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Atom

• spicyj 13y ago
  I can't tell from this page whether it's open source -- I hope it is.
  • donretag 13y ago
    https://github.com/atom https://github.com/atom
    • spicyj 13y ago
      Yes, there are lots of packages but the editor core isn't posted there, as far as I can tell.
    • rmc 13y ago
      Just cause you can see the source, doesn't mean it's Open Source.
  • hswolff 13y ago
    At the least seems like there will be a paid version: https://github.com/atom/welcome/blob/master/lib/welcome.md https://github.com/atom/welcome/blob/master/lib/welcome.md
    • pbreit 13y ago
      "free during beta" doesn't always imply "paid on launch" and I'd be surprised if the basic editor was paid. Github certainly doesn't need the cash and usage is oxygen.
  • spicyj 13y ago
    From ##atom IRC: <DouweM> kevinsawicki: is the actual core going to be OS? <kevinsawicki> DouweM: not during the beta <tyOverby> How is atom both invite-only and open source at the same time? <avidal> tyOverby: the engine isn't open source (or at least yet)
    • Touche 13y ago
      Welp, makes that decision easy. Not making the most important tool in my toolbox one that I can't hack to my liking.
      • eob 13y ago
        Agree. It's a tough decision for them -- I'm sure the "Hot New Text Editor" market has a decent chunk of money associated with it. But it's pretty hard to commit to a text editor that you can't open up and recompile. EDIT: Plus, if an editor is going to join the ranks of vim and emacs in history (something which neither Sublime nor TextMate are on track to do) it has to be open source. Anything else and it's just another product.
        • rogerbinns 13y ago
          I agree on the open source nature. However if this editor treats github as a first class citizen (while being free/open) then it does have value to github. This is especially the case for new github features introduced in the future.
          • kamaal 13y ago
            There are very few people who would opt in to a editor for everything only to use it with Github. Most of the world's developers don't even have a Github account. Tools work in a strange way. I recently saw a whole team of embedded developers use TextPad. They haven't heard of anything called 'vim' or 'emacs'. From their perspective its either a vendor supplied IDE or TextPad. One of them was even startled to see this shiny new thing called 'Sublime Text' when I was using it. He went out with enthusiasm, but was hardly able to convince any one to use it.
            • rogerbinns 13y ago
              There will always be outliers. A code editor with first class prominent Github support is more likely to encourage creating Github accounts - it would just work. Compare to regular code editors which require jumping through various hoops (typically having to find relevant plugins, install them on all machines/users, and then figure out how to use them as they are extensions not core). A pitch of "if you use this editor then all the team's work is automatically synchronized and available" is a very powerful sell.
  • krelian 13y ago
    Usually if you don't see "free" or "open source" mentioned on the main page it means it's not going to be either of these two (or at least that it hasn't been decided yet).
• ohhmaar 13y ago
  I don't like how it looks like Sublime text... couldn't they have designed something new?
  • spicyj 13y ago
    The tabs are the thing that reminds me most of ST but they are practically just Chrome's tabs -- everything else isn't particularly distinctive and seems standard for a text editor.
    • amima 13y ago
      But the very first thought is "wow, it's exactly the same look as Sublime Text", not JetBrains product, not Eclipse, not even Visual Studio, so they definitely were completely inspired by Sublime in particular.
      • babby 13y ago
        True; but if you were making a text editor today, with the whole flat UI trend and minimalism being so prevalent, the sublime UI is actually very intuitive. It's just that sublime got to it first, in my opinion.
  • redbad 13y ago
    Text editors appear to be approaching a design ideal. At least, for the ways we currently use them.
  • flyosity 13y ago
    As the designer who worked on the main interface for Sublime Text 2, it does irk me that it looks so similar. They had carte blanche to create a wonderful new interface and they mostly just copied Sublime Text. The go-to anything menu looks especially similar. https://t.co/5YxVbZcVcK https://t.co/5YxVbZcVcK
    • arthurcolle 13y ago
      Just wondering, do you know how to code? What are your day to day tools as a designer?
• beefsack 13y ago
  As was speculated in the other thread the beta looks like it will be closed, there's a "request and invite" form on the page. Others noted that the source mentioned "free during beta", I certainly hope that's not the case and it's truly FOSS. Sublime Text development has slowed significantly recently and the community can't continue to drive it since it's closed. Funnily enough, Sublime Text was born out of Textmate development slowing, and I can't seem to shake that vibe here too.
  • chc 13y ago
    If you want an open-source text editor based on Node.js, Light Table might interest you. (Light Table itself is written in ClojureScript, which is a bit idiosyncratic, but it's hardly worse than Elisp, and anyway you can write plugins in normal JavaScript.)
    • ytpete 13y ago
      Or Brackets: http://brackets.io http://brackets.io
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• iambateman 13y ago
  A competitor to Sublime is a great thing. Sublime is great and I love it, but we need more teams like Github building editors that make sense. Thanks Github!
  • atmosx 13y ago
    How did you come to this conclusion?
  • angersock 13y ago
    It's called vim.
    • ahuth 13y ago
      I think he means that we need editors that are powerful AND easy to use. Seems like vim isn't really for someone like me (I haven't studied PhD level computer science and I don't write compilers and/or lisp interpreters in my spare time for fun).
      • alecbenzer 13y ago
        You don't need to do those things to use vim. It just has a kind of steep learning curve -- one that has to do with just getting used to its keybindings (ie, nothing to do with PhD level cs or writing compilers).
        • ahuth 13y ago
          I was being a smartass, which wasn't fair to angersocks. My point is that I can load up Sublime Text or Brackets or this (maybe?) and work in a very efficient way.
      • Touche 13y ago
        Not to get on vim tangent but it's very easy to learn vim slowly. If you use a gui like MacVim you can still use cmd+s to save, etc. and use it like a normal editor. The only thing you are really required to know is the difference between normal and insert modes.
• hodgesmr 13y ago
  Apparently this was almost 6 years in the making. https://twitter.com/defunkt/status/438791340222971904 https://twitter.com/defunkt/status/438791340222971904
  • bashcoder 13y ago
    Wow - I didn't even think node.js was that old. It will be interesting to see its genesis. The first git commit for node appears to have been on Feb 16, 2009: commit 9d7895c567e8f38abfff35da1b6d6d6a0a06f9aa Author: Ryan <ry@tinyclouds.org> Date: Mon Feb 16 01:02:00 2009 +0100 add dependencies
    • highpixels 13y ago
      I'm guessing the Atom project was WAY different back then, and has probably gone through several ground-up re-writes.
    • adamors 13y ago
      It probably started out as a Rails app, but then Node came along. Gotta keep it relevant!
  • subsection1h 13y ago
    I wonder how long Atom has been usable. Chris stopped updating his Emacs packages in 2012.[1][2] [1] https://github.com/defunkt/coffee-mode/commits/master?page=7 https://github.com/defunkt/coffee-mode/commits/master?page=7 [2] https://github.com/defunkt/textmate.el/commits/master https://github.com/defunkt/textmate.el/commits/master
    • lord_quas 13y ago
      4 months ago... https://github.com/defunkt/gist.el https://github.com/defunkt/gist.el
• teraflop 13y ago
  No mention of supported platforms, but the documentation refers to keyboard shortcuts like "cmd-shift-P". This isn't Mac-only, is it?
  • fournm 13y ago
    I'm certainly getting that feeling.
