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Fine, I'll build my own text editor

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Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#151

Post by tripledry »

f3408fh wrote: post #132
dist-epoch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He created Go because he believed that the average Google programmer is too stupid to program in C++, and he didn't like Java, the other language created to address this problem.

Bullshit. He describes the actual reasons here: https://go.dev/talks/2012/splash.article#TOC_4 . And anyway, since when is not liking something a bad reason to try your hand at creating a better thing?

They are probably referring to what Rob said in a presentation.

"The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt."

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#152

Post by criddell »

roarcher wrote: post #8
pmkary wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

A word of unsolicited advice: HNers are a prickly lot and will downvote without explanation because you stepped on some unknowable pet peeve of theirs that probably nobody else in the world shares. This happens all the time but you likely only notice when you happen to get downvoted before any upvotes and end up at 0 or -1. If your comment is reasonable, it will usually come back up. But complaining about downvotes w…

I always blame it on the HN UI, especially on a touch device. The up/down vote arrow is a pretty small target and once you hit it, the arrows go away with no visual indication of which way you voted.

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#153

Post by utopiah »

krzyzanowskim wrote: post #120

the Web is probably the most limited platform today to build custom text editor, in terms of text layout, interaction and all the small bits that may matter. It is still lacking proper API to interact with the OS input system outside the browser built-in text capabilities. That's why the approach is so painful, and everything else is "limited" by the HMTL and Browser implementation details.

Could use a WASM environment to run tests or a companion app that run wrap in a (Podman) container, to be safe, e.g :

   const { exec } = require("child_process");
    const express = require('express');
    const app = express();

   app.get('/', (req, res) => {
        exec("req", (error, stdout, stderr) => {
            res.json({error, stdout, stderr}) })
        }); 
    });
   
   app.listen(3000);
I'm not saying it's perfect but took me a minute.

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#154

Post by jsymolon »

mangecoeur wrote: post #68
dang wrote: post #2

Recent and related: They don't make 'em like Sublime Text anymore - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49209354 - Aug 2026 (13 comments)

I mean… they still make sublime text. Works great.

I have a few minor quibbles about sublime, but I still use it for the bulk of stuff.

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#155

Post by criddell »

fg137 wrote: post #143

When I saw the title, I thought this is about a native editor. A noble pursuit. As I read on I realized this is about a web based editor. Almost just as noble but I would not wish anyone go down this rabbit hole. You cannot build a good, performant and useful editor without sinking tons of work, as proved by many people. You could create something simple but will very quickly discover all sorts of problems and edge c…

The beauty of the word performant is that any thing is performant if your expectations are low enough.

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#156

Post by lbriner »

A text editor is very personal to your use-case and experience, which is why not everyone likes any particular editor.

Before I knew about multi-line cursors, I wouldn't have cared a less about whether an editor did that. Now that I know it and use it and love it, I would never choose to use an editor that doesn't have it.

But since I not really spent much time identifying what should be quicker for me in a text editor, I am probably much happier still with simple/quick/responsive compared to some of the vi Gods who require at least 8000 macros to be productive and would never live with a mortal text editor (or emacs :-)

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#157

Post by tomxor »

rezonant wrote: post #119
roarcher wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A word of unsolicited advice: HNers are a prickly lot and will downvote without explanation because you stepped on some unknowable pet peeve of theirs that probably nobody else in the world shares. This happens all the time but you likely only notice when you happen to get downvoted before any upvotes and end up at 0 or -1. If your comment is reasonable, it will usually come back up. But complaining about downvotes w…

Don't forget the post score is a balance of up votes and down votes. This mean 2 down votes and 0 up votes registers the same (-1) as 10 down votes and 8 up votes (-1). So there's no sense treating it like the community has forsaken you.

Thats a good point to highlight.

If the purpose of down votes is to guide discussion away from uninteresting or counterproductive paths, then it also scoops up divisive comments.

I suppose divisive comments are potentially disruptive if they are particularly flamey. But it seems like they deserve to be distinguished from more objectively negative comments. If the raw up/downs were exposed it would be interesting to experiment with this in the front end.

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#159

Post by pjmlp »

dist-epoch wrote: post #107
socksy wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing just how many stories of Rob Pike seem to show him being both a dick and wrong

He created Go because he believed that the average Google programmer is too stupid to program in C++, and he didn't like Java, the other language created to address this problem.

He also doesn't like C++, that was the main reason, note that Plan 9 and Inferno contrary to UNIX, also don't do C++.

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#160

Post by speed_spread »

atherton94027 wrote: post #127
dist-epoch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He created Go because he believed that the average Google programmer is too stupid to program in C++, and he didn't like Java, the other language created to address this problem.

Honestly could you blame him for not liking Java in 2007? Between the many layers of abstractions the frameworks used, the exceptions and the sluggishness to compile it was not a compelling stack

Nothing would have prevented building a nice, lightweight system in Java in 2007 had one thrown away the conventions that had infested it at that point.

Java's problem never was the language which has been as serviceable as any other since the JDK1.4 days. It is straightforward to compile (no metaprogramming, type erased generics), linking is delayed to runtime and dependencies are all precompiled to bytecode which _should_ make for very fast builds.

The problems came from the multitude of Internet-bubble era tool vendors which overcomplicated everything in order to sell high priced "corporate-level" solutions and imposed that certain coding style. Java is still known for this today because it appears in so many vintage codebases and is still being applied by coders who never revised their practices from 22 years ago.

My theory is that Rob Pike was jealous of Java because it has succeeded with a model similar to his own Inferno (bytecode, C syntax) and this aligned with Google's ask of developing something that would be outside of Sun's lawyers reach.

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