10 ms·

Nova 9

siva7 5y ago
How does it compare to VS code?
- rched 5y ago
  In my experience it is a bit of a mixed bag. The speed and "Mac feel" are great overall. It seems to work pretty well for the natively supported languages. Unfortunately the LSP support is nowhere near as good as VSCode and they seem to be slow to add features and fix bugs for LSP. This makes it a much worse editor for most languages.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Smooth, but lacking
kstrauser 5y ago
Nova is absolutely gorgeous. I'm so done with Electron apps, even ones "done well". There's a lot to be said for fast, native apps that look and feel like they belong on the platform you're running them on. That said, Nova's Python support wasn't in the ballpark of VS Code's. But testing it for a while soured me on VS Code, and I ended up switching back to Emacs (which has outstanding Python support via LSP these days).
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
  Unfortunately Nova didn't work on a large project for me with a lot of generated type definitions. It was a gigantic mobx project and that would make Nova really really slow to the point of being unusable. Somehow VSCode could still work with that.
  - blakewatson 5y ago
    Yeah this sort of thing was my experience as well. Despite being Electron, VS Code is faster and smoother for the main project I work on. Which sucks because I would love to use Nova more (I’ve owned it for over a year now).
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    I forget the exact details, but I also had problems getting things like Black, mypy, flake8, isort, etc. running. VS Code is really good about making that all work with minimal effort. Emacs is a bit more effort, but it's flawless with a tiny bit of tweaking. I never was able to get the same results out of Nova, and that's what ultimately pushed me away. I don't have anything bad to say about Nova, except that I personally didn't find it to be a great Python environment. Maybe it's brilliant for other languages? I hope so, because it's really pleasant and I'd like to see it succeed!
    - css 5y ago
      When Nova first came out I wrote a small extension [0] to provide an autopep8 formatting, but there is too much manual management on the user's end. Since there is no API to manage extension dependencies, the user has to manually install and specify the path to where `autopep8` is, which to my mind is a lot of friction. Compare that to VSCode, where there is a whole API [1] for formatting extensions! [0]: https://github.com/ReagentX/Nova-autopep8 https://github.com/ReagentX/Nova-autopep8 [1]: https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2016/11/15/formatters-best-practices https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2016/11/15/formatters-be...
      - kstrauser 5y ago
        That matches my experience. I hope that gets straightened out!
- newlisp 5y ago
  Emacs with EVIL? If so, do you like the integration?
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    Nope, regular Emacs without EVIL. Nothing against vi, and I use it regularly for tweaking files on remote machines, but I prefer the native Emacs experience.
  - ziftface 5y ago
    Emacs with evil is excellent. I don't use a lot of vim plugins but it has all the basics, change surround with cs, commenting with gc, going to definition and finding references with gd and gD respectively, etc. Unless you have some custom vim plugins you should be fine.
- Melatonic 5y ago
  Agreed
- gtirloni 5y ago
  Does Emacs feel more macOS-y than VS Code?
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    In my opinion, yeah. In its minimalism (I've turned off the toolbar and other stuff), it has fewer GUI elements to get "wrong". VSCode has a gazillion widgets, and none of them look like other Mac apps, and is in an uncanny valley of looking like it might be a native app on some system I don't use. Emacs is definitely off on its own direction, but at first glance looks a lot like TextEdit, minus the toolbars. It's just a large text input waiting for me to start typing.
- cpill 5y ago
  you can have an interactive debugger for python in Emacs with break points and everything?
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    Yep! https://realpython.com/emacs-the-best-python-editor/#debugging-support https://realpython.com/emacs-the-best-python-editor/#debuggi...
outcoldman 5y ago
Tried v1 two years ago. Even purchased an year subscription. Send some bug issues, feature requests. Got reply in 3 months, at which point I was back on Sublime Text 4 and IntelliJ.
- fnordsensei 5y ago
  Almost exactly my story. I also found the API limited regarding writing extensions to improve the support for my favorite language, which is not one of the few they focus on.
- rwl4 5y ago
  I actually got a few replies to a text formatting issue I was having. I sent pictures and even little screencasts of the problem, but the support guy kept misinterpreting my problem and I finally gave up. Such a beautiful app. I've been a HUUGE Panic fan too, so it was sad to somewhat mentally give up on them. I just recommend JetBrains products now. I really wish it didn't have to be that way. :(
eddof13 5y ago
