from the just-what-we-needed,-another-editor dept.
Looks like Github has finally did an official release of that editor we all love to hate and generally be uncertain of. Except for me of course. I use vim. No one ever questions vim right? From the announcement:
Today we're proud to announce Atom 1.0. It's amazing to think Atom has only been out and available to the public for a little over a year. A lot has happened since then. Atom has been downloaded 1.3 million times, and serves 350,000 monthly active users. The community has created 660 themes, and 2,090 packages including can't-live-without packages that have their own mini communities like the linter, autocomplete-plus, and minimap.
In the 155 releases since launch, the editor has improved immensely in performance, stability, feature-set, and modularity. The editor is faster in scrolling, typing, and start-up time. Atom now has a Windows installer, Linux packages, and several heavily requested features have been added like pane resizing and multi-folder projects.
Editor: Are there any Atom users amongst our community - what makes it your editor of choice?
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @02:29AM
SN turns into an advertisement platform?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 29 2015, @02:52AM
Makes me wonder what so special about this editor? It's 32-bit compilable? ;-)
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday June 29 2015, @12:06PM
It is a little kid that wants to grow up to be emacs some day.
I wandered around the site and the packages all have a severe emacs inferiority complex.
So theres atomatigit which is wanna be magit
Theres linter which is a wanna be flycheck
Theres paredit which is a microscopic subset of emacs paredit. Seriously, if you're only going to implement four keystrokes don't call yourself a clone. You want to have a fun time arguing with emacs people, start debating paredit mode vs smartparens mode.
Theres .... nothing at all which is like cider on emacs. Whoops.
theres about ten packages which want to be tramp mode on emacs, none of them come close but if all worked together they'd probably be nearly as good, well, maybe. Likewise theres about 20 packages which want to grow up to be multi-term on emacs. Ditto projectile, there's 20 packages that want to grow up to be emacs projectile. It'll be interesting to watch them grow, of course I plan to use projectile today.
rainbow-selection appears to want to grow up to be the emacs rainbow-xyz packages, contrary to popular opinion this has nothing to do with my little pony. I know the rainbow modes are "love it or hate it", but I sometimes like it as sort of a colored flycheck mode sorta kinda.
snippets appears to want to grow up to be the emacs yasnippet system.
The big problem I see is that if I invest a huge amount of time and effort I could eventually replicate some of my development environment but in a greatly inferior manner and honestly I can't see any upside at all, none at all. I mean, guys, gimmie something? anything? Its kind of like if I invested a zillion hours and dollars I might eventually get myself up to rock star level of "Winger" but why not save all the effort and money and just listen to a "Metallica" album I already have?
There is nothing bad about being a toy or a want to be experiment. I think the "make a lisp" project is awesome fun learning experience. I just wouldn't use it in production or to actually do anything, thats all. This is some dude's "make a emacs" project. Awesome man, keep on coding. Personally, writing editors doesn't float my boat but obviously it floats his, so have fun. I don't think its likely to replace emacs any time soon, of course.
One problem is you can replace my emacs of 1990 in 2015, but by the time you catch up to emacs of 2015, I'll be using emacs of 2020. I mean, its not like magit is dead, for example, in fact there's a "big release party" on Wednesday.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 29 2015, @12:53PM
Perhaps there's some CV boosting, investor entrapment, IPO seduction at work here? or just NIH ego boost? ;)
Makes one wonder why Atom exists..
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday June 29 2015, @04:07PM
Because it can. Thats why.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Monday June 29 2015, @03:01AM
I submitted the story. If you bothered to check out any of my stuff you'd see that I'm just about the least friendly person towards advertising that you'll ever see.
So no. SN isn't an advertising platform.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Monday June 29 2015, @03:04AM
I will say however that I'm disappointed in the editor's decision to remove my note about using vim that was meant to make it clear that this was me posting a news story objectively and not a fan of the editor. Look at the original submission.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 29 2015, @03:10AM
I went ahead and put your bait back in the summary since the first bit was already there. Either janrinok or LaminatorX took the rest out.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Monday June 29 2015, @03:22AM
If people take it as bait then we'll know who to not listen to next time. It's a win/win!
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @04:51AM
Heh heh.... vim mention takes us on the slippery slope to VI versus EMACS :)
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday June 29 2015, @03:25AM
I took it out because your usage of vim has absolutely nothing to do with Github releasing this editor.
There, you made the very same point without mentioning vim - was that so difficult?