  • Touche 13y ago
    No, just normal developer monoculturalism. Same as showing only Mac screenshots that is common, or showing your website inside a Macbook, etc.
    • bsimpson 13y ago
      To be fair, would most people know what super-shift-P means? That said, it would be fairly simple to have a variable for super that resolves to ctrl/cmd on other platforms, the same way that most download pages nowadays infer your platform and show you the binary you most likely want.
      • rozap 13y ago
        If you're writing software, you know what the super key is.
        • archagon 13y ago
          I... I do?
          • nkuttler 13y ago
            It's the one you put the tux or beastie sticker on.
    • woah 13y ago
      I've always wanted to show mockups in alternate non mac devices, but they tend to be ugly.
• justizin 13y ago
  So it's light table without Chris Granger, for better or worse..
  • swah 13y ago
    LightTable has its own philosophy: http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/01/24/the-ide-as-data/ http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/01/24/the-ide-as-data/ Sounds pretty different from Atom's modules... I guess.
  • TinyTimZamboni 13y ago
    Light Table is a great project, but it's all in closurescript -.- This is a big obstacle to people wanting to edit/customize/write their own plugins
    • swah 13y ago
      And this one is all in Coffeescript... so there is still a niche for an editor in Javascript!
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
    • tensor 13y ago
      It's really sad that learning a new language is considered "a big obstacle." An average programmer should be able to pick up nearly any new computing language quite easily.
      • jbeja 13y ago
        Depends, is not like some who have code in a Imperative, OOP paradigm, is gonna learn a functional language in no time.
    • Morgawr 13y ago
      The language itself is actually very simple and writing plugins for lighttable is the opposite of complex, there are amazing tutorials floating around the web. The whole process is simply just manipulating sets of data, it's all about adding and removing triggers. This said, you can also write lighttable plugins in javascript.
• nicklovescode 13y ago
  Can I use it online? That would be the killer feature for me, being able to code on anyone's computer in a second. Currently it's basically the only thing stopping me from being able to pick up anyone's computer and use it as I use my own.
  • mmanfrin 13y ago
    I believe that's the point -- it's web based.
    • teraflop 13y ago
      Nope: "Atom is a desktop application based on web technologies." So it's using node.js internally, but it's not actually a webapp.
      • bsimpson 13y ago
        Brackets does the same, which is frustrating as platforms like FirefoxOS and ChromeOS emerge. It'd be nice to see the backend be a drop-in replaceable API so it works just as well hosted in a browser/on a Chromebook/in a NodeJS process.
        • ytpete 13y ago
          Fyi, the Brackets file IO layer is indeed drop-in replaceable: https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/File-System-Implementations https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/File-System-Implement.... The core team only maintains the standard desktop file IO backend, but others can be swapped in. That's only one piece of making an editor run in-browser and cross-browser of course, but it's an important piece. Also -- there are actually a couple ChromeOS ports of Brackets out there already (such as Tailor - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tailor/mfakmogheanjhlgjhpijkhdjegllgenf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tailor/mfakmoghean...), but I'm nto sure if any of them are being actively maintained.
  • igul222 13y ago
    Guessing no, because of the Node.js plugin architecture ("need to call into C or C++?", "full access to the filesystem"). Really only the UI seems to be done in WebKit.
• atmosx 13y ago
  The more I see new editors floating around, the more I'm sticking to VIm. I am getting old, or it's a just a survival instinct. On the other hand, the more the better, but we have already too many editors around.
  • ahuth 13y ago
    If vim works great for you, then rock on! We can't have too many editors, though. Bad ones will fail to gain traction, and it's always good to get new ideas and modern techniques out there.
  • izolate 13y ago
    I've sworn by SublimeText until now. And Atom is getting released during a time when I'm increasingly learning to love console-only computing. I envision a day when I can travel the world with a cheap laptop/chromebook and do all my coding remotely via SSH.. and Vim is very much at the core of that dream. Now I just have to master it.
    • adamors 13y ago
      Try using the Vim plugin (Vintage or the newer one, Vintageous) with Sublime. That way, you can gradually get used to modal editing. I worked like that for 8-10 months then made the switch to Vim. I've gotten so used to modal editing (not to mention window management etc.) by then, that I didn't even skip a beat.
      • christiangenco 13y ago
        This was my strategy when I switched from TextMate to Sublime a few years ago, the plan being to make the full switch to vim in a few months. Sublime never gave me a reason to go all the way, though :p
        • adamors 13y ago
          I was like that while using ST2. But then better plugins started appearing for ST3 (the aforementioned Vintageous being one of them) so I switched to ST3. But it crashed constantly; also, by that time the Vim emulation was really hurting me. The dot command was anemic, tabs were interfering with splits etc. All in all, Vim was calling me, haha.
• mrbogle 13y ago
  The blog post: http://blog.atom.io/2014/02/26/introducing-atom.html http://blog.atom.io/2014/02/26/introducing-atom.html
  • lloeki 13y ago
    > we've open-sourced over 80 of the libraries Some of them look quite interesting already.
• rdtsc 13y ago
  Does it have emacs emulation?
• KhalilK 13y ago
  What's the difference between this and Emacs?
  • Nikkau 13y ago
    This is a text editor.
    • tptacek 13y ago
      You can use Emacs to build a kind of text editor.
  • pseut 13y ago
    butterfly mode
  • jmz92 13y ago
    The big difference from my perspective is that Atom isn't currently FOSS. Other than that, the maturity of the emacs ecosystem is both one of its greatest features and a bit of a curse.
    • danudey 13y ago
      40 years of legacy decisions can be a huge weight on a project, but reinventing a newer, rounder wheel has pitfalls as well. I'd love to say 'I want a modern version of emacs' (or, in my case, vim), but I'd be terrified that I'd end up with a TextMate2-style second system syndrome. It looks like the GH guys have worked around this problem quite well, and I'm looking forward to begging, borrowing, and then just begging again if I get a chance to try it out.
    • doorhammer 13y ago
      The non-FOSS part is the part that bothers me the most. Maybe bothers is too strong a word. It's just hard for me to get into a text editor without knowing that the community could pick it up and run with it, if the originator dropped it. Not sure if that's an unfounded fear, but I don't want to invest time customizing a platform and writing plugins when it could close shop in a second. I suppose I could say that about a lot of things I do customize, but it's hard when the FOSS text editor world is so rich.
• mmanfrin 13y ago
  This might make developing on chromebook viable.
  • akulbe 13y ago
    THIS.
    • akulbe 13y ago
      Wow. Lost karma because I'm enthusiastic about something? Neutral, I'd understand... but downvotes? Really? I've seen even more plain and simple comments get upvotes. You folks are a fickle bunch.
  • bovermyer 13y ago
    Nitrous.IO already did that.
  • kzahel 13y ago
    You already can, just load up a crosh window and enter your chroot. Take your pick of vim or emacs or whatever other console editor. Or, if you're enterprising, you can run a window manager on the same X display and use any GUI editor, but the integration is a bit wacky.
  • schwuk 13y ago
    There's already many, many ways to do this and it works fine for me on (primarily) web development.
• paperwork 13y ago
  The editor looks good. I'm more excited about the fact that this is a good looking desktop app, built using, what are normally considered, web technologies.
• josephschmoe 13y ago
  I've been wanting, for a long time, to be able to have custom UIs to websites (just like how video games do it). If this is a step in that direction for github, I will be very, very happy.
