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Re: Atom

#611

Post by cturner »

Ygg2 wrote: post #444
dkasper wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it's a human issue or a software issue it could still be solved by better software.

In other words, always blame the software. I get it, but the convenience of things like ZFS and Time Machine have a cost. It takes time to implement such things and they take resources. And even then a failure is possible. E.g. you decide to do some kind of Garbage Collect on a HD, because you lack disk space and you don't want to buy a disk, but you forgot to backup a file you deleted a month ago.

I'd break it into two categories. There's software that expects you to be an expert.

Then there's software that's designed to allow lay-people to get stuff done with the promise that it will hide the nasty things of the world from them.

Microsoft Word really is the perfect example of this. The main use-case it's built around is being a lovely place for a new user to write and print a small document. It captures users from this simple use-case, and then tries to upsell them to large document and multi-user scenarios with madness like mail-merge wizards and sharepoint.

The promise of Microsoft Word is to bring functionality to users while shielding them from the nasty realities of the world. It's reasonable to be vicious about it when it fails to protect the user from themselves.

Re: Atom

#612

Post by wzy3721 »

thedaniel wrote: post #44
ecnahc515 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's built on node-webkit and chromium, which technically works on Windows, OSX and Linux. Do you seriously think they would make an OSX only editor when there's already so many that work on all platforms?

The download is only available for Mac today, but we are working on the Linux and Windows builds.

really?

Re: Atom

#613

Post by wzy3721 »

thedaniel wrote: post #44
ecnahc515 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's built on node-webkit and chromium, which technically works on Windows, OSX and Linux. Do you seriously think they would make an OSX only editor when there's already so many that work on all platforms?

The download is only available for Mac today, but we are working on the Linux and Windows builds.

I want to try it!

Re: Atom

#614

Post by johw »

gavinpc wrote: post #377
tzs wrote: post #341

From "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…

I'm using dropbox for document backups. Just edit your files inside your dropbox folder and your documents will be versioned.

Re: Atom

#615

Post by ytpete »

spyder wrote: post #415
ytpete wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw, Brackets ( http://brackets.io ) supports a similar degree of customization since it's also written in JS/HTML, uses CodeMirror, and offers lots of extensibility APIs. And it's MIT-licensed. Writing an extension is as easy as this: https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Simple-"Hello-World"-...

Looks like in Atom you can just inspect elements of the editor and change them right there. In Brackets if you want to change the font of the editor then you have to write an extension or search for the CSS file of the editor which is barely editable with Brackets because it's slows down with the somewhat bigger CSS file, syntax highlight stops at the half of the file and searching was extremely slow for me in this b…

You can open dev tools on either of these editors, but in both cases you're not making permanent changes to the source that will stick around the next time you launch the app.

Hacking the minified source isn't going to be fun no matter what, but if you clone Brackets from git the original LESS files are very easy to modify. Or you could just write a three line extension (https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Customize-Your-Code-F...) to adjust the CSS without modifying the core at all. That flexibility is the advantage of building on the web tech stack (an advantage shared by Brackets, Light Table, and Atom alike).

Re: Atom

#616

Post by baddox »

mturmon wrote: post #605
hrktb wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I am boiling a stew, and while I am preparing another dish on the side, for some unknown reason I put the raw eggs on the stew instead of the fry pan. Pans have been there for centuries, and there is nothing preventing me from throwing stuff in the wrong place, nor undo the eggs in the stew. It's so intolerable, and I feel so ashamed and guilty on behalf of all the pan makers. Not. We are in a field where w…

No, no, no. This is why reasoning by analogy can lead you astray. We have enough control over the world of software that the problem described above should not exist. This control does not exist in the real world, but it does in software.

Do we have enough control over software to make it impossible for someone to delete something and make it unrecoverable when they will later realize they should not have done so?

Re: Atom

#617

Post by baddox »

fhars wrote: post #405
gavinpc wrote: post #377

Earlier 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.

Only in the same sense that public-key cryptography in the 1990s solved the problem of secure electronic communication between two parties. Creating the technology is on big hurdle; getting enough people to adopt it so that it's actually useful is sometimes a bigger hurdle.

Re: Atom

#618

Post by hrktb »

doorhammer wrote: post #594
hrktb wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I am boiling a stew, and while I am preparing another dish on the side, for some unknown reason I put the raw eggs on the stew instead of the fry pan. Pans have been there for centuries, and there is nothing preventing me from throwing stuff in the wrong place, nor undo the eggs in the stew. It's so intolerable, and I feel so ashamed and guilty on behalf of all the pan makers. Not. We are in a field where w…

I don't think he's voicing an expectation so much as lamenting a pervasive and realistically solvable, or at the very least approachable problem.

His problem (or his wife's) is solvable, even right now. She could use time machine, dropbox works as well, using a versionning system would also work, she could switch to an editor that supports infinte undos, dozens of other solutions exist.

But all these require preparation, settings and some care. It could get better, even 'magical', but it would be an achievement that should not be taken for granted.

Btw we could make a pan for stew that checks if you are adding eggs to it, but no one would want the tradeoffs IMO.

Re: Atom

#619

Post by stephenr »

marcamillion wrote: post #282

Is it just me or do most of the new IDEs tend to focus around front-end technology? Would love to see some innovation on the Ruby editor front.

I haven't used this but if it's comparable to text mate and sublime, you should stop calling it an IDE.

Re: Atom

#620

Post by Dewie »

brodo wrote: post #439
jshen wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we all have far less time than it would require to learn all of the interesting things. Once you get good with an editor your time is much better spent learning a new data structure, algorithm, language paradigm, etc than learning a new editor.

Thats maybe true for the vims and emacses of the world, but these new editors come with a fancy pants thing called a GUI. These GUI thingys adhere to certain standards and customs that are set by the OS. I do some web development work from time to time and therefore I have multiple browsers installed on my machine. I can switch between them without having to dig through a manual! I have to learn hardly anything!

As others have pointed out, Emacs has a GUI. But the fact that you didn't know this might suggest that the GUI part of Emacs isn't integrally linked to the killer features of Emacs.

Learning tools like Emacs is for many a matter of productivity. If you want productivity, you want to streamline your most commonly used actions. Streamlining things in an editor will probably mean to use keybindings, since you're using the keyboard to input text anyway. Then you have to memorize the keybindings (or: your fingers have to), and you have to practice using it to the point that it actually becomes more productive than whatever previous routine you had - you have to fight your old habits.

Building these habits is what takes time. The fact that Emacs has a GUI helps with feedback and discoverability, not that much with building habits. When you have finally built these habits, only then can you know if you are more productive. If you aren't you might have to unlearn a lot of your habits (for example by learning modal text editing).

- Written in my Emacs

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