7 ms·

So the thing about Atom (and any "disruptive" software) is that it doesn't have to be amazing at everything. It only has to be 10x better for some niche of peop

by pbiggar 12y ago

So the thing about Atom (and any "disruptive" software) is that it doesn't have to be amazing at everything. It only has to be 10x better for some niche of people who will be this product's early adopters and evangelists. That will gain it enough traction to prove itself in the market, and over the next few years it will fix all the problems such as the 2MB limit, and whatever else is there. And then, laggards (well, you're probably more of an "early majority" type of person in Crossing the Chasm lingo) will see enough value to join.

PlzSnow 12y ago
The 2MB/slowness isn't something that can just be "coded away". It's a direct result of the technology stack chosen. It is not a solvable problem. Therefore Atom cannot succeed beyond niche usage.
- pbiggar 12y ago
  "not a solvable problem" and "cannot succeed" are very strong assertions that are not backed up by evidence.
- laurent123456 12y ago
  Why is there a 2MB limit anyway? Is it because the document is rendered to HTML? In this case, why don't they render only the part currently visible on screen?
  - iends 12y ago
    https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/1607/files https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/1607/files The editor is intentionally crippled.
    - davidy123 12y ago
      They were probably tired of people complaining about problems with this corner case of opening humongous files in an editor meant for editing source code. Atom properly should be optimized for kilobyte sized files, not megabyte.
      - jussij 12y ago
        Machines these days have Giga Bytes of RAM so handling a file only a few megabytes in size should hardly be an issue. I'm the author of the Zeus editor and I regularly use an old 1.25 Pentium with 512 MBytes of RAM to test the performance of the editor. Even running on that 15 year old machine Zeus stays fully responsive while editing a 60+ MByte file. For a modern day tool a 2 Mega file limit seems rather low.
        userbinator 12y ago
        Atom is essentially a web browser running a text editing web app. Given how much web pages tend to "expand" when loaded into memory in a browser, it's not so surprising. I'm guessing that Zeus isn't based on a web browser but was designed from the beginning to be an editor.
        jussij 12y ago
        Zeus, like a lot of text editors is an in memory editor, which basically means it loads the whole file into memory. So it too is limited by the total memory available to the application. For a 32 bit Windows application the available memory comes in at around 2 Gigs and for a 64 bit Windows application that explodes to 8 Terra bytes. So even if Atom was 32 bit it should have 2 Gigs of memory to play with. I'm not sure why Atom does limit files to 2 megs, but if it is because of the expansion of memory then there must be some serious expanding happening there.
        Cthulhu_ 12y ago
        > Zeus isn't based on a web browser but was designed from the beginning to be an editor. But Atom was also supposed to be an editor...
awalton 12y ago
It needs to be amazing at something though. And well... it isn't. The biggest thing I can tell is that it's "hip". Meanwhile Sublime Text spins around it at 40MPH doing donuts. I tried. I really tried to use Atom. But the text editor is just so slow and unresponsive, and that is a flat out dealbreaker for a text editor. Its extensibility isn't any better than Sublime's, and I feel like Python's a way better language than Javascript, so I'm happier tooling against Sublime. I too wish Sublime Text was open source, coming from an open source development background, but I understand exactly how hard it is to develop open source software and feed and clothe yourself - people only buy "support contracts" for the first year and rarely renew, and only for software they feel is technically complex enough that they might actually need help or customizations. For the record, I also backed GNOME Builder (which I also already find superior to Atom) in the hopes of some day it becoming the text editor and development environment I lust after. But my greatest fear is that more time will be spent on the shiny features and not enough time on the things I really care about like a decent GUI debugger so I don't have to live with poking at GDB, ahead-of-build compiler warnings/errors, and code refactoring tools.
- pbiggar 12y ago
  You just described a load of things that it's amazing at: - it's hip (dont discount that, its important. it excites people, and gives contributors a reaso to contribute) - it's in JS - maybe not right for you, but there are lots of people who have the opposite opinion. - it's open source: for some, a closed source editor is a deal breaker. Imagine the people who say "i hate emacs and vim; I'd love to use sublime but it's closed source" - they'll run to atom. - its got corporate backing (gnome builder may die or wither, there are many who can believe that atom wont because of GitHub's backing) So those are some pretty big niches right there!
  - kristianp 12y ago
    None of those things are actually features.
    - pbiggar 12y ago

by pbiggar 12y ago

PlzSnow 12y ago

The 2MB/slowness isn't something that can just be "coded away". It's a direct result of the technology stack chosen. It is not a solvable problem. Therefore Atom cannot succeed beyond niche usage.

