
Atom - hswolff
http://atom.io/
======
tzs
From "The Zen of Programming":

\------

Hearing a disturbance, the master programmer went into the novice's cubicle.

"Curse these personal computers!" cried the novice in anger, "To make them do
anything I must use three or even four editing programs. Sometimes I get so
confused that I erase entire files. This is truly intolerable!"

The master programmer stared at the novice. "And what would you do to remedy
this state of affairs?" he asked.

The novice thought for a moment. "I will design a new editing program," he
said, "a program that will replace all these others."

Suddenly the master struck the novice on the side of his head. It was not a
heavy blow, but the novice was nonetheless surprised. "What did you do that
for?" exclaimed the novice.

"I have no wish to learn another editing program," said the master.

And suddenly the novice was enlightened.

~~~
gavinpc
> Sometimes I get so confused that I erase entire files

OT, but just this week my wife did something that really got me thinking about
how far computers haven't come in terms of usability.

I heard her say "O crap" from behind her macbook, and out of habit I came to
assist.

For some reason unknown to both of us, she had pasted the text of an email
into a document called "thesis.docx", and then saved it.

The text was completely unrelated to "thesis.docx", which of course was not
backed up.

Now, I love my wife deeply. And she is no fool. On the contrary, she is a
graduate student.

Moreover, I completely understand how something like this can happen. We have
two small children, and it was the end of the day. It is just too much to
expect of the human mind that one should not say something one doesn't mean.

I felt guilty on behalf of my profession that this was the best we had to
offer. Microsoft word on a macbook, and your penultimate version of a file is
not backed up. It truly is intolerable.

So, while I have had some of my greatest highs using emacs macros, I somehow
feel that the brilliant tooling made by developers for developers never quite
percolates into userland.

~~~
fhars
VMS file versions solved that problem in the late 70ies. We are not learning
anything from out history as a profession.

~~~
hoggle
I'm a loyal unix guy but as a millenial without much actual hands-on
experience with VMS I always love to hear anecdotes like that :) The first
time I read about it was in Clifford Stoll's Cuckoo's Egg where it seemed as
if there was constant competition between UNIX/VMS folks over which was the
more sophisticated/elegant operating system - mostly good hearted competition
of a more civilized age of course ;) I vividly remember the one encounter I
had with it's weird shell where I had to re-configure an application running
on an Alpha machine which had a consecutive uptime of something like 12
years...

One of humanity's biggest enemies to progress are "Not invented here" and the
cult of youth. It's often better to start with a blank slate ("being
ignorant") because amongst other things like simply having a different
perspective (worth 100 IQ points ~Alan Key) it helps with actually starting to
build something. Eventually though we should still be aware of what we as a
collective have learned already.

To be fair I think Github folks should know their history so this project
might be one of the exceptions - looking forward to it! <3

~~~
dfc
How do you differentiate "the cult of youth" from "it is better to start from
a blank slate"?

Side note: Neither of the two issues you mentioned are "one of humanity's
biggest enemies to progress."

~~~
hoggle
I guess it boils down to respect - for both sides, young and old. Thanks for
the compiler error ;)

------
crazygringo
I was all ready to be skeptical and everything... but this could actually be
amazing.

I currently use Chocolat for code editing, which is beautifully elegant and I
love it, but there are 25 little tiny things that I _really_ wish I could fix.
I file issues, but the developers rightly have their own priorities. It's
closed-source, but even if it were open source, I'm not about to learn how to
use XCode and Objective C and figure out how to compile and whatnot.

But if Atom is ultimately just a big collection of straight-up node.js files,
and anyone can go in at any time to change a line here or there -- and it's in
_JavaScript_ , so it couldn't be easier for programmers in general -- and
there's no compilation step or anything -- then it's almost a fundamental
paradigm shift for what desktop software could be.

It already makes me dream of a word processor I could hack like that, or a
music player. Just by opening up a text editor. It's an inspiring thought.

~~~
adamors
> and there's no compilation step or anything -- then it's almost a
> fundamental paradigm shift for what desktop software could be. > It already
> makes me dream of a word processor I could hack like that, or a music
> player. Just by opening up a text editor. It's an inspiring thought.

Not to rain on your parade or anything, but you can already do this with
Emacs, not to mention that Emacs is free, open source software. Atom is not
only not open source but their readme says it won't even be free after the
beta.

Emacs has been around for almost 40 years, and because it's FOSS it will be
around for at least another 40. Editors like Atom come and go.

~~~
crazygringo
True, but it's a question of accessibility.

Far more people can program in JavaScript than Lisp, and far more people use
GUI desktop software that follows traditional GUI user-interface paradigms,
than do things inside their terminal. (Edit: or terminal-style
buffers/frames.)

So that's why my statement was limited to what " _desktop_ software" could be.
:) I mean, I use LibreOffice, which is FOSS, but I am never going to touch its
code in a million years. The cost-to-benefit ratio is too high. But Atom makes
doing that sound almost trivial. That's the paradigm shift.

~~~
adamors
Emacs is GUI desktop software. Few people use it in a terminal.

Also, people didn't born knowing Javascript. They learnt it. And one could
argue that Lisp is just as easy to learn, if not easier.

~~~
pete_aykroyd
I mostly agree with that although I think it's also kind of irrelevant in a
practical sense because many programmers already have to know javascript for
their work so you get a lot more people who can contribute right away.

Aside from that -- lisp or javascript as the extension language, I'd love to
see a brand-new extensible editor like emacs just to have a shot at changing
terminology and some of the APIs. Emacs terminology is a little off-putting
because it was invented before the GUIs were widely adopted so it doesn't map
that well. I also find some of the APIs a bit weird, but that could just be
me.

~~~
adamors
It's true that a lot of people work with Javascript, but honestly I wouldn't
say that they can contribute to anything right away. A lot of these people
don't know more than

    
    
      $('#element').hide();
    

In fact, I would wager that there are more potential contributors to Emacs
than there are to Atom.

~~~
scottrblock
But if someone just wants to customize their text editor,
$('#element').hide();, or something not orders of magnitude more complex,
would actually be useful.

------
davexunit
> A hackable text editor for the 21st century

I'll fix: A proprietary (unhackable) text editor that only runs on OS X.

I imagine that web developers will drool over this.

~~~
pbiggar
Where are you getting this from? I can see all the source at
[https://github.com/atom](https://github.com/atom). Every repo I checked has
the MIT license.

~~~
sheetjs
Can you build a fully functional version of Atom just from those repos?

To compare, Apple releases source code for some components, but they
definitely don't distribute "/System/Library/Extensions/Dont Steal Mac OS
X.kext".

~~~
Goopplesoft
I thought that file was a joke until I checked it and it actually exists. For
those (like me) wondering what it does:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architectur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architecture#Dont_Steal_Mac_OS_X.kext)

~~~
xentronium
Oh my, "DSMOS has arrived" line (and subsequent freeze) is gonna haunt me for
years.

------
lhnz
There's real opportunity here for Github and I hope they take it.

Why is the basic workflow of the modern-day programmer split over multiple
tools and over multiple systems?

Aspects of Github could be modularised and added to the editor while still
keeping the underlying tool simple and this could change our user experience
for the better.

Imagine flipping through your pull requests in the text editor and then seeing
your friends comments and code reviews appear on top.

Imagine an issue being created on Github and the file(s) referenced instantly
glowing.

This opens doors to thinking about the engineering workflow in a new holistic
manner.

