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Introducing Atom-IDE
- batisteo 9y agoI like how this blog is not responsive. Atom is for desktop, so the blog has to be so.
- andreime 9y agoYES! cause nobody reads news.ycombinator while taking a dump.
- thrillgore 9y agoI hope they address memory consumption at some point too.
- quaz3l 9y agoSame! This really is the only reason I don't use atom as of now
- TremendousJudge 9y agoYeah, I need to save all my ram for Slack
- godDLL 9y agoAs good as this comment is, don't reddit on hn please.
- thrillgore 9y agoHe's being unintentionally ironic, Slack is another Electron app that's just terrible about memory.
- jbob2000 9y agoYep, I was using Atom for 6 months, I wanted to give a solid go. But now I am back to sublime text. I can't really put my finger on it, but sublime text is just snappy and reliable in ways that Atom isn't. Got really tired of Atom lagging because I'm typing too fast, got tired of lockups and hanging. VS Code has very simillar issues too. It was a nice experiment (can we do editors in HTML/JS?), but I'm convinced native is the only way to go for proper editing.
- pitaj 9y agoHave you tried VS Code? It's very snappy in my experience, much better than atom.
- jbob2000 9y agoYep, been using it for a month full time so far. It IS better than Atom, but it still has snappiness problems. The embedded console is great, but not as fast as just using command prompt, it just has weird laggy moments. Using the built-in Git is also laggy, there's a delay when you click to stage a file, really annoying. The search is really laggy too, when you do a search across your app, it locks up the whole window for a second or two. Microsoft also has this really annoying tendency to use icons for everything, every once in a while I find myself googling wtf these icons are.
- godDLL 9y agoneither is even bearable on a Raspberry Pi, or any old laptop of which I have many laying around the house
- rplnt 9y agoSublime Text works as a simple code editor as well, while Atom has start-up times not far from those of Visual Studio. Opening files in a running instance of ST is virtually instantaneous. Not sure if it is even possible with Atom.
- brlewis 9y agoWhat release of Atom did you use? I'm curious whether newer releases actually feel better. I'm an emacs user myself, but am looking at whether to recommend Atom to others.
- drngdds 9y agoHow much does it use?
- smudgymcscmudge 9y agoHow much you got?
- thrillgore 9y agoCurrent available RAM ^ 2 I wish I was joking but that's what it feels like sometimes
- fasquoika 9y agoA fresh install (no plugins) for me uses about 300Mb. With plugins it can get pretty high
- 482794793792894 9y agoMost of the RAM use comes from its architecture (it basically runs a web browser to display the UI), so this isn't a problem that they can just address. They'd have to rewrite the entire text editor with a different technology.
- dotancohen 9y agoSo why did the developers of a text editor decide on a web browser stack for their project? Yes, I know that the answer is "electron". They picked the wrong tool for the job.
- ForHackernews 9y ago> So why did the developers of a text editor decide on a web browser stack for their project? When all you have is a hammer...
- opencl 9y agoThis is actually backwards: Electron was originally created for the Atom project and even used to be called Atom Shell.
- dotancohen 9y agoAnd it was the wrong tool for the job even then. Atom might be Electron's reason for existing, but that just emphasizes that Electron (in its current form) should not exist at all. I have no problem with the idea of using Javascript for desktop application development. I do have a problem with relying on a memory-hogging framework, which Javascript was originally design to _avoid_ because back in the 90's it was meant to run in the resource-limited web browser. Too bad that Javascript has strayed so far from its roots.
- wldcordeiro 9y agoRead the blog post for Atom 1.19 then. They've been making efforts there and there's been great improvements.
- pjmlp 9y agoYes, by dropping into C++. With enough C++ they might just replicate Sublime Text, vim or Emacs.
- tvanantwerp 9y ago> [Utilize] the power of language servers to provide deep syntactical analysis of your code and projects. Having my code analyzed by others' servers just so I can have better autocomplete does not sound like something I want.
- damieng 9y agoThe servers run entirely locally on your machine.
- itwy 9y agoThey mean the local language server/interpreter, I think.
