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Moving Atom to React

blog.atom.io

21–30 of 142 posts

Re: Moving Atom to React

#21
post #16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still use Sublime mostly. However, Atom seems to have a thriving ecosystem around it. There are a lot of high quality Atom packages. I believe it's mostly because Atom has a more accessible developer interface for newcomers, being it is just a web app. And it's open source. Also, Sublime seems to be abandoned for a while. Not that it stopped working or anything.. But I believe the lack of development will push peop…

I just find it funny that replacing "Atom" with "Emacs" in your argument doesn't feel out of place at all. Well, Emacs Lisp might be less newcomer friendly and it's not a webapp. But still, thriving ecosystem - check, accessible to developers - check, huge number of packages - check, runs everywhere - check.

atom works well out of the box. Emacs ... not so much.

Re: Moving Atom to React

#22
post #20

Not trying to start an editor war, but I've been trying to learn Emacs for the past week. The learning curve is still at the point of being frustrating/painful. Should I stick with it or download Atom? (Anyone have a solid opinion between the two?)

Emacs is the One True Editor.

Re: Moving Atom to React

#23
So psyched. The speed in which the editor used to function drove me totally crazy and I was hoping that GitHub would find a solution. And I'm doubly psyched that they chose such an awesome technology! Great work.

edit: Just installed the update and indeed, all of the "clunk" that you used to feel is gone. Gonna retire Sublime Text 3 now :)

Re: Moving Atom to React

#24
post #16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still use Sublime mostly. However, Atom seems to have a thriving ecosystem around it. There are a lot of high quality Atom packages. I believe it's mostly because Atom has a more accessible developer interface for newcomers, being it is just a web app. And it's open source. Also, Sublime seems to be abandoned for a while. Not that it stopped working or anything.. But I believe the lack of development will push peop…

I just find it funny that replacing "Atom" with "Emacs" in your argument doesn't feel out of place at all. Well, Emacs Lisp might be less newcomer friendly and it's not a webapp. But still, thriving ecosystem - check, accessible to developers - check, huge number of packages - check, runs everywhere - check.

The thing Atom has which Emacs doesn't is that it's approachable even if you don't appreciate all the customization and the rich ecosystem. You can sit down with Atom and just explore it like you would any other GUI text editor, and it pretty much behaves exactly like you'd expect without having to learn any obscure commands or shortcuts. You can learn the commands and shortcuts (and explore the ecosystem) as you settle in.

I'm primarily a vim user and I still prefer vim to Atom, but within a day or two of seriously trying out Atom, I was probably up to speed with 90% of the core functionality I use in vim on a day to day basis. That last 10% is a bit of a killer, though. :)

Re: Moving Atom to React

#25
post #3
post #2

Just checked the new version briefly. Scrolling performance seems to be much better, especially on a large display with fullscreen editor. Atom is getting pretty decent for daily use.

Haven't been following it too much recently, but just curious, why use it over Sublime?

Atom is [more] free than Sublime. You have the freedom to modify its behavior.

Re: Moving Atom to React

#26
Having spent the past two weeks diving deeply into React, this doesn't surprise me. If you haven't tried it out, give it a go.

Being able to rewrite the virtual DOM at will makes development so much cleaner, and it plays incredibly well with other tools, because React is just a presentation layer (I'm using it with Backbone)

There are rough edges (TransitionGroup), but they clearly know what they are doing.

Re: Moving Atom to React

#27
post #26

Having spent the past two weeks diving deeply into React, this doesn't surprise me. If you haven't tried it out, give it a go. Being able to rewrite the virtual DOM at will makes development so much cleaner, and it plays incredibly well with other tools, because React is just a presentation layer (I'm using it with Backbone) There are rough edges (TransitionGroup), but they clearly know what they are doing.

Can this play nicely with Angular and still make use of Angular's two-way binding?

Re: Moving Atom to React

#28
post #20

Not trying to start an editor war, but I've been trying to learn Emacs for the past week. The learning curve is still at the point of being frustrating/painful. Should I stick with it or download Atom? (Anyone have a solid opinion between the two?)

    I use ST because it just works.
    
    Let me tell you.. Atom will probably never come 
    close to Emacs programmability and extensibility. 
    Its by far the most beautiful software 
    environment. Its a living thing.

    In Emacs you're constantly reminded of the love of 
    generations of hackers in improving it. The 
    C-core-and-Lisp-scripting pattern was a perfect
    match. Emacs has the quality without a name.
    
    But Atom is modern. Emacs is single threaded (IIRC)
    and a single evil elisp snippet takes it to its knees.
    
    Those thousands of elisp mdoules (mostly) work together,
    without any kind of sandboxing. I think this is also
    notable and beautiful. It was achieved by a lot of 
    hackers who cared a lot.
This is MY little list of people who wrote emacs philosophy or code that I loved, off the top of my head:

    erik naggum (rip,  most people hated him, but he loved 
                 and understood lisp and I want back to old usenet
                 posts for insights many times 
                 those insights now lost somewhere)
    luke gorrie (slime originator iiuc, mind blown w/ his demos. 
                 also erlang guy and hacker at heart
    steve yegge (js2, explained emacs qwan in many posts)
    sacha chua
    TamasPatrovics (anything!)
    Eduardo Ochs (eev, built his own little world inside emacs)
    David O'Toole (linkd.el, many other intersting packages)
    rubikitch (!!! so many useful emacswiki snippets)
    alex schroeder (emacswiki master iirc)
    Matsushita Akihisa (moccur-edit.el, still miss this in Sublime)
    dr qubit
    Nikolaj Schumacher (beautiful auto completion packages)
    xahlee
    magnars sveen
Using emacs feels like being immersed in the rich culture of a past civilization.

Re: Moving Atom to React

#29
post #20

Not trying to start an editor war, but I've been trying to learn Emacs for the past week. The learning curve is still at the point of being frustrating/painful. Should I stick with it or download Atom? (Anyone have a solid opinion between the two?)

You probably do want an editor that is free, can be used for the rest of your life, works perfectly in a terminal, and is completely programmable.

I suggest you continue on with your ascent to emacs understanding! Be sure to use something like prelude, i.e. something with 'sane defaults', and checkout this slideshow by emacs enthusiast (and chief designer of ruby) Yukihiro Matsumoto. (http://www.slideshare.net/yukihiro_matz/how-emacs-changed-my...)

It took me 3 weeks to become proficient, and I moved from Sublime Text 2.

Re: Moving Atom to React

#30
I've used React since it became available and the editor is still pretty slow, to be honest. Can't imagine using it with the option enabled. Honestly, Sublime Text is great, I've purchased a license, but the speed of development will kill it. Every day I "Check Update" and I get disappointed. Not that it needs that much new stuff, but still. You don't feel the heartbeat, if you see what I mean. One great feature of Sublime that I miss in Atom is persisting unsaved changes between restarts, which I abused for temporary To Do lists and stuff.
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