• brunoqc 13y ago
  I wish it was open source. We need a modern, good looking, libre text editor.
  • jbeja 13y ago
    There is LightTable, also you can even make Emacs or Vim as "good looking" as this if you give them so tweak.
• Narretz 13y ago
  It could be really great. I wonder if Jon Skinner knew, and said to himself "Welp, I might as well stop with Sublime". However, Sublime is (mostly) blazingly fast. I don't expect this from a node based app, especially in Windows. And: I didn't see it under Features, but Atom definitely needs the command palette from Sublime baked into core. Only if it's core, plugin authors will set their hooks correctly from the beginning. Or even better, there might be a flexible command api that exposes each plugin's commands from the start and can be extended too. -> edit: the readme says it has Command Palette. Great! Also, since the term is identical with Sublime Text, I wonder if there's more to it than inspiration.
  • TheZenPsycho 13y ago
    You do know that v8 is generally much much much faster than cpython, don't you?
    • jordanthoms 13y ago
      Although, most of the Sublime core is in C/C++ as far as I know. And it's using native drawing, not webkit. Will be interesting to see how the performance compares.
      • est 13y ago
        sublime is using opengl to render every glype. Its speed will blow anything out of the water. Open 2MB text will be highlighted and colored in an instant. I wonder how could webkit achieve that.
        • TheZenPsycho 13y ago
          My suspicion is sublime's speed has very little to do with its rendering method and a lot more to do with its I/O philosophy. Because, let's be honest, there is no way OpenGL can make loading a 50mb file into memory significantly faster than plain rendering.
    • techdragon 13y ago
• 8ig8 13y ago
  Metrics is an interesting package. It reports usage stats to Google Analytics, referenced by a hash of the machine's MAC address: http://atom.io/packages/metrics http://atom.io/packages/metrics
  • Touche 13y ago
    Good catch. I really shouldn't have any more of a problem with a desktop app tracking me than I do a web app but for some reason I do. I guess because I can always use Disconnect in the browser and I can't with Atom. I guess the fact that it is open about it is a positive thing, though.
    • spicyj 13y ago
      It sounds like you can disable Metrics in the settings.
      • 8ig8 13y ago
        Some apps ask on install if you agree to share usage data. I can't say how Atom handles it, but it sounds like you're in unless you modify the config. BTW, I'm less concerned and more just surprised to see Google Analytics used like this. I guess it really is the blurring of the lines between desktop and browser-based apps. Maybe this GA usage is not unique, but it's new to me.
        • teacup50 13y ago
          It's unique, and extremely sketchy to be pushing desktop data to Google, without prior explicit user approval.
        • spicyj 13y ago
          > it sounds like you're in unless you modify the config. You are, though it's mentioned on the very first screen that pops up when you open the app: https://github.com/atom/welcome/blob/master/lib/welcome.md https://github.com/atom/welcome/blob/master/lib/welcome.md
• gre 13y ago
  No thanks, I'll stick with jEdit.
• msoad 13y ago
  Bracket is built on top of Code Mirror. It never feels like a native editor. If Atom is using a Webkit renderer for core editor part, I'm not gonna switch from Sublime anytime soon
  • chc 13y ago
    Light Table is build on Node-Webkit and it feels pretty good most of the time. (Opening folders is the only spot I've found where it's like, "Wait, something is a little off here.")
    • nelmaven 13y ago
      My experience with Light Table isn't that fortunate, even moving the cursor through some lines feels sluggish and not great.
• natural219 13y ago
  I am very excited about this, I love the Github team and this looks like a great tool. My only question is -- why should I switch to this from Sublime Text? Are there specific use cases it handles better out of the box, or is it more of a modular base that will be expected to grow and outfeature ST2/3's seasoned plugin economy? I am very happy with Sublime Text now, but I would be willing to switch if either it gained a lot of traction, or could do stuff that I couldn't do with Sublime.
  • olegbl 13y ago
    I believe the main benefit is that it is much easier to customize/change/tweak.
    • stormbrew 13y ago
      I don't see a reason to take that as a given. This uses node, ST uses python. Sublime plugins have a huge amount of power and python is certainly not terrible to work in.
      • johnthedebs 13y ago
        I've been playing with it for a few minutes now, and it's definitely the case that it's easier to tweak. Not because of the underlying language, but because they expose so much of what's available through a GUI. I'm blown away by how cool this is. I'm just really hoping for good Vim keybindings and I will pay good money for this once it's out of beta.
        • mattyohe 13y ago
          Lots of work to be done in the vim department: https://github.com/atom/vim-mode https://github.com/atom/vim-mode
        • mrbogle 13y ago
          You may have found it already, but there is: https://github.com/atom/vim-mode https://github.com/atom/vim-mode
• alrs 13y ago
  Gross. The moment that their new editor provides some piece of Github functionality that isn't exposed to an open API is the moment that we need to bail, en masse. We've already killed Freshmeat and Sourceforge for turning lame, this shouldn't be hard.
• archagon 13y ago
  You know, I'm usually very skeptical of web apps, but building a text editor in WebKit actually seems like a really good idea. Everything a browser should be good at — text display, scripting, styling — also applies to text editors. You don't really have to worry about complex UI, animation, or user input. You also get remote access almost for free. What other text-centric apps can be made better by a browser framework? Maybe the terminal?
  • mattmanser 13y ago
    HTML's not good at windows, apps, doesn't have any sort of concept of a widget and has the kind of layout rules you'd have a tough time beating if you were sitting there trying to be deliberately malicious to future programmers. It's not a good idea, but given the abysmal state that desktop apps seem to be in at the moment[1], it's probably the least bad idea. [1] Been about 5 years since I did a desktop app, but if anything they look to be getting worse. WPF, flop. Flex, flop. GTK+ looks poo. If I had to do a cross platform desktop app, I wouldn't even know where to start.
    • archagon 13y ago
      I agree with you, but I don't think most of those things are really vital for a great text editor. For the most part, it's just a giant window with your text in it, maybe a sidebar or two. Most of the magic happens under the hood. That's why I think this is a good idea. Dunno about cross-platform app development, but Cocoa on OSX is pretty nice. QT isn't bad either, from what I've tried.
  • pmr_ 13y ago
    So why is every text editor I have ever seen embedded in a website an abomination? > text display, scripting, styling The only thing that really matters is scripting. Every serious editor has solved displaying text and styling since ages and those two points aren't even that important in programming languages. All you want is a syntax aware highlighting. Maybe underlines and a little bold here and there. Scripting is the really hard part. There are many flavors, languages, APIs to chose from. Just because you now can script things in <hip-language-of-the-day>, the problem isn't solved. My editor uses a lisp dialect and I'm perfectly happy with it, not because of the language choice but the APIs and amount of integration. One thing that is incredibly important for text editors is speed: something web engines are notoriously bad at.
• jbeja 13y ago
  So this it yet another web base text editor like Brackets and LT, one have it's "live-reload" feature the other his "live-code-evaluation", and which is the selling point for this?. Going throught the website it just give me the idea that is a what i mentioned before.
• pcmonk 13y ago
  For me, this might be the killer feature: http://atom.io/packages/vim-mode http://atom.io/packages/vim-mode
  • jbeja 13y ago
    That is my only concern, and i hope that doesn't disappoint me :).