~~~
theboywho
Why is seeing your friends comments and code reviews in the text editor any
better than seeing them in the browser? Are we becoming this lazy? or this
busy?

~~~
rjzzleep
i see people saying less context switches. but isn't this the exact opposite?
it's way more context switches?

isn't this the same as having our mails popup up notifications every so often
or your gmail aggregating twitter and Facebook, because people thought it
would make them more productive

~~~
chimeracoder
Exactly - making context switches cheaper isn't very helpful if you're doing
so at the expense of making context switches more frequent[0].

[0] and easier to do "by accident"

~~~
calinet6
This is a silly argument. You're all assuming this type of integration will be
have the UI quality of your dishwasher.

Of course context switches and irrelevant information will be distracting _if
done poorly._ This is a UX challenge—not a reason to abandon the idea.

Having the focus you need during concentrated tasks such as coding, while also
enabling the integration of other tasks—such as high-level team context
awareness and collaboration—is the key design challenge. Done well, it would
be a killer app.

Done poorly, as with anything, it will fail miserably.

Programmers have a poor reputation for UI design prowess, and programmers
tools are sadly usually made by programmers, and thus carry the same
reputation. Very few amalgam programmer/designers exist to bridge the gap of
motivation and ability to design a better toolset. But they do exist.

Let's be optimistic, shall we?

------
atmosx
The more I see new editors floating around, the more I'm sticking to VIm. I am
getting old, or it's a just a survival instinct.

On the other hand, the more the better, but we have already too many editors
around.

~~~
izolate
I've sworn by SublimeText until now. And Atom is getting released during a
time when I'm increasingly learning to love console-only computing. I envision
a day when I can travel the world with a cheap laptop/chromebook and do all my
coding remotely via SSH.. and Vim is very much at the core of that dream.

Now I just have to master it.

~~~
adamors
Try using the Vim plugin (Vintage or the newer one, Vintageous) with Sublime.
That way, you can gradually get used to modal editing.

I worked like that for 8-10 months then made the switch to Vim. I've gotten so
used to modal editing (not to mention window management etc.) by then, that I
didn't even skip a beat.

~~~
christiangenco
This was my strategy when I switched from TextMate to Sublime a few years ago,
the plan being to make the full switch to vim in a few months.

Sublime never gave me a reason to go all the way, though :p

~~~
adamors
I was like that while using ST2. But then better plugins started appearing for
ST3 (the aforementioned Vintageous being one of them) so I switched to ST3.

But it crashed constantly; also, by that time the Vim emulation was really
hurting me. The dot command was anemic, tabs were interfering with splits etc.

All in all, Vim was calling me, haha.

------
natural219
I am very excited about this, I love the Github team and this looks like a
great tool.

My only question is -- why should I switch to this from Sublime Text? Are
there specific use cases it handles better out of the box, or is it more of a
modular base that will be expected to grow and outfeature ST2/3's seasoned
plugin economy? I am very happy with Sublime Text now, but I would be willing
to switch if either it gained a lot of traction, or could do stuff that I
couldn't do with Sublime.

~~~
kansface
In practice, the ST3 API is extremely limiting and poorly implemented. The
docs are both lacking and dated (read incorrect). It is trivial to crash ST3
by making the incorrect sequence of correct API calls. It is also common to
resort to polling the editor to make up for other deficiencies. The API also
only allows for extremely limited UI choices forcing highly unintuitive
interfaces on end users. The ST3 runtime also features such gems as not
shipping the ssl module on linux (while ST2 stripped out even more stuff).

I also expect NPM to be much better in practice than the sublime package
manager which frequently ships broken code. JS is a better choice than python
for async code which will make writing plugins easier.

Furthermore, ST is 3 people who largely ignore all feedback from the community
regarding bugs and features. It won't be hard to out compete ST in the long
run.

~~~
wbond
I don't know if I'd call it extremely limiting… there are some places I'd like
to see more accessibility. However, I've built some pretty extensive stuff
with it.

I would love to see ssl compiled in - I believe the reason Jon currently
doesn't is that it would require building on at least 6 different machines to
cover 0.9.8 and 1.0.0 (libssl.so.10 and libssl.so.1.0.0) for x86/x64 plus a
customized version of ssl.py.

~~~
ricardobeat
where on earth would a professional software developer find SIX different
machines to run builds on??

------
8ig8
Metrics is an interesting package. It reports usage stats to Google Analytics,
referenced by a hash of the machine's MAC address:

[http://atom.io/packages/metrics](http://atom.io/packages/metrics)

~~~
Touche
Good catch. I really shouldn't have any more of a problem with a desktop app
tracking me than I do a web app but for some reason I do. I guess because I
can always use Disconnect in the browser and I can't with Atom. I guess the
fact that it is open about it is a positive thing, though.

~~~
spicyj
It sounds like you can disable Metrics in the settings.

~~~
8ig8
Some apps ask on install if you agree to share usage data. I can't say how
Atom handles it, but it sounds like you're in unless you modify the config.

BTW, I'm less concerned and more just surprised to see Google Analytics used
like this. I guess it really is the blurring of the lines between desktop and
browser-based apps.

Maybe this GA usage is not unique, but it's new to me.

~~~
spicyj
> it sounds like you're in unless you modify the config.

You are, though it's mentioned on the very first screen that pops up when you
open the app:
[https://github.com/atom/welcome/blob/master/lib/welcome.md](https://github.com/atom/welcome/blob/master/lib/welcome.md)

~~~
8ig8
I think that's fair for a beta app where they really need the data to tighten
things up. It would be nice if metrics became opt-in post-beta, though.

------
skennedy
_To help us improve the editor, Atom sends usage information to Google
Analytics. See [atom
/metrics]([https://github.com/atom/metrics](https://github.com/atom/metrics))
for details._

More data going to Google without opting in first? Bummer.

~~~
victorhooi
See, I never get the tinfoil hat crowd.

Are any of us so self-important, that we think our usage stats for a text
editor are some kind of top-secret data?

I mean, come on - it's a text editor - I edit my scratchpad and my coding
projects on it.

If any of the stuff I had was _that_ top-secret, I'd be doing it in a digital
clean-room, with an airgap. And I'd actually have top-secret clearance.

How many of us here actually _have_ top secret clearance? I'd bet very
few...lol. And I doubt they'd be posting here, or admit it.

My list of text files I have open is quite frankly, is not _that_ interesting.
I don't really care if Google wants to mine it. Or if Github finds out I edit
a document called "Lolcat images" fifteen times a day. I seriously doubt any
Githubber is going to be sitting there, pouring through logs looking for
salacious information about the documents I edit...

~~~
yeukhon
I just don't understand why people downvote you. It's quite stupid to downvote
someone who is merely pointing out facts.

Google analytic is everywhere. If you don't want Github to track you, then
don't use it. So if people fear Google, then should Github do the tracking on
its own? Then all the sudden Github is not evil anymore. But look: github has
your repository, your code. If you have a private repo, github still owns the
source code in their data store. So in the end, privacy on Github? Minimal.

And you know what? Github itself has been using Google analytic for years. And
now we are complaining about Google collecting data?

If you care about privacy, you shouldn't even be using Github. If you care
about your privacy, you should never give up your true IP, your true identity
on the Internet.

