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Atom

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Re: Atom

#311

I was all ready to be skeptical and everything... but this could actually be amazing. I currently use Chocolat for code editing, which is beautifully elegant and I love it, but there are 25 little tiny things that I really wish I could fix. I file issues, but the developers rightly have their own priorities. It's closed-source, but even if it were open source, I'm not about to learn how to use XCode and Objective C a…

Have you looked at Adobe Brackets? It's basically that, open-sourced today. Or look at node-webkit if you only want the app framework without the editor. The biggest downside I see right now is HUGE binaries (100+MB) because you're bundling a browser in your exe.

Re: Atom

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know that v8 is generally much much much faster than cpython, don't you?

and v8 has its ass handed to it vs the mozilla engine when running asm.js code... and there is pypy... and c extentions... and WHO CARES. It is fast enough for every job I've ever thrown at it... Do you only want there to be one programming language or something.?

You're missing the point. The point is, for some reason a bunch of people have their expectations of Javascript performance set 10-15 years out of date.

Re: Atom

#314

To help us improve the editor, Atom sends usage information to Google Analytics. See [atom/metrics]( https://github.com/atom/metrics ) for details. More data going to Google without opting in first? Bummer.

See, I never get the tinfoil hat crowd. Are any of us so self-important, that we think our usage stats for a text editor are some kind of top-secret data? I mean, come on - it's a text editor - I edit my scratchpad and my coding projects on it. If any of the stuff I had was that top-secret, I'd be doing it in a digital clean-room, with an airgap. And I'd actually have top-secret clearance. How many of us here actuall…

Some people with lives "not that interesting" don't want to give up their privacy. Some of us even understand that there is no such thing as "anonymous statistics".

It's not about a big government spying conspiracy. It's about basic privacy and not giving out data about yourself that you don't want to give out.

There are also enormous trust implications.

Re: Atom

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs is GUI desktop software. Few people use it in a terminal. Also, people didn't born knowing Javascript. They learnt it. And one could argue that Lisp is just as easy to learn, if not easier.

Most emacs users I know alias emacs to emacs-nw, or install emacs-nox. Myself included (:

I have it aliased but for some reason I still add -nw every time I open it. Silly muscle memory.

Re: Atom

#316

I was all ready to be skeptical and everything... but this could actually be amazing. I currently use Chocolat for code editing, which is beautifully elegant and I love it, but there are 25 little tiny things that I really wish I could fix. I file issues, but the developers rightly have their own priorities. It's closed-source, but even if it were open source, I'm not about to learn how to use XCode and Objective C a…

> but even if it were open source, I'm not about to learn how to use XCode and Objective C and figure out how to compile and whatnot.

It's such a shame that modern web "development" has instilled this lack of curiosity in so many people. It really is disheartening to see that a generation of programmers has been lost to this "if I can't accomplish it in 2 clicks with a JS framework then I won't bother learning" mentality...

Re: Atom

#317
post #171

There's real opportunity here for Github and I hope they take it. Why is the basic workflow of the modern-day programmer split over multiple tools and over multiple systems? Aspects of Github could be modularised and added to the editor while still keeping the underlying tool simple and this could change our user experience for the better. Imagine flipping through your pull requests in the text editor and then seeing…

Why is seeing your friends comments and code reviews in the text editor any better than seeing them in the browser? Are we becoming this lazy? or this busy?

This is pretty shortsighted. It's not the simple case of "what you can already do with two tools" that we should be thinking about. It's that stuff that you can't even imagine was possible until it integrated, in the same place, and with a good user experience.

You'll have information that's right in front of your eyes where before, the tiniest wall of separation was barrier enough to make it inaccessible or out of mind. Things will become the same, instead of just both being in the same place. This is the essence of good UX, and it has nothing to do with this specific case, but it will emerge from simple cases like this. First two things coexist, then they share, then they become one.

For a while, the iPhone was just a phone and a computer. People even said the same exact thing you just did: "why is having a phone and a palm pilot in one device any better than having them separate?" Then they started sharing features, the internet became pervasively accessible. Then everything started sharing data and features. And now we can't imagine them separate, and we have an entirely new class of thing that came out of it that basically enabled a revolution.

Eventually programming could be the same. Programmers probably have the highest tolerance I know of for compartmentalization of tasks and poor interaction design and data visualization: they are extremely intelligent and have the ability to tie things together in their heads and break down tasks and tools ad hoc. But when you don't have to do that, when programming becomes easier and more fluid, things will start happening that simply couldn't before.

We can only dream of the kinds of advancements in our tools that are yet to come.

Re: Atom

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i see people saying less context switches. but isn't this the exact opposite? it's way more context switches? isn't this the same as having our mails popup up notifications every so often or your gmail aggregating twitter and Facebook, because people thought it would make them more productive

Exactly - making context switches cheaper isn't very helpful if you're doing so at the expense of making context switches more frequent[0]. [0] and easier to do "by accident"

This is a silly argument. You're all assuming this type of integration will be have the UI quality of your dishwasher.

Of course context switches and irrelevant information will be distracting if done poorly. This is a UX challenge—not a reason to abandon the idea.

Having the focus you need during concentrated tasks such as coding, while also enabling the integration of other tasks—such as high-level team context awareness and collaboration—is the key design challenge. Done well, it would be a killer app.

Done poorly, as with anything, it will fail miserably.

Programmers have a poor reputation for UI design prowess, and programmers tools are sadly usually made by programmers, and thus carry the same reputation. Very few amalgam programmer/designers exist to bridge the gap of motivation and ability to design a better toolset. But they do exist.

Let's be optimistic, shall we?

Re: Atom

#319

To help us improve the editor, Atom sends usage information to Google Analytics. See [atom/metrics]( https://github.com/atom/metrics ) for details. More data going to Google without opting in first? Bummer.

See, I never get the tinfoil hat crowd. Are any of us so self-important, that we think our usage stats for a text editor are some kind of top-secret data? I mean, come on - it's a text editor - I edit my scratchpad and my coding projects on it. If any of the stuff I had was that top-secret, I'd be doing it in a digital clean-room, with an airgap. And I'd actually have top-secret clearance. How many of us here actuall…

Obviously your life is more interesting than you think given that so many people eagerly want to track it.
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