I tried it and couldn't get into it, like opening files (command-p in VScode) didn't work as expected for me, and the file explorer wasn't there yet either. I'll check again in a couple years perhaps
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lelandfe 5y ago
  Cmd-Shift-O for opening files. It's also remappable. I also bounced off of Nova for other reasons, but saying the hotkeys differ from one's favorite editor is a strange complaint
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- stmpjmpr 5y ago
  This is exactly backwards, IMO. Command-P is "print" on the Mac, and always has been; Command-O is open. This is the kind of thing that makes non-native apps stand out as poor platform citizens.
  - mattlondon 5y ago
    It is "p" for pallette IIRC. Same as in Chrome devtools and others. In a development context, I do not want platform-specific quirks. Consistency is really important for me otherwise it is a jarring context switch when e.g. copy-paste changes when moving between OSes (which I do hundreds of time a day - laptop is Mac, developer workstation is in the office and is Linux, so I remote desktop into it for code, but "office productivity" stuff is on the mac). MacOS is really irritating in this regard (different keyboard layout for fundamental things (copy paste etc) compared to Linux/win, different physical key layout compared to every other physical keyboard in the UK, different functions for home/end compared to Linux/win, different position of window controls compared to Linux/win, different position of menu bar compared to Linux/win etc) I look on with confusion when I see people ranting about wanting more native UI elements - I want the opposite! VS Code & Chrome look and act identically on Linux and windows and Mac (more or less) and that's how I want it to stay! And indeed I would encourage further abstractions away from OS-specific allowances (e.g. position of window controls is still wrong on Mac)
ProAm 5y ago
Thought this was the Nova Launcher for Android.
- cestith 5y ago
  My first thought before seeing the version number was it was something about the Nova compute service in OpenStack, but that's on 25.0.something right now.
systemvoltage 5y ago
I tried Nova and it's wonderful. Unfortunately, it just can't compete with JetBrains. Creators of Nova/Panic - please extend updates for 3 years and I'll purchase it. Once it is mature up to PyCharm levels, 1 year subscription is fine.
Koshkin 5y ago
No built-in support for C/C++ (or even Rust).
- georgehaake 5y ago
  bbedit does these pretty well along with addressing the above complaints if you want native
- gvil 5y ago
  clion still the best for rust
lekevicius 5y ago
I'm happy to see them try, but rationally, I just don't understand why Panic is even trying. The trade-offs are just too steep. They won't ever have the ecosystem of open-source, Electron-based editors. And whatever you gain from being mac-native is just not enough of a benefit for almost all development.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- reaperducer 5y ago
  Not everyone lives on the SV scale-at-all-costs treadmill. Some people are happy building quality tools for a discerning audience. That's pretty much what Panic has been doing for the last 20+ years.
  - lekevicius 5y ago
    I understand that, and I've been buying their software for at least 10+ years, starting with CandyBar. My point is, for the effort it requires, I don't see it paying off. I would bet money that Nova will be discontinued in less than 5 years, while VS Code will not.
    - tra3 5y ago
      If we put aside get-rich-quick options, if they are breaking even, for some value of breaking even, then why not?.. But you're right it doesn't seem to be sustainable long term with a wealth of free options available.
    - reaperducer 5y ago
      Perhaps you and the people at Panic have different definitions of "paying off." Keeping a company afloat, bring proud of your work, working with a good group of people, and providing for one's family sound like pretty good payoffs to me. Much better than obsessing over all the things that FAANG-types talk about on HN: What "level" engineer I am, pre-counting stock options (fake money) before vesting, or worrying about whether the project I work on will be cancelled because it "only" makes $10 million profit a year.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nfadili 5y ago
Deal breaker for me (last time I checked it out) was the lack of a built in git diff. I don't need anything fancy, but I can't live in an editor without it. Does anybody know if this is planned or workable in later versions?
- egypturnash 5y ago
  "We don't have built-in diff yet, but it's on our list!" - halfway down the front page of nova.app
  - nfadili 5y ago
    Yeah... that was there when they launched it if I recall correctly. Oh well
    - mattl 5y ago
      It launched about a year ago.
- nier 5y ago
  That feature used to be in Coda. It’s hard for me to understand why it isn’t higher up the list or already implemented.
- azinman2 5y ago
  I swear by the native version of the GitHub app. It’s now unsupported but does everything I need and is stable. I prefer it over anything in app, personally.
