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Atom was archived today

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Re: Atom was archived today

#511
post #311

I resisted switching to VS Code for a long time because I far preferred the UX and design of Atom, but I eventually caved not because of performance gains I wanted in VS Code (honestly I found Atom plenty fast for the work I was doing), but because many Atom extensions were left to rot and slowly broke over time as most maintainers moved to VSCode extensions. Farewell friend, you will be missed.

I cannot stand VSCode UX/UI. Not sure how this is not an issue for everyone. Maybe I'm just too picky. For this kind of things I don't use VSCode: - The right side bar is "dynamic". Most of the time it's the Explorer showing the directories and files, but when I try to search for something, though, it becomes the Search sidebar. Same for all the potential sidebars (Source Control, Run and Debug, etc.) - Everything is…

> - The right side bar is "dynamic". Most of the time it's the Explorer showing the directories and files, but when I try to search for something, though, it becomes the Search sidebar. Same for all the potential sidebars (Source Control, Run and Debug, etc.)

Yeah it's just a tabbed view. I like it, saves space while staying useful. Maybe because most software I use has tabs already.

- Everything is a plugin. That means I need to carefully check who's the author of the plugin, probably check as well the source code to avoid using malware, etc.

True, but most popular languages have plugins authored by Microsoft. Some are from Red Hat. You'll miss out on GitLens and LaTeX Workshop, but VSCode with only trusted plugins is more than good enough.

> - Everything is a plugin. That means I need to craft a set of plugins in order to work in certain projects. I prefer JetBrain's approach

For Python, web dev, C++, etc., there's a "plugin pack" that depends on what you need to work.

> No floating windows. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I prefer that, for instance, Settings to be opened in its own window, instead of opening a new tab in my editor. Also all the Settings in VSCode are on the same "page" (sure, whenever you scroll, the left-side grouping of Settings is updated accordingly, but imho it's difficult for me to focus on the section I need to work on)

Sounds like you just don't like tabs? I find that the window list gets way too crowded and messy when I'm working on multiple projects with multiple tools. Tabs (in browser, explorer and editors) are a lifesaver.

Re: Atom was archived today

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VSCode is good but as someone who’s been writing software for nearly 40 years, I really feel you’ve over doing the compliments by a long long way. Compilers, operating systems, browser engines (unfortunately) and reverse engineering proprietary hardware/firmware are all significantly harder challenges than writing an IDE. in fact there have been excellent IDEs around for decades before VSCode came along. Yes the indu…

I think VSCode's impressiveness is less about the pure engineering challenge (although I do think even among popular, well-used IDEs there's a large differential in things like performance, which points to it not being a trivial problem), and more about making smart product decisions to strike a great balance between extensibility and performance / smoothness. There's not a singular big hairy problem to solve, but if…

Sure, we do all stand on the shoulders of giants. But the other things I listed requires significantly more research and development effort than building an IDE does.

Also I dispute that VS Code is the quickest editor out there. It’s faster than its Electron counterparts but that’s a pretty low bar. This isn’t a dig at VS Code, it’s my default IDE (well that and vim). But the largest part of the reason I use VSCode is because it’s free.

That, for me, is its real advantage. But that’s not an engineering achievement.

Re: Atom was archived today

#513
post #134
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is so noticeable how different they are in speed. I’ve worked in Sublime for many years now (and continue to for most projects) but will switch to VSCode whenever I want to hack on some Go, since the LSP stuff works so well there. I constantly find myself messing things up due to input latency.

Have you tried LSP with gopls on Sublime 4 recently? Works great for me.

Took about 10 minutes to set up, and it's working great. Thanks!

Re: Atom was archived today

#514
post #311

I resisted switching to VS Code for a long time because I far preferred the UX and design of Atom, but I eventually caved not because of performance gains I wanted in VS Code (honestly I found Atom plenty fast for the work I was doing), but because many Atom extensions were left to rot and slowly broke over time as most maintainers moved to VSCode extensions. Farewell friend, you will be missed.

I cannot stand VSCode UX/UI. Not sure how this is not an issue for everyone. Maybe I'm just too picky. For this kind of things I don't use VSCode: - The right side bar is "dynamic". Most of the time it's the Explorer showing the directories and files, but when I try to search for something, though, it becomes the Search sidebar. Same for all the potential sidebars (Source Control, Run and Debug, etc.) - Everything is…

For your first point, you can drag views to other parts of the window.

Re: Atom was archived today

#515

Very sad. I'll continue to use it. I can't abide how vscode is run as a project by Microsoft.

What's wrong with how Microsoft runs the VS Code project?