- giancarlostoro 9y agoThey run on your own machine, and it's used by many other editors. The spec is by Microsoft and supported by Emacs and other editors, it's not perfected yet, but it works pretty well.
- coldtea 9y agoLanguage servers are local services that analyze the code outside of your editor (and can be used by several editors etc). It's a protocol that got big the last 2 years or so. It doesn't refer to servers in some Cloud.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y agoSo... daemons?
- Matthias247 9y agoyes. They are deamons which are spawned by the editor and which are running locally on the machine. The daemons are reapsonsible for analyzing code in the edited project and to provide IDE-like features (auto-completion, refactorings, etc.) around it. The editor talks to the daemon (language-service) through an RPC protocol (language server protocol).
- jamescostian 9y agoIn my opinion, this is how IDEs should be - make something better described as a text editor (like a fresh install of vim, sublime, or atom), and allow users to add more things to the light-weight(ish?) base. So many IDEs are overkill. Text editors with the right plugins can accomplish the same things but also be much more lightweight, and help you achieve a balance between "IDE" and "text editor"
- TremendousJudge 9y agoExcept for the fact that Atom eats more memory than Visual Studio
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Existenceblinks 9y agoWhile the statement is true, I have almost 2GB of RAM left before opening Atom. My OS says it's fine (although I know it writes more stuff to SSD) Fact is that it will use the maximum resource it requires, and maximum resources OS can provide.
- giancarlostoro 9y agoSpacemacs turns Emacs into an IDE of sorts. I use Spacemacs when I need to SSH to another box and edit files remotely, I much prefer remoting through Emacs. Also Visual Studio Code kind of is like this to some degree? You start with basics, and add on what you need, their D plugin is pretty decent, and their Rust one has gotten pretty popular by the looks of the last Rust survey. Also their .NET Core support is pretty much the best on VS Code compared to on other editors from what I've seen, their Sublime Text plugin seems abandoned.
- coldtea 9y ago>Text editors with the right plugins can accomplish the same things but also be much more lightweight Oh, the irony...
- hacker_9 9y agoHonestly can't see why I'd use this - I have all the professional grade IDEs I need, why do I need one that is written in JS, is slower and consumes 5x more memory? Not to mention IDEs already have their own extension stores too. This seems like an 'IDE-lite', which doesn't make much sense in a world where professional grade IDEs are free.
- Tenobrus 9y agoThe same reason thousands of programmers use Vim or Emacs with various extensions as their development environment. It allows the same editing experience across multiple languages. A consistent interface, lack of need for learning many (often very different) IDEs, less proprietary annoyance, many many more options for customization, much easier to port your setup to various platforms, etc. Admittedly I don't think Atom is a very worthwhile text editor, but using an augmented text editor as an IDE is a very common practice.
- hacker_9 9y agoBut that's what I mean - we already have Emacs/Vim, with their million of extensions, which are always going to be faster. Outside of that we have Visual Studio, IntelliJ, PyCharm, the list goes on. All downloadable for free.
- simlevesque 9y ago> going to be faster Fast is not the end goal.
- MikusR 9y agoI like how they downplay Microsoft' role in Language Server Protocol.
- pjmlp 9y agoGiven that even Eclipse runs faster, uses less resources and has a much better plugin ecosystem than Atom, no thanks.
- lewisj489 9y ago20Gb of RAM latter.
- dikaiosune 9y agoIs this a nicely packaged version of nuclide?
- sandGorgon 9y agoFlow is supported, but Reason is not ? I thought it would be the other way around. Anyone know which one is what the React ecosystem is moving to ?
- dubcanada 9y agoThis was made mostly by Facebook, it stands to reason Flow would be supported.
- fasquoika 9y agoReason is also made by Facebook
- spicyj 9y agoFlow is more mature than Reason and is more widely used both at Facebook and outside.
- robinricard 9y agoYou can already find a package wrapping the ocaml-language-server. I tried it and it works well with reason: https://atom.io/packages/ide-reason https://atom.io/packages/ide-reason. You should also install language-reason and reason-refmt alongside it.