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  I know it's not what you asked for, but I used to use the one is VS Code exclusively. Now I use Sublime Merge 90% of the time and it's been a huge benefit to my workflow. I didn't expect it to win me over, but I instinctively reach for it now.
  - 5y ago
ozarker 5y ago
I think it’s commendable to be pushing native purpose-built apps in this day and age.
- SomeCallMeTim 5y ago
  Commendable..? Or short-sighted? I exclusively use Linux and Windows; I see something like this and ... it's a disappointment. I think what's "commendable" is cross-platform development, breaking out of walled gardens to support everyone.
  - yurishimo 5y ago
    Eh. There are plenty of tools and programs that are windows only and that will never change. There will always be vendor lock in as long as vendors exist. I’d rather have teams start with high quality apps and branch out when it makes sense for them. Maybe it never will make sense for them and that’s okay!
    - Dragory 5y ago
      There might be an oversaturation of Mac native apps on the HN front page relative to Linux/Windows native apps. I, too, feel a bit disappointed when they are posted for the same reason as SomeCallMeTim (especially if it's not clear from the post's title that it's Mac exclusive and it only becomes apparent deep into the linked page), but I also know there are tons of native tools for Windows and Linux — they're just not discussed here as often. Though this could also be confirmation bias on my part.
      - SomeCallMeTim 5y ago
        Almost every tool in my current weekly use is cross-platform, with the one exception being Visual Studio (and that only when I'm working on a C# app and I don't really have a choice in the matter). And I use a ton of proprietary tools: SmartGit, Beyond Compare, DataGrip, Postman, Word/Excel, Sublime, Docker Desktop, Blender, Slack, Discord... The only thing I can find that's Windows-only are the two tools that make up for the shortcomings of Windows shells: MSYS2 and ConEmu. Seriously; cross-platform (or at least multi-platform) is the future. The frequent posting of Mac-exclusive apps seems to be more about Mac-snobs trying to brag about (and justify) their decision to rely on Macs.
OnionBlender 5y ago
I was hoping this was going to be about the game Nova 9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_9:_The_Return_of_Gir_Draxon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_9:_The_Return_of_Gir_Drax...
benatkin 5y ago
Glad to see Deno listed there!
cosmiccatnap 5y ago
eyelidlessness 5y ago
When I last tried Nova, debugging and tasks were the biggest gaps for my workflows in VSCode. I’m excited to give it another try! I’d happily buy a license to switch to a native macOS editor/IDE.
titlefixer 5y ago
seumars 5y ago
I'm a big fan of Panic but I really hope they tone down the quirkyness of the UI. I don't mind the diagonal dividers, but the icons look like Tide pods of different shapes and colors.
rched 5y ago
I think the biggest thing holding Nova back from being a great code editor for most Mac users is their lack of investment in the extension ecosystem. The extension library has no curation which results in outdated, broken, and duplicate extensions. As far as I can tell Nova is maintained by a tiny team and extension bugs or feature requests are slow to be resolved. It's hard to see many folks switching from VSCode if the extensions they rely on are unreliable in Nova.
kinghuang 5y ago
I use and pay for Nova primarily because it's a fully native app, even though it is lacking features compared to Visual Studio Code. Even on the new MacBook Pro with a M1 Pro, simple things like resizing a VSC window is just so much laggier than Nova. I personally value the native implementation of Nova over the features of VSC.
btreecat 5y ago
Docker on mac just...sucks. So I don't develop on mac. Remote debugging sucks, so I don't like to setup a pure remote env for development. Maybe I just have Linux-colored lenses but I am not sure I see this product having huge growth potential given it's intentionally small target audience.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  You should try Rancher Desktop instead of Docker Desktop.
- procinct 5y ago
  Developers using a mac is probably a larger audience size than you are imagining.
lukifer 5y ago
I really want to love Nova, I was a Coda die-hard for many years, but there's been one thing holding me back: the lack of "sticky tab stops", in VSCode parlance, or what was called Atomic Soft Tabs in Atom. (The world may have forced me to capitulate to using spaces; but in my local editor, it's all tabs, all the time.)
TomMasz 5y ago
This certainly looks nice. But the courses I teach require students to use VS Code with Python and Java, which means I have to use it, too. It doesn't work well with PyTest and while it's pretty good with JUnit, dealing with external libraries like JavaFX completely flummoxed a lot of the students. Sometimes good enough is good enough.
gherkinnn 5y ago
Time to give it another try! But I struggle to use it without a git diff view. It can’t come soon enough.
- yboris 5y ago
