
Early Thoughts on Atom - devonbarrett
http://dylanfoundry.org/2014/02/28/early-thoughts-on-atom/
======
davexunit
The glaring ethical issue remains that the core of Atom is nonfree. From what
I've read, the source code will be viewable but _not_ redistributable and the
public can submit pull requests. If this is true, it means that GitHub is
intending to trick users into providing gratis labor for their product without
retention of copyright for their contribution.

~~~
maxerickson
If they are clear up front then it isn't really a trick.

If they want to distribute the contributions, they will have to make it clear
up front.

~~~
skywhopper
I think calling it "hackable" is a _little_ bit of a fudge on Github's part,
but from what I can see of Atom, it's open enough that I'm okay with their
characterization. Certainly it's more open and hackable than github.com
itself.

~~~
maxerickson
I would go in the other direction and say that 'hackable' is so fuzzy that it
doesn't mean anything.

"I hacked this wood and made a spoon."

"I hacked my breakfast."

I do get that there was at some time a group of people where it had a clearer
meaning.

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sdegutis
My real gripe with using web rendering isn't that it doesn't look native (the
"native look" changes every year, so who cares if we deviate)... no, it's that
it's slow and sluggish and resource-hungry. I honestly don't feel comfortable
running Atom on my laptop.

~~~
ollyculverhouse
Does that mean that you haven't yet tried Atom on your laptop? I haven't
however haven't heard complaints about performance...

~~~
lunixbochs
It's definitely slower than Sublime Text 3, but not by much _and_ it's a
pretty high bar.

~~~
ChristianBundy
How much slower? Slower doing what?

It _feels_ snappier to me at everything except for opening large files, but
it's a beta – it's to be expected.

~~~
lunixbochs
The framerate is visibly slower on drag to select. Opening a window takes
forever.

The two major improvements for me are package management, and actual support
for making GUIs.

------
sergiotapia
I love this editor! Instantly switched to it - now to wait for some Gophers to
create some neat packages for Go.

This editor is so easy to extend that it took me three hours to learn how to
tweak the UI from scratch (and I have NO Nodejs experience - dependencies are
easy to install).

[https://github.com/sergiotapia/atom-
darcula](https://github.com/sergiotapia/atom-darcula)

Everything is tweakable using CSS and that's fantastic. It's super fast as
well, no difference whatever between this and Sublime Text 3 for me. Love it
and will gladly buy it once it leaves Beta.

------
zbruhnke
RE: Sending info to google.

When I got my invite to Atom it definitely mentioned that during the beta
period it was automatically sending feedback and that it was a feature that
could be disabled.

So far Atom is not life changing for me but I do find it very useful and
extensible, possibly the most interesting part is that I can already use it
switching from Sublime Text 3 with almost zero issues because its so similar
in feel.

I think its got a great chance to be a wonderful editor and I'm rooting for
Atom (and Github) on this one, but there is still a long way to go before
giving everyone a compelling reason to switch (especially those coming from
vim, etc.

~~~
rjzzleep
every chromium embedded also uses the google dns fyi. having built a chromium
embedded app it was puzzling to me that there's no way to disable that(or
maybe there is and i haven't found it). i don't know if that's the case here
though(since it's blocked in my firewall).

in fact most of the so called privacy aware chromium builds also leak the dns
information to google.

This is not deliberate practice, it's usually hidden somewhere in the code,
and unless your firewall prompts you you might not even ever notice.

------
llamataboot
Sorry for the grovel, but still looking for an atom invite. Would like to try
it out for myself, and of course I'm impatient.

~~~
ChristianBundy
Email me at me@christianbundy.com. :)

~~~
ChristianBundy
After receiving 80+ emails, I'd like everyone to know that I don't have any
more invitations. Check out ##atom-invitations on irc.freenode.net!

------
purephase
It's definitely slick. While comparisons with ST are obvious, I find it a
touch more polished. One example is that the "find all" results page is
automatically updated whenever you modify the results. So, if you replacing a
bunch of text, the results are updated in real-time each time the files are
saved.

Two gripes that I have so far are:

\- The actual integration with GH does not work for me. E.g. Git blame does
nothing. I haven't had a chance to troubleshoot yet.

\- I can't open files (or even see them) if they're in .gitignore. I can't
figure out how to turn this off.

All in all though, I like it so far. I'm excited that the community seems to
have hopped on it so quickly with packages so it will be interesting to see
where it goes.

~~~
ChristianBundy
Settings (Cmd+,) -> Tree View -> Hide Ignored Names

------
legohead
> Is It Worth All of the Hype? Who really cares?

well, me.. that's why I'm reading your blog

~~~
derefr
It's a silly question to _want_ the answer to, though. You can tell someone
everything they need to know to judge something on its merits, and they'll
still ask whether it's "overhyped" or "underhyped", or, I suppose, "just the
right amount of hyped."

Hype fluctuates over time and between different venues (e.g. right now Atom is
being "hyped" on HN, but next month it might be the talk of /r/programming,
etc.) Asking whether something is worth _the_ hype requires the author to be
aware of exactly the level of hype the reader has experienced, which requires,
basically, being that individual reader.

------
look_lookatme
Does Atom have an emacs keybinding mode?

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gboone42
The git integration could be a lot better but I like the green or amber
hairlines next to the line number that give you a real-time git diff against
HEAD. Cool feature. It is a bit slow, especially when opening files, I've
noticed.

------
jimhart3000
Anyone know how quickly they're adding people to the beta at this point?
Should I hold my breath on the invite I requested, or should I stop reading
these articles that are making me increasingly jealous? :)

~~~
canthonytucci
put your email in your profile :) or just email me. I have one left.

~~~
jimhart3000
I don't see your email, but I added to mine. (gmail, jimhart3000). :)

~~~
canthonytucci
All set. Sorry, I thought because I had entered one it would just show up.
Anyway, Enjoy.

------
jareds
How long is it taking to get an invite through the normal github signup? I'd
like to try this out to see if it is accessible with screen reading software
although the answer is probably not really.

------
bovermyer
Great read, thanks for this. I haven't had a chance to play with Atom yet, and
this kind of article keeps me in the loop.