- dubcanada 9y agoOff-topic but does anyone know what that atom skin used in the screenshot (https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/378023/29859731-741403be-8d9e-11e7-99c5-6b914e3fff9c.png https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/378023/29859731-74...) is called?
- Will_Do 9y agoThis seems to also have the BSD + Patents beloved by Facebook[0]. The virus is spreading. [0]: https://github.com/facebook-atom/atom-ide-ui/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebook-atom/atom-ide-ui/blob/master/PAT...
- echelon 9y agoWhat can we reasonably do to stop this? This goes against the very notion of open source.
- halfteatree 9y agoNo, it is not. If you sue people with software patent, I’m happy you lose that ability.
- imtringued 9y agoYeah but the protection only applies to facebook. You can still sue github and everyone else. We can clearly conclude that facebook is selfishly doing this for their own benefit and not because of an altruistic reason like a world without patents. So in reality what you're saying means: "If you sue facebook with any patent, I’m happy you lose that ability. If you sue any other company other than facebook, I’m happy you keep that ability."
- halfteatree 9y agoAnd now github is using the same license too :)
- bigleagueposter 9y agoI don't have any patents why should I give a fuck about people who want to steal money from facebook?
- neilparikh 9y agoThis covers all patents, including non-software patents, so you lose the ability to sue for non-software patents as well. Are you happy with that?
- alexashka 9y agoCan someone compare this to Visual Studio Code? It seems to be the exact same thing?
- purerandomness 9y agoOne is written in .NET, while the other one is written in JavaScript, run in a JavaScript runtime environment ripped out of Chrome.
- AlphaSite 9y agoThey’re both electron applications?
- bernadus_edwin 9y agoYes. Both are electron
- Paradox0 9y agoNo. Like Atom, VSCode is also an Electron app, written in Javascript.
- aesthetics1 9y agoThis seems aimed squarely at VSCode. VSCode does a lot of this now out of the box (or with a few extensions). I think Atom is really just trying to keep up. I personally do not believe they have the horsepower to compete with Microsoft here though. VSCode is a phenomenal product.
- Longhanks 9y agoMost importantly, VS Code does all this with a lot better performance and without Facebook.
- pritambaral 9y ago> and without Facebook Does Atom have any kind of Facebook integration?
- shados 9y agoThey're referring to how a lot of these plugins are features extracted from Nuclide and/or open sourced by Facebook.
- Pigo 9y agoI fought for Atom for a long time. But after browsing a node_modules folder in Code, I realized how much I'd just accepted poor performance. It also worked as good on my Linux devices as my work pc.
- m4tthumphrey 9y agoWhy why why why why? What is the point in this? Seriously. Please can someone enlighten me. Atom was bad enough with all of the other text editors are out there and not written in JS, but now you can't even say it's just a text editor. Facebook and the other contributors clearly have too much spare time on their hands. JetBrains. End of. </rant>
- eduren 9y ago>What is the point in this? Seriously. Please can someone enlighten me. People want to improve the tools they use. Whether or not you feel they are using their "spare time" correctly, I'm sure they don't care.
- bernadus_edwin 9y agoI hope fb team put ability auto import on react native flow ide
- krisdol 9y agoHave you tried not using atom? Atom is and has been my IDE replacement for almost 3 years now. Things like this make my experience better.
- ndreckshage 9y agowhat theme is used in the screen shots?
- Dirlewanger 9y agoI Imagine this will run like mid-2000s Eclipse, but with 5 times worse performance.
- amiga-workbench 9y agoMan, Eclipse used to be such a dog. I was overjoyed when the Android SDK moved to IntelliJ.
- bigdubs 9y agoNo golang support, going to pass for now.
- johnhenry 9y agoRelevant: https://nuclide.io/ https://nuclide.io/
- philosopherlawr 9y agoUnlike lots of the posters here, I see a real need for an IDE that's completely free. I have used Eclipse and IntelliJ, and the bloat/bug/setup process in them is incredibly painful. However, I don't know if we're just going to add those problems into atom instead of what makes atom awesome - easy package management, fast text editing - and remove it.