  Try diff2html - just a single npm install command away from viewing your diffs in your browser whenever you run "diff2html" in your terminal (pro tip: alias "diff" to the command). https://diff2html.xyz/ https://diff2html.xyz/
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    diff-so-fancy[0] is lovely in a terminal. Still, it's nice having a competent Git client inside an editor so you can get a quick visual indicator of what's changed. For example, Magit inside Emacs is freaking amazing. [0] https://github.com/so-fancy/diff-so-fancy https://github.com/so-fancy/diff-so-fancy
parkersweb 5y ago
There was a rumour some years ago (based on a tweet from a member of staff there) that Panic were working on an email app for mobile devices. Even now I still hope that rumour is true - a genuinely well designed email app made the usual high standard of polish synonymous with Panic software would be amazing.
- kstrauser 5y ago
  I'd probably pay good money for this. Mail.app is "good enough" that I haven't bothered switching to another client, especially as the ones I'd otherwise consider have security issues I'm uncomfortable with. I'm certainly open to it, though.
rcarmo 5y ago
Hmmm. No Clojure, LISP or Scheme support, apparently, not even for syntax highlighting?
hit8run 5y ago
I bought a license some time ago because I want a native Mac IDE to succeed! I use Nova for Rails development and it feels quite pleasing. I also use Jetbrains and Sublime but avoid VSCode wherever I can. Too many plugins and not enough out of the box combined with less intelligent refactoring (Jetbrains is unbeaten here). Nova is amazing fresh air and whenever an update lands it’s like a little present and I get excited what’s included. It’s good and they are constantly making it better with every release.
- sparker72678 5y ago
  I really want to use Nova for my Rails projects but keep going back to RubyMine because the code completion/jumping just isn’t even close, imo.
  - hit8run 5y ago
    I know what you mean. I did a bundle install --path vendor/bundle and this makes the go to definition a little better because solargraph has trouble finding things outside the project itself. Try it and test if it gets a little better for you. But yes Rubymine is better in this regard. On the other hand I can't get the tailwind extension working in Jetbrains with the Rails 7 standalone tailwind. Tailwind extension works in Nova.
herrherrmann 5y ago
Tried out Nova once again today after a long break since version 1. I’m a web developer who primarily uses TypeScript and I’m unfortunately still pretty disappointed about Nova. Things like autocompletion and file browsing are significantly slower and more tedious than in VS Code and I can only cover about 50% of the features and extensions I use on a daily basis (e.g. there seems to be no way to find all instances/usages of a function aside from a plain text search). I’d love for Nova to happen because competition is important and it’d be great to have more native alternatives but in its current state I can’t recommend Nova to anyone yet.
andrewstuart 5y ago
If the company founders are here - can I ask how did you get such great design? Do you do it in house or use and external designer?
eddwinpaz 5y ago
I don't know what to say. I use NVIM. And it would be hard for me to switch to any other editor.
- SixDouble5321 5y ago
  Seems like you sorted out what to say, now just paste it into any thread that mentions IDEs. I don't see what reason there is to be curmudgeonly about your editor. Try new ones, go back to old, write your own... but for heaven's sake don't assume you know everything.
chipotle_coyote 5y ago
I see a lot of "but how will this compete against Visual Studio Code," and the answer is kind of "it won't, but so what?" I presume Panic is smart enough to structure the pricing so they don't need to get a kabillion users for this to be financially viable. Moving to add multi-language interactive debugging with breakpoint support in Nova 9 kind of suggests the ultimate goal is to be less "expensive VS Code (but native!)" than "lighter-weight JetBrains (and native!)", which is intriguing. Having said that, its flakier-than-a-kouign-amann LSP support was a big stumbling block for me. Ironically, the oldest native macOS editor, BBEdit, now has pretty solid LSP support -- with many servers, you can just install them through npm and they're automatically picked up and used correctly. With Nova, sometimes they come installed, sometimes they say they come installed but really don't, sometimes they don't work for mysterious reasons, sometimes they explode and send flaming bits of code cascading across your screen. (Metaphorically.) Also, the last time I tried it (around v7, back in August: they're kind of ripping through version numbers, aren't they?), Nova's native autocompletion, which clearly tries to be smart and language-aware, behaved pretty inscrutably, generally much worse than TextMate's old "just offer to complete a word somewhere already in the document" approach. I'll probably try Nova again, but for both Elixir and PHP, BBEdit is unglamorous but actually pretty solid for me. (I don't do much in JavaScript currently so haven't dug into that yet; I may see about trying to bring BBEdit's Ruby on Rails support up to par, too.)