pbiggar 12y ago
"not a solvable problem" and "cannot succeed" are very strong assertions that are not backed up by evidence.
laurent123456 12y ago
Why is there a 2MB limit anyway? Is it because the document is rendered to HTML? In this case, why don't they render only the part currently visible on screen?
- iends 12y ago
  https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/1607/files https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/1607/files The editor is intentionally crippled.
  - davidy123 12y ago
    They were probably tired of people complaining about problems with this corner case of opening humongous files in an editor meant for editing source code. Atom properly should be optimized for kilobyte sized files, not megabyte.
    - jussij 12y ago
      Machines these days have Giga Bytes of RAM so handling a file only a few megabytes in size should hardly be an issue. I'm the author of the Zeus editor and I regularly use an old 1.25 Pentium with 512 MBytes of RAM to test the performance of the editor. Even running on that 15 year old machine Zeus stays fully responsive while editing a 60+ MByte file. For a modern day tool a 2 Mega file limit seems rather low.
      - userbinator 12y ago
        Atom is essentially a web browser running a text editing web app. Given how much web pages tend to "expand" when loaded into memory in a browser, it's not so surprising. I'm guessing that Zeus isn't based on a web browser but was designed from the beginning to be an editor.
        jussij 12y ago
        Zeus, like a lot of text editors is an in memory editor, which basically means it loads the whole file into memory. So it too is limited by the total memory available to the application. For a 32 bit Windows application the available memory comes in at around 2 Gigs and for a 64 bit Windows application that explodes to 8 Terra bytes. So even if Atom was 32 bit it should have 2 Gigs of memory to play with. I'm not sure why Atom does limit files to 2 megs, but if it is because of the expansion of memory then there must be some serious expanding happening there.
        Cthulhu_ 12y ago
        > Zeus isn't based on a web browser but was designed from the beginning to be an editor. But Atom was also supposed to be an editor...

awalton 12y ago

It needs to be amazing at something though. And well... it isn't. The biggest thing I can tell is that it's "hip". Meanwhile Sublime Text spins around it at 40MPH doing donuts. I tried. I really tried to use Atom. But the text editor is just so slow and unresponsive, and that is a flat out dealbreaker for a text editor. Its extensibility isn't any better than Sublime's, and I feel like Python's a way better language than Javascript, so I'm happier tooling against Sublime. I too wish Sublime Text was open source, coming from an open source development background, but I understand exactly how hard it is to develop open source software and feed and clothe yourself - people only buy "support contracts" for the first year and rarely renew, and only for software they feel is technically complex enough that they might actually need help or customizations. For the record, I also backed GNOME Builder (which I also already find superior to Atom) in the hopes of some day it becoming the text editor and development environment I lust after. But my greatest fear is that more time will be spent on the shiny features and not enough time on the things I really care about like a decent GUI debugger so I don't have to live with poking at GDB, ahead-of-build compiler warnings/errors, and code refactoring tools.

pbiggar 12y ago
You just described a load of things that it's amazing at: - it's hip (dont discount that, its important. it excites people, and gives contributors a reaso to contribute) - it's in JS - maybe not right for you, but there are lots of people who have the opposite opinion. - it's open source: for some, a closed source editor is a deal breaker. Imagine the people who say "i hate emacs and vim; I'd love to use sublime but it's closed source" - they'll run to atom. - its got corporate backing (gnome builder may die or wither, there are many who can believe that atom wont because of GitHub's backing) So those are some pretty big niches right there!
- kristianp 12y ago
  None of those things are actually features.
  - pbiggar 12y ago