~~~
Dewie
So it's either all or nothing? It's possible to concede some privacy in some
aspects of work/life while trying to retain it in another. Even though you
have a Github account doesn't mean that all your code is on Github. You might
not have remotely close to all the work you do in an editor on Github, at
least if you're the kind of person who's more comfortable in your favorite
editor than in a word-processor. People have been power users of editors for
decades without needing the cloud or a remote, third party service in order to
use them.

~~~
yeukhon
I was addressing the reaction. Github has been using GA for years and AFAIK
there is no way to opt out via Github account settings. Atom is not something
you use on Github; it's a desktop application. If you install a browser, you
have the option to NOT send data to the browser vendor, but most people choose
to use the default settings. I don't see why we have to think auto opt-in is
bad or a bummer. Github even makes it explicit that you can disable GA (or
whatever metric software they are using in Atom) in Atom and atom's opt out
option is 100x better than Google Plus integration.

------
teraflop
No mention of supported platforms, but the documentation refers to keyboard
shortcuts like "cmd-shift-P". This isn't Mac-only, is it?

~~~
Touche
No, just normal developer monoculturalism. Same as showing only Mac
screenshots that is common, or showing your website inside a Macbook, etc.

~~~
protomyth
The most common cause of people showing websites inside a Macbook is that the
graphic designer is using a Mac and Apple provides some pretty nice high
resolution tiffs of all its products.

------
Yahivin
I'm really sad to see that they totally blew it.

The performance of a webapp with the accessibility of a desktop app. Not to
mention that it's closed source. This is a tremendous step backwards.

Looking at the implementation of the open sourced packages is discouraging as
well. It looks like they are using a Backbone inspired jQuery infested
nightmare of clientside MVC.

Maybe my bitterness comes from the fact that I've already been down that road
and it leads to a bad place.

Here's an editor that has deep Github integration, runs in the browser, and
self hosts: [http://www.danielx.net/editor](http://www.danielx.net/editor)

Maybe I just live too far in the future.

~~~
wololo_
I would wait until I actually try the product instead of calling quits. And
jQuery/Backbone is not an infested nightmare MVC. It's beautiful modular
javascript.

~~~
q3k
> beautiful

> javascript

Choose one.

------
hodgesmr
Apparently this was almost 6 years in the making.
[https://twitter.com/defunkt/status/438791340222971904](https://twitter.com/defunkt/status/438791340222971904)

~~~
bashcoder
Wow - I didn't even think node.js was that old. It will be interesting to see
its genesis. The first git commit for node appears to have been on Feb 16,
2009:

    
    
        commit 9d7895c567e8f38abfff35da1b6d6d6a0a06f9aa
        Author: Ryan <ry@tinyclouds.org>
        Date:   Mon Feb 16 01:02:00 2009 +0100
    
        add dependencies

~~~
highpixels
I'm guessing the Atom project was WAY different back then, and has probably
gone through several ground-up re-writes.

------
comice
"Our goal is a zero-compromise combination of hackability and usability"

I can see a huge compromise in hackability - its core is closed source.

------
fs111
Imagine Linus had used that sort of license for git. There would be no github,
no nothing. I don't get it. Take for free, build a million dollar business and
then make your own stuff closed...

~~~
scorpion032
Github folks are awesome mostly. I'd have imagined they would have made it a
liberal license if they could.

But they are the venture invested company now. Need to show returns 10 to 100x
the investment in a few years.

------
jamesmoss
I've just had play around with the beta. It looks like it's using a version of
CodeMirror 4 (as it has multiple ranges). Fairly fast but it doesn't match
Sublime Text just yet

Initial impressions: it's early days but this thing is just oozing for
customisation. The fact it's written in JS means writing packages is pretty
simple compared to Python for ST; we're going to see TONNES of addons for it.
I can already think of 2-3 I'd like to build.

The one thing that really excites me is how people getting into programming
could start off with a pretty basic editor and add and write packages as they
hone their skills, ending with something incredible powerful and tailored to
them. In fact I'd really love to see a super customised starter version for
children / beginners that acts as a learning aid as well as a text editor.

No doubt there's going to be haters in the vim / emacs / ST / _insert
favourite editor here_ camp but I really hope this works out for the Github
guys (and I have a feeling it will).

~~~
ytpete
Fwiw, Brackets ([http://brackets.io](http://brackets.io)) supports a similar
degree of customization since it's also written in JS/HTML, uses CodeMirror,
and offers lots of extensibility APIs. And it's MIT-licensed. Writing an
extension is as easy as this:
[https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Simple-"Hello-
World"-...](https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Simple-"Hello-
World"-extension)

~~~
spyder
Looks like in Atom you can just inspect elements of the editor and change them
right there. In Brackets if you want to change the font of the editor then you
have to write an extension or search for the CSS file of the editor which is
barely editable with Brackets because it's slows down with the somewhat bigger
CSS file, syntax highlight stops at the half of the file and searching was
extremely slow for me in this big file.

~~~
ytpete
You can open dev tools on either of these editors, but in both cases you're
not making permanent changes to the source that will stick around the next
time you launch the app.

Hacking the minified source isn't going to be fun no matter what, but if you
clone Brackets from git the original LESS files are very easy to modify. Or
you could just write a three line extension
([https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Customize-Your-
Code-F...](https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Customize-Your-Code-Font))
to adjust the CSS without modifying the core at all. That flexibility is the
advantage of building on the web tech stack (an advantage shared by Brackets,
Light Table, and Atom alike).

------
midas007
Turns out it's going to be payware, closed-source only while the rest of their
community gets to build and support it. [http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-
closed-source/82/9](http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/9)

But who's going to buy an editor that can't even open a 1 MiB file?
[http://discuss.atom.io/t/unable-to-open-files-more-
than-1mb/...](http://discuss.atom.io/t/unable-to-open-files-more-than-1mb/549)

Moreover, besides code posers and managers, who is going to throw away all
their knowledge and time configuring the editor they were using?

~~~
victorhooi
I was the one who reported the 1 Mb file issue...

I mean, it looks nice - but I'm a bit undecided about the whole proprietary
code project thing.

If it was open-source, we might actually be able to see if there was some
silly hardcoded limit in there - heck, we could even submit a patch and do a
pull request.

That, and the blatant ripping off of Sublime Text's interface.

It's bad enough they don't put the source itself on Github, but they aren't
even using Github's issue tracker for the project - or heck, any other issue
tracker as all.

So we're resorting to filing bug reports on a discussion forum... _shakes
head_.

Hopefully Github will come through, and sort things out.

I have no objections to paying for an editor - heck, Sublime is $70 - but with
this being closed source, and Brackets.io being more mature, and open-source,
not sure what the attraction is.

~~~
pritambaral
Brackets is focussed on frontend webdev only. You might wanna try LightTable.

------
mkhattab
A common thread or line of argument that I find when reading about new editors
is their out-of-the-box ease of use compared to Emacs and Vim. For example, a
quote from the Atom blog:

>Sublime and TextMate offer convenience but only limited extensibility. On the
other end of the spectrum, Emacs and Vim offer extreme flexibility, but they
aren't very approachable and can only be customized with special-purpose
scripting languages.

It doesn't seem like they (and many others) are denying that Emacs and Vim are
excellent editors. Why is ease of use such an important issue for text
editors? Emacs isn't terribly difficult to use, but if my livelihood and the
majority of my time is tied to what tools I use, then it's worth the
investment of time. I don't think I've met an Emacs user who has put in the
effort of learning Elisp and customizing Emacs to their liking ever deny the
benefits of learning it in the first place. Yes, it's a pain in the ass
initially. I quit Emacs twice before I became determined to stop whining and
spend quality time learning about tooling.

There is no doubt that Emacs has a steep learning curve and perhaps that's
because its developers have a higher expectation of its users. I would argue
that these expectations are easily matched by the capabilities of a competent
programmer.