How does it compare to VS code?

rched 5y ago
In my experience it is a bit of a mixed bag. The speed and "Mac feel" are great overall. It seems to work pretty well for the natively supported languages. Unfortunately the LSP support is nowhere near as good as VSCode and they seem to be slow to add features and fix bugs for LSP. This makes it a much worse editor for most languages.
brailsafe 5y ago
Smooth, but lacking

Nova is absolutely gorgeous. I'm so done with Electron apps, even ones "done well". There's a lot to be said for fast, native apps that look and feel like they belong on the platform you're running them on. That said, Nova's Python support wasn't in the ballpark of VS Code's. But testing it for a while soured me on VS Code, and I ended up switching back to Emacs (which has outstanding Python support via LSP these days).

ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
Unfortunately Nova didn't work on a large project for me with a lot of generated type definitions. It was a gigantic mobx project and that would make Nova really really slow to the point of being unusable. Somehow VSCode could still work with that.
- blakewatson 5y ago
  Yeah this sort of thing was my experience as well. Despite being Electron, VS Code is faster and smoother for the main project I work on. Which sucks because I would love to use Nova more (I’ve owned it for over a year now).
- kstrauser 5y ago
  I forget the exact details, but I also had problems getting things like Black, mypy, flake8, isort, etc. running. VS Code is really good about making that all work with minimal effort. Emacs is a bit more effort, but it's flawless with a tiny bit of tweaking. I never was able to get the same results out of Nova, and that's what ultimately pushed me away. I don't have anything bad to say about Nova, except that I personally didn't find it to be a great Python environment. Maybe it's brilliant for other languages? I hope so, because it's really pleasant and I'd like to see it succeed!
  - css 5y ago
    When Nova first came out I wrote a small extension [0] to provide an autopep8 formatting, but there is too much manual management on the user's end. Since there is no API to manage extension dependencies, the user has to manually install and specify the path to where `autopep8` is, which to my mind is a lot of friction. Compare that to VSCode, where there is a whole API [1] for formatting extensions! [0]: https://github.com/ReagentX/Nova-autopep8 https://github.com/ReagentX/Nova-autopep8 [1]: https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2016/11/15/formatters-best-practices https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2016/11/15/formatters-be...
    - kstrauser 5y ago
      That matches my experience. I hope that gets straightened out!
newlisp 5y ago
Emacs with EVIL? If so, do you like the integration?
- kstrauser 5y ago
  Nope, regular Emacs without EVIL. Nothing against vi, and I use it regularly for tweaking files on remote machines, but I prefer the native Emacs experience.
- ziftface 5y ago
  Emacs with evil is excellent. I don't use a lot of vim plugins but it has all the basics, change surround with cs, commenting with gc, going to definition and finding references with gd and gD respectively, etc. Unless you have some custom vim plugins you should be fine.
Melatonic 5y ago
Agreed
gtirloni 5y ago
Does Emacs feel more macOS-y than VS Code?
- kstrauser 5y ago
  In my opinion, yeah. In its minimalism (I've turned off the toolbar and other stuff), it has fewer GUI elements to get "wrong". VSCode has a gazillion widgets, and none of them look like other Mac apps, and is in an uncanny valley of looking like it might be a native app on some system I don't use. Emacs is definitely off on its own direction, but at first glance looks a lot like TextEdit, minus the toolbars. It's just a large text input waiting for me to start typing.
cpill 5y ago
you can have an interactive debugger for python in Emacs with break points and everything?
- kstrauser 5y ago
  Yep! https://realpython.com/emacs-the-best-python-editor/#debugging-support https://realpython.com/emacs-the-best-python-editor/#debuggi...

outcoldman 5y ago

Tried v1 two years ago. Even purchased an year subscription. Send some bug issues, feature requests. Got reply in 3 months, at which point I was back on Sublime Text 4 and IntelliJ.

fnordsensei 5y ago
Almost exactly my story. I also found the API limited regarding writing extensions to improve the support for my favorite language, which is not one of the few they focus on.
rwl4 5y ago
I actually got a few replies to a text formatting issue I was having. I sent pictures and even little screencasts of the problem, but the support guy kept misinterpreting my problem and I finally gave up. Such a beautiful app. I've been a HUUGE Panic fan too, so it was sad to somewhat mentally give up on them. I just recommend JetBrains products now. I really wish it didn't have to be that way. :(

eddof13 5y ago

I tried it and couldn't get into it, like opening files (command-p in VScode) didn't work as expected for me, and the file explorer wasn't there yet either. I'll check again in a couple years perhaps