Biggest issue is the closed source licensing of many of the most popular extensions. Pylance, C# (future), Remote Extensions, etc. In addition, the VSCode marketplace is only licensed for use with the closed source distribution of Visual Studio Code, hence openvsx.org.

https://ghuntley.com/fracture/

Re: Atom was archived today

#517
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> VSCode is one of the greatest pieces of engineering of our time. That must be one of the saddest things I read this month.

Could you elaborate on what exactly you find "sad" about it?

Something that immediately comes to mind is https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11#readme.

Of course, this is an earlier generation. But if the commenter is correct that VS Code is one of the greatest pieces of engineering of our time, then what the heck are we doing. And if the commenter is incorrect, then what the heck are we doing as a community in our duty to educate to the extent that the commenter doesn't realize that massive projects like this have been implemented, and continue to be implemented.

We have rockets that land by themselves, trucks making cross-country autonomous trips without intervention, multiple systems that can securely run arbitrary sandboxed code from anywhere in the world by simply typing a URL. I'd want someone to be excited not by an IDE for an IDE's sake, but what they can build with their IDE.

Re: Atom was archived today

#518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VSCode is good but as someone who’s been writing software for nearly 40 years, I really feel you’ve over doing the compliments by a long long way. Compilers, operating systems, browser engines (unfortunately) and reverse engineering proprietary hardware/firmware are all significantly harder challenges than writing an IDE. in fact there have been excellent IDEs around for decades before VSCode came along. Yes the indu…

I agree that it is an exaggeration to call it the greatest pieces of engineering of our time. Still there are many technologies that are well liked but haven't developed in many years. There are many technologies that are here today but severely limited. And there are many technologies which promises potential for something better in the future. There are very few pieces of software that are here today and ticks a lo…

> There are very few pieces of software that are here today and ticks a lot of the boxes of computer science. That are open source, cross-platform, extensible and has a modern stack.

Open source: there’s loads. I’m very surprised to read that comment here of all places. But even if we take your comment at face value, licensing has naff all to do with engineering impressiveness.

Cross platform: again I’d beg to differ there there aren’t many. And again I’d also like to point out that something not being cross platform doesn’t negate it being impressive engineering.

Extensible: this is another metric you’ve added that I disagree is a requirement

Used a modern stack: this absolutely shouldn’t matter when one talks about “of all time” like the GP was. Otherwise you’re intentionally skewing the results to only include recent developments.

> I often wish it wasn't so but the reality is that a shit ton of development has gone into browsers and in many cases other areas just aren't comparable.

The point of the GPs tangent was comparing all software engineering.

Sure, if you say VSCode is the greatest software engineering project of all time then suffix that comment with a dozen footnotes describing a dozen exclusions to the scope, then the claim might be more reasonable. But that wasn’t what the GP said and nor is it then “greatest”.

Frankly though, I wouldn’t even extend that description of his to modern IDEs specifically, let alone the broader context they intended.

Re: Atom was archived today

#519

It might sound controversial, but for me Atom was almost a 1 to 1 Sublime copy with worse performance and quality. It was slow and ugly. It’s only quality was that it was 0$. It was the first editor I’ve seen to choke when opening 1M file (it even had a warning that it’s a too big file - lol). There simply was not enough RAM in the world for this memory hog. I’m not really sad to see it go. It was another free toy of…

> t was the first editor I’ve seen to choke when opening 1M file I recall trying Atom before VSCode had been released. I loaded up a 1MB XML file and it ground to a halt. After some searching I found a bug tracker issue reflecting this, where one of the devs said something to the effect of "a 1MB XML file is extremely large, I don't think we'll support that". At that point I uninstalled Atom. On a related note, not l…

I had a gig which required opening ridiculously large XML files (metadata for music albums). Some classical music compilations (think "6 CD bargain bin" boxsets) would end up with 1-2GB XML files.

Sublime didn't even flinch when opening and navigating around the file. Truly impressive text editor and absolutely worth the license cost.

Re: Atom was archived today

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VSCode is good but as someone who’s been writing software for nearly 40 years, I really feel you’ve over doing the compliments by a long long way. Compilers, operating systems, browser engines (unfortunately) and reverse engineering proprietary hardware/firmware are all significantly harder challenges than writing an IDE. in fact there have been excellent IDEs around for decades before VSCode came along. Yes the indu…

I dunno, I'm not convinced that a compiler or OS is a harder problem than an IDE. "Turns out humans are complicated and making computers do things they want is hard."[1] UX design is not only a whole complicated field in its own right, it imposes additional technical constraints that interlock with UX ones in complex ways. (E.g., VS Code's plugin API is architected the way it is partly to limit the ability of a plugi…

I’ve written hobby compilers, hobby kernels and hobby IDEs.

The later was by far the easiest for me.

Maybe you’re brain is wired differently but I can only speak from my own experiences.

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