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I see a lot of folks here comparing this to VS Code and asking "Why would I use this instead?" — I am exactly on the opposite side of that equation. Why would I

I see a lot of folks here comparing this to VS Code and asking "Why would I use this instead?" — I am exactly on the opposite side of that equation. Why would I use VS Code when I can use this? I've been using Atom for most of the decade (plus a bit of Sublime, and TextMate before), and I've loved being able to hack it to look and feel exactly how I want. There's a ton of custom CSS in my setup. Now, Atom is slow. That is a daily frustration for me. The latency on every keypress is grating. I've stripped out every package I can, and that custom CSS I mentioned is mostly hiding things I don't want to see. But still, the lag! I feel it all around. I tried switching to VS Code, but it was appreciably worse for me. I couldn't configure it to look as nice as Atom (and it had the unshakable feeling that it was made by folks from the Windows school of design — plenty of weird [to me] spacing and typographic choices). It also didn't feel any faster. So why does Nova appeal to me? Well, Atom is no longer supported, so I'm going to have to switch to something anyway. Nova doesn't look as minimal as I'd like, but I can live with that — at least it looks nice! And it's a native app, so it should (in theory) be buttery smooth. When it comes to a tool I will spend all day, every day in, $50/year is peanuts. This is my working life. It's worth spending a relatively tiny bit of money to have something nice instead of something good enough. Price is a non-issue for me. As for extensions... I don't use any. I stripped them all out to try to make Atom faster. So now I get to discover what extensions are available, without being left longing for something I had to give up. Maybe I'll build an extension for myself. This is a new frontier for me. So we'll see. I tried Coda, didn't like it. I love Transmit, though. So if this tool lives up to its promises, and succeeds on its own terms, I'll be thrilled. For the folks happy with VS Code... that's fantastic. I'm glad you have found a tool you like. For folks like me, for whom VS Code just felt off, this seems like a great option.