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Monday June 29 2015, @03:42AM
You make a fair point sir. But I hate Atom in so many different ways on so many different levels from fundamental design to implementation. From the pandering web 2.0 bullshit and resource usage comparable to the heaviest memory leak firefox has ever seen with speed to match. It was rather hard for me to make it clear that I'm not merely "not a fan of the editor" but someone so unfavorable of it that I felt it would be wrong to do anything but name drop my own preferred editor. Sure, it's biased. But in a way that shows I'm still willing to submit it as a story for those who are interested. I thought we weren't going to treat this like a slashdot bureaucracy. :(
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday June 29 2015, @04:01AM
I hope that is not what you think happened here. The vim comment was partially bait - but there is a good question posed about a doubtful editor that could easily be lost in a bun fight regarding vim, emacs or whatever other editor people favour. I, too, wonder about the attraction of this editor, so much so that I have downloaded it and I am trying to see which niche it supposedly fills. I have not yet found anything that suggests why it should have been written, yet a lot of people have downloaded it. Of course, download figures do not necessarily correspond with usage - after all I have downloaded it but I doubt it will stay on my hard drive for more than a few days.
Yet, to me, that sentence sums it up rather more effectively than a quip about vim. Nevertheless, you have been around long enough - since the beginning in fact - to know that we value all submissions. But the weekend is not the place for encouraging the ACs to start a bun fight over a question of which editor is king - although I fear that this exchange between us might have that very effect. Keep submitting, and I will do my best to keep posting.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Pino P on Monday June 29 2015, @03:07AM
There are too many things in computing called Atom. There are the Atom syndication format [wikipedia.org], the Atom CPU [wikipedia.org], and now this. Is the computer industry really out of names?
(Score: 5, Funny) by TheRaven on Monday June 29 2015, @08:44AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday June 29 2015, @09:29PM
XKCD had the right idea. Use a bunch of letters no one was using, and that don't stand for anything. Instant uniqueness!
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday June 29 2015, @09:22AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday June 29 2015, @01:23PM
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday June 29 2015, @09:22PM
(NOT (ARE (FORGETTING (YOU (FAMOUS (ATOM))))))?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Monday June 29 2015, @03:21AM
Besides, I'm tired.
To be oneself, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @03:22AM
Text, not video please.
What makes atom more suitable for many projects and circumstances compared with vi, emacs, or Eclipse. Why it was developed in the first place. Examples of how it makes a developer dramatically more productive compared with his or her current editor. etc
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @05:23AM
It was only written because people stupid enough to buy Macs can't be arsed to learn vi(m).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @08:38AM
Well, if they don't want to learn vim, they still could have used Emacs, couldn't they?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @07:47AM
If they only make their manifesto in video it already tells you everything you need to know: it's for hipsters and douchebags...
And lo and behold: it's mac only, so QED.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @08:35AM
You say GitHub released/announced the editor? I thought GitHub only hosted the repositories, and releasing/announcing was the job of whoever maintained the project?
Anyway, to the question at the end of the summary: I didn't even know that there was an editor named Atom.
(Score: 5, Informative) by TheRaven on Monday June 29 2015, @08:46AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by kadal on Monday June 29 2015, @07:38PM
Parent is true. From TFA
What a waste of time and effort.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday June 29 2015, @10:25PM
Atom is just an inferior iteration of Emacs.
That's how I feel, anyway. Replace Emacs Lisp with Javascript, take away all of the existing packages for Emacs, and add whopping time and memory inefficiencies, you get Atom.
I'd rather all that manpower go toward making Emacs better, but NIH is no fun, we have to reinvent all the things in Node.js now.
(Same thing about Neovim, by the way. All customizable editors gradually approach Emacs, because Emacs got the fundamental model right.)
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by dr_barnowl on Tuesday June 30 2015, @09:10AM
I like the idea - I just don't like it's lack of maturity.
My daily driver editor at the moment is Komodo Edit, because it has a dark theme, a passable Vim keybinding, and it makes a lot of the things you use rarely in Vim but are kinda powerful a bit easier by having GUI dialogs that walk you through them.
Atom is pretty much the same idea - a powerful editor based on a browser platform, only it's Chromium instead of Xulrunner. It's just not as mature as Komodo Edit.
What I *really* want to see from the Neovim project is a metamodel of the Vim state machine, that can generate a shell of it in JavaScript or whatever. Then you could create an editor like this that actually behaved 100% like Vim but could be hooked and e.g. have those dialogs to generate commands like "for this region of the buffer, spew it out to STDOUT through this command and replace it with what emerges from the command".
So : I think Atom is on the right path. It looks like it's innards are more accessible to tinkering than Vim and Emacs, because you don't have to learn Vimscript or Lisp to tinker with them - most of the people using it will already know JavaScript. It looks like making it open and tinkerable has been better thought out than Komodo Edit.
What it really needs is that *real* vim state machine in it.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday June 29 2015, @11:15AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Monday June 29 2015, @12:03PM
I tried it a few weeks ago, hated it. Really didn't like the interface or layouts.
I'll be sticking with Notepad++.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday June 29 2015, @09:34PM
It seems it was intended so that the developer is in complete control of the editor.
Evidently it failed in your case. Maybe complete control doesn't make reconfiguring it easy enough. Or maybe control isn't complete enough yet.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @04:42AM
:q!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @04:14PM
Sorry, you forgot to leave insert mode first.