  • justizin 13y ago
    Light Table has it, as well as emacs - both using tools that are not specific to LT.
• hexagonsun 13y ago
  this looks fantastic! i've been wanting a reason to pick up a cheap chromebook.
  • teraflop 13y ago
    It won't run on a Chromebook.
    • pritambaral 13y ago
      Source?
      • jbeja 13y ago
        Only works on mac and windows, no Linux port.
        • pritambaral 13y ago
          You seem to oddly out of the loop here. Atom has been released for Mac only (private beta that too.) Linux, Windows builds are coming up, by their own admission. (My source? IRC and Discuss from atom.io footer.) Besides, for the tech purported to be behind Atom: node-webkit, There would be no additional costs or efforts required to get it running on Linux.
  • camus2 13y ago
    lol , since when ChromeOs can run desktop apps?
    • dragonwriter 13y ago
      If it is, as it appears, node + node-webkit, it might not be all that hard to build a web version, particularly one for Chrome/ChromeOS, since it would mostly be an app written to run on the same JS engine used in Chrome that already uses Chromium for its UI.
• dmritard96 13y ago
  looks cool, i really enjoy gedit with all the dev plugins and theme customization etc. Will def try this out to see how it compares
• mikecarlton 13y ago
  Will it have vim key bindings? My fingers have vim wired in and that's not going to change.
• ranman 13y ago
  Can this work at all without an internet connection? Can it work offline?
  • gjtorikian 13y ago
    It is a desktop app, so yes.
• jasonpeacock 13y ago
  Can you edit files while offline? Or do you need to be always-connected? (i.e. this is an actual web service) I couldn't find mention anywhere about offline abilities.
  • mrbogle 13y ago
    There is no online component. So yes, you can edit offline.
• cdata 13y ago
  This sounds like a very promising tool. I'm really excited to hear all of the talk about extensibility. One thing that is conspicuously absent is any mention of it being open source. I can certainly appreciate that Github is for-profit, but I would love to have a clearer idea of how free / not-free this tool will be when it is publicly available.
• skennedy 13y ago
  To help us improve the editor, Atom sends usage information to Google Analytics. See [atom/metrics](https://github.com/atom/metrics https://github.com/atom/metrics) for details. More data going to Google without opting in first? Bummer.
  • zackboe 13y ago
    From the page you link to: If you do not want this information reported, disable this package from the Metrics section of the Settings view (cmd-,).
    • phaer 13y ago
      I suppose that's why skennedy writes "without opting in first". What you describe is called "opt out", it's the opposite of opt in.
  • ihuman 13y ago
    I know it's a stretch, but technically, you are opting in by downloading and running the program, and therefor accepting some sort of privacy policy or ToS.
  • mcovey 13y ago
    echo ' 127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com 127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com' >> /etc/hosts
    • tuananh 13y ago
      and remove it whenever i want to access GA !?
      • nilved 13y ago
        Why are you using GA if you hate GA?
        • 13y ago
• neomech 13y ago
  Hopefully this will run on arm, which is something SublimeText does not
• thecrumb 13y ago
  Sublime has 'limited extensibility'? Package Manager lists over 2000 packages. And what about Brackets? This looks very similar - editor built with web tech. http://brackets.io/ http://brackets.io/
• xster 13y ago
  Granted they started this effort a while ago but would be pretty boss if hypothetically they built this on Dart
• jedireza 13y ago
  I find it interesting that there is little to no conversation about the integration with git. In one of the the screenshots I saw a branch name and icon in the bottom status bar. I assume this is an important motivation for GitHub.
• desireco42 13y ago
  Last thing I need is another editor. Having said that, I will for sure examine and give a fair chance to anything you produce. I am a vim user, I recently learned a lot of power moves in SublimeText and this is my go-to editor now. Making me use anything else would be super difficult but not impossible. Price is not the issue.
• crazygringo 13y ago
  I was all ready to be skeptical and everything... but this could actually be amazing. I currently use Chocolat for code editing, which is beautifully elegant and I love it, but there are 25 little tiny things that I really wish I could fix. I file issues, but the developers rightly have their own priorities. It's closed-source, but even if it were open source, I'm not about to learn how to use XCode and Objective C and figure out how to compile and whatnot. But if Atom is ultimately just a big collection of straight-up node.js files, and anyone can go in at any time to change a line here or there -- and it's in JavaScript, so it couldn't be easier for programmers in general -- and there's no compilation step or anything -- then it's almost a fundamental paradigm shift for what desktop software could be. It already makes me dream of a word processor I could hack like that, or a music player. Just by opening up a text editor. It's an inspiring thought.
  • adamors 13y ago
    > and there's no compilation step or anything -- then it's almost a fundamental paradigm shift for what desktop software could be. > It already makes me dream of a word processor I could hack like that, or a music player. Just by opening up a text editor. It's an inspiring thought. Not to rain on your parade or anything, but you can already do this with Emacs, not to mention that Emacs is free, open source software. Atom is not only not open source but their readme says it won't even be free after the beta. Emacs has been around for almost 40 years, and because it's FOSS it will be around for at least another 40. Editors like Atom come and go.
    • michaelmior 13y ago
      > Atom is free during the beta period. Where does it say it won't be free after the beta period?
      • adamors 13y ago
        Well, one can only assume, based on the wording they use here: https://github.com/atom/welcome/blob/master/lib/welcome.md https://github.com/atom/welcome/blob/master/lib/welcome.md > Atom is free during the beta period.
• narrator 13y ago
  Eclipse is massively modifiable but everyone hates it because of bloat. You see this kind of thing starts off with good intentions and then all the plugin madness gets going and suddenly everyone gets revolted and charges off to embrace the next great "lightweight" editor.
• jbrooksuk 13y ago
  It's ironic that you're unable to commit code from within Atom. Apart from that there are a couple of things that I feel can be added. - Soft undo for multiple selections. - Search settings since the panel is overwhelming. - Markdown preview should be updated live? - I really miss Go To Anything from Sublime Text 3. - You should be able to select the syntax highlighting from the status bar. - Inline preview of audio, SVG (toggle?) and fonts? That would be rad. - Syncing of settings using GitHub settings? But other than that this is really good progress!
  • AhtiK 13y ago
    Commit is not needed if the next version includes a dropbox-like sync to your github repo. I'm pretty sure it's one of the reasons to come up with its own desktop editor (that later can be also used online) -- to bridge the gap.
• malierdo 13y ago
  I think, in the long run -3 to 5 years-, Jon Skinner -Sublime Text- will be leading, like now. I can clearly see his passion and investment in his product. People at GitHub are also great, well funded, but this is not their core product. Do they have a leader -I don't know if they have or not- who will be focusing only on this product and keep up with jskinner? I am sure Atom will be around for long years, as well as Sublime Text. Thanks to GitHub, I am looking forward to give it a try.
  • jbrooksuk 13y ago
    I hope that this spurs Jon on to continue working on Sublime Text and start to be more transparent with what development is ongoing etc. See the forums for recent outcries.
    • zeckalpha 13y ago
      And fix the bus factor.
