
Nova by Panic - 0x0
https://nova.app/
======
Brendinooo
> Here's a little editor story for fun. During beta we found some bugs in
> Apple's text layout engine that we just could not fix. Our solution? Writing
> our own text layout manager… from scratch. Not only did this fix the bugs,
> but it also boosted our editor's performance. We're not messing around!

Seems like there's nobody better than Panic at doing this sort of thing.
They're willing to push Apple's UI forward, but they always do it in a way
that feels Apple-y. Didn't they also pioneer a tab UI that Apple ended up
adopting?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
The company itself would likely have become part of Apple if not for one bit
of unlucky timing. Apple wanted to turn Panic's Mac OS 9 music player, Audion,
into iTunes.

[https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/](https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/)

~~~
forgotmypw17
Rest in peace, SoundJam. Best music player on Mac before Apple transformed it
into the iTunes atrocity.

SoundJam's hierarchical playlist has yet to be replicated by any other music
player to my knowledge.

~~~
Mandatum
> hierarchical playlist

Like playing music by albums, or artists and it would recursively play all of
the music within those albums?

~~~
forgotmypw17
You could have a playlist with folders, which you could collapse, expand,
nest, etc.

It would then be played in order, yes, recursing through all the layers.

~~~
Mandatum
What order did the folders play? Was it usually just the order of the album
tracks, or was it more folders of playlists where you custom ordered each? So
you might have a playlist of playlists of programming music for instance.

I might be able to replicate this by building a front-end for it which
converts it into a flat playlist for Spotify/Apple Music etc.

------
Xavdidtheshadow
I really like their pricing structure here. If you want updates forever, it's
functionally a subscription (which makes sense - constant updates require
constant dev work). The key difference is that if you stop paying, you keep
everything you've paid for previously (the app and all past updates).

That's a _great_ way to do a subscription.

~~~
TylerE
intellij is functionally the same.

Buying a subscription gets you one year updates, and then whatever that last
version is remains functional forever.

~~~
hibbelig
As I understand it, the IntelliJ version you can keep using forever is the one
from the _beginning_ of the subscription.

So while the subscription was valid, you got upgrades, and then if you don't
renew, you have to downgrade. It's their way of nudging customers to keep
paying. It's working for me.

~~~
xrendan
Slightly different, you get a fallback license for every version you've paid
12 months for [0]

[0] [https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/207240845-What...](https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/207240845-What-is-a-perpetual-fallback-license-)

~~~
RussianCow
This is a bit misleading; you only get a perpetual license for the version you
had at the _beginning_ of the 12 months, as you can see with the second
graphic[0] on that page.

[0]:
[https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/article_attachments/203511589...](https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/article_attachments/203511589/One_year.png)

------
threatofrain
It's strange that Nova would target web tech as their top priority, and not
Swift. If you're Mac-exclusive, why not advertise top-class support for Apple
ecosystem app development?

Since Nova is prioritizing web workflows, VSC is the elephant in the room and
a very deadly competitor. It's free and open source, it's available on
Windows, MacOS, Linux, and it can also be ported to the web. And it's Insanely
popular and very high quality.

Meanwhile, all notable features Nova lists are default to VSC. One VSC feature
that's been quite the remote lifesaver is shared sessions with voice chat.

~~~
asadlionpk
Going for Swift means competing with XCode, which wouldn't make sense as Swift
is generally used along with the entire iOS/macOS Dev tools (Simulators, UI
Builders, Device Manager etc). Not a wise thing to do.

~~~
paxys
It's the same for VSCode and JS/TS support though. Fighting against a fully
featured, free, open-source and well-established product just on the basis of
speed is going to be an uphill battle.

~~~
mkozlows
There is a big "ugh, Electron apps" contingent of Mac users.

Or at least, there's a loud one, and I guess they figured it's also a big-
enough one...

~~~
paxys
The vast majority of developers aren't hanging out on HN though. I'll wait
till there are real benchmarks but I'd be very surprised if Nova is actually
noticeably more performant than VS Code.

~~~
Nextgrid
Just the fact that Nova is ~36MB and VSCode is ~3x that at ~95MB should at
least point you in the right direction. Also note that Nova already includes
features that are only available via separate plugins on VSCode.