~~~
redbad
There is no reason why "editing plain text" should be anything other than
immediately intuitive. Advanced, time-saving features, like multi-cursors or
regexp-based find-and-replace, can and should be progressively revealed
through normal use of the software.

This ludditic reverence for user-hostile text editors is one of the more
perplexing and frustrating things about our industry.

~~~
prasoon2211
> There is no reason why "editing plain text" should be anything other than
> immediately intuitive.

Are you suggesting that it isn't in Emacs?

Well, I remember using Emacs for the first time. It opened up and I started
editing the opened file. I saved the file from the file menu (which also
showed me the shortcut for saving the file the next time I have to save
something). Done. Now, this is exactly what a novice would do with notepad.

I found that many people 'demonize' Emacs just because they found it
_unfamiliar_. Sure it's unfamiliar. For about a day. Then, it's just as
familiar as any other user interface. I now used Emacs for, well, the shell,
the dired and wdired, multiple cursors, keyboard macros, project-wide grepping
and everything in between. Getting familiar with the editor was a great thing
to have done, however unfamiliar it was in the beginning.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can truly say that learning how to properly
use a text editor, especially one so powerful as Emacs, is _the one thing_ the
any programmer absolutely must do. So, even if the editor isn't "anything
other than immediately intuitive", it's still a good idea to wrap your head
around the non-intuitive things.

~~~
redbad

        > Are you suggesting that it isn't in Emacs?
    

Yes, of course. Emacs is obviously and inarguably _not_ immediately intuitive.

~~~
mkhattab
What is immediately intuitive about anything a programmer does on their
machine? I assume you have used a Unix shell, right? Was there anything
immediately intuitive about that? You've probably done some programming, so
was there anything immediately intuitive about your programming language?

~~~
ricardobeat
You press the key labeled 'X' in the keyboard, and an X shows up in the
screen. Can't be more intuitive than that.

------
Narretz
It could be really great. I wonder if Jon Skinner knew, and said to himself
"Welp, I might as well stop with Sublime". However, Sublime is (mostly)
blazingly fast. I don't expect this from a node based app, especially in
Windows. And: I didn't see it under Features, but Atom definitely needs the
command palette from Sublime baked into core. Only if it's core, plugin
authors will set their hooks correctly from the beginning. Or even better,
there might be a flexible command api that exposes each plugin's commands from
the start and can be extended too. -> edit: the readme says it has Command
Palette. Great! Also, since the term is identical with Sublime Text, I wonder
if there's more to it than inspiration.

~~~
TheZenPsycho
You do know that v8 is generally much much _much_ faster than cpython, don't
you?

~~~
jordanthoms
Although, most of the Sublime core is in C/C++ as far as I know. And it's
using native drawing, not webkit. Will be interesting to see how the
performance compares.

~~~
est
sublime is using opengl to render every glype. Its speed will blow anything
out of the water. Open 2MB text will be highlighted and colored in an instant.
I wonder how could webkit achieve that.

~~~
TheZenPsycho
My suspicion is sublime's speed has very little to do with its rendering
method and a lot more to do with its I/O philosophy. Because, let's be honest,
there is no way OpenGL can make loading a 50mb file into memory significantly
faster than plain rendering.

------
fisherprice
Nice to see some innovate architecture for an editor but this product launch
reminds me to product launches from Apple or Google: it doesn't matter what
product or feature is shown, there is always tons of premature praise.

If an unknown third party came up with Atom it would have never gotten that
attention.

ST3 is a very good product viewed from any angle and VIM either—it will be
hard to beat these reference products. I love Node/npm and again the stack
sounds great but I don't know if this stack will be much easier to extend than
something like ST3 or VIM.

What I have seen from a product perspective on the Atom landing page does not
blow me away, not at all. And it is wether free nor open source.

But it's from Github and that's reason enough to vote it up.

------
beefsack
As was speculated in the other thread the beta looks like it will be closed,
there's a "request and invite" form on the page.

Others noted that the source mentioned "free during beta", I certainly hope
that's not the case and it's truly FOSS. Sublime Text development has slowed
significantly recently and the community can't continue to drive it since it's
closed.

Funnily enough, Sublime Text was born out of Textmate development slowing, and
I can't seem to shake that vibe here too.

~~~
chc
If you want an open-source text editor based on Node.js, Light Table might
interest you.

(Light Table itself is written in ClojureScript, which is a bit idiosyncratic,
but it's hardly worse than Elisp, and anyway you can write plugins in normal
JavaScript.)

~~~
ytpete
Or Brackets: [http://brackets.io](http://brackets.io)

------
spicyj
I can't tell from this page whether it's open source -- I hope it is.

~~~
spicyj
From ##atom IRC:

<DouweM> kevinsawicki: is the actual core going to be OS?

<kevinsawicki> DouweM: not during the beta

<tyOverby> How is atom both invite-only and open source at the same time?

<avidal> tyOverby: the engine isn't open source (or at least yet)

~~~
Touche
Welp, makes that decision easy. Not making the most important tool in my
toolbox one that I can't hack to my liking.

~~~
eob
Agree. It's a tough decision for them -- I'm sure the "Hot New Text Editor"
market has a decent chunk of money associated with it. But it's pretty hard to
commit to a text editor that you can't open up and recompile.

EDIT: Plus, if an editor is going to join the ranks of vim and emacs in
history (something which neither Sublime nor TextMate are on track to do) it
_has_ to be open source. Anything else and it's just another product.

~~~
rogerbinns
I agree on the open source nature. However if this editor treats github as a
first class citizen (while being free/open) then it does have value to github.
This is especially the case for new github features introduced in the future.

~~~
kamaal
There are very few people who would opt in to a editor for everything only to
use it with Github. Most of the world's developers don't even have a Github
account.

Tools work in a strange way. I recently saw a whole team of embedded
developers use TextPad. They haven't heard of anything called 'vim' or
'emacs'. From their perspective its either a vendor supplied IDE or TextPad.
One of them was even startled to see this shiny new thing called 'Sublime
Text' when I was using it. He went out with enthusiasm, but was hardly able to
convince any one to use it.

~~~
rogerbinns
There will always be outliers.

A code editor with first class prominent Github support is more likely to
encourage creating Github accounts - it would just work. Compare to regular
code editors which require jumping through various hoops (typically having to
find relevant plugins, install them on all machines/users, and then figure out
how to use them as they are extensions not core).

A pitch of "if you use this editor then all the team's work is automatically
synchronized and available" is a very powerful sell.

