If anyone wants to spare me an invite - him {at} ian [d0t] sh
Atom
541–550 of 662 posts
Re: Atom
#542A common thread or line of argument that I find when reading about new editors is their out-of-the-box ease of use compared to Emacs and Vim. For example, a quote from the Atom blog: >Sublime and TextMate offer convenience but only limited extensibility. On the other end of the spectrum, Emacs and Vim offer extreme flexibility, but they aren't very approachable and can only be customized with special-purpose scriptin…
There is no reason why "editing plain text" should be anything other than immediately intuitive. Advanced, time-saving features, like multi-cursors or regexp-based find-and-replace, can and should be progressively revealed through normal use of the software. This ludditic reverence for user-hostile text editors is one of the more perplexing and frustrating things about our industry.
> This ludditic reverence for user-hostile text editors is one of the more perplexing and frustrating things about our industry.
I feel the same way about our industry's enslavement to faddishness.
Re: Atom
#543More online editors...
Check out Brackets (http://brackets.io/) and Eclipse Orion (http://eclipse.org/orion/) who both have been trying to build fully open editing experiences. There are more out there but those come to mind.
Would be nice if more people started working together on these things...
Re: Atom
#544From "The Zen of Programming": ------ Hearing a disturbance, the master programmer went into the novice's cubicle. "Curse these personal computers!" cried the novice in anger, "To make them do anything I must use three or even four editing programs. Sometimes I get so confused that I erase entire files. This is truly intolerable!" The master programmer stared at the novice. "And what would you do to remedy this state…
> Sometimes I get so confused that I erase entire files OT, but just this week my wife did something that really got me thinking about how far computers haven't come in terms of usability. I heard her say "O crap" from behind her macbook, and out of habit I came to assist. For some reason unknown to both of us, she had pasted the text of an email into a document called "thesis.docx", and then saved it. The text was c…
What did you do? Was her whole thesis gone??
Re: Atom
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the computer remembered every modification of every document, then users would be protected from incidents like this.
Yes, but in that case we would be talking about yet another privacy issue here.
That's why it should be the file system storing backups, not the document itself.
One should also consider a logarithmic decrease in backups: while I'm writing, a backup of the state a few seconds ago is useful, but I don't need every second from weeks ago. Say the system keeps a backup of every few seconds for the last few minutes, every few minutes for the last few hours, every few hours for the last few days, every few days for the last few weeks, every few weeks for the last few months, every few months for the last few years--the odds are then pretty good that I'd be able to revert to a version I find useful, but not requiring an awful lot of versions.
Back of the envelope: 5 versions/minute for 5 minutes = 25 versions; 4 versions/hour for 8 hours = 24 versions; 3 versions/day for seven days = 21 versions; 4 versions/week for four weeks = 16 versions; 1 version/month for 4 years = 48 versions, so a grand total of 134 previous versions of a document, which really isn't that much space, particularly assuming efficient differencing algorithms.
Re: Atom
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like you can disable Metrics in the settings.
Some apps ask on install if you agree to share usage data. I can't say how Atom handles it, but it sounds like you're in unless you modify the config. BTW, I'm less concerned and more just surprised to see Google Analytics used like this. I guess it really is the blurring of the lines between desktop and browser-based apps. Maybe this GA usage is not unique, but it's new to me.
> it sounds like you're in unless you modify the config.
You are, though it's mentioned on the very first screen that pops up when you open the app: https://github.com/atom/welcome/blob/master/lib/welcome.md
Re: Atom
#547I'm really sad to see that they totally blew it. The performance of a webapp with the accessibility of a desktop app. Not to mention that it's closed source. This is a tremendous step backwards. Looking at the implementation of the open sourced packages is discouraging as well. It looks like they are using a Backbone inspired jQuery infested nightmare of clientside MVC. Maybe my bitterness comes from the fact that I'…
I would wait until I actually try the product instead of calling quits. And jQuery/Backbone is not an infested nightmare MVC. It's beautiful modular javascript.
> beautiful
> javascript
Choose one.
Re: Atom
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sometimes I get so confused that I erase entire files OT, but just this week my wife did something that really got me thinking about how far computers haven't come in terms of usability. I heard her say "O crap" from behind her macbook, and out of habit I came to assist. For some reason unknown to both of us, she had pasted the text of an email into a document called "thesis.docx", and then saved it. The text was c…
VMS file versions solved that problem in the late 70ies. We are not learning anything from out history as a profession.
Amen brother. Tragic that we haven't even good back to the 80s
Re: Atom
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's called vim.
I think he means that we need editors that are powerful AND easy to use. Seems like vim isn't really for someone like me (I haven't studied PhD level computer science and I don't write compilers and/or lisp interpreters in my spare time for fun).
I think you are biased. I've seen countless PhD-less, unixbeard-less people use vim. And emacs...
Re: Atom
#550When did web dev become the only dev?
When you started frequenting Hacker News ;).
(I really need a lobste.rs invite...)