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Atom 1.0

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Re: Atom 1.0

#191

Post by duncanawoods »

coldtea wrote: post #157
duncanawoods wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent did not say that plugins caused bloat, instead that resolving common problems with plugins (stability, quality, conflicts etc.) by pulling them into core is what causes bloat (slowness, complexity etc.) and that trying to resolve the tension between flaky plug-in based systems and bloated monolithic systems is cyclical.

Still: is anyone complaining of Emacs or Vim or ST3 being slow/complex because they have installed plugins to the core? What's an example in the wild of this "cycle of bloat" in which people complain about it?

I can't speak for the parent but I would say the most commonly seen effect of complexity is stagnation. Change becomes harder, promised features take forever, the developers lose motivation and significant new releases grind to a halt.

Atom exists because ST3 was seen to stagnate, ST3 exists because TextMate was seen to stagnate etc. They start as simple but incomplete tools that are moving fast and blah blah - its just the software circle of life.

Re: Atom 1.0

#192

Post by harperlee »

Wow... just downloaded the windows installer version and it autoinstalled itself wherever it chose fit, without questioning, it installed shortcuts on the start menu, placed itself on an already bloated contextual menu on several file extensions as an Open option, instead on "Open with...", etc.

I usually install software on my user folder on the work laptop, as I don't have enough priviledges. This time the installer worked, but why override the questions to the user, like install location, etc.? There's a standard for Windows installers, why did they ignore it? Not cool.

Re: Atom 1.0

#193

Post by hawsome »

jerf wrote: post #60
joefitzgerald wrote: post #42

The killer feature of Atom to me is the ease with which it can be extended (via packages) and the openness to community contribution on core features. That's not a knock against any other editor (some of which share similar characteristics in this regard) – it's just what draws me to Atom. It's super easy to hack on and contribute to.

It's the Cycle of Bloat. 1. Develop tool. It's small and fast and minimal! Woo! 2. It's easy to modify because it's so small! Woo! 3. Look, there's a budding ecosystem of packages! Woo! (Let's not talk about the fact the packages exist precisely because the original product wasn't big enough.) 4. Oh dear, some of them conflict, a lot of them suck. Well, here's some winners, let's pull them into the core. Now the base…

You're probably one of those people that pull in jQuery to use just the selector.

Re: Atom 1.0

#194

Post by TheLoneWolfling »

zacharypinter wrote: post #97
jerf wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the Cycle of Bloat. 1. Develop tool. It's small and fast and minimal! Woo! 2. It's easy to modify because it's so small! Woo! 3. Look, there's a budding ecosystem of packages! Woo! (Let's not talk about the fact the packages exist precisely because the original product wasn't big enough.) 4. Oh dear, some of them conflict, a lot of them suck. Well, here's some winners, let's pull them into the core. Now the base…

See also: "minimalist web browser" and the history of Firefox :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#History

Try: the web itself.

The amount you need to be able to do to just load a basically-plaintext webpage now is absurd.

Re: Atom 1.0

#195

Post by 16bytes »

harperlee wrote: post #192

Wow... just downloaded the windows installer version and it autoinstalled itself wherever it chose fit, without questioning, it installed shortcuts on the start menu, placed itself on an already bloated contextual menu on several file extensions as an Open option, instead on "Open with...", etc. I usually install software on my user folder on the work laptop, as I don't have enough priviledges. This time the installe…

To be fair Chrome doesn't ask you either, at least on the storage location. It looks like Atom puts itself in APPDATA, which is the easiest place to install because you have known permissions and update strategies. I actually like this method.

I agree that I didn't like the default shortcut and context menu entries, however.

Re: Atom 1.0

#196

Post by Cthulhu_ »

harperlee wrote: post #192

Wow... just downloaded the windows installer version and it autoinstalled itself wherever it chose fit, without questioning, it installed shortcuts on the start menu, placed itself on an already bloated contextual menu on several file extensions as an Open option, instead on "Open with...", etc. I usually install software on my user folder on the work laptop, as I don't have enough priviledges. This time the installe…

It's optimizing the onboarding and install process to its bare minimum. I'm sure they go "Well you don't get a choice for OSX or mobile apps either, so why should you for windows"?

Actually they have a point. But Windows and PCs are not as straightforward as that.

Re: Atom 1.0

#197

Post by JonnieCache »

schneidmaster wrote: post #183
WaxProlix wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did they get out of that decision anyway? There was a moment in the blurb film where the narrator says, "Atom is based on JavaScript - so it's easy to use!" What? I don't get the value proposition.

The primary purpose was to make it easily hackable - since the whole thing is JS (actually CoffeeScript) and webviews, creating views and stuff is as easy as making a website. That said, I think I care more about performance. Sublime Text is just unbelievably rock solid.

>creating views and stuff is as easy as making a website.

Making websites is a huge pain in the ass though. Why would I invite the DOM into my life?

Re: Atom 1.0

#198

Post by radlad »

jerf wrote: post #137
steego wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your characterization. Take jQuery for example. 1. Small, fast and minimal. 2. Easy to create plugins. 3. Budding ecosystem and explosion of plugins. 4. Conflicts ensued and some plugins got pulled into the core project. Eventually, the growth of jQuery tapered off as the project stabilized. Not only did the size taper off, it got smaller as well. After nearly 10 years, we're talking about a payload o…

"The cycle of bloat doesn't always take hold" Don't recall claiming everything is under the "cycle of bloat". The fact that I gave specific examples was a pretty big clue that it's not all equal.... and jQuery isn't in any of them, either. Edit: Sorry, is there something wrong with my pointing out that I didn't ever claim the things being imputed to me?

The problem is you haven't given a single example of any software that fits the model, and people are continuing to provide counter-examples.

I can make lists too, if that's all we're doing.

  1. Get a cat.
  2. Cat requires playtime or they ruin your stuff and can be annoying.
  3. Repeat 1 and 2 a few times.
  4. You are a crazy cat man.

Re: Atom 1.0

#199

Post by palmer »

afarrell wrote: post #131
kajecounterhack wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've felt largely the same about vim. I think atom is the GUI'ed equivalent of excellent extensible minimalist command line tools.

You have felt it is easy to install, debug, and write vim plugins? As a vim user, I am super curious how?

Installing and managing plugins at least is pretty easy with pathogen and vundle.

Re: Atom 1.0

#200

Post by mcao »

smaili wrote: post #115

Just downloaded and opened Atom for the first time, and I have to admit the look and feel is amazing! Fantastic job to all those involved! However, one thing that stands out to me, the file size of Atom.app is 203MB!! How in the world can a text editor be that large? Compare that with MacVim, which is about 27MB.

It's because the shell (http://electron.atom.io/) is based on Chromium, which can be quite large if you include everything. But in the future, the size should get smaller. NWJS, which is also based on Chromium, is already making efforts to significantly shrink the binary size.
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