------
ohhmaar
I don't like how it looks like Sublime text... couldn't they have designed
something new?

~~~
flyosity
As the designer who worked on the main interface for Sublime Text 2, it does
irk me that it looks so similar. They had carte blanche to create a wonderful
new interface and they mostly just copied Sublime Text. The go-to anything
menu looks especially similar.
[https://t.co/5YxVbZcVcK](https://t.co/5YxVbZcVcK)

~~~
arthurcolle
Just wondering, do you know how to code? What are your day to day tools as a
designer?

~~~
lugg
The Atom team is recruiting I see. -.^

------
vhost-
> Emacs and Vim offer extreme flexibility, but they aren't very approachable
> and can only be customized with special-purpose scripting languages.

Only? I can point to a large number of Python, Ruby and Perl plugins for Vim.
Unless they are considering those special-purpose and nodejs is the only truly
flexible scripting language.

------
mrbogle
The blog post: [http://blog.atom.io/2014/02/26/introducing-
atom.html](http://blog.atom.io/2014/02/26/introducing-atom.html)

~~~
lloeki
> _we 've open-sourced over 80 of the libraries_

Some of them look quite interesting already.

------
joeevans1000
Atom is a cargo cult.

Atom is eventually a dead end. They are paying lip service to eventually
partially opensourcing it.

It is the opposite direction of the magic of git, which enables easy sharing
and collaboration.

Beware the promise of later opensourcing of projects. Without an early
commitment, the developers of atom will invariably include proprietary
software to ease development which will preclude later opensourcing.

You are better off taking the hard road and investing your time in tools that
are not cargo cults.

------
tcl16
Apparently github will be charging for it and it will not be fully open
source.

[http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-
source/82/9](http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/9)

------
babby
I've been observing the reactions to this over several communities and I find
it all to be rather interesting! [ Warning; meta comment incoming ]

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1z0ykn/atom_lau...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1z0ykn/atom_launched/)

Almost every single comment is negative, dismissive, one liners filled with
half truths and very few child comments seek to rectify any misinformation or
support a discussion.

The first and by far most-upvoted with a 700 point margin.

>I must be out of touch with modern development. I don't understand the
thought process that leads people to be excited about a closed source, node.js
text editor that reports your usage to Google.

It suggests the user simply scanned over other comments, glanced at atom's
site and proceeded to regurgitate karma bait. I suppose it says a lot about
the attention span of these people as there are also highly voted "tl;dr"
request comments.

A perfect example of misinformation:

>[ unquietwiki 70 points] Isn't Brackets this already? Node.js/Chromium app
with plugin support? > \--- [ MrSenorSan 67 points] yup, but atom is not open
source yay! wait a min... > \--- [ kmeisthax 17 points ] Yes, but with Atom,
you have the priviledge of paying GitHub money for a software product in a
market with numerous competent free and Free Software options.

The supply of vitriol is unending.

It was the same with the /g/ thread, though surprisingly not quite as bad.

[http://archive.rebeccablacktech.com/g/thread/S40550074](http://archive.rebeccablacktech.com/g/thread/S40550074)

My point is, stay classy Hacker News. While you may even have similar opinions
with these communities, the reception in this thread has been far more
exciting and you put effort into your discussions. The contrast is massive,
and especially interesting considering this is one the highest upvoted
articles on HN, sitting alongside Neovim. suggesting we _desperately_ want to
replace our editors.

------
narrator
Eclipse is massively modifiable but everyone hates it because of bloat. You
see this kind of thing starts off with good intentions and then all the plugin
madness gets going and suddenly everyone gets revolted and charges off to
embrace the next great "lightweight" editor.

------
mmanfrin
This might make developing on chromebook viable.

~~~
akulbe
THIS.

~~~
akulbe
Wow. Lost karma because I'm enthusiastic about something? Neutral, I'd
understand... but downvotes? Really? I've seen even more plain and simple
comments get upvotes. You folks are a fickle bunch.

------
jaimebuelta
Seems like quite a weird priority for GitHub to dedicate resources into
creating Yet Another Text Editor.

I don't know, I can't see how this is a priority for them...

~~~
jlangenauer
Github has iPad-based robots that allow remote workers to wonder about their
SF office. Obviously, that $100m VC money has to be spent on ~something~.

Compared to that, a text editor is a mere bagatelle.

------
justizin
So it's light table without Chris Granger, for better or worse..

~~~
TinyTimZamboni
Light Table is a great project, but it's all in closurescript -.- This is a
big obstacle to people wanting to edit/customize/write their own plugins

~~~
tensor
It's really sad that learning a new language is considered "a big obstacle."
An average programmer should be able to pick up nearly any new computing
language quite easily.

~~~
jbeja
Depends, is not like some who have code in a Imperative, OOP paradigm, is
gonna learn a functional language in no time.

------
gojomo
The "space-pen" part of this deserves separate attention:

[http://atom.github.io/space-pen/](http://atom.github.io/space-pen/)

I bet this space-pen DOM DSL would mix well with the React virtual-DOM
approach.

------
losvedir
So how much is written in Javascript? Won't that performance pale in
comparison to, say, Sublime which is written in C++?

Or are just the plugins/extensions written in Javascript while the core editor
is in C or C++?

Obligatory: People who got a beta invite, anyone feeling generous and want to
give me one? (As I understand it, when you're invited you get a few to hand
out, too.)

~~~
scorpion032
Sublime is written in Python.

I'd imagine, all of this is written in Javascript and compiled/rendered with
v8.

~~~
ChristianBundy
Sublime is written in C++, the plugins are written in Python.

------
brunoqc
I wish it was open source. We need a modern, good looking, libre text editor.

~~~
jbeja
There is LightTable, also you can even make Emacs or Vim as "good looking" as
this if you give them so tweak.

------
dreamdu5t
So, they want people to contribute writing plugins so they can turn-around and
make money off the plugin ecosystem by selling atom?

Seems transparently under-handed to me.

------
nicklovescode
Can I use it online? That would be the killer feature for me, being able to
code on anyone's computer in a second. Currently it's basically the only thing
stopping me from being able to pick up anyone's computer and use it as I use
my own.

~~~
igul222
Guessing no, because of the Node.js plugin architecture ("need to call into C
or C++?", "full access to the filesystem"). Really only the UI seems to be
done in WebKit.

~~~
rsamvit
From a quick glance it looks like its architected the same as Light Table
(Local node server that accesses the file system and a decoupled UI that
connects over http and uses WebKit). If it works like that it could run in the
browser. Not so easily from anywhere though

------
felipebueno
Thanks to Atom not being really free software and people here suggesting it a
lot I give LightTable a try. I'm an emacs user but I like experimenting
different foss editors and LighTable + emacs keybindings plugin is a really
nice and beautiful tool.

Couldn't get it to work on Debian Wheezy yet (GLIBC_2.15 not found)* but
worked on a Windows machine at work so I'm testing it there. I'll get back to
linux later. Looking forward for v1.0. :)

* It seems to be a known issue: [https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/issues/972](https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/issues/972)

------
jedireza
I find it interesting that there is little to no conversation about the
integration with git. In one of the the screenshots I saw a branch name and
icon in the bottom status bar. I assume this is an important motivation for
GitHub.

------
mattattaque
Looks like Sublime Text but with a ton of resource-consuming shit I'll never
use, which itself is similar to the reason I stopped using Sublime Text. I'll
sick with vim, thanks.

------
donw
Atom team, if you're reading this, I have a big feature request that would
make this far, far greater than just another editor.

Pair editing.

Specifically, having the ability to pair two editors over a network and edit
the same set of files.

Lots of other editors do this, but here's the key: Each editor keeps its own
settings and environment.

I'm a vim guy. I can set up my Atom to be vimlike. My buddy, the Emacs
(heretic!) guy, can set up his Atom the way he likes, and we can work in
harmony.

That's all I want.