~~~
RussianCow
But 95MB is small enough that it doesn't matter—1/3 the size of basically
nothing is still basically nothing. Even in terms of memory or CPU usage, VS
Code is relatively efficient compared to some other products on the market
such as the JetBrains IDEs.

Say what you will about Electron apps in general, but Microsoft has done a
great job in making VS Code not feel like a typical Electron app.

~~~
read_if_gay_
> VS Code is relatively efficient compared to some other products on the
> market such as the JetBrains IDEs.

That's not really a fair comparison I think. JetBrains IDEs do a _lot_ more
than VS Code. You'd have to load it up with plugins to make something
resembling a fair comparison, and in that case I'd be very interested in how
efficient VS Code still is.

~~~
RussianCow
I completely agree, but I would wager that VS Code would still be noticeably
faster even if it had all of the functionality that IntelliJ does. As a daily
user of the latter, it seems like they have a lot more room for optimization,
whereas VS Code seems to have been built from day 1 with performance in mind.
But this is pure anecdote so I could be wrong.

------
spiralganglion
I see a lot of folks here comparing this to VS Code and asking "Why would I
use this instead?" — I am exactly on the opposite side of that equation. Why
would I use VS Code when I can use this?

I've been using Atom for most of the decade (plus a bit of Sublime, and
TextMate before), and I've loved being able to hack it to look and feel
exactly how I want. There's a ton of custom CSS in my setup.

Now, Atom is slow. That is a daily frustration for me. The latency on every
keypress is grating. I've stripped out every package I can, and that custom
CSS I mentioned is mostly hiding things I don't want to see. But still, the
lag! I feel it all around.

I tried switching to VS Code, but it was appreciably worse for me. I couldn't
configure it to look as nice as Atom (and it had the unshakable feeling that
it was made by folks from the Windows school of design — plenty of weird [to
me] spacing and typographic choices). It also didn't feel any faster.

So why does Nova appeal to me? Well, Atom is no longer supported, so I'm going
to have to switch to something anyway. Nova doesn't look as minimal as I'd
like, but I can live with that — at least it looks _nice_! And it's a native
app, so it should (in theory) be buttery smooth.

When it comes to a tool I will spend all day, every day in, $50/year is
peanuts. This is my working life. It's worth spending a relatively tiny bit of
money to have something _nice_ instead of something _good enough_. Price is a
non-issue for me.

As for extensions... I don't use any. I stripped them all out to try to make
Atom faster. So now I get to discover what extensions are available, without
being left longing for something I had to give up. Maybe I'll build an
extension for myself. This is a new frontier for me.

So we'll see. I tried Coda, didn't like it. I love Transmit, though. So if
this tool lives up to its promises, and succeeds on its own terms, I'll be
thrilled. For the folks happy with VS Code... that's fantastic. I'm glad you
have found a tool you like. For folks like me, for whom VS Code just felt
_off_ , this seems like a great option.

~~~
FullyFunctional
I change platforms many times a day (macOS, Linux, occasionally Windows) and
VS Code being cross platform is essential for my use of it. Being Mac-only is
a complete deal-breaker.

~~~
1986
How do you deal with the difference in common keyboard shortcuts / text
selection with keyboard (i.e. option vs ctrl, command vs ctrl)? I also go back
and forth between macOS and Linux and it always takes me 30 min to get the
correct muscle memory back.

~~~
FullyFunctional
Touché. I do desperately miss macOS's emacs bindings across the board and the
wonderful Cmd that leaves Ctrl alone. I constantly look for a Linux distro
that actually "get it", but so far all I've seen are efforts to make it _look_
like macOS, without making it _feel_ like it.

TL;DR: I cope, begrudgingly.

~~~
aidenn0
It is a massive amount of work to rework every single application's shortcuts.
Higher level frameworks (e.g. KDE) may have ways of doing so centrally, but
most applications do not use the higher level frameworks.

If you were to suddenly change 1/3 of the applications on Linux to use Mac
style shortcuts, it would make usability worse.

------
thamer
Looks pretty, but is there really no Vim extension? I couldn't find one on the
Extensions page. This is a deal-breaker for me, I can't use an editor or IDE
without Vim bindings, this would kill my productivity.

Is one planned, maybe?

~~~
bkanber
This was the first thing I looked for too. Perhaps one is planned or perhaps
they're counting on the community to write one using their API.

TBH the only feature I truly use JetBrains for is their Cmd+Click to jump to
definition, otherwise I'd be happy sticking with tmux+vim as IDE (as I did for
about a decade).

