4 ms·

But your wants and needs aren't universal. My perfect editor needs to be as configurable and customizable as possible, and I couldn't give a rats ass about sta

But your wants and needs aren't universal. My perfect editor needs to be as configurable and customizable as possible, and I couldn't give a rats ass about startup performance or large file rendering performance. For me, an editor where I can't display inline images alongside text which is in multiple languages (including some RTL languages) while linting and providing IDE level features all while displaying inline test coverage results is worse than an editor that starts instantly. From that perspective, a browser is the perfect abstraction. It's okay if Atoms priorities aren't for you, but saying they are wrong is like saying trains are wrong because they can't do 0 to 60 in 4 seconds.

zozbot123 8y ago
> For me, an editor where I can't display inline images alongside text which is in multiple languages (including some RTL languages) while linting and providing IDE level features all while displaying inline test coverage results is worse than an editor that starts instantly. Emacs does provide these features, and it's not too slow at startup either. It's a really nice operating system "abstraction"... too bad that they haven't gotten around to making a good editor for it.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  A big problem I have with emacs, and I fully acknowledge that it's shallow and superficial, is that it looks bad. I stare at this thing for hours a day, I like it to look nice. That combined with the fact that I'm in JavaScript all day long, so it's super easy to extend and modify Atom, means that it just wins out. Atom is also a LOT easier to pickup than emacs ever was for me, and I tried a few times.
  - m45t3r 8y ago
    Spacemacs looks beautiful tough, and has some pretty nice defaults (for example, it automatically adds a layer for each language you're using, so you have good IDE-like features without fuzzing with packages).
pjmlp 8y ago
SlickEdit does all of that while being native, fast and handling big data sets.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  I'm happy there are options, but Atom does all that as well, and it uses the same tech that I'm working with every day, and it has extensions for just about everything, and it's free software. And that last part is suprisingly important to me. I'm not opposed to paying for software (hell, I use Windows as my development environment of choice!), but with the amount of time I spend customizing, and relying on my editor, it would have to be significantly better before I'd give up the ability to throw together a quick extension to integrate a homegrown test runner, or add syntax highlighting and debugger integration for a business basic style language that I work on from time to time, or be able to dive in and fix bugs or make changes to the core editor in cases where I run into a bug or want to tweak something. Native just isn't something I care about. You might as well try to sell it by telling me that it uses a fantastic color blue for it's chrome. And Atom handles big files just fine for me (at least up to a few hundred mb), but an editor is also not the tool I reach for in those cases (opting to pass stuff through CLI tools once it gets above a few megs), so an editor that handles those large files and datasets also doesn't benefit me and my process that much. I have my complaints about Atom (the biggest at this point is that it sorely needs some direction in the linting/ide side of things. Every plugin does things slightly differently, and with Facebook dropping maintenance of the atom-ide set of packages, I fear it's only going to get worse), but I'm generally happy with it. Maybe I'm just getting old, but every few months I tend to try out alternatives, and I always end up coming back.

zozbot123 8y ago

> For me, an editor where I can't display inline images alongside text which is in multiple languages (including some RTL languages) while linting and providing IDE level features all while displaying inline test coverage results is worse than an editor that starts instantly. Emacs does provide these features, and it's not too slow at startup either. It's a really nice operating system "abstraction"... too bad that they haven't gotten around to making a good editor for it.

Klathmon 8y ago
A big problem I have with emacs, and I fully acknowledge that it's shallow and superficial, is that it looks bad. I stare at this thing for hours a day, I like it to look nice. That combined with the fact that I'm in JavaScript all day long, so it's super easy to extend and modify Atom, means that it just wins out. Atom is also a LOT easier to pickup than emacs ever was for me, and I tried a few times.
- m45t3r 8y ago
  Spacemacs looks beautiful tough, and has some pretty nice defaults (for example, it automatically adds a layer for each language you're using, so you have good IDE-like features without fuzzing with packages).

pjmlp 8y ago

SlickEdit does all of that while being native, fast and handling big data sets.

Klathmon 8y ago
I'm happy there are options, but Atom does all that as well, and it uses the same tech that I'm working with every day, and it has extensions for just about everything, and it's free software. And that last part is suprisingly important to me. I'm not opposed to paying for software (hell, I use Windows as my development environment of choice!), but with the amount of time I spend customizing, and relying on my editor, it would have to be significantly better before I'd give up the ability to throw together a quick extension to integrate a homegrown test runner, or add syntax highlighting and debugger integration for a business basic style language that I work on from time to time, or be able to dive in and fix bugs or make changes to the core editor in cases where I run into a bug or want to tweak something. Native just isn't something I care about. You might as well try to sell it by telling me that it uses a fantastic color blue for it's chrome. And Atom handles big files just fine for me (at least up to a few hundred mb), but an editor is also not the tool I reach for in those cases (opting to pass stuff through CLI tools once it gets above a few megs), so an editor that handles those large files and datasets also doesn't benefit me and my process that much. I have my complaints about Atom (the biggest at this point is that it sorely needs some direction in the linting/ide side of things. Every plugin does things slightly differently, and with Facebook dropping maintenance of the atom-ide set of packages, I fear it's only going to get worse), but I'm generally happy with it. Maybe I'm just getting old, but every few months I tend to try out alternatives, and I always end up coming back.