~~~
zeckalpha
Floobits.

~~~
roryokane
That is to say, [https://floobits.com/](https://floobits.com/) appears to
already do this.

------
jbrooksuk
It's ironic that you're unable to commit code from within Atom. Apart from
that there are a couple of things that I feel can be added.

\- Soft undo for multiple selections.

\- Search settings since the panel is overwhelming.

\- Markdown preview should be updated live?

\- I really miss Go To Anything from Sublime Text 3.

\- You should be able to select the syntax highlighting from the status bar.

\- Inline preview of audio, SVG (toggle?) and fonts? That would be _rad_.

\- Syncing of settings using GitHub settings?

But other than that this is really good progress!

~~~
AhtiK
Commit is not needed if the next version includes a dropbox-like sync to your
github repo.

I'm pretty sure it's one of the reasons to come up with its own desktop editor
(that later can be also used online) -- to bridge the gap.

------
dinosaurs
Looking forward to this. The fact that it's all JavaScript/Node based makes
this particularly attracting for me. I haven't really been able to hack on
ST2/3 because I'm not that proficient in Python and never found the time to
properly dig into it. The repositories look great, really hope it'll live up
to the expectations.

That being said, anyone with a spare invite? :) Ta.

------
cgcardona
First let me say that I've used only vim and emacs for the last 5+ years that
I have been a daily coder.

I'm extremely comfortable with vim. I can cruise seemingly at light speed and
have just never been able to find a text editor which offered the same level
of productivity when jumping back and forth between the mouse/trackpad and
keyboard.

However I just couldn't resist the urge to try out a new text editor that was
created by github and thankfully I scored an invite from someone on twitter.

I've only had the thing open for about 10 minutes and already I'm impressed.

It allows me to write in markdown, save the file, render the markdown into
markup, and then launch the webkit dev tools to inspect the rendered DOM.[0]

Do other modern text editors such as Sublime Text allow you to render the
markup and then inspect the DOM with browser dev tools? If not that alone
seems like a pretty good innovation.

More Info: [0]
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BhdTeedCcAARgYV.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BhdTeedCcAARgYV.jpg:large)

------
iambateman
A competitor to Sublime is a great thing. Sublime is great and I love it, but
we need more teams like Github building editors that make sense.

Thanks Github!

~~~
angersock
It's called vim.

~~~
ahuth
I think he means that we need editors that are powerful AND easy to use.

Seems like vim isn't really for someone like me (I haven't studied PhD level
computer science and I don't write compilers and/or lisp interpreters in my
spare time for fun).

~~~
justizin
I taught Linux Admin courses before I graduated high school, and the first
order was learning vim. If you have a mac, 'vimtutor' is available to you.

vim has nothing to do with PhD-level CS or writing compilers and/or lisp
interpreters. The Emacs community might fit that stereotype a _little_ more
but really not much more.

Vi (vim being 'vi improved') is great because it works on basically any
terminal. It works with my iPad's keyboard and with a teletype terminal from
the 70s or 80s, as well as a normal PC keyboard. Emacs has similar brags.

The terminal's not going anywhere and if you like keyboard shortcuts, knowing
five or ten that will work on _any keyboard in existence_ for an editor that
is on _most_ unix systems you'll find has some value.

~~~
ahuth
I was being a smartass, which was uncalled for. Sorry, Angersock!

Also, I do have a mac, so maybe I'll check out vimtutor.

My point is that I'm very new to programming, and it's so much easier for me
to load up Sublime Text and start getting work done. At least for now,
learning vim would be something that get's in the way of learning/making. It
also doesn't seem like the benefits would outweigh the cost.

~~~
doorhammer
I started using vim when I had first started to learn to program. I'd say give
it a shot if for no other reason than it's an interesting paradigm shift, and
can be really effective.

I'd say give Vintage mode on sublime a shot. It does the basic
keybindings/motions of vim and will give you an idea of whether or not you
might be interested in it. It's also nice because in insert mode it's
basically just normal sublime, so you can just switch back to that if you get
frustrated.

Are you on linux, osx, windows, or something else?

If you use vim/vintage mode, remap capslock to be escape.

This took me forever to figure out, for whatever reason, but if you're on
windows, the easiest thing to do is get autohotkey [1] and write a script with
one line:

Capslock::Escape

You can compile that to a portable binary and use it anywhere as well. It's
really straight forward.

I also added two keybindings to make Alt+movement to add cursors above and
below: { "keys": ["alt+k"], "command": "select_lines", "args": {"forward":
false} }, { "keys": ["alt+j"], "command": "select_lines", "args": {"forward":
true} },

It doesn't always interact naturally with vintage/vim mode, though, but that
was just a personal preference.

[1] [http://www.autohotkey.com/](http://www.autohotkey.com/)

------
KhalilK
What's the difference between this and Emacs?

~~~
jmz92
The big difference from my perspective is that Atom isn't currently FOSS.
Other than that, the maturity of the emacs ecosystem is both one of its
greatest features and a bit of a curse.

~~~
doorhammer
The non-FOSS part is the part that bothers me the most. Maybe bothers is too
strong a word. It's just hard for me to get into a text editor without knowing
that the community could pick it up and run with it, if the originator dropped
it.

Not sure if that's an unfounded fear, but I don't want to invest time
customizing a platform and writing plugins when it could close shop in a
second. I suppose I could say that about a lot of things I _do_ customize, but
it's hard when the FOSS text editor world is so rich.

------
ranman
Can this work at all without an internet connection? Can it work offline?

~~~
gjtorikian
It is a desktop app, so yes.

------
cdata
This sounds like a very promising tool. I'm really excited to hear all of the
talk about extensibility.

One thing that is conspicuously absent is any mention of it being open source.
I can certainly appreciate that Github is for-profit, but I would love to have
a clearer idea of how free / not-free this tool will be when it is publicly
available.

------
sdegutis
Maybe it's not true of all JavaScript GUI apps, but almost all the ones I
tried are _hecka sluggish_ for things like drag+drop. I could see that being a
problem with tabs in this case. Plus I'm concerned about the CPU on my poor
little MBP, Chrome usually eats it all the way up, is that somehow mitigated
in Atom?

------
_zen
I will switch to this if it is as good as Sublime Text, but with a more open
API. Sublime Text's API is too restricted, and there's a ton of things I want
in Sublime Text that IDEs have.. but I don't want a full-blown IDE.

Take the overall diff bar of most IDEs for example (Jetbrains, Netbeans,
etc.). I want that in Sublime/Atom. There is a plug-in for Sublime to show
diffs per line, but no way to manipulate the mini-map to show diffs at a
glance.

[http://blog.jetbrains.com/pycharm/files/2013/12/2.png](http://blog.jetbrains.com/pycharm/files/2013/12/2.png)

Edit:

See, this is inferior and what Sublime Text already has:
[http://atom.io/packages/git-diff](http://atom.io/packages/git-diff)

What's superior is a full-blown diff bar overview of the file.