~~~
mmm_grayons
Wouldn't g ctrl+] work for jumping to definition with a tags file?

~~~
sushisource
Not to speak for parent comment, but the reason I use vim plugins in JetBrains
IDEs is to have all that shit "just work". Yeah, you can setup stuff to
autogen tags, but it's not always reliable. If you care about other IDE
features (I do) then the list of crap you need to do to get vim/nvim to work
properly piles up endlessly. I'll take the IDE with it's nice appearance and
features and slap the keybindings in any day over the reverse.

~~~
OOPMan
Indeed.

I suspect the reason a lot of people don't seem to refactor their code is
because they would have to do so semi-manually with whatever hip-but-feature-
bereft editor they've sworn allegiance to.

------
SirHound
I've been using the beta version of Nova for a few weeks now and I've almost
used my trial period for the 1.0.

As a TypeScript developer, if someone made me choose between paying $99 for
the actually-free VS Code, or buy Nova, I would by VS Code without hesitation.

Before it began getting long in the tooth I was a big Coda fan. On the whole I
like VS Code but I do suffer the occasional runaway process so I am open-
minded to a new editor from Panic.

Nova is faster than VS Code, but barely. I like the default rainbow
indentation, though I'm sure there's a VSC plugin for that. The contextual
spell-checking is excellent and I _know_ it's a better experience than any VSC
plugin.

But this thing can't even auto-format a comment block. You can't set format-
specific options (so for instance no line-wrapping on _only_ Markdown/MDX
files).

The default editing experience is lightweight, and that's a good thing. But
the plugin story is dire. Plugins like ESLint and Prettier crash constantly,
requiring an app restart. Prettier has a format-on-save behaviour that seems
to format _after_ save on _some_ file types. Typescript cmd-click definitions
are broken, cmd-click import filepaths are broken.

It's not a bad effort but it speaks to how much ground they have to cover to
get within the same galaxy as the VS Code experience. I genuinely think it'll
be years before they can charge for this with a straight face.

~~~
ghego1
> I'm sure there's a VSC plugin for that

This part of your comments nails 100% why, for me (web developer, 90% in
typescript these days), it's nearly impossible to justify paying for an IDE.

Visual Studio code has almost everything that I need, and what it's not baked
in, is easily done with a plug-in, which in the worst case I can write myself.
But that's really a worst case scenario, since to this date it has never
materialized as all my needs are covered by existing, and excellent, plugins.

~~~
copperx
I almost agree; but in my experience, JetBrains IDEs are worth every cent. I
am more productive on them than in Visual Studio Code, even for "simple"
tasks, like raw HTML/CSS/JS editing.

~~~
ajkjk
Weird, I can't stand them. Mine falls over on a moderately sized project and
it feels like it's always melting while re-indexing-- which also totally
blocks inspection operations.

~~~
Aeolun
In my experience, indexing takes longer, but after that the autocomplete is
actually instant, as opposed to VS code’s ‘lets wait 10 seconds to show you
the hint you might want to automatically import this’.

I’m flipping between Jetbrains and VS code a bit, but Jetbrains is by far the
superior experience.

------
perardi
I love native Mac apps, I love Panic…but I’m not sure what this gets me over
Visual Studio Code, besides a Preferences pane that isn’t inscrutable.

I’m not sure there’s enough of a market on the Mac for another commercial code
editor, as we already have BBEdit for hard-core text wrangling. _(And
obviously all the open-source options.)_

~~~
criddell
I think it's for people that want their text editor to feel like a Mac app. VS
Code is great, but it doesn't feel very Apple-y.

~~~
perardi
Oh I get that’s the market, I just hope said market is large enough for them.

~~~
ghego1
Considering that for iOS/mac/apple platforms devs will probably chose xcode,
and given the premium one has to pay for mac computers these days (justified
or not, I'm not saying either), I fear the answer is no.

Most devs that do _not_ make native apple apps (e.g. web devs) do not need a
Mac, so the market of devs that do not use xcode, that prefer a Mac and that
are willing to pay for a proprietary solution, over other proprietary
solutions, is likely not that big.

~~~
criddell
There are still a lot of web developers who choose a Mac even if they don't
need one. Nice hardware running unix with a decent UI is worth a premium price
to lots of people.

