6 ms·

Yes, a native-feeling GUI. Emacs GUI for OSX is ugly and unpolished. Atom's real competition is Sublime, but unlike Sublime it's open source.

magicmu 11y ago
I agree; with vim as well, gVim isn't much help to those who still want to use a mouse / don't know the keybindings. Atom is really the most versatile open-source GUI text editor right now IMO.
- xienze 11y ago
  Well, I think the OP's point is that it would be easier to bring Emacs/VIM up to acceptable GUI editor standards rather than build the whole thing from scratch, as a webapp no less. But they didn't, my guess is because NIH.
  - grmarcil 11y ago
    Keep in mind, Atom was NIH at Facebook too.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >is that it would be easier to bring Emacs/VIM up to acceptable GUI editor standards Perhaps but nobody has done it yet.
    - oblio 11y ago
      And it's not for lack of trying. The last major attempt was Sun Studio on the 90's/early 00's. Emacs and Vim are like Lisp at this point: unicorns. Perfect, mythical creatures everybody loves to talk about. Meanwhile oxen like Eclipse, Visual Studio, Sublime, etc. keep chugging 90% of the world's code :)
  - Blackthorn 11y ago
    > Well, I think the OP's point is that it would be easier to bring Emacs/VIM up to acceptable GUI editor standards I've been waiting for this for literally a decade with emacs. It hasn't happened and I don't have the expertise to do it, so nowadays I exclusively use IntelliJ for the languages I can. I'm probably going to start using CLion with it as well. There are lots of aspects of Emacs that I miss but I hope that IntelliJ can take them over with future iterations of the vestigial "IDE scripting console". They just need to put a lispy language in there like Clojure and bindings into the editor like Emacs Lisp has.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    If it was NIH, then why did they use the existing Atom editor?
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    And while bringing Emacs/Vim up to acceptable GUI editor standards might be possible (MacVim does an alright job of this), I'm guessing that a lot of the head Emacs/Vim people would be against it, and wouldn't want to merge it back into mainline. That would leave FB having to maintain their fork of it, and splitting mindshare, etc. Atom doesn't need that much work, and it's easier to maintain a plugin than an entire fork.
empyrical 11y ago
I really hope Sublime goes open source someday
- honest_joe 11y ago
  I really hope people start paying more for software someday.
  - empyrical 11y ago
    I paid for Sublime - it's my favourite editor by far. There are ways for companies to support themselves while having their offering be open source though. And I think Sublime might need to eventually to compete
    - honest_joe 11y ago
      OpenSource often means easy to use without paying. It gives you choice to use but not pay. I am not against open source but most of the time people religiously screaming that this and that must be open source are the ones that never pay for software. Oh and also replying to the guy above. Tell that to dozens of OSS tools that had to be supported by real companies because people were not that willing to donate. Look at grsecurity for example, tmux, and the other ones i do not remember that Stripe donated 100k to.
    - superuser2 11y ago
      There is a way, selling support. Do you really see people paying for commercial support of Sublime?
      - kybernetyk 11y ago
        >There is a way, selling support Which gives you the incentive to make the software less user friendly so more people pay for support :)
  - codemac 11y ago
    Open source != no cost of distribution: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html I work with someone who has gotten me thinking a lot more about what software I do and don't pay for. He pays for any software he uses "daily". The payments are either donations to open source projects, service fees, or software purchases.

magicmu 11y ago

I agree; with vim as well, gVim isn't much help to those who still want to use a mouse / don't know the keybindings. Atom is really the most versatile open-source GUI text editor right now IMO.

xienze 11y ago
Well, I think the OP's point is that it would be easier to bring Emacs/VIM up to acceptable GUI editor standards rather than build the whole thing from scratch, as a webapp no less. But they didn't, my guess is because NIH.
- grmarcil 11y ago
  Keep in mind, Atom was NIH at Facebook too.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >is that it would be easier to bring Emacs/VIM up to acceptable GUI editor standards Perhaps but nobody has done it yet.
  - oblio 11y ago
    And it's not for lack of trying. The last major attempt was Sun Studio on the 90's/early 00's. Emacs and Vim are like Lisp at this point: unicorns. Perfect, mythical creatures everybody loves to talk about. Meanwhile oxen like Eclipse, Visual Studio, Sublime, etc. keep chugging 90% of the world's code :)
- Blackthorn 11y ago
  > Well, I think the OP's point is that it would be easier to bring Emacs/VIM up to acceptable GUI editor standards I've been waiting for this for literally a decade with emacs. It hasn't happened and I don't have the expertise to do it, so nowadays I exclusively use IntelliJ for the languages I can. I'm probably going to start using CLion with it as well. There are lots of aspects of Emacs that I miss but I hope that IntelliJ can take them over with future iterations of the vestigial "IDE scripting console". They just need to put a lispy language in there like Clojure and bindings into the editor like Emacs Lisp has.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  If it was NIH, then why did they use the existing Atom editor?
- s73v3r 11y ago
  And while bringing Emacs/Vim up to acceptable GUI editor standards might be possible (MacVim does an alright job of this), I'm guessing that a lot of the head Emacs/Vim people would be against it, and wouldn't want to merge it back into mainline. That would leave FB having to maintain their fork of it, and splitting mindshare, etc. Atom doesn't need that much work, and it's easier to maintain a plugin than an entire fork.

empyrical 11y ago

I really hope Sublime goes open source someday

honest_joe 11y ago
I really hope people start paying more for software someday.
- empyrical 11y ago
  I paid for Sublime - it's my favourite editor by far. There are ways for companies to support themselves while having their offering be open source though. And I think Sublime might need to eventually to compete
  - honest_joe 11y ago
    OpenSource often means easy to use without paying. It gives you choice to use but not pay. I am not against open source but most of the time people religiously screaming that this and that must be open source are the ones that never pay for software. Oh and also replying to the guy above. Tell that to dozens of OSS tools that had to be supported by real companies because people were not that willing to donate. Look at grsecurity for example, tmux, and the other ones i do not remember that Stripe donated 100k to.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    There is a way, selling support. Do you really see people paying for commercial support of Sublime?
    - kybernetyk 11y ago
      >There is a way, selling support Which gives you the incentive to make the software less user friendly so more people pay for support :)
- codemac 11y ago
  Open source != no cost of distribution: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html I work with someone who has gotten me thinking a lot more about what software I do and don't pay for. He pays for any software he uses "daily". The payments are either donations to open source projects, service fees, or software purchases.