Atom was archived today • Hacker News Board

Re: Atom was archived today

#11

Post by umvi » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:02 AM UTC

p-e-w wrote: post #7

Sad to see this go. I was an early adopter of Atom, and I wrote two extensions for it, one of which while it was still in beta. The Atom developers made some technology choices that in retrospect were ill-advised, CoffeeScript being the worst of them and splitting everything into dozens of packages a close second. They tried to backpedal on both of these later on, but by that time VSCode, with its far superior engine…

People hate on electron, but it's a pretty amazing piece of tech if you ask me. I can turn a browser game into a steam game with basically no effort which is nice because browsers change over time and electron helps you get a working offline snapshot of something you created.

Re: Atom was archived today

#12

Post by emadabdulrahim » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:03 AM UTC

I was a noob when Atom was new and I remember thinking it was unusably slow. Took a minute to realize that I had loaded my entire computer's directory, not just the project I was working on.

Re: Atom was archived today

#13

Post by brundolf » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:04 AM UTC

To add to everything else people are reminiscing about, here's Atom's very fun announcement trailer from 7 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7aEiVwBAdk

Re: Atom was archived today

#14

Post by p-e-w » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:04 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #4

Pour one out. While Atom itself was overtaken by a better editor, its legacy lives on in the form of "Atom Shell" aka Electron (for better or worse).

For better, certainly. Electron has in particular been an enormous boon for Linux users, because it's so easy to make cross-platform applications now that even companies who wouldn't have bothered otherwise now have a Linux download. No way that apps like Slack would have a Linux desktop version if it wasn't for Electron.

Re: Atom was archived today

#15

Post by dijit » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:04 AM UTC

umvi wrote: post #11

p-e-w wrote: post #7

Sad to see this go. I was an early adopter of Atom, and I wrote two extensions for it, one of which while it was still in beta. The Atom developers made some technology choices that in retrospect were ill-advised, CoffeeScript being the worst of them and splitting everything into dozens of packages a close second. They tried to backpedal on both of these later on, but by that time VSCode, with its far superior engine…

People hate on electron, but it's a pretty amazing piece of tech if you ask me. I can turn a browser game into a steam game with basically no effort which is nice because browsers change over time and electron helps you get a working offline snapshot of something you created.

But what value is that, over the website?

Re: Atom was archived today

#16

Post by locofocos » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:05 AM UTC

I'm a happy user of Atom as my daily driver for basic note taking and scratch pads. Even though it's being sunset, I look forward to using it for years to come.

Perhaps it will have a good fork one day, but honestly it works great as-is. Sometimes software reaches a point where it just works, and you appreciate not having a team that wants to change everything.

Re: Atom was archived today

#17

Post by sergiotapia » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:05 AM UTC

Huge thank you to Atom for birthing VS Code!

To this day Atom is the only editor I've written an extension for, because they made it so easy and accessible.

Re: Atom was archived today

#18

Post by p-e-w » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:05 AM UTC

umvi wrote: post #11

p-e-w wrote: post #7

Sad to see this go. I was an early adopter of Atom, and I wrote two extensions for it, one of which while it was still in beta. The Atom developers made some technology choices that in retrospect were ill-advised, CoffeeScript being the worst of them and splitting everything into dozens of packages a close second. They tried to backpedal on both of these later on, but by that time VSCode, with its far superior engine…

People hate on electron, but it's a pretty amazing piece of tech if you ask me. I can turn a browser game into a steam game with basically no effort which is nice because browsers change over time and electron helps you get a working offline snapshot of something you created.

Electron is essentially an operating system that runs on every operating system, so you can target just a single OS and your application works everywhere.

Re: Atom was archived today

#19

Post by drdeca » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:07 AM UTC

dijit wrote: post #15

umvi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People hate on electron, but it's a pretty amazing piece of tech if you ask me. I can turn a browser game into a steam game with basically no effort which is nice because browsers change over time and electron helps you get a working offline snapshot of something you created.

But what value is that, over the website?

“ because browsers change over time and electron helps you get a working offline snapshot of something you created.”

If the browsers change in a way that makes the website not work, the electron application will still work.

Re: Atom was archived today

#20

Post by dmitryminkovsky » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:07 AM UTC

dijit wrote: post #15

umvi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People hate on electron, but it's a pretty amazing piece of tech if you ask me. I can turn a browser game into a steam game with basically no effort which is nice because browsers change over time and electron helps you get a working offline snapshot of something you created.

But what value is that, over the website?

> which is nice because browsers change over time and electron helps you get a working offline snapshot of something you created.