  • subsection1h 13y ago
    > in the long run -3 to 5 years-, Jon Skinner -Sublime Text- will be leading As an Emacs user, I find it funny to hear 3-5 years be referred to as "the long run". Also, Sublime Text won't be leading until it has a package with more features than Org mode. ;-)
    • malierdo 13y ago
      actually I was expecting a comment on that one :) don't you think the time frame narrows on predicting the future on topics like these -web, desktop or mobile applications-? I am not arguing that Sublime Text is the best -because I am not that pro-, but I can assure you it is hot right now, all around the world. It may be wrong, but all cs students and developers I personally know in 4-5 countries use it, like it. Most of the online courses tell their students to use it. It is highly recommended, all over the web. The word is spreading. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F01yp0m%2C%20%2Fm%2F0b6h18n&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F01yp0m%2C%20%2...
• jbeja 13y ago
  I hope that it doesn't suffer from the same text redering issuies that LT nad Brackets has.
• _zen 13y ago
  I will switch to this if it is as good as Sublime Text, but with a more open API. Sublime Text's API is too restricted, and there's a ton of things I want in Sublime Text that IDEs have.. but I don't want a full-blown IDE. Take the overall diff bar of most IDEs for example (Jetbrains, Netbeans, etc.). I want that in Sublime/Atom. There is a plug-in for Sublime to show diffs per line, but no way to manipulate the mini-map to show diffs at a glance. http://blog.jetbrains.com/pycharm/files/2013/12/2.png http://blog.jetbrains.com/pycharm/files/2013/12/2.png Edit: See, this is inferior and what Sublime Text already has: http://atom.io/packages/git-diff http://atom.io/packages/git-diff What's superior is a full-blown diff bar overview of the file.
• lhnz 13y ago
  There's real opportunity here for Github and I hope they take it. Why is the basic workflow of the modern-day programmer split over multiple tools and over multiple systems? Aspects of Github could be modularised and added to the editor while still keeping the underlying tool simple and this could change our user experience for the better. Imagine flipping through your pull requests in the text editor and then seeing your friends comments and code reviews appear on top. Imagine an issue being created on Github and the file(s) referenced instantly glowing. This opens doors to thinking about the engineering workflow in a new holistic manner.
  • techpeace 13y ago
    IDEs, while they have fallen out of favor somewhat in the web development community, offer such a "holistic" development experience already - complete with deep integration into GitHub, in some instances.
    • lhnz 13y ago
      I think you miss the point. Being modularised allows the basic user experience to be kept very simple. It does not need to grow into something like an IDE. Hell, according to Packages [0] even tools like find-and-replace have been modularised so I do not think it follows that Github would carelessly decide to create a big ball of mud! And additionally this tool has removed barriers that previously existed before. Since it was created by Github they will be able to expose APIs to create features which are currently not possible. Likewise the UI being implemented with WebKit means that the user interface can tightly represent what a user is used to seeing at different stages of their development process. You might have read "The Design of Everyday Things" [1] before. There are certain elements which you need to control to create a good user experience: (1) discoverability, (2) feedback, (3) the conceptual model, (4) affordances, (5) signifiers, and (6) mappings. Without ease in changing the UI, and the possibility that Github will have self-interest in exposing extra APIs, it would be a lot more difficult to control for each of these. It's just an opportunity to try new ideas. I'm not suggesting that this would be preferable to everybody. [0] http://atom.io/packages http://atom.io/packages [1] http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0465067107 http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...
• isadeal 13y ago
  What is web based core? Does it run on Chrome?
• brianzelip 13y ago
  wow, there are 2,078 lines of (unminified) css styling this page. Nice page though. Can't wait to try out the editor.
• kungpooey 13y ago
  Newest text editor for the gui-text-editor of the month crowd? It's okay, VIM and Emacs will still be waiting for those that graduate. </smug>
• ucarion 13y ago
  If you're looking for an invite, there are lots of people offering and requesting invites on IRC: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=##atom http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=##atom
• davexunit 13y ago
  > A hackable text editor for the 21st century I'll fix: A proprietary (unhackable) text editor that only runs on OS X. I imagine that web developers will drool over this.
  • fafner 13y ago
    And it reports data to Google... http://atom.io/packages/metrics http://atom.io/packages/metrics
    • callumjones 13y ago
      "If you do not want this information reported, disable this package from the Metrics section of the Settings view (cmd-,)."
      • davesque 13y ago
        Why should I have to opt out of metric gathering in a freaking text editor??
        • squintychino 13y ago
          Because they made the program. So it's their decision. If you want a program that turns this off by default, please feel free to create your own program with this feature disabled.
          • lispm 13y ago
            FAIL. A text editor with this default is just wrong.
          • pritambaral 13y ago
            > please feel free to create your own program with this feature disabled. I could do that very easily, if Atom were FOSS.
          • fauigerzigerk 13y ago
• jamesmoss 13y ago
  I've just had play around with the beta. It looks like it's using a version of CodeMirror 4 (as it has multiple ranges). Fairly fast but it doesn't match Sublime Text just yet Initial impressions: it's early days but this thing is just oozing for customisation. The fact it's written in JS means writing packages is pretty simple compared to Python for ST; we're going to see TONNES of addons for it. I can already think of 2-3 I'd like to build. The one thing that really excites me is how people getting into programming could start off with a pretty basic editor and add and write packages as they hone their skills, ending with something incredible powerful and tailored to them. In fact I'd really love to see a super customised starter version for children / beginners that acts as a learning aid as well as a text editor. No doubt there's going to be haters in the vim / emacs / ST / insert favourite editor here camp but I really hope this works out for the Github guys (and I have a feeling it will).
  • _zen 13y ago
    > Initial impressions: it's early days but this thing is just oozing for customisation. The fact it's written in JS means writing packages is pretty simple compared to Python for ST; we're going to see TONNES of addons for it. I can already think of 2-3 I'd like to build. This isn't why it's going to be popular for plugin development though. Sublime plugins are Python, which isn't that hard to learn. Atom's plugins are worth looking forward to if the API is more extensive than Sublime. There is too much you can't do in Sublime Text plugin authoring.
    • jamesmoss 13y ago
      > This isn't why it's going to be popular for plugin development though. Sublime plugins are Python, which isn't that hard to learn. Agreed, but Javascript has many more developers who know JS over Python. From my initial glance at the docs the learning curve for package development isn't too steep either.
  • ytpete 13y ago
    Fwiw, Brackets (http://brackets.io http://brackets.io) supports a similar degree of customization since it's also written in JS/HTML, uses CodeMirror, and offers lots of extensibility APIs. And it's MIT-licensed. Writing an extension is as easy as this: https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Simple-"Hello-World"-extension https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Simple-"Hello-World"-...
• gojomo 13y ago
  The "space-pen" part of this deserves separate attention: http://atom.github.io/space-pen/ http://atom.github.io/space-pen/ I bet this space-pen DOM DSL would mix well with the React virtual-DOM approach.
• fisherprice 13y ago
  Nice to see some innovate architecture for an editor but this product launch reminds me to product launches from Apple or Google: it doesn't matter what product or feature is shown, there is always tons of premature praise. If an unknown third party came up with Atom it would have never gotten that attention. ST3 is a very good product viewed from any angle and VIM either—it will be hard to beat these reference products. I love Node/npm and again the stack sounds great but I don't know if this stack will be much easier to extend than something like ST3 or VIM. What I have seen from a product perspective on the Atom landing page does not blow me away, not at all. And it is wether free nor open source. But it's from Github and that's reason enough to vote it up.
• comice 13y ago
  "Our goal is a zero-compromise combination of hackability and usability" I can see a huge compromise in hackability - its core is closed source.