I think you underestimate how many developers are willing to pay for their
tools proprietary or not. We know better than most how difficult it is to make
software and so I think as a group are more willing to support each other
financially.

------
vosper
> It's new, hyper-fast, and flexible, with all the features you want: [...] a
> Minimap

Do people actually find the Minimap useful for coding? If so, how? And why is
it better/different than just a scrollbar, or searching?

I've always thought of Minimaps as a thing that seems like it should be adding
something to the interface, but actually isn't at all. Seems like pointless
eye-candy, to me.

What am I missing?

~~~
Brendinooo
I use my minimap sometimes. Some people are just more visual.

Like, if I have a big file that has a class somewhere, and I know I took a
bunch of notes on it, I can scan the minimap for the big block of green
comment text, and click that section to jump directly to it.

Regardless, I'm not really short on horizontal space in a world where monitors
are huge and 80-character lines are still the norm, so it costs little to keep
it there.

~~~
dmit
This is it. In my head the code file I'm working on is closer to a
(geographic) map than to a Table of Contents in a book. There are large
islands and small ones, some of the small ones form archipelagos (like grouped
up constant definitions at the top). The minimap is good at conveying the
"shape" and relative size of these code sections at a glance.

------
prezjordan
Looks like Language Server Protocol [0] support is on their list of features -
awesome. Will definitely check out, I have a soft spot for native.

[0] [https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-
protocol/](https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/)

~~~
johnghanks
kinda wild that something so important is buried in a huge list of other
things. LSP is critical for _anything_ that even _wants_ to compete with VSC.

~~~
runawaybottle
If they did that part before their launch, they’d have a real launch.

Basically we are all going to be waiting for the ‘And now Nova can import all
your VSCode stuff seamlessly’.

------
avolcano
It's so hard to target web development with how fragmented the ecosystem is,
so it's nice to see they have a lot of extensions already.

That said, because of how fragmented the ecosystem is, it is difficult for me
to jump in. For example, my main side project right now is a Vue app that uses
SCSS syntax in components, which the Vue extension for Nova does not yet
support. This might sound like a small detail, but it's a total dealbreaker -
and while, if this was a totally open source editor, I might be interested in
contributing to the extension, I can't say that I'm interested in paying $100
and then helping out. It's a very difficult chicken and egg situation.

------
slmjkdbtl
Panic makes the juiciest GUI apps and have the strongest presentations, but I
can't stand an editor that isn't 60fps scrolling, feels like Atom all over
again (downloaded VS Code just to make sure it's not my computer that's slow,
and VS Code did give me smooth scrolling, curious about why a browser based
editor is smoother than a native mac one)

ps. just found out they're the devs of Untitled Goose Game and Firewatch nice
nice

~~~
ihuman
They're the publisher of Untitled Goose Game and Firewatch, not the developer.

~~~
slmjkdbtl
thanks for the info!

------
andrethegiant
The hover effect on the CTA is amazing.

~~~
dylan604
Different worlds. I would have called it the download button. By chance are
you in the marketing world?

~~~
izolate
Or just a frontend developer.

~~~
dylan604
Yikes! That's too close to the user for my liking. I'll stay in the shadows in
the backend

------
planb
I tried to open a 300MB file and it gave me the spinning wheel. If there's one
thing I would expect of a new editor (and they even wrote their own text
layout engine), then that it's designed for large files and incremental
loading from the ground up.

------
hbosch
I see some interesting things here. The bundled Git tools look really clean, I
like the overall UI, it seems to already have some of my most used extensions
ported over... but as someone who paid for and uses Sublime Text and finds it
to be more than enough text editor for me, does anyone see something here that
is worth switching for? At $99 it seems to be competing directly with ST3
($80, fyi), not to mention the free editors VSCode and Atom.

At that price am I getting much more than the satisfying feeling of supporting
Panic?

~~~
ghshephard
Depends on what you are doing - and what you value.

I have VSCode and SublimeText both running all day. VSCode competes with Nova,
not as much SublimeText. If your priority is beautiful Mac apps, at perhaps
the cost of the more mature plugin/code support from VSCode, then maybe Nova
speaks to you. If you are just slamming through tons and tons of text files,
and just need a really high-performance text file tool - SublimeText beats out
both of them.