FullyFunctional 6y ago
I change platforms many times a day (macOS, Linux, occasionally Windows) and VS Code being cross platform is essential for my use of it. Being Mac-only is a complete deal-breaker.
- Brendinooo 6y ago
  You are definitely not Panic's target audience.
- hu3 6y ago
  I've been testing cloud-hosted VS Code (Codespaces) for the portability between platforms and I'm liking it so far. There are certainly drawbacks but running everything on the cloud allows me to code on a lightweight machine like MacBook Air or Microsoft Surface with extended battery life regardless of the workload. It also keeps the machine cool and silent.
  - FullyFunctional 6y ago
    That's pretty much my setup for the past few years. I find there's a significant productivity boost from being able to resume exactly where I left off hours or days ago, without having to depending on accessing with the same devices from the same location. For this, mosh + tmux are super lovely. I do use VS Code locally, but I export the filesystem, typically with sshfs.
- 1986 6y ago
  How do you deal with the difference in common keyboard shortcuts / text selection with keyboard (i.e. option vs ctrl, command vs ctrl)? I also go back and forth between macOS and Linux and it always takes me 30 min to get the correct muscle memory back.
  - kevmo314 6y ago
    I have a mac vscode running alongside a windows vscode connected with synergy with a physical kb and mouse. At first the different shortcuts were annoying but with enough practice I just got used to them. Some of the lesser used ones like delete file I have to resort to using the mouse on mac, but I do try to make a conscious decision to learn both sets of shortcuts.
  - FullyFunctional 6y ago
    Touché. I do desperately miss macOS's emacs bindings across the board and the wonderful Cmd that leaves Ctrl alone. I constantly look for a Linux distro that actually "get it", but so far all I've seen are efforts to make it _look_ like macOS, without making it _feel_ like it. TL;DR: I cope, begrudgingly.
yreg 6y ago
>The latency on every keypress is grating. May I ask what computer are you using? I would say VS Code runs 'buttery smooth' on my macs. Is this a case of me having no idea of what I'm missing?
- josephg 6y ago
  It might also matter what languages the poster is using. Programming typescript in vscode is a peerless experience. But writing C and Rust feel much worse - I get 200+ ms latency navigating around and typing sometimes, and cmd+click navigation gets janky and breaks very regularly in both of those languages. I assume the culprit is half baked language extensions. I love vscode for typescript but I’d happily switch which editor I use for rust and C if I find something better.
  - tuankiet65 6y ago
    Man, and I'm here thinking it's just my VSCode that's super slow and sluggish while editing C++ code. I switch to Clion and it's surprisingly more responsive than VSCode, given Clion is a whole IDE in itself.
    - josephg 6y ago
      Yeah I highly recommend giving VSCode another try if you ever end up writing typescript. Typescript in vscode is so great that its weird to me that Nova is targetting web development. VSCode sets a really high bar for this community. In comparison, programming Swift in XCode lags so much sometimes that it starts missing keystrokes, and I end up with variable names that are missing half their letters. (This happens particularly when filling in a function's arguments). Its terrible, and it leaves me second guessing the idea that native editors are superior by default. This seems to me like a much more useful target for a new IDE.
  - spiralganglion 6y ago
    I work with CoffeeScript (yes, I'm the one person, hah), SCSS, and HTML. No frameworks. No editor extensions. As minimal a setup as possible, aside from my two fave transpilers. The perf I'm taking about is just purely motion to photon, with a plain text file.
thisisblurry 6y ago
> Well, Atom is no longer supported, so I'm going to have to switch to something anyway. Is there an official source or announcement for this? I've noticed that recent release notes and changelogs have become much less substantial, but I've yet to see anything indicating that it's approaching EOL.
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  There isn't an official announcement but I wouldn't wait for one. The lack of updates coupled with the fact that Microsoft now owns GitHub indicates a very high likelihood that Atom development is practically dead.
- hylaride 6y ago
  Even if Atom itself is not dead the ecosystem is. The kick that finally got me onto VSCode was the stagnant plugin updates for things that were very important to me. I haven’t really looked back, except that Atom had better git support in its native UI.
nicoburns 6y ago
I'm still using Sublime. I guess it's less customisable than Atom, but you can't fault it for performance.
PascLeRasc 6y ago
What do you think of Sublime? I'm like you and something about VS Code's design really bothers me. It's incredibly heavy and can't stop getting in my way. Sublime on the other hand feels like a sharp kitchen knife or a carbon road bike, it's amazingly light and nimble to use. I love it. Really what I miss is 2015-2018 Atom, but it seems like its time has gone.
- spiralganglion 6y ago
  Sublime has fantastic perf, and for the first while with Atom (when it struggled with any file bigger than a few dozen KB) I kept Sublime around for big files. But I don't like how Sublime looks. It doesn't look designed to me — it just looks like an accretion of features placed around the window. To me, that matters a lot. That is, after all, why I'm a Mac user. Why I'm fond of indie Mac software.
  - marmaduke 6y ago
    I get what you mean (I bought sublime text and merge) but > It doesn't look designed to me — it just looks like an accretion of features placed around isn’t a lot of programming like (despite our best efforts)?
fastball 6y ago
> Atom is slow, VS Code is appreciably worse Honestly this isn't possible. VSC had better perf than Atom 4 years ago[1]. I say this as a long-time Sublime user, which is best-in-class[2] when it comes to perf. > I've loved being able to hack it to look and feel exactly as I want What is not customizable in VSC? When I first started using VSC, I installed an extension that made all my keybindings exactly as they were in Sublime, then I installed extensions to make it look almost exactly as my Sublime setup had looked (just took installing a UI theme and a color scheme). If you want buttery smooth, Sublime is where to go. Native doesn't compete with Sublime's low-level text rendering. But seriously there must be something wrong with your setup if VSC is lacking in perf and Atom wasn't. [1] https://blog.xinhong.me/post/sublime-text-vs-vscode-vs-atom-performance-dec-2016/ https://blog.xinhong.me/post/sublime-text-vs-vscode-vs-atom-... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mZOzyzlsww&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mZOzyzlsww&feature=youtu.be
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Since they wrote their own text rendering engine, maybe it does compete with Sublime?
  - mantap 6y ago
    They didn't write their own text rendering engine AFAIK, they wrote their own layout manager. The layout manager determines where the lines go. I'm sure they are still using Core Text to render.
- spiralganglion 6y ago
  I didn't mean to suggest that VSC was slower than Atom — only that it wasn't meaningfully faster. The fact that the typing latency felt equivalent (ie. not native), and that I couldn't visually customize VSC to my liking (despite spending days trying) turned me off it.
zaro 6y ago
> Atom is slow, VS Code is appreciably worse I switched from Atom to VScode, precisely because VScode felt so much snapier.
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
You had a look at Textmate lately? It's still getting updates and works as nice as it ever did.
runeks 6y ago
> Why would I use VS Code when I can use this? Because of the wealth of extensions available for VS Code. An editor is only as good as the number of developer-hours that has gone into writing extensions for it.