- amorphid 9y agoI'm with you. Free, open source, and useful is awesome. I'll use it, and contribute when able. I wouldn't be a developer today if I didn't have access to these kind of tools when I got started with coding (I was broke, and couldn't have afforded to replace the computer on which I learned).
- baby 9y agoI think the bloat about Eclipse and IntelliJ is more about Java. As much as I hate the language, if I have to do some Java I don't think there is a smoother alternative than IntelliJ.
- deedubaya 9y agoInteresting to see no Ruby support, since Github runs on Rails. Maybe code completion is too hard with Ruby?
- amorphid 9y agoRubymine has it, so it can be done. Although you'd have a hard time supporting elements defined at runtime. I'd guess Ruby just has a smaller user base, and IDE support was added for tech that is the most popular among IDE users & stuff Facebook was interested in making a priority. Personally, when I program in Ruby, I don't like using an IDE.
- jeffbax 9y agoJust started a new job at a Ruby shop and really wanted to use VS Code… but the plugins just aren't there. RubyMine is miles ahead of the free stuff right now. Maybe one day!
- cpayne624 9y agoCan you elaborate? We're a Ruby via VSCode team. I fear I'm blissfully ignorant of the possibilities.
- sandstrom 9y agoThere doesn't seem to be a production-ready language server protocol implementation for ruby. This is the only one I've found (not sure which state it's in): https://github.com/mtsmfm/language_server-ruby https://github.com/mtsmfm/language_server-ruby
- hit8run 9y agoCame here to express the same observation. Github is running Ruby + Rails so why not improve the own tooling with the own editor? Currently I use VSCode and RubyMine (from time to time) for Rails development but both have only mediocre code completion.
- ksec 9y ago
- stevenschmatz 9y agoHow is this different than Facebook's Nuclide?
- Ajedi32 9y ago> Atom IDE UI is fast and lightweight by design. It extracts only the subset of the core UI features from Nuclide necessary to support Atom’s atom-languageclient library in displaying features supported by the language server protocol. Source: https://nuclide.io/blog/2017/09/12/Introducing-Atom-IDE-UI/ https://nuclide.io/blog/2017/09/12/Introducing-Atom-IDE-UI/ So I guess the main differences are that it's more lightweight, and open-source.
- robohamburger 9y agoThis is interesting because language servers are interesting. I will probably hold out for a vim language server client that isn't just a port of nvim's.
- ComputerGuru 9y agoWhat’s wrong with neovim?
- k__ 9y agoSad. Hoped they would cooperate with MS on VSCode
- reificator 9y agoStill playing catchup with VSCode, but without the integrated debugger and all the rest of its fancy tooling. Is it still mind-numbingly slow as well? I can't imagine switching back to Atom at this point, or even Sublime. For individual projects I might use IntelliJ or Visual Studio again, but outside of that VSCode is my exclusive editor for all languages for the foreseeable future. I'm very impressed by what Microsoft pulled off to be honest. (Blinking cursor jokes aside, of course)
- slewis 9y agoCan you comment on when/why you might use IntelliJ/VS over VSCode? I've recently switched to VSCode from vim, and haven't really used full IDEs since college (except for small amounts of mobile app development).
- Viper007Bond 9y agoWhen working with large projects, a full blown IDE can really make your life easier. I use PhpStorm for my main work and I'm just in it all day. However VSCode is what I use when I just need to quickly edit something as it's still smarter than a dumb editor.
- int_19h 9y agoCode completion is still generally better in VS, for one.
- reificator 9y agoI don't have a reason to right now, but I'm saying I could imagine having one. More specialized debugging support perhaps? Joining a team with a build system that's easier to work with from {{IDE}}?
- askvictor 9y agoI haven't looked at vscode for a while, but intellij and it's ilk allow me to do everything inside the ide with the same interface. For example, for a django project, it has support for vagrant, SSH, django-admin tasks, remote debugging, DB inspection/modification, virtualenvs, package management, just off the top of my head.
- EasyTiger_ 9y agoGood luck against PHPStorm / IntelliJ. Nothing comes close yet, worth every penny.