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lelandfe 5y ago
Cmd-Shift-O for opening files. It's also remappable. I also bounced off of Nova for other reasons, but saying the hotkeys differ from one's favorite editor is a strange complaint
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
stmpjmpr 5y ago
This is exactly backwards, IMO. Command-P is "print" on the Mac, and always has been; Command-O is open. This is the kind of thing that makes non-native apps stand out as poor platform citizens.
- mattlondon 5y ago
  It is "p" for pallette IIRC. Same as in Chrome devtools and others. In a development context, I do not want platform-specific quirks. Consistency is really important for me otherwise it is a jarring context switch when e.g. copy-paste changes when moving between OSes (which I do hundreds of time a day - laptop is Mac, developer workstation is in the office and is Linux, so I remote desktop into it for code, but "office productivity" stuff is on the mac). MacOS is really irritating in this regard (different keyboard layout for fundamental things (copy paste etc) compared to Linux/win, different physical key layout compared to every other physical keyboard in the UK, different functions for home/end compared to Linux/win, different position of window controls compared to Linux/win, different position of menu bar compared to Linux/win etc) I look on with confusion when I see people ranting about wanting more native UI elements - I want the opposite! VS Code & Chrome look and act identically on Linux and windows and Mac (more or less) and that's how I want it to stay! And indeed I would encourage further abstractions away from OS-specific allowances (e.g. position of window controls is still wrong on Mac)

ProAm 5y ago

Thought this was the Nova Launcher for Android.

cestith 5y ago
My first thought before seeing the version number was it was something about the Nova compute service in OpenStack, but that's on 25.0.something right now.

systemvoltage 5y ago

I tried Nova and it's wonderful. Unfortunately, it just can't compete with JetBrains. Creators of Nova/Panic - please extend updates for 3 years and I'll purchase it. Once it is mature up to PyCharm levels, 1 year subscription is fine.

Koshkin 5y ago

No built-in support for C/C++ (or even Rust).

georgehaake 5y ago
bbedit does these pretty well along with addressing the above complaints if you want native
gvil 5y ago
clion still the best for rust

lekevicius 5y ago

I'm happy to see them try, but rationally, I just don't understand why Panic is even trying. The trade-offs are just too steep. They won't ever have the ecosystem of open-source, Electron-based editors. And whatever you gain from being mac-native is just not enough of a benefit for almost all development.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
reaperducer 5y ago
Not everyone lives on the SV scale-at-all-costs treadmill. Some people are happy building quality tools for a discerning audience. That's pretty much what Panic has been doing for the last 20+ years.
- lekevicius 5y ago
  I understand that, and I've been buying their software for at least 10+ years, starting with CandyBar. My point is, for the effort it requires, I don't see it paying off. I would bet money that Nova will be discontinued in less than 5 years, while VS Code will not.
  - tra3 5y ago
    If we put aside get-rich-quick options, if they are breaking even, for some value of breaking even, then why not?.. But you're right it doesn't seem to be sustainable long term with a wealth of free options available.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    Perhaps you and the people at Panic have different definitions of "paying off." Keeping a company afloat, bring proud of your work, working with a good group of people, and providing for one's family sound like pretty good payoffs to me. Much better than obsessing over all the things that FAANG-types talk about on HN: What "level" engineer I am, pre-counting stock options (fake money) before vesting, or worrying about whether the project I work on will be cancelled because it "only" makes $10 million profit a year.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nfadili 5y ago

Deal breaker for me (last time I checked it out) was the lack of a built in git diff. I don't need anything fancy, but I can't live in an editor without it. Does anybody know if this is planned or workable in later versions?

egypturnash 5y ago
"We don't have built-in diff yet, but it's on our list!" - halfway down the front page of nova.app
- nfadili 5y ago
  Yeah... that was there when they launched it if I recall correctly. Oh well
  - mattl 5y ago
    It launched about a year ago.
nier 5y ago
That feature used to be in Coda. It’s hard for me to understand why it isn’t higher up the list or already implemented.
azinman2 5y ago
I swear by the native version of the GitHub app. It’s now unsupported but does everything I need and is stable. I prefer it over anything in app, personally.
steve_adams_86 5y ago
I know it's not what you asked for, but I used to use the one is VS Code exclusively. Now I use Sublime Merge 90% of the time and it's been a huge benefit to my workflow. I didn't expect it to win me over, but I instinctively reach for it now.
- 5y ago

ozarker 5y ago

I think it’s commendable to be pushing native purpose-built apps in this day and age.