FullyFunctional 6y ago

I change platforms many times a day (macOS, Linux, occasionally Windows) and VS Code being cross platform is essential for my use of it. Being Mac-only is a complete deal-breaker.

Brendinooo 6y ago
You are definitely not Panic's target audience.
hu3 6y ago
I've been testing cloud-hosted VS Code (Codespaces) for the portability between platforms and I'm liking it so far. There are certainly drawbacks but running everything on the cloud allows me to code on a lightweight machine like MacBook Air or Microsoft Surface with extended battery life regardless of the workload. It also keeps the machine cool and silent.
- FullyFunctional 6y ago
  That's pretty much my setup for the past few years. I find there's a significant productivity boost from being able to resume exactly where I left off hours or days ago, without having to depending on accessing with the same devices from the same location. For this, mosh + tmux are super lovely. I do use VS Code locally, but I export the filesystem, typically with sshfs.
1986 6y ago
How do you deal with the difference in common keyboard shortcuts / text selection with keyboard (i.e. option vs ctrl, command vs ctrl)? I also go back and forth between macOS and Linux and it always takes me 30 min to get the correct muscle memory back.
- kevmo314 6y ago
  I have a mac vscode running alongside a windows vscode connected with synergy with a physical kb and mouse. At first the different shortcuts were annoying but with enough practice I just got used to them. Some of the lesser used ones like delete file I have to resort to using the mouse on mac, but I do try to make a conscious decision to learn both sets of shortcuts.
- FullyFunctional 6y ago
  Touché. I do desperately miss macOS's emacs bindings across the board and the wonderful Cmd that leaves Ctrl alone. I constantly look for a Linux distro that actually "get it", but so far all I've seen are efforts to make it _look_ like macOS, without making it _feel_ like it. TL;DR: I cope, begrudgingly.

yreg 6y ago

>The latency on every keypress is grating. May I ask what computer are you using? I would say VS Code runs 'buttery smooth' on my macs. Is this a case of me having no idea of what I'm missing?

josephg 6y ago
It might also matter what languages the poster is using. Programming typescript in vscode is a peerless experience. But writing C and Rust feel much worse - I get 200+ ms latency navigating around and typing sometimes, and cmd+click navigation gets janky and breaks very regularly in both of those languages. I assume the culprit is half baked language extensions. I love vscode for typescript but I’d happily switch which editor I use for rust and C if I find something better.
- tuankiet65 6y ago
  Man, and I'm here thinking it's just my VSCode that's super slow and sluggish while editing C++ code. I switch to Clion and it's surprisingly more responsive than VSCode, given Clion is a whole IDE in itself.
  - josephg 6y ago
    Yeah I highly recommend giving VSCode another try if you ever end up writing typescript. Typescript in vscode is so great that its weird to me that Nova is targetting web development. VSCode sets a really high bar for this community. In comparison, programming Swift in XCode lags so much sometimes that it starts missing keystrokes, and I end up with variable names that are missing half their letters. (This happens particularly when filling in a function's arguments). Its terrible, and it leaves me second guessing the idea that native editors are superior by default. This seems to me like a much more useful target for a new IDE.
- spiralganglion 6y ago
  I work with CoffeeScript (yes, I'm the one person, hah), SCSS, and HTML. No frameworks. No editor extensions. As minimal a setup as possible, aside from my two fave transpilers. The perf I'm taking about is just purely motion to photon, with a plain text file.