• benched 13y ago
  My Poe's Law detector is itching uncomfortably right now. Really, was anybody asking for all this?
• TuxLyn 13y ago
  I exclusively use Sublime Text editor for some time now. But this Atom editor by GitHub is very interesting. Will definantly try it.
• enahs 13y ago
  how i feel about atom.io... http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg876/scaled.php?tn=0&server=876&filename=79jka.jpg&xsize=480&ysize=480 http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg876/scaled.php?tn=0&server=876&...
• RA_Fisher 13y ago
  It needs a LaTeX plugin!
• tambourine_man 13y ago
  Bespin, Skywriter, Ace, Brackets… now Atom. Everybody seems to be having the same idea: that browser based technologies are the future for code editors. I for one am more enticed by the possibility of a WebKit frontend, with a NeoVim core and a libuv backend. Finally, Vim as an embeddable library.
• donw 13y ago
  Atom team, if you're reading this, I have a big feature request that would make this far, far greater than just another editor. Pair editing. Specifically, having the ability to pair two editors over a network and edit the same set of files. Lots of other editors do this, but here's the key: Each editor keeps its own settings and environment. I'm a vim guy. I can set up my Atom to be vimlike. My buddy, the Emacs (heretic!) guy, can set up his Atom the way he likes, and we can work in harmony. That's all I want.
  • zeckalpha 13y ago
    Floobits.
    • roryokane 13y ago
      That is to say, https://floobits.com/ https://floobits.com/ appears to already do this.
• mattattaque 13y ago
  Looks like Sublime Text but with a ton of resource-consuming shit I'll never use, which itself is similar to the reason I stopped using Sublime Text. I'll sick with vim, thanks.
• dreamdu5t 13y ago
  So, they want people to contribute writing plugins so they can turn-around and make money off the plugin ecosystem by selling atom? Seems transparently under-handed to me.
• mkhattab 13y ago
  A common thread or line of argument that I find when reading about new editors is their out-of-the-box ease of use compared to Emacs and Vim. For example, a quote from the Atom blog: >Sublime and TextMate offer convenience but only limited extensibility. On the other end of the spectrum, Emacs and Vim offer extreme flexibility, but they aren't very approachable and can only be customized with special-purpose scripting languages. It doesn't seem like they (and many others) are denying that Emacs and Vim are excellent editors. Why is ease of use such an important issue for text editors? Emacs isn't terribly difficult to use, but if my livelihood and the majority of my time is tied to what tools I use, then it's worth the investment of time. I don't think I've met an Emacs user who has put in the effort of learning Elisp and customizing Emacs to their liking ever deny the benefits of learning it in the first place. Yes, it's a pain in the ass initially. I quit Emacs twice before I became determined to stop whining and spend quality time learning about tooling. There is no doubt that Emacs has a steep learning curve and perhaps that's because its developers have a higher expectation of its users. I would argue that these expectations are easily matched by the capabilities of a competent programmer.
  • redbad 13y ago
    There is no reason why "editing plain text" should be anything other than immediately intuitive. Advanced, time-saving features, like multi-cursors or regexp-based find-and-replace, can and should be progressively revealed through normal use of the software. This ludditic reverence for user-hostile text editors is one of the more perplexing and frustrating things about our industry.
    • lord_quas 13y ago
      Editing plain text is in fact very easy. Structured text requires a little more logic, however. Ultimately, you could use emacs in the exact way one would use notepad++ and be none the wiser to the rich customizations under the hood. If thats your bag of tea, drink it.
    • prasoon2211 13y ago
      > There is no reason why "editing plain text" should be anything other than immediately intuitive. Are you suggesting that it isn't in Emacs? Well, I remember using Emacs for the first time. It opened up and I started editing the opened file. I saved the file from the file menu (which also showed me the shortcut for saving the file the next time I have to save something). Done. Now, this is exactly what a novice would do with notepad. I found that many people 'demonize' Emacs just because they found it unfamiliar. Sure it's unfamiliar. For about a day. Then, it's just as familiar as any other user interface. I now used Emacs for, well, the shell, the dired and wdired, multiple cursors, keyboard macros, project-wide grepping and everything in between. Getting familiar with the editor was a great thing to have done, however unfamiliar it was in the beginning. With the benefit of hindsight, I can truly say that learning how to properly use a text editor, especially one so powerful as Emacs, is the one thing the any programmer absolutely must do. So, even if the editor isn't "anything other than immediately intuitive", it's still a good idea to wrap your head around the non-intuitive things.
• trekky1700 13y ago
  This isn't the best thing since sliced bread. It's better than sliced bread.
• akosednar 13y ago
  Interesting, this has been in development since sometime in November of 2013
• losvedir 13y ago
  So how much is written in Javascript? Won't that performance pale in comparison to, say, Sublime which is written in C++? Or are just the plugins/extensions written in Javascript while the core editor is in C or C++? Obligatory: People who got a beta invite, anyone feeling generous and want to give me one? (As I understand it, when you're invited you get a few to hand out, too.)
  • scorpion032 13y ago
    Sublime is written in Python. I'd imagine, all of this is written in Javascript and compiled/rendered with v8.
    • ChristianBundy 13y ago
      Sublime is written in C++, the plugins are written in Python.
• marcamillion 13y ago
  Is it just me or do most of the new IDEs tend to focus around front-end technology? Would love to see some innovation on the Ruby editor front.
  • jbeja 13y ago
    Would be slower than this.
  • stephenr 13y ago
    I haven't used this but if it's comparable to text mate and sublime, you should stop calling it an IDE.
• sochin 13y ago
  sochinquixabeira@gmail.com
• Yahivin 13y ago
  I'm really sad to see that they totally blew it. The performance of a webapp with the accessibility of a desktop app. Not to mention that it's closed source. This is a tremendous step backwards. Looking at the implementation of the open sourced packages is discouraging as well. It looks like they are using a Backbone inspired jQuery infested nightmare of clientside MVC. Maybe my bitterness comes from the fact that I've already been down that road and it leads to a bad place. Here's an editor that has deep Github integration, runs in the browser, and self hosts: http://www.danielx.net/editor http://www.danielx.net/editor Maybe I just live too far in the future.
  • wololo_ 13y ago
    I would wait until I actually try the product instead of calling quits. And jQuery/Backbone is not an infested nightmare MVC. It's beautiful modular javascript.
    • q3k 13y ago
      > beautiful > javascript Choose one.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
• vhost- 13y ago
  > Emacs and Vim offer extreme flexibility, but they aren't very approachable and can only be customized with special-purpose scripting languages. Only? I can point to a large number of Python, Ruby and Perl plugins for Vim. Unless they are considering those special-purpose and nodejs is the only truly flexible scripting language.
• jaimebuelta 13y ago
  Seems like quite a weird priority for GitHub to dedicate resources into creating Yet Another Text Editor. I don't know, I can't see how this is a priority for them...
  • pritambaral 13y ago
    Even if they don't commercially benefit from it, a better editor will help their devs. As for how it could commercially benefit them: similar to how Chrome benefits Google.
  • jlangenauer 13y ago
    Github has iPad-based robots that allow remote workers to wonder about their SF office. Obviously, that $100m VC money has to be spent on ~something~. Compared to that, a text editor is a mere bagatelle.
• watermarkcamera 13y ago
  That's great things !
• peterashford 13y ago
  So... it's like Emacs but based on Javascript rather than Lisp?
