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> Why doesn’t someone make a better native editor? I can make it. In fact, there are many native text editors out there. The problem is not creating the edit

> Why doesn’t someone make a better native editor? I can make it. In fact, there are many native text editors out there. The problem is not creating the editor itself but the community around it. If your editor doesn't supports the most common/basic plugins like linters, debuggers, painters, formatters, code intelligence, etc then it becomes another one in the pile. Atom became the popular piece of software that is today because of the JavaScript community. Hundreds of high school, college and university students with several hours of free time during the week, writing code in a language that overflows on the Internet, to extend the functionality of a program baked by one of the most popular companies among software developers [GitHub]. This is the type of community that you need to build around your editor in order to make it popular. Take a look at TextMate [1] which used to be one of the most popular code editor with a graphical interface for Mac years ago. It was open-sourced [2] after its developer put it in maintenance mode. And while it is still being maintained today, not many people are well versed in C++ and Objective-C to contribute to the project at the same speed as a JavaScript programmer would do with Atom. [1] https://macromates.com https://macromates.com [2] https://github.com/textmate/textmate https://github.com/textmate/textmate

rossy 9y ago
I don't think that's it. I could definitely manage without having a community around my editor. The only packages I have installed in Sublime Text are syntaxes and colour schemes. Sublime actually supports TextMate syntax for those (.tmLanguage and .tmTheme,) which was a good way to bootstrap a useful editor before it got a community of its own. If you want linters or code intelligence, there's an emerging editor-agnostic solution for that as well. The guys behind the Language Server protocol[1] realized that making an editor plugin for each language in each editor was inefficient and it slows the adoption of new languages and new editors. [1]: https://langserver.org/ https://langserver.org/
nurettin 9y ago
>> Hundreds of high school, college and university students with several hours of free time during the week, writing code in a language that overflows on the Internet Citation definitely needed.

rossy 9y ago

I don't think that's it. I could definitely manage without having a community around my editor. The only packages I have installed in Sublime Text are syntaxes and colour schemes. Sublime actually supports TextMate syntax for those (.tmLanguage and .tmTheme,) which was a good way to bootstrap a useful editor before it got a community of its own. If you want linters or code intelligence, there's an emerging editor-agnostic solution for that as well. The guys behind the Language Server protocol[1] realized that making an editor plugin for each language in each editor was inefficient and it slows the adoption of new languages and new editors. [1]: https://langserver.org/ https://langserver.org/

nurettin 9y ago

>> Hundreds of high school, college and university students with several hours of free time during the week, writing code in a language that overflows on the Internet Citation definitely needed.