4 ms·

I made the switch yesterday not knowing 1.0 would be released today, and I am seriously psyched. Their Vim bindings are now good enough, and there are tons of

by cnp 11y ago

I made the switch yesterday not knowing 1.0 would be released today, and I am seriously psyched. Their Vim bindings are now good enough, and there are tons of tweaks you can do to make them better (which will inspire more people to contribute). I found a few bugs here and there related to installing / removing packages (just checked and 1.0 fixes them), but nothing major, and was able to migrate my mammoth .vimrc configuration file over over the course of an afternoon, with everything I need having already been developed by the community. Super fast, too. Also! I was able to create the colorscheme of my dreams in about 15 minutes, thanks to to the dev tools integration.

jonahx 11y ago
What are the main advantages that atom gives you over native vim?
- cnp 11y ago
  From the perspective of a web app developer it's just so modern. The language of the interface takes all of the (admittedly subjective) best-practice lessons that the web has taught us over the years and embeds them directly in, and then lets you hack them apart however you wish -- simply. Code editing works without a thousand inconsistencies, and then you have things like embedding your terminal directly with ease (its trivial to create a tmux like environment), etc. The limitations feel very few, and as someone who spent a LOT of time getting my Vim environment exactly as I wanted it, switching over to Atom was a breeze as I went through my .vimrc trying to match functionality; most of it was already there. One thing I wish they would implement (and I'm sure it will come with time) is the ability to fully navigate the file tree with the keyboard, similar to NERDTree. All you can do right now is arrow up and down, after toggling over. I've heard its like Emacs -- and now I know what people are talking about!
  - vowelless 11y ago
    I haven't looked at Atom yet, but can it parse the vimrc file to load the right settings?
    - cnp 11y ago
      Nope. Most of the code editor settings are there in the main config to be tweaked, and new packages can be installed right inside the preferences / command line. If you have a lot of style settings in your vimrc, the ability to use an actual stylesheet (when combined with the native chromium dev tools) make tweaking the look and feel absolutely trivial.
    - bluepill 11y ago
      Atom's vim mode is a joke. No ex mode, you need another plugin for that ... which is kind of clunky.
    - jjawssd 11y ago
      You have to manually point and click. It's a regression. But OMG clicking is SO EASY /sarcasm
- bluepill 11y ago
  None. Atom's installer is a huge download, and the editor is much slower ... It also consumes much more memory and written in coffeescript. Takes a long time to start up ... just a few things on the top of my head. It's a great initiative though so that's already a good point.
  - cnp 11y ago
    I just timed it and it was less than 5 seconds. I would suggest giving 1.0 a spin before you judge.
    - rhodysurf 11y ago
      Thats still a long time for a text editor though. Sublime, Vim, gedit, etc are all instantaneous.
    - bluepill 11y ago
      On this MacBook Pro (MacBookPro12,1) i7(3,1GHz) 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD ... it takes less that 5 seconds which is way to long for me. If that's ok for you no worries, but you can't say it isn't slow.
  - outworlder 11y ago
    My Emacs with all customizations takes longer than Atom does to startup. Which, for Emacs, is not an issue at all. Leave the server running and all clients will open instantly whenever I ask.
- grayrest 11y ago
  Background processes don't block the main thread, the extension points are better thought out and the development experience in working on extensions is a LOT better, js/coffee are better languages than vimL, and display is not limited to a fixed grid of text cells. The downsides are that it's comparatively slow. The vim keybinding emulation isn't great but I can now use it without getting frustrated using ^[ to get back to normal mode. I still use Vim for most things but I do Clojure/Clojurescript in Emacs evil-mode, and Typescript in Atom.
  - tgram 11y ago
    You should check out Neovim. The native scripting language is Lua, and it's a fork of the vim codebase so still fast and commands all work identically. It's still early, but I am monitoring (and supporting) the project closely.
    - quarterto 11y ago
      Also, one of Neovim's banner features is asynchronous job control, which greyrest complained about.
      - tshannon 11y ago
        I can't wait until we don't have to run it in a terminal though.
- jjawssd 11y ago
  It offers a point and click interface for people that can't be fucked to learn how to set up a .vimrc

by cnp 11y ago

jonahx 11y ago

What are the main advantages that atom gives you over native vim?

cnp 11y ago
From the perspective of a web app developer it's just so modern. The language of the interface takes all of the (admittedly subjective) best-practice lessons that the web has taught us over the years and embeds them directly in, and then lets you hack them apart however you wish -- simply. Code editing works without a thousand inconsistencies, and then you have things like embedding your terminal directly with ease (its trivial to create a tmux like environment), etc. The limitations feel very few, and as someone who spent a LOT of time getting my Vim environment exactly as I wanted it, switching over to Atom was a breeze as I went through my .vimrc trying to match functionality; most of it was already there. One thing I wish they would implement (and I'm sure it will come with time) is the ability to fully navigate the file tree with the keyboard, similar to NERDTree. All you can do right now is arrow up and down, after toggling over. I've heard its like Emacs -- and now I know what people are talking about!
- vowelless 11y ago
  I haven't looked at Atom yet, but can it parse the vimrc file to load the right settings?
  - cnp 11y ago
    Nope. Most of the code editor settings are there in the main config to be tweaked, and new packages can be installed right inside the preferences / command line. If you have a lot of style settings in your vimrc, the ability to use an actual stylesheet (when combined with the native chromium dev tools) make tweaking the look and feel absolutely trivial.
  - bluepill 11y ago
    Atom's vim mode is a joke. No ex mode, you need another plugin for that ... which is kind of clunky.
  - jjawssd 11y ago
    You have to manually point and click. It's a regression. But OMG clicking is SO EASY /sarcasm
bluepill 11y ago
None. Atom's installer is a huge download, and the editor is much slower ... It also consumes much more memory and written in coffeescript. Takes a long time to start up ... just a few things on the top of my head. It's a great initiative though so that's already a good point.
- cnp 11y ago
  I just timed it and it was less than 5 seconds. I would suggest giving 1.0 a spin before you judge.
  - rhodysurf 11y ago
    Thats still a long time for a text editor though. Sublime, Vim, gedit, etc are all instantaneous.
  - bluepill 11y ago
    On this MacBook Pro (MacBookPro12,1) i7(3,1GHz) 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD ... it takes less that 5 seconds which is way to long for me. If that's ok for you no worries, but you can't say it isn't slow.
- outworlder 11y ago
  My Emacs with all customizations takes longer than Atom does to startup. Which, for Emacs, is not an issue at all. Leave the server running and all clients will open instantly whenever I ask.
grayrest 11y ago
Background processes don't block the main thread, the extension points are better thought out and the development experience in working on extensions is a LOT better, js/coffee are better languages than vimL, and display is not limited to a fixed grid of text cells. The downsides are that it's comparatively slow. The vim keybinding emulation isn't great but I can now use it without getting frustrated using ^[ to get back to normal mode. I still use Vim for most things but I do Clojure/Clojurescript in Emacs evil-mode, and Typescript in Atom.
- tgram 11y ago
  You should check out Neovim. The native scripting language is Lua, and it's a fork of the vim codebase so still fast and commands all work identically. It's still early, but I am monitoring (and supporting) the project closely.
  - quarterto 11y ago
    Also, one of Neovim's banner features is asynchronous job control, which greyrest complained about.
    - tshannon 11y ago
      I can't wait until we don't have to run it in a terminal though.
jjawssd 11y ago
It offers a point and click interface for people that can't be fucked to learn how to set up a .vimrc