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Sunsetting Atom

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Re: Sunsetting Atom

#811

Post by journey_16162 »

GordonS wrote: post #661
exyi wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the other parts of the thread: Performance, maybe better collaboration?

Being honest, that doesn't sound too enticing. Despite VSCode being an Electron app, I've never had any performance issues with it - really, it's a great example of how Electron can be done right. On collaboration, I'm not sure what they might add that isn't already covered by GitHub/GitLab/AzDo etc. Again being honest, "collaboration" sounds like a weak Open Source pitch to VCs. I'd be interested in some details tho…

I do. I don't have a powerful laptop though. Whenever I open a new project I hear the cpu fan and cpu usage close to 100%, (TypeScript and ESlint are also a bit heavy and switching the app may not help with that). It's totally bearable though and as the years go by it will be less of an issue when everyone has a faster machine though.

The biggest performance improvement would probably be RAM usage. You don't notice laptop specs get more RAM. The usual options are still 8GB or 16GB. Until 32GB / 64GB is the new default, having a non-electron app will always be an improvement.

Personally I don't think it matters that much in the end, whether it is CPU usage or RAM, but if the editor was just as capable but faster, I'd switch. Code will never be rewritten from scratch and it will always be tied to Electron, starting a new text editor built with faster technologies could give a long-term edge the existing competitors would not be able to use.

Re: Sunsetting Atom

#812

Post by d1sxeyes »

unethical_ban wrote: post #806
ClawsOnPaws wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite is VS Code by far. I use it daily. They recently also added a bunch of sound cues to help figure out if code is folded or a line contains an error. It's pretty great. Auto completion reads well, the parameter hints read, even the built-in terminal works. So overall I'm really happy with it.

I cannot comprehend being blind and developing for my existence. I think I would die, or else become a lecturer .

What an exceptionally unhelpful comment.

Re: Sunsetting Atom

#813

Post by lenkite »

polote wrote: post #690
ClawsOnPaws wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, Please don't forget about accessibility. Getting this right from day 1 will make your life a lot easier in the long run. If I remember correctly, I was never able to use Atom with a screen reader. Hearing custom UI already makes me nervous and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to use Zed with a screen reader either. Blind developers exist. Please don't forget about us. It's one of the few areas where we can actual…

It is normal to advocate for your needs but asking for it to be included from day 1 is weird. The same way you don't start a saas app with localization from day one. I'm not blind so for sure I won't really care about accessibility but honest question why not use an ide developed for blind people instead of using the same as non blind people?

I have learnt from VERY painful experience that you cannot "bolt on" accessibility later (not without very painful refactoring and massive tech debt). It needs to be a core feature considered in the base design and a task added for every feature added on top.

Re: Sunsetting Atom

#814

Post by granshaw »

zackmorris wrote: post #332
skohan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron is both an amazing enabling technology, and also an artifact of the sad state of affairs for computing platforms. One could imagine a world where strong standards have been established which would allow you to easily deploy lean native applications across a wide variety of platforms. Instead we ended up in this bizzare world where if you want to maintain a desktop GUI app, you either need a large team to sup…

I feel that we were well on our way to a cross-platform, web-based future before mobile smartphones arrived around 2007. Also CSS and frameworks like Angular and React really derailed browser progress because they convinced everyone to use recycler views by hand instead of just making tables and the DOM itself more performant and memory-efficient in the browser itself. I may be wrong in the moment, but I base my argu…

> there was never a viable way to make enough residual income to live on after the Dot Bomb around 2000/2001

Disagree with this. As a dev you have a huge advantage in that you can bootstrap a Saas or similar business cheaply. With the tooling and services available today you can launch quicker than ever before

If you can get a semblance of product market fit you can generate enough income to live off of. It’s not easy but it’s definitely possible.

Re: Sunsetting Atom

#815

Post by dewey »

spartanatreyu wrote: post #737
exysle wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind commenting on XCode? I heard that Apple really cares about accessibility.

The design of the existing and previous mac mice and the new System Settings app in MacOS Ventura tell a different story.