SomeCallMeTim 5y ago
Commendable..? Or short-sighted? I exclusively use Linux and Windows; I see something like this and ... it's a disappointment. I think what's "commendable" is cross-platform development, breaking out of walled gardens to support everyone.
- yurishimo 5y ago
  Eh. There are plenty of tools and programs that are windows only and that will never change. There will always be vendor lock in as long as vendors exist. I’d rather have teams start with high quality apps and branch out when it makes sense for them. Maybe it never will make sense for them and that’s okay!
  - Dragory 5y ago
    There might be an oversaturation of Mac native apps on the HN front page relative to Linux/Windows native apps. I, too, feel a bit disappointed when they are posted for the same reason as SomeCallMeTim (especially if it's not clear from the post's title that it's Mac exclusive and it only becomes apparent deep into the linked page), but I also know there are tons of native tools for Windows and Linux — they're just not discussed here as often. Though this could also be confirmation bias on my part.
    - SomeCallMeTim 5y ago
      Almost every tool in my current weekly use is cross-platform, with the one exception being Visual Studio (and that only when I'm working on a C# app and I don't really have a choice in the matter). And I use a ton of proprietary tools: SmartGit, Beyond Compare, DataGrip, Postman, Word/Excel, Sublime, Docker Desktop, Blender, Slack, Discord... The only thing I can find that's Windows-only are the two tools that make up for the shortcomings of Windows shells: MSYS2 and ConEmu. Seriously; cross-platform (or at least multi-platform) is the future. The frequent posting of Mac-exclusive apps seems to be more about Mac-snobs trying to brag about (and justify) their decision to rely on Macs.

OnionBlender 5y ago

I was hoping this was going to be about the game Nova 9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_9:_The_Return_of_Gir_Draxon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_9:_The_Return_of_Gir_Drax...

benatkin 5y ago

Glad to see Deno listed there!

cosmiccatnap 5y ago

eyelidlessness 5y ago

When I last tried Nova, debugging and tasks were the biggest gaps for my workflows in VSCode. I’m excited to give it another try! I’d happily buy a license to switch to a native macOS editor/IDE.

titlefixer 5y ago

seumars 5y ago

I'm a big fan of Panic but I really hope they tone down the quirkyness of the UI. I don't mind the diagonal dividers, but the icons look like Tide pods of different shapes and colors.

rched 5y ago

I think the biggest thing holding Nova back from being a great code editor for most Mac users is their lack of investment in the extension ecosystem. The extension library has no curation which results in outdated, broken, and duplicate extensions. As far as I can tell Nova is maintained by a tiny team and extension bugs or feature requests are slow to be resolved. It's hard to see many folks switching from VSCode if the extensions they rely on are unreliable in Nova.

kinghuang 5y ago

I use and pay for Nova primarily because it's a fully native app, even though it is lacking features compared to Visual Studio Code. Even on the new MacBook Pro with a M1 Pro, simple things like resizing a VSC window is just so much laggier than Nova. I personally value the native implementation of Nova over the features of VSC.

btreecat 5y ago

Docker on mac just...sucks. So I don't develop on mac. Remote debugging sucks, so I don't like to setup a pure remote env for development. Maybe I just have Linux-colored lenses but I am not sure I see this product having huge growth potential given it's intentionally small target audience.

speedgoose 5y ago
You should try Rancher Desktop instead of Docker Desktop.
procinct 5y ago
Developers using a mac is probably a larger audience size than you are imagining.

lukifer 5y ago

I really want to love Nova, I was a Coda die-hard for many years, but there's been one thing holding me back: the lack of "sticky tab stops", in VSCode parlance, or what was called Atomic Soft Tabs in Atom. (The world may have forced me to capitulate to using spaces; but in my local editor, it's all tabs, all the time.)