• tsax 13y ago
  At first glance the UI seems 'inspired' by Sublime
• tlongren 13y ago
  Screenshot on front page of site made me think of Sublimetext immediately, which is not a bad thing at all.
• beefsack 13y ago
  Mojombo[0] commented[1] that it won't be either closed or open source, but "somewhere inbetween" to make it easy for them to charge for it. [0] https://github.com/mojombo https://github.com/mojombo [1] http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/9 http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/9
• tcl16 13y ago
  Apparently github will be charging for it and it will not be fully open source. http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/9 http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/9
• gleenn 13y ago
  Having used it for the past couple hours, it looks great! It is pretty intuitive, snappy, and looks great. I'm definitely looking forward to using it more.
• maddy2get 13y ago
  Can somebody tell me how to run/install the editor? Thanks.
  • nilved 13y ago
    It's in private beta right now.
• ksec 13y ago
  I was hoping Github will offer a one stop shop for Online Editor via Atom and Communication via Gitter. Looks like i was wrong.
• tzs 13y ago
  From "The Zen of Programming": ------ Hearing a disturbance, the master programmer went into the novice's cubicle. "Curse these personal computers!" cried the novice in anger, "To make them do anything I must use three or even four editing programs. Sometimes I get so confused that I erase entire files. This is truly intolerable!" The master programmer stared at the novice. "And what would you do to remedy this state of affairs?" he asked. The novice thought for a moment. "I will design a new editing program," he said, "a program that will replace all these others." Suddenly the master struck the novice on the side of his head. It was not a heavy blow, but the novice was nonetheless surprised. "What did you do that for?" exclaimed the novice. "I have no wish to learn another editing program," said the master. And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
  • Gracana 13y ago
    I think the first assertion is simply untrue, and without it the rest is nonsense. You don't need to learn how to use multiple editors to do anything. I suppose there are some languages/environments that are somewhat tied to certain editors (java and eclipse, C# and visual studio, objective-C and xcode), but that's not what is proposed here. It's a general purpose programmer's editor that anyone can use for anything. Are you really upset that it's being written? Why do you think you'll have to learn it?
    • greyskull 13y ago
      I think it's also worth mentioning that Atom, like Sublime, looks straight-forward out of the box. You don't need to learn much to be productive. It doesn't have the learning curve of vim/emacs, but it's more powerful than Sublime/Notepad++/Gedit etc. Also, I don't think anyone needs more than one general purpose text editor like vim or Sublime or Notepad++, and possibly a full-featured IDE like IntelliJ or Visual Studio. If there's a counter-argument, I'd like to read it.
    • rjzzleep 13y ago
      tbh with you i've used both omnisharp and eclim with vim. you get full IDE features as well as refactoring inside of vim. for most things you can use vim as a full featured IDE these days. well for refactoring you might have a few issues on, say, c++ and objective-c [] http://eclim.org http://eclim.org [] https://github.com/nosami/Omnisharp https://github.com/nosami/Omnisharp
• piratebroadcast 13y ago
  Someone explain Atom to me like I'm 5?
  • skeletonjelly 13y ago
    Yet Another File Editor. This one's made by Github which the kids love to use on their Macbook Pros hacking some Ruby.
• alecsmart1 13y ago
  Am lost. Where do I download it from? I do not see any link. Or is it an online based editor? Will it work on Windows?
  • skeletonjelly 13y ago
    Invite. Offline. Not yet.
• jpmec 13y ago
  Can it send email?
• cgcardona 13y ago
  First let me say that I've used only vim and emacs for the last 5+ years that I have been a daily coder. I'm extremely comfortable with vim. I can cruise seemingly at light speed and have just never been able to find a text editor which offered the same level of productivity when jumping back and forth between the mouse/trackpad and keyboard. However I just couldn't resist the urge to try out a new text editor that was created by github and thankfully I scored an invite from someone on twitter. I've only had the thing open for about 10 minutes and already I'm impressed. It allows me to write in markdown, save the file, render the markdown into markup, and then launch the webkit dev tools to inspect the rendered DOM.[0] Do other modern text editors such as Sublime Text allow you to render the markup and then inspect the DOM with browser dev tools? If not that alone seems like a pretty good innovation. More Info: [0] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BhdTeedCcAARgYV.jpg:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BhdTeedCcAARgYV.jpg:large
  • IE5point5 13y ago
    Textmate can, pretty sure any editor that uses webkit to display a markdown preview can do this.
• itsnotvalid 13y ago
  I'd think it's not a requirement for OSS (look at textmate, sublime) but as new comers hit the store it would be nice to know it beforehand and have an expectation of what would come. Since for people writing addons it would be a decision-maker. What most people wouldn't like to see are yearly subscriptions of another editor or paid upgrade every 18-month. I could personally bear with textmate and sublime for their current licensing (personal => works on as many computers I have - which I have at least 4) For OSS ones, we have the traditional ones like emacs, vim, eclipse, and newer ones like brackets (which also sold as paid editor as Edge Code CC), lighttable or google's half-baked collide.
• sdegutis 13y ago
  I hate to say it, but honestly, I think Atom is probably going to be my next full-time editor. The purist in me hates the idea of running such a powerful rendering engine inside a desktop app, but all desktop GUI toolkits have proven that they really really suck at text editing (I've tried almost all of them). This is probably the best way forward.
• sdegutis 13y ago
  Where's the emacs keybindings repo and the paredit-clone repo? Am I gonna have to write them?
• sdegutis 13y ago
  Maybe it's not true of all JavaScript GUI apps, but almost all the ones I tried are hecka sluggish for things like drag+drop. I could see that being a problem with tabs in this case. Plus I'm concerned about the CPU on my poor little MBP, Chrome usually eats it all the way up, is that somehow mitigated in Atom?
• sbornia 13y ago
  http://discuss.atom.io/t/atom-is-so-powerful-that-it-blows-my-mind/294 http://discuss.atom.io/t/atom-is-so-powerful-that-it-blows-m... sounds great!
• integricho 13y ago
  I wonder if it will have similar performance issues like Brackets does.
• prasoon2211 13y ago
  I'm willing to bet anything that just like Sublime was FOSS cloned to Lime (https://github.com/limetext/lime https://github.com/limetext/lime), this as well will be cloned as FOSS, if it is any good, that is. Subatom seems like a great project title :)
• midas007 13y ago
  Turns out it's going to be payware, closed-source only while the rest of their community gets to build and support it. http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/9 http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/9 But who's going to buy an editor that can't even open a 1 MiB file? http://discuss.atom.io/t/unable-to-open-files-more-than-1mb/549 http://discuss.atom.io/t/unable-to-open-files-more-than-1mb/... Moreover, besides code posers and managers, who is going to throw away all their knowledge and time configuring the editor they were using?
  • pritambaral 13y ago
    beta. Closed beta, that too.
  • victorhooi 13y ago
    I was the one who reported the 1 Mb file issue... I mean, it looks nice - but I'm a bit undecided about the whole proprietary code project thing. If it was open-source, we might actually be able to see if there was some silly hardcoded limit in there - heck, we could even submit a patch and do a pull request. That, and the blatant ripping off of Sublime Text's interface. It's bad enough they don't put the source itself on Github, but they aren't even using Github's issue tracker for the project - or heck, any other issue tracker as all. So we're resorting to filing bug reports on a discussion forum...shakes head. Hopefully Github will come through, and sort things out. I have no objections to paying for an editor - heck, Sublime is $70 - but with this being closed source, and Brackets.io being more mature, and open-source, not sure what the attraction is.