> the new System Settings app in MacOS Ventura

Maybe it's just me but I'd not judge things like that on the first non-public beta.

Re: Sunsetting Atom

#816

Post by dao- »

ClawsOnPaws wrote: post #561
nathansobo wrote: post #253

Founder of Atom here. We're building the spiritual successor to Atom over at https://zed.dev . We learned a lot with Atom and had a great time, but it always fell short of our vision. With Zed we're going to get it right. Written in Rust, custom native UI framework, engineered to be collaborative. Just starting our private alpha this week, so the timing of this announcement feels quite fitting. Here's a talk I gave l…

Hey, Please don't forget about accessibility. Getting this right from day 1 will make your life a lot easier in the long run. If I remember correctly, I was never able to use Atom with a screen reader. Hearing custom UI already makes me nervous and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to use Zed with a screen reader either. Blind developers exist. Please don't forget about us. It's one of the few areas where we can actual…

Especially for a _collaborative_ editor, a11y seems like a must. Everyone can pick their own personal editor, but you don't want to shut out your (potential) peers from (potential) collaboration. Without accessibility, such an editor likely wouldn't stand a chance at Mozilla where I work; I certainly would lobby against it.

Re: Sunsetting Atom

#817

Post by brianzelip »

aniforprez wrote: post #277
nathansobo wrote: post #253

Founder of Atom here. We're building the spiritual successor to Atom over at https://zed.dev . We learned a lot with Atom and had a great time, but it always fell short of our vision. With Zed we're going to get it right. Written in Rust, custom native UI framework, engineered to be collaborative. Just starting our private alpha this week, so the timing of this announcement feels quite fitting. Here's a talk I gave l…

IMO the killer thing that VSCode has over all the other editors is the wealth of extensions and a certain degree of simplicity. What are your plans for Zed in terms of extensibility and are you aligning more towards making something beefy and full-featured like the IntelliJ offerings or something more "lightweight" like VSCode or Sublime?

The killer feature for me wrt to Atom -> VSCode was the built in terminal.

Re: Sunsetting Atom

#818

Post by mr_toad »

brundolf wrote: post #115

I held out for a year or so after VSCode was released. It felt scummy how MS had swooped in and tried to hijack this new category of editor that GitHub had invented (this was before they'd been acquired, I believe) But once I tried VSCode... man, there was no going back. It was infinitely more performant and cohesive. Atom (with IDE-like features installed) felt so sluggish by comparison. I think the main improvement…

> this new category of editor that GitHub had invented

There was prior art in the form of Bespin. GitHub’s innovation was electron and turning it into a desktop app. I think it’s amusing that VSCode has recently come full-circle and introduced a browser-based version.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Skywriter

Re: Sunsetting Atom

#819

Post by can16358p »

BeetleB wrote: post #636
can16358p wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't know about the plugin ecosystem of Vim/Emacs, I definitely agree with the learning curve part. In Emacs/Vim I can't even escape the program if I don't know a keyboard shortcut. In Vscode even if I forgot Cmd+W/Q I can simply click the close button. Not to mention that all the shortcuts are just globally used shortcuts in all the other software. While I respect praising by the community of Vim/Emacs, I r…

> In Emacs/Vim I can't even escape the program if I don't know a keyboard shortcut. Or, you know, you could just click on the File menu and click on Quit.

I was (obviously) referring to terminal.

Re: Sunsetting Atom

#820

Post by niutech »

nathansobo wrote: post #253

Founder of Atom here. We're building the spiritual successor to Atom over at https://zed.dev . We learned a lot with Atom and had a great time, but it always fell short of our vision. With Zed we're going to get it right. Written in Rust, custom native UI framework, engineered to be collaborative. Just starting our private alpha this week, so the timing of this announcement feels quite fitting. Here's a talk I gave l…

Why not collaborate with developers of existing code editors such as Xi Editor (https://xi-editor.io) or Lapce (https://lapce.dev) instead of making yet another one?

As for lightweight alternatives to Atom, there is also Lite-XL (https://lite-xl.com).

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