- nkkollaw 9y agoDefinitely. I wish they didn't do the autosave crap.
- on_and_off 9y agoI will regret asking this, but why ? I don't even remember what it was like to code without autosave in IntelliJ. I will review the changeset before creating the PR anyway, so I don't see the downside of autosave.
- dkarl 9y agoThis is my feeling as well. I hated autosave until I switched from Subversion to git and suddenly branches were a nimble and powerful tool. Honestly, I don't even remember why it was so important to control when my code changes were written to the filesystem. I just remember it used to be extremely important to me, and then I quickly stopped caring when I started using git and GitHub.
- nkkollaw 9y agoClose editor by mistake, battery dies, go to lunch and forget what I was doing. What is the upside? One less keystroke..?
- on_and_off 9y agoThe upside of not potentially losing everything you have done since the last time you remembered to save ? is this a real question ?
- iza 9y agoIt's configurable...
- wildchild 9y agoI am guessing we need 1 TB RAM for it.
- romanovcode 9y agoPlaying catch-up with VS Code.
- skybrian 9y agoSo Atom is yet another editor supporting the language server protocol. Whether you like Atom or not, that's good news. The more that editors support it, the easier it is for new languages to get a good IDE experience with many editors.
- brotherjerky 9y agoYes, this is the best part. Joint effort makes all editors better for tooling.
- alloyed 9y agoI appreciate the extended support for LSP, but this seems to repeat the mistake VSCode made of requiring custom plugins for each backend you'd like to integrate. This increases the overhead for server authors and makes it less likely that language servers and clients actually match spec, if people give in to writing custom integrations that can paper over bugs.
- zython 9y agoIs this the fate of all text editors once they run out of ideas to implement ? I for sure wouldnt use this, especially with the whole kite controversy just being over (is it ?).
- amirmasoudabdol 9y ago"It's like the Atom editor but even slower!" I never managed to work with Atom as it is now. It's just too slow. Now they are pushing it even further, I cannot imagine how much slower could still get.
- cr0sh 9y agoI've only found a couple of instances where Atom was slow: 1. On startup, it seems to take "forever" - but I can be patient for it 2. When having multiple files open that are really long; this may be due to linting or something, I'm not sure currently And yes, memory usage is insane...
- jussij 9y ago> When having multiple files open that are really long; I've not used Atom so I'm curious to what you mean by this. Firstly, what would define a really long file. Is a file with 10k of lines long? Second, I would have though the ability to open lots of files would be a rather common occurrence for any programmer working on a large code base. What happens in Atom if you have 30 files open?
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- karmakaze 9y agoWhat I'd much rather have is a reasonable development on Android or iOS. I've tried some but it always felt awkward, even with a Bluetooth keyboard. Eventually it we"ll get there as web apps are now fine replacements for desktop apps. Question is when.
- pwdisswordfish 9y agoSo I pressed CTRL + F and typed in "debug" - zero results found. It seems like this is still a glorified text editor and not IDE-ish editor like Visual Studio Code.
- fineline 9y agoLots of people talking about their preferred IDE/editor here. It's great that we can use what we choose, because the underlying standards - languages, runtimes, repositories - are so standardised. I sometimes swap to and fro on the same project. Not at all like UI development in the 80's and 90's, where you picked between, say, VB, Delphi, Omnis etc. and that's what you were stuck with. I use WebStorm/IntelliJ for my daily drivers. Tried Atom a while ago and have been liking VSCode more recently (good for Rust) and was very impressed, but still prefer WebStorm for JavaScript. Recently prompted to try Atom again due to the plugin for Marko.js, and was pleasantly surprised. Performance on my 2013 16GB MBPro is fine and it seems overall cleaner and snappier than I remembered. Just installed this new IDE plugin and it's instantly impressive. Good to see that the underpinnings of IDE functions are also becoming standardised thanks to LSP.
- peternicky 9y agoHow is this different from Nuclide?
- diedyesterday 9y agoI can't believe it took this long for language servers and an open editor/"language smartness server" comm protocol to be developed.