    • pritambaral 13y ago
      Brackets is focussed on frontend webdev only. You might wanna try LightTable.
• Dobbs 13y ago
  I just played with atom for the last 2+ hours. It is kinda cool, but holy shit is it slow. Editing a plugin requires a reload. A reload is a good 2-4 seconds on my 4 year old mbp. The vim-mode is very incomplete and very buggy. Granted that should get a lot better in time.
  • babby 13y ago
    It may have to do what ST3 did and queue loading of plugins after startup, instead of all at once before the editor is "usable". If they do that it could start up nice and fast in theory, though we obviously don't know what else it's trying to do yet.
• sspiff 13y ago
  A few things bother me: 1. The documentation clearly mentions only cmd-key based shortcuts, implying Mac-only support. 2. They say they will be sending out invites, and that they've released a bunch of libraries as open source. This implies that the editor-as-a-whole will probably not be open source.
• dinosaurs 13y ago
  Looking forward to this. The fact that it's all JavaScript/Node based makes this particularly attracting for me. I haven't really been able to hack on ST2/3 because I'm not that proficient in Python and never found the time to properly dig into it. The repositories look great, really hope it'll live up to the expectations. That being said, anyone with a spare invite? :) Ta.
• MyNameIsMK 13y ago
  Finally.
• fs111 13y ago
  Imagine Linus had used that sort of license for git. There would be no github, no nothing. I don't get it. Take for free, build a million dollar business and then make your own stuff closed...
  • odonnellryan 13y ago
    Unfortunately, that's most companies.
  • scorpion032 13y ago
    Github folks are awesome mostly. I'd have imagined they would have made it a liberal license if they could. But they are the venture invested company now. Need to show returns 10 to 100x the investment in a few years.
• jbrooksuk 13y ago
  I've ported the Oblivion scheme across; https://atom.io/packages/Oblivion https://atom.io/packages/Oblivion from https://github.com/jbrooksuk/Oblivion https://github.com/jbrooksuk/Oblivion
• ahuth 13y ago
  Guess I will have to break down and learn vim... no invite
• rootuid 13y ago
  so this is Brackets aka Bones on steroids ?
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• asima123 13y ago
  So nice
• joeevans1000 13y ago
  Atom is a cargo cult. Atom is eventually a dead end. They are paying lip service to eventually partially opensourcing it. It is the opposite direction of the magic of git, which enables easy sharing and collaboration. Beware the promise of later opensourcing of projects. Without an early commitment, the developers of atom will invariably include proprietary software to ease development which will preclude later opensourcing. You are better off taking the hard road and investing your time in tools that are not cargo cults.
• corndoge 13y ago
  When did web dev become the only dev?
  • q3k 13y ago
    When you started frequenting Hacker News ;). (I really need a lobste.rs invite...)
• iancarroll 13y ago
  If anyone wants to spare me an invite - him {at} ian [d0t] sh
• caniszczyk 13y ago
  More online editors... Check out Brackets (http://brackets.io/ http://brackets.io/) and Eclipse Orion (http://eclipse.org/orion/ http://eclipse.org/orion/) who both have been trying to build fully open editing experiences. There are more out there but those come to mind. Would be nice if more people started working together on these things...
• sdegutis 13y ago
  When I saw a screenshot, I was put off by the ugly tabs. So I made a theme for flat tabs[1]. You can install it by going to Install Themes in the app and searching for "flat". It's called "Atom Dark Flat UI". [1]: http://atom.io/packages/atom-dark-flat-ui http://atom.io/packages/atom-dark-flat-ui
  • ihuman 13y ago
    Heads up: The image on the package page is broken
    • sdegutis 13y ago
      Thanks, should be fixed now. Seems like a caching issue on Atom's end (probably github-pages related).
  • ChristianBundy 13y ago
    You rock – those tabs were driving me crazy.
• felipebueno 13y ago
  Thanks to Atom not being really free software and people here suggesting it a lot I give LightTable a try. I'm an emacs user but I like experimenting different foss editors and LighTable + emacs keybindings plugin is a really nice and beautiful tool. Couldn't get it to work on Debian Wheezy yet (GLIBC_2.15 not found)* but worked on a Windows machine at work so I'm testing it there. I'll get back to linux later. Looking forward for v1.0. :) * It seems to be a known issue: https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/issues/972 https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/issues/972
• JabavuAdams 13y ago
  Wait, so now I have to deal with all the shittiness of the web stack in order to develop a native app?
  • Kequc 13y ago
    The new, dominant and universal front end/back end/desktop app all round programming language. JavaScript :(
• babby 13y ago
  I've been observing the reactions to this over several communities and I find it all to be rather interesting! [ Warning; meta comment incoming ] http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1z0ykn/atom_launched/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1z0ykn/atom_lau... Almost every single comment is negative, dismissive, one liners filled with half truths and very few child comments seek to rectify any misinformation or support a discussion. The first and by far most-upvoted with a 700 point margin. >I must be out of touch with modern development. I don't understand the thought process that leads people to be excited about a closed source, node.js text editor that reports your usage to Google. It suggests the user simply scanned over other comments, glanced at atom's site and proceeded to regurgitate karma bait. I suppose it says a lot about the attention span of these people as there are also highly voted "tl;dr" request comments. A perfect example of misinformation: >[ unquietwiki 70 points] Isn't Brackets this already? Node.js/Chromium app with plugin support? > --- [ MrSenorSan 67 points] yup, but atom is not open source yay! wait a min... > --- [ kmeisthax 17 points ] Yes, but with Atom, you have the priviledge of paying GitHub money for a software product in a market with numerous competent free and Free Software options. The supply of vitriol is unending. It was the same with the /g/ thread, though surprisingly not quite as bad. http://archive.rebeccablacktech.com/g/thread/S40550074 http://archive.rebeccablacktech.com/g/thread/S40550074 My point is, stay classy Hacker News. While you may even have similar opinions with these communities, the reception in this thread has been far more exciting and you put effort into your discussions. The contrast is massive, and especially interesting considering this is one the highest upvoted articles on HN, sitting alongside Neovim. suggesting we desperately want to replace our editors.
• pettersolberg 13y ago
  All right, but no invitation responses are coming back. Ho to download Atom?
• kevinlangleyjr 13y ago
  I see people saying they get into the beta within 15 minutes of signing up, but I still haven't gotten one and I signed up day 1. Anybody have an extra invite they're willing to spare? Email in profile. It'd be much appreciated!
• angelohuang 13y ago
  What framework is Atom using? chromiumembedded or appjs?
• Morphling 13y ago
  I thought this was an open source project, but when I read FAQ beta version is only out for OSX and they talk about charging for it so it probably wont be open source.
• commander_ahab 13y ago
  I use github and do a fair amount of Ruby, but I can't say I find Atom to provide enough benefit to move from a native option. I would have to see it used in more example cases to make that leap.
• Cless 13y ago
  To try out Atom: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/9265315 https://gist.github.com/anonymous/9265315 Then visit the resulting link output by curl. You're welcome.
• slacko 13y ago
  Has anyone got a spare invite? davfuc at gmail dot com Thanks
• plg 13y ago
  how is this not a blatant ripoff of sublime text??