------
AJRF
I am so confused why they didn't put efforts into making this an iPad app.
There is a market for something like this that developers are crying out for,
but on mac why would anyone use this over VSCode (and pay $99 for the
privilege?)

~~~
starik36
Does anyone seriously want to develop on the iPad?

~~~
scarlac
To straight up answer your question: Yes, I have friends who really like the
iPad so much and wants to do development on it. Will it practically work? I
really don't know. Until I see Xcode and/or Docker on iOS/iPadOS I am not very
hopeful.

------
esaym
Man I'm still vim only. I've tried these giant IDE apps, but just can't wing
it.

~~~
yesimahuman
You're getting downvoted but a legitimate question is if vim binding support
is coming or is even possible in the extension framework? VS Code vim binding
support is very buggy and breaks frequently, but otherwise works well. I could
see myself switching if vim bindings were better on this because I think the
sweet spot of editors is a nice GUI/project tree/etc. with vim bindings.

~~~
curiouser2
It's worth checking out if the Neovim VScode plugin[1] works for your
workflow. It's not as mature, but was much smoother when I tested it out. I'm
not able to make the change until they implement a "toggle vim mode" command
available... but once they do I'll jump. Also check out Onivim[2]

1:
[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetlia...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetliakov.vscode-
neovim) 2: [https://www.onivim.io/](https://www.onivim.io/)

~~~
yesimahuman
Interesting, thanks for the links! I use a pretty shallow set of vim features
so even if it's minimal but more stable that would be a big boost.

------
umvi
Panic seems like it would be a cool company to work for. I'm not a Mac guy, so
this particular product doesn't interest me, but I've had my eye on the
Playdate.

~~~
compscistd
They tease it through the text editor environments screenshotted in the Nova
page!

------
rbanffy
I see a lot of real estate dedicated to things I don't care that much about
when I'm writing code.

I'm probably not the target audience for this. I'm much too happy with Emacs.

~~~
criddell
It looks pretty configurable. What parts weren't you able to hide?

~~~
rbanffy
I refer to their screenshot they show at the home. I was once fond of IDEs
that had lots of information on-screen, but now I find it distracting.

------
mortenjorck
Great to see the up-to-date pricing model find another high-profile adopter.

Subscriptions for non-service-based apps are terrible for customers, while
major version upgrades make it hard for developers to plan around a steady
revenue stream. Up-to-date models, as Panic has implemented with Nova, offer
the best of both, with perpetual licenses for customers and a regular income
stream for developers.

------
biztos
I'll definitely give it a try but it seems _very_ web-dev-centric at first
glance.

There is a "preliminary alpha" Go extension for example, but there is first-
class support for... FTP.

It took me a few minutes to notice the magical sometimes-visible "download"
link but now I have the trial, and I hope it's as useful as it is pretty!

~~~
reaperducer
You couldn’t find the download link? The one that everyone else in this
discussion is raving about?

It’s the huge blue button right in the middle of the page that reads “Download
Nova for free.” They couldn’t make it more obvious unless the forced an auto-
download.

~~~
biztos
Indeed somehow I missed that. Scanned right past it, even though I took a
minute to play with the stars. I guess I registered the "buy now" link and
then went right into the content section.

Clearly my bad, looking at it now obviously it's a prominent call to action.

------
m0zg
As a small business owner, I envy Panic, in a good way. They do great work,
and charge good money for it, and people don't mind paying because if you know
Panic, you know their product is worth the cost. That's priceless. I wish they
did more, TBH. I'd pay just to enjoy their work.

------
brainless
I feel if a domain has a very well evolving, competitive open source offering
(VS Code), it's really hard to sell something else if the feature difference
isn't big.

Perhaps they should have started by targeting something other than web
development.

~~~
madeofpalk
Nova feels like an editor for 10, 15 years ago when they were making Coda. It
feels like its for when you have a bunch of simple static HTML files and maybe
a sass watcher.

These days, web development got both more mature, complicated, and simpler,
all in ways that makes it hard for Nova to make sense.

~~~
rimliu

       > These days, web development got both more mature,
       > complicated, and simpler
    

"Mature" and "simpler" do not belong there.

------
mamcx
(In case that somebody of panic read this)

For different reasons, I use VS Code (pretty, JS stuff), Sublime (fast),
IntelliJ(rust) and a SQL Tool(sql!) at the same time.

I like the idea of coda of being more IDEish with transmission and ssh built-
in, but one thing that no editor I have use is good at, is to see logs, sql
and CVS/JSON data.