thisisblurry 6y ago

> Well, Atom is no longer supported, so I'm going to have to switch to something anyway. Is there an official source or announcement for this? I've noticed that recent release notes and changelogs have become much less substantial, but I've yet to see anything indicating that it's approaching EOL.

themacguffinman 6y ago
There isn't an official announcement but I wouldn't wait for one. The lack of updates coupled with the fact that Microsoft now owns GitHub indicates a very high likelihood that Atom development is practically dead.
hylaride 6y ago
Even if Atom itself is not dead the ecosystem is. The kick that finally got me onto VSCode was the stagnant plugin updates for things that were very important to me. I haven’t really looked back, except that Atom had better git support in its native UI.

nicoburns 6y ago

I'm still using Sublime. I guess it's less customisable than Atom, but you can't fault it for performance.

PascLeRasc 6y ago

What do you think of Sublime? I'm like you and something about VS Code's design really bothers me. It's incredibly heavy and can't stop getting in my way. Sublime on the other hand feels like a sharp kitchen knife or a carbon road bike, it's amazingly light and nimble to use. I love it. Really what I miss is 2015-2018 Atom, but it seems like its time has gone.

spiralganglion 6y ago
Sublime has fantastic perf, and for the first while with Atom (when it struggled with any file bigger than a few dozen KB) I kept Sublime around for big files. But I don't like how Sublime looks. It doesn't look designed to me — it just looks like an accretion of features placed around the window. To me, that matters a lot. That is, after all, why I'm a Mac user. Why I'm fond of indie Mac software.
- marmaduke 6y ago
  I get what you mean (I bought sublime text and merge) but > It doesn't look designed to me — it just looks like an accretion of features placed around isn’t a lot of programming like (despite our best efforts)?

fastball 6y ago

> Atom is slow, VS Code is appreciably worse Honestly this isn't possible. VSC had better perf than Atom 4 years ago[1]. I say this as a long-time Sublime user, which is best-in-class[2] when it comes to perf. > I've loved being able to hack it to look and feel exactly as I want What is not customizable in VSC? When I first started using VSC, I installed an extension that made all my keybindings exactly as they were in Sublime, then I installed extensions to make it look almost exactly as my Sublime setup had looked (just took installing a UI theme and a color scheme). If you want buttery smooth, Sublime is where to go. Native doesn't compete with Sublime's low-level text rendering. But seriously there must be something wrong with your setup if VSC is lacking in perf and Atom wasn't. [1] https://blog.xinhong.me/post/sublime-text-vs-vscode-vs-atom-performance-dec-2016/ https://blog.xinhong.me/post/sublime-text-vs-vscode-vs-atom-... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mZOzyzlsww&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mZOzyzlsww&feature=youtu.be

Aeolun 6y ago
Since they wrote their own text rendering engine, maybe it does compete with Sublime?
- mantap 6y ago
  They didn't write their own text rendering engine AFAIK, they wrote their own layout manager. The layout manager determines where the lines go. I'm sure they are still using Core Text to render.
spiralganglion 6y ago
I didn't mean to suggest that VSC was slower than Atom — only that it wasn't meaningfully faster. The fact that the typing latency felt equivalent (ie. not native), and that I couldn't visually customize VSC to my liking (despite spending days trying) turned me off it.

zaro 6y ago

> Atom is slow, VS Code is appreciably worse I switched from Atom to VScode, precisely because VScode felt so much snapier.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

You had a look at Textmate lately? It's still getting updates and works as nice as it ever did.

runeks 6y ago

> Why would I use VS Code when I can use this? Because of the wealth of extensions available for VS Code. An editor is only as good as the number of developer-hours that has gone into writing extensions for it.