------
jbrooksuk
I've ported the Oblivion scheme across;
[https://atom.io/packages/Oblivion](https://atom.io/packages/Oblivion) from
[https://github.com/jbrooksuk/Oblivion](https://github.com/jbrooksuk/Oblivion)

------
rdtsc
Does it have emacs emulation?

------
itsnotvalid
I'd think it's not a requirement for OSS (look at textmate, sublime) but as
new comers hit the store it would be nice to know it beforehand and have an
expectation of what would come. Since for people writing addons it would be a
decision-maker.

What most people wouldn't like to see are yearly subscriptions of another
editor or paid upgrade every 18-month. I could personally bear with textmate
and sublime for their current licensing (personal => works on as many
computers I have - which I have at least 4)

For OSS ones, we have the traditional ones like emacs, vim, eclipse, and newer
ones like brackets (which also sold as paid editor as Edge Code CC),
lighttable or google's half-baked collide.

------
thecrumb
Sublime has 'limited extensibility'? Package Manager lists over 2000 packages.
And what about Brackets? This looks very similar - editor built with web tech.
[http://brackets.io/](http://brackets.io/)

------
sbornia
[http://discuss.atom.io/t/atom-is-so-powerful-that-it-
blows-m...](http://discuss.atom.io/t/atom-is-so-powerful-that-it-blows-my-
mind/294) sounds great!

------
msoad
Bracket is built on top of Code Mirror. It never feels like a native editor.
If Atom is using a Webkit renderer for core editor part, I'm not gonna switch
from Sublime anytime soon

~~~
chc
Light Table is build on Node-Webkit and it feels pretty good most of the time.
(Opening folders is the only spot I've found where it's like, "Wait, something
is a little off here.")

~~~
nelmaven
My experience with Light Table isn't that fortunate, even moving the cursor
through some lines feels sluggish and not great.

------
malierdo
I think, in the long run -3 to 5 years-, Jon Skinner -Sublime Text- will be
leading, like now. I can clearly see his passion and investment in his
product.

People at GitHub are also great, well funded, but this is not their core
product. Do they have a leader -I don't know if they have or not- who will be
focusing only on this product and keep up with jskinner?

I am sure Atom will be around for long years, as well as Sublime Text. Thanks
to GitHub, I am looking forward to give it a try.

~~~
subsection1h
> in the long run -3 to 5 years-, Jon Skinner -Sublime Text- will be leading

As an Emacs user, I find it funny to hear 3-5 years be referred to as "the
long run".

Also, Sublime Text won't be leading until it has a package with more features
than Org mode. ;-)

~~~
malierdo
actually I was expecting a comment on that one :) don't you think the time
frame narrows on predicting the future on topics like these -web, desktop or
mobile applications-?

I am not arguing that Sublime Text is the best -because I am not that pro-,
but I can assure you it is hot right now, all around the world. It may be
wrong, but all cs students and developers I personally know in 4-5 countries
use it, like it. Most of the online courses tell their students to use it. It
is highly recommended, all over the web.

The word is spreading.

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F01yp0m%2C%20%2...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F01yp0m%2C%20%2Fm%2F0b6h18n&cmpt=q)

------
Morphling
I thought this was an open source project, but when I read FAQ beta version is
only out for OSX and they talk about charging for it so it probably wont be
open source.

------
archagon
You know, I'm usually very skeptical of web apps, but building a text editor
in WebKit actually seems like a really good idea. Everything a browser should
be good at — text display, scripting, styling — also applies to text editors.
You don't really have to worry about complex UI, animation, or user input. You
also get remote access almost for free.

What other text-centric apps can be made better by a browser framework? Maybe
the terminal?

~~~
pmr_
So why is every text editor I have ever seen embedded in a website an
abomination?

> text display, scripting, styling

The only thing that really matters is scripting. Every serious editor has
solved displaying text and styling since ages and those two points aren't even
that important in programming languages. All you want is a syntax aware
highlighting. Maybe underlines and a little bold here and there.

Scripting is the really hard part. There are many flavors, languages, APIs to
chose from. Just because you now can script things in <hip-language-of-the-
day>, the problem isn't solved. My editor uses a lisp dialect and I'm
perfectly happy with it, not because of the language choice but the APIs and
amount of integration.

One thing that is incredibly important for text editors is speed: something
web engines are notoriously bad at.

~~~
archagon

      "Every serious editor has solved displaying text and styling since ages ago..."
    

Sure, but why reinvent the wheel? In this case, Github is leveraging a
technology specifically optimized for text and styling. They don't have to
maintain it, and they get a lot of cutting-edge optimizations for free. It
also gives them the freedom to do some crazy things that would otherwise be
very difficult — see Light Table.

    
    
      "...and those two points aren't even that important in programming languages."
    

I disagree. Efficient text display and presentation in a text editor are very
important, at least for me. Not that scripting is any less important, but it
looks like Github has that front covered as well. (Then again, I've never been
a heavy vim or emacs user. I guess I'm what you might call a "filthy casual".)

    
    
      "One thing that is incredibly important for text editors is speed: something web engines are notoriously bad at."
    

I was under the impression that web engines are really good at text when
there's not a lot of other crazy nonsense going on. Guess we'll see!

    
    
      "So why is every text editor I have ever seen embedded in a website an abomination?"
    

My guess is going (partially) native and using Node.js will make the
experience a whole lot better.

------
paperwork
The editor looks good. I'm more excited about the fact that this is a good
looking desktop app, built using, what are normally considered, web
technologies.

------
pcmonk
For me, this might be the killer feature: [http://atom.io/packages/vim-
mode](http://atom.io/packages/vim-mode)

~~~
justizin
Light Table has it, as well as emacs - both using tools that are not specific
to LT.

------
jasonpeacock
Can you edit files while offline? Or do you need to be always-connected? (i.e.
this is an actual web service)

I couldn't find mention anywhere about offline abilities.

~~~
mrbogle
There is no online component. So yes, you can edit offline.

------
caniszczyk
More online editors...

Check out Brackets ([http://brackets.io/](http://brackets.io/)) and Eclipse
Orion ([http://eclipse.org/orion/](http://eclipse.org/orion/)) who both have
been trying to build fully open editing experiences. There are more out there
but those come to mind.

Would be nice if more people started working together on these things...

------
beefsack
Mojombo[0] commented[1] that it won't be either closed or open source, but
"somewhere inbetween" to make it easy for them to charge for it.

[0] [https://github.com/mojombo](https://github.com/mojombo)

[1] [http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-
source/82/9](http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/9)

------
sdegutis
I hate to say it, but honestly, I think Atom is probably going to be my next
full-time editor. The purist in me hates the idea of running such a powerful
rendering engine inside a desktop app, but all desktop GUI toolkits have
proven that they really really suck at text editing (I've tried almost all of
them). This is probably the best way forward.

------
sdegutis
When I saw a screenshot, I was put off by the ugly tabs. So I made a theme for
flat tabs[1]. You can install it by going to Install Themes in the app and
searching for "flat". It's called "Atom Dark Flat UI".

[1]: [http://atom.io/packages/atom-dark-flat-ui](http://atom.io/packages/atom-
dark-flat-ui)

~~~
ihuman
Heads up: The image on the package page is broken

~~~
sdegutis
Thanks, should be fixed now. Seems like a caching issue on Atom's end
(probably github-pages related).