In the case of CVS/json, I kill for a way to turn it in auto-datatable with
built-in search (do a lot of tabular data manipulation).

So, then after use sublime to load stuff, need ALSO to open excel OR numbers
(which one open this CVS file is a gamble) do the edits there, then go
back....

~~~
cosmotic
IDEA has excellent log support, SQL, and CVS/JSON support including loading as
a table with search.

~~~
mamcx
I just checked and is true. I need to test for a while how good. Thanks!

------
protomyth
I love Panic and am pretty sure this will be a great app, but I have a
question on the category.

Is there some reason that text macros aren't a built-in feature more often? I
spent a lot of years using the very simple PFE on Windows because it had text
macros and code snippets / templates. VS Code doesn't have them and neither
does this one. Do people not find this useful or at least useful? I guess I do
a lot of data munging with coding.

------
johnknowles
Anyone else tired of this underlying form for IDEs? I get why the side
toolbars make sense, from a space efficiency perspective, but the amount of
information to take in is always overwhelming from a zoomed-out perspective,
considering the whole app window. Why do app designers continue to force us to
select what to focus on amongst a sea of visual stimulation? Make it hidden by
default, and appear only when we want it!

~~~
runawaybottle
IDE devs can copy a thing or two from all the distraction free writing tools
(which have gone too far), balance is key.

------
thebouv
I feel like buying it to support them because Mac native app companies are few
and far between. And Transmit was good when I needed to use it (haven't
forever). And Coda was my main editor for a long time.

But I'll still use VS Code cause I work on a Mac and on Linux and it's nice
for it to just be the same. And I have no complaints to solve with VS Code. It
does exactly what I need for Python and other stuff.

------
sneak
I love Panic and I love hacking, and I started hacking on the Mac and will
always have a soft spot for the macOS. I'm glad they built this and their
other cool (but proprietary) software, despite the fact that software freedom
is really important.

That said, I'll never use a toolchain that isn't free software. These are my
_work tools_ , into which I invest decades of muscle memory and configuration.
Between Apple's lack of emphasis on long term application BC, and their
increasingly locked down hardware (and I type this on an iMac Pro with T2 and
firmware security on), I just can't invest my time and energy into the most
critical of my development tools (an editor) that isn't going to come with me
to any platform or device that I ever end up using, or, more importantly, be
hackable.

It's sort of like fire insurance. I hope to never, ever need to use it
(recompile my editor with a change), but the idea of having some of my most
valuable resources/investments at risk, with no recourse should the worst
happen, is insane to me.

------
0898
What happened to that little handheld console with a crankshaft Panic was
making?

~~~
dbt00
Looks like it's still chugging along. There was a big twitter update a month
ago with some in-progress third party projects from developer preview units
that shipped.

------
slater
Tries to connect to appcenter.ms at launch... is that just for extensions?

~~~
cglong
App Center is a beta distribution platform. I guess the prod version still
includes its library.

~~~
saagarjha
App Center does crash reporting as well.

------
jumelles
Panic is almost better at clean Apple-esque design than Apple themselves.

------
Nextgrid
Just downloaded, looks and feels great but I don’t see any way to configure a
Python project? It does per-file syntax highlighting but no cross-file symbol
resolution and I don’t see any place where I can configure the location of my
virtualenv so it can find all the libraries. Am I just being stupid or is
there no proper Python support yet?

------
mikorym
The first sentence on the website is:

> Can a native Mac code editor really be that much better?

I honestly thought that this must be a fork of Text Wrangler.

Footnote: Text Wrangler was merged into BBEdit and this was superficially
complicated enough that I never made the switch. I think this is an _I promise
the problem is with me_ situation.

------
m1keil
As much as I would like to use this, the lack of cross platform support is a
big no go for me. The same way I became 1Password customer _after_ they
introduced support for Windows and Android (which I need).

It looks like a wonderful product for someone who is dead set locked into
Apple eco system.

~~~
the_lucifer
Well, to be honest Panic have been Mac exclusive developers for upwards of 20
years now. I don’t see things changing anytime soon.

------
tpush
Finally a Mac-native code editor with Language Server Protocol support! Been
clamoring this for a while.

~~~
dorian-graph
> Language Server Protocol

This was the first thing I looked for on their feature page!

