-class feature. * Nostalgia: Atom was the first text editor I used, and so it has a certain friendliness than other editors can…

> Nostalgia: Atom was the first text editor I used, and so it has a certain friendliness than other editors can't match. Can't say I felt this way about qbasic.

Maybe QB64 will change your mind: https://qb64.com/

Re: Pulsar: A Community Effort to Revive the Atom Text Editor

#27

Post by piskerpan » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:59 AM UTC

r24y wrote: post #19

It’s ironic that VS Code has become the premier Electron-based IDE, since Electron (originally called Atom Shell) came from the original Atom project. I loved using Atom, and I like that there’s a community trying to keep it going. However, I think there’s value in trying to push the platform forward, too; maybe rethinking the extension model to maximize stability/performance would allow Pulsar to start stealing mark…

Ironic and fantastic. So many good ideas are born and die with short-lived projects because no one bothered to extract and polish them as standalone solutions while the project was still alive.

Atom will continue living through Electron (regardless of Pulsar)

Re: Pulsar: A Community Effort to Revive the Atom Text Editor

#28

Post by piskerpan » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 9:01 AM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #5

lalaland1125 wrote: post #2

What does Atom offer over alternatives, in particular Visual Studio Code?

Atom used a very different extension model than Visual Studio Code. Atom was designed more in the "everything is an extension" mold and even "core" functionality could be replaced or extended in ways that VS Code likely will never allow. On the one hand greater potential power, on the other hand more potential responsibility (Atom did have some notorious performance issues with comparison to VS Code and "everything i…

Knowing the history of Firefox, XUL extensions and their demise, this feels more of a limitation.

For those who don't know, Firefox couldn't innovate because any change to the UI broke half the extension ecosystem. This is what happens when you give carte blanche to third party developers on your UI: It's great for the short them.

Re: Pulsar: A Community Effort to Revive the Atom Text Editor

#29

Post by maegul » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 9:07 AM UTC

I never used Atom, but I suspect all of us not within the orbit of VS Code that use any of the other not quite IDE text editors can appreciate that sometimes with text editors it's not the one you use but how you use it.

Getting to know it well and how to customise, configure and extend it to your liking, without it becoming too onerous, can be a valuable relationship to have with such a fundamental tool in our trade ... valuable enough that sometimes it's worth retaining over the better features the new tool might have to offer. So good on Atom users and I wish them luck!

On VS Code, I can appreciate moving on to the better tool, but something about bringing a platform war dynamic to the text editor feels a bit too off for my liking. It's apparently open, but I'm really not clear on how much and what the consequences of that are. For instance, the python LSP pyright is the open version of the proprietary pylance ... what's the difference? I find it bothersome that I'd have to work that out.

Re: Pulsar: A Community Effort to Revive the Atom Text Editor

#30

Post by nsonha » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 9:59 AM UTC

Why should Atom be kept alive? It's literally VSCode but with abandoned extensions and worst performance, being written in coffeescript. If the project owner actually articulated some reason such as they are rewriting in a better language (but in which case it's no longer Atom), then I might bite.