------
desireco42
Last thing I need is another editor. Having said that, I will for sure examine
and give a fair chance to anything you produce.

I am a vim user, I recently learned a lot of power moves in SublimeText and
this is my go-to editor now. Making me use anything else would be super
difficult but not impossible. Price is not the issue.

------
jbeja
So this it yet another web base text editor like Brackets and LT, one have
it's "live-reload" feature the other his "live-code-evaluation", and which is
the selling point for this?. Going throught the website it just give me the
idea that is a what i mentioned before.

------
prasoon2211
I'm willing to bet anything that just like Sublime was FOSS cloned to Lime
([https://github.com/limetext/lime](https://github.com/limetext/lime)), this
as well will be cloned as FOSS, if it is any good, that is.

Subatom seems like a great project title :)

------
tambourine_man
Bespin, Skywriter, Ace, Brackets… now Atom. Everybody seems to be having the
same idea: that browser based technologies are the future for code editors.

I for one am more enticed by the possibility of a WebKit frontend, with a
NeoVim core and a libuv backend. Finally, Vim as an embeddable library.

------
sdegutis
Where's the emacs keybindings repo and the paredit-clone repo? Am I gonna have
to write them?

------
kevinlangleyjr
I see people saying they get into the beta within 15 minutes of signing up,
but I still haven't gotten one and I signed up day 1. Anybody have an extra
invite they're willing to spare? Email in profile. It'd be much appreciated!

------
Dobbs
I just played with atom for the last 2+ hours.

It is kinda cool, but holy shit is it slow. Editing a plugin requires a
reload. A reload is a good 2-4 seconds on my 4 year old mbp.

The vim-mode is very incomplete and very buggy. Granted that should get a lot
better in time.

~~~
babby
It may have to do what ST3 did and queue loading of plugins after startup,
instead of all at once before the editor is "usable". If they do that it could
start up nice and fast in theory, though we obviously don't know what else
it's trying to do yet.

------
ucarion
If you're looking for an invite, there are lots of people offering and
requesting invites on IRC:

[http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=##atom](http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=##atom)

------
commander_ahab
I use github and do a fair amount of Ruby, but I can't say I find Atom to
provide enough benefit to move from a native option. I would have to see it
used in more example cases to make that leap.

------
josephschmoe
I've been wanting, for a long time, to be able to have custom UIs to websites
(just like how video games do it). If this is a step in that direction for
github, I will be very, very happy.

------
peterashford
So... it's like Emacs but based on Javascript rather than Lisp?

------
Cless
To try out Atom:

[https://gist.github.com/anonymous/9265315](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/9265315)

Then visit the resulting link output by curl. You're welcome.

------
maddy2get
Can somebody tell me how to run/install the editor? Thanks.

~~~
nilved
It's in private beta right now.

------
gleenn
Having used it for the past couple hours, it looks great! It is pretty
intuitive, snappy, and looks great. I'm definitely looking forward to using it
more.

------
TuxLyn
I exclusively use Sublime Text editor for some time now. But this Atom editor
by GitHub is very interesting. Will definantly try it.

------
marcamillion
Is it just me or do most of the new IDEs tend to focus around front-end
technology?

Would love to see some innovation on the Ruby editor front.

~~~
stephenr
I haven't used this but if it's comparable to text mate and sublime, you
should stop calling it an IDE.

------
alecsmart1
Am lost. Where do I download it from? I do not see any link. Or is it an
online based editor? Will it work on Windows?

~~~
skeletonjelly
Invite. Offline. Not yet.

------
xster
Granted they started this effort a while ago but would be pretty boss if
hypothetically they built this on Dart

------
ksec
I was hoping Github will offer a one stop shop for Online Editor via Atom and
Communication via Gitter.

Looks like i was wrong.

------
tlongren
Screenshot on front page of site made me think of Sublimetext immediately,
which is not a bad thing at all.

------
JabavuAdams
Wait, so now I have to deal with all the shittiness of the web stack in order
to develop a native app?

~~~
Kequc
The new, dominant and universal front end/back end/desktop app all round
programming language. JavaScript :(

------
mikecarlton
Will it have vim key bindings? My fingers have vim wired in and that's not
going to change.

------
jbeja
I hope that it doesn't suffer from the same text redering issuies that LT nad
Brackets has.

------
trekky1700
This isn't the best thing since sliced bread. It's better than sliced bread.

------
pettersolberg
All right, but no invitation responses are coming back. Ho to download Atom?

------
akosednar
Interesting, this has been in development since sometime in November of 2013

------
integricho
I wonder if it will have similar performance issues like Brackets does.

------
neomech
Hopefully this will run on arm, which is something SublimeText does not

------
RA_Fisher
It needs a LaTeX plugin!

------
slacko
Has anyone got a spare invite? davfuc at gmail dot com Thanks

------
iancarroll
If anyone wants to spare me an invite - him {at} ian [d0t] sh

------
tsax
At first glance the UI seems 'inspired' by Sublime

------
ahuth
Guess I will have to break down and learn vim... no invite

------
angelohuang
What framework is Atom using? chromiumembedded or appjs?

------
dmritard96
looks cool, i really enjoy gedit with all the dev plugins and theme
customization etc. Will def try this out to see how it compares

------
isadeal
What is web based core? Does it run on Chrome?

------
brianzelip
wow, there are 2,078 lines of (unminified) css styling this page. Nice page
though. Can't wait to try out the editor.

------
piratebroadcast
Someone explain Atom to me like I'm 5?

~~~
skeletonjelly
Yet Another File Editor. This one's made by Github which the kids love to use
on their Macbook Pros hacking some Ruby.

------
corndoge
When did web dev become the only dev?

~~~
q3k
When you started frequenting Hacker News ;).

(I really need a lobste.rs invite...)

------
hexagonsun
this looks fantastic! i've been wanting a reason to pick up a cheap
chromebook.

~~~
teraflop
It won't run on a Chromebook.

~~~
pritambaral
Source?

~~~
jbeja
Only works on mac and windows, no Linux port.

~~~
pritambaral
You seem to oddly out of the loop here. Atom has been released for Mac only
(private beta that too.) Linux, Windows builds are coming up, by their own
admission. (My source? IRC and Discuss from atom.io footer.)

Besides, for the tech purported to be behind Atom: node-webkit, There would be
no additional costs or efforts required to get it running on Linux.

------
alrs
Gross.

The moment that their new editor provides some piece of Github functionality
that isn't exposed to an open API is the moment that we need to bail, en
masse.

We've already killed Freshmeat and Sourceforge for turning lame, this
shouldn't be hard.

------
plg
how is this not a blatant ripoff of sublime text??

------
jpmec
Can it send email?

------
MyNameIsMK
Finally.

------
sochin
sochinquixabeira@gmail.com

------
benched
My Poe's Law detector is itching uncomfortably right now.

Really, was anybody asking for all this?

------
enahs
how i feel about atom.io...
[http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg876/scaled.php?tn=0&server=876&...](http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg876/scaled.php?tn=0&server=876&filename=79jka.jpg&xsize=480&ysize=480)

------
rootuid
so this is Brackets aka Bones on steroids ?

------
watermarkcamera
That's great things !

------
gre
No thanks, I'll stick with jEdit.