TomMasz 5y ago

This certainly looks nice. But the courses I teach require students to use VS Code with Python and Java, which means I have to use it, too. It doesn't work well with PyTest and while it's pretty good with JUnit, dealing with external libraries like JavaFX completely flummoxed a lot of the students. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

gherkinnn 5y ago

Time to give it another try! But I struggle to use it without a git diff view. It can’t come soon enough.

yboris 5y ago
Try diff2html - just a single npm install command away from viewing your diffs in your browser whenever you run "diff2html" in your terminal (pro tip: alias "diff" to the command). https://diff2html.xyz/ https://diff2html.xyz/
- kstrauser 5y ago
  diff-so-fancy[0] is lovely in a terminal. Still, it's nice having a competent Git client inside an editor so you can get a quick visual indicator of what's changed. For example, Magit inside Emacs is freaking amazing. [0] https://github.com/so-fancy/diff-so-fancy https://github.com/so-fancy/diff-so-fancy

parkersweb 5y ago

There was a rumour some years ago (based on a tweet from a member of staff there) that Panic were working on an email app for mobile devices. Even now I still hope that rumour is true - a genuinely well designed email app made the usual high standard of polish synonymous with Panic software would be amazing.

kstrauser 5y ago
I'd probably pay good money for this. Mail.app is "good enough" that I haven't bothered switching to another client, especially as the ones I'd otherwise consider have security issues I'm uncomfortable with. I'm certainly open to it, though.

rcarmo 5y ago

Hmmm. No Clojure, LISP or Scheme support, apparently, not even for syntax highlighting?

hit8run 5y ago

I bought a license some time ago because I want a native Mac IDE to succeed! I use Nova for Rails development and it feels quite pleasing. I also use Jetbrains and Sublime but avoid VSCode wherever I can. Too many plugins and not enough out of the box combined with less intelligent refactoring (Jetbrains is unbeaten here). Nova is amazing fresh air and whenever an update lands it’s like a little present and I get excited what’s included. It’s good and they are constantly making it better with every release.

sparker72678 5y ago
I really want to use Nova for my Rails projects but keep going back to RubyMine because the code completion/jumping just isn’t even close, imo.
- hit8run 5y ago
  I know what you mean. I did a bundle install --path vendor/bundle and this makes the go to definition a little better because solargraph has trouble finding things outside the project itself. Try it and test if it gets a little better for you. But yes Rubymine is better in this regard. On the other hand I can't get the tailwind extension working in Jetbrains with the Rails 7 standalone tailwind. Tailwind extension works in Nova.

herrherrmann 5y ago

Tried out Nova once again today after a long break since version 1. I’m a web developer who primarily uses TypeScript and I’m unfortunately still pretty disappointed about Nova. Things like autocompletion and file browsing are significantly slower and more tedious than in VS Code and I can only cover about 50% of the features and extensions I use on a daily basis (e.g. there seems to be no way to find all instances/usages of a function aside from a plain text search). I’d love for Nova to happen because competition is important and it’d be great to have more native alternatives but in its current state I can’t recommend Nova to anyone yet.

andrewstuart 5y ago

If the company founders are here - can I ask how did you get such great design? Do you do it in house or use and external designer?

eddwinpaz 5y ago

I don't know what to say. I use NVIM. And it would be hard for me to switch to any other editor.

SixDouble5321 5y ago
Seems like you sorted out what to say, now just paste it into any thread that mentions IDEs. I don't see what reason there is to be curmudgeonly about your editor. Try new ones, go back to old, write your own... but for heaven's sake don't assume you know everything.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago

I see a lot of "but how will this compete against Visual Studio Code," and the answer is kind of "it won't, but so what?" I presume Panic is smart enough to structure the pricing so they don't need to get a kabillion users for this to be financially viable. Moving to add multi-language interactive debugging with breakpoint support in Nova 9 kind of suggests the ultimate goal is to be less "expensive VS Code (but native!)" than "lighter-weight JetBrains (and native!)", which is intriguing. Having said that, its flakier-than-a-kouign-amann LSP support was a big stumbling block for me. Ironically, the oldest native macOS editor, BBEdit, now has pretty solid LSP support -- with many servers, you can just install them through npm and they're automatically picked up and used correctly. With Nova, sometimes they come installed, sometimes they say they come installed but really don't, sometimes they don't work for mysterious reasons, sometimes they explode and send flaming bits of code cascading across your screen. (Metaphorically.) Also, the last time I tried it (around v7, back in August: they're kind of ripping through version numbers, aren't they?), Nova's native autocompletion, which clearly tries to be smart and language-aware, behaved pretty inscrutably, generally much worse than TextMate's old "just offer to complete a word somewhere already in the document" approach. I'll probably try Nova again, but for both Elixir and PHP, BBEdit is unglamorous but actually pretty solid for me. (I don't do much in JavaScript currently so haven't dug into that yet; I may see about trying to bring BBEdit's Ruby on Rails support up to par, too.)