------
reaperducer
Eager to try this out. Coda was far ahead of its time, but became dated as
others caught up. Hopefully Nova is just as far ahead.

Moreover, I'm getting tired of VS Code's slowness and quirks, so switching
back to something from Panic would be great. If it crashes less often than VS
Code, it's half way there.

For those who don't know, Panic is well known for decades for making
incredibly high-quality software. It's not a big, flashy SV startup, but a
small team in Portland that emphasizes quality over quantity.

Also important: Panic takes purchase orders, which is the only way the company
I work for will buy software. A multi-billion dollar company where only the
C-levels have credit cards. Panic bent over backwards to sell us several
products.

~~~
pier25
> _Coda was far ahead of its time_

Other than the Cocoa UI what feature did it introduce?

> _Panic is well known for decades for making incredibly high-quality
> software_

They make great UIs that for sure, but other than that I wouldn't consider
them a great software company.

Transmit 4 is one of the slowest FTP clients I've ever used. [0]

Coda 1 and 2 were extremely slow. I remember years ago a coworker had to wait
a minute or more to be able to open a medium sized file while Sublime chew it
in a second or two.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMACGW7zOcY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMACGW7zOcY)

~~~
reaperducer
Transmit 4? That came out over a decade ago. Why would you use that as a basis
of comparison?

Transmit 5 has been out for more than three years.

~~~
pier25
Transmit 4 lasted in the market for 7 years. If that is not representative of
a company, I don't know what it is.

------
warpspin
Tried it out a few minutes. While I like the polish, this cannot (yet) compete
with Sublime Text for me (and remote editting is one of the major weaknesses
of Sublime currently, even with available extensions, while it looks as if it
might be one of the strengths of Nova).

It already starts with the editor itself, which has only one word wrapping
mode (the other mode is horizontal scrolling), where it will wrap the lines at
pretty arbitrary locations due to its desire to implement "word" wrapping,
instead of also offering a simple mode which simply breaks the current work
:-(

If basic editting does not fit my style, it is a no go no matter what other
niceties it might have, once the extension stuff starts going for real.

------
samatman
Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to answer the only question I have,
which is how they handle syntax highlighting.

I'm going to assume they support .tmLanguage, because it's the de facto
standard.

Do they support .sublime-syntax? If they do, I'm interested, if not, well, I'd
circle back if they add it, but lack of support is a deal-breaker for my use
case.

More generally, it's a great splash page, but it doesn't appear to link into
extensive documentation, and that's not a good sign. Should be right there on
the top bar. This is a tool I'd spend hours of my life a day in, and every
text editor in existence is an immensely complex beast which requires good
documentation.

------
vkoskiv
Lovely looking editor with a bunch of features, but they seemingly forgot to
include support for something as ubiquitous as C? That's kind of a weird
omission.

I'll be following the development of this, but for now I'm not playing with it
much further.

~~~
mmm_grayons
Yeah, I was confused by that; I believe there's LSP support, but no C/C++
support is a deal-breaker for a lot of people.

------
fmoronzirfas
Hm. Looks quite nice but does not work out of the box with fish shell and or
Node installed using nvm only. It gives me a hint like this:

> Prettier couldn't be found because npm isn't available. Please make sure you
> have Node installed. If you've only installed Node through NVM, you'll need
> to change your shell configuration to work with Nova. See
> [https://library.panic.com/nova/environment-
> variables/](https://library.panic.com/nova/environment-variables/)

Unfortunately the documentation is for zsh and bash only. Has anyone an idea
how to get this up and running with any other shell?

------
nodesocket
I use Sublime Text 3 for nearly all my DevOps work. I figured that I'd give
Nova a try as I was a big Coda fan back in the day.

I opened up Nova and first installed HCL (language support for HashiCorp's
Terraform and Packer). Then I looked for Shellcheck[1] validator, but was
disappointed it did not exist. Then I search for Kubernetes and Helm wondering
if there were any specific extensions, but no results. Next up was installing
Dockerfile and ENV syntax highlighting.

Overall still tinkering around, but Nova seems very promising.

[1]
[https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck](https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck)

------
hultner
Is there a vim-mode? If so, is it any good? I couldn’t see any mention of it
on the webpage or in the extensions.

I used to love Coda back in the late 00s, especially for its live CSS mode
(not so revolutionary today with this built into every browser these days),
and would happily give Nova a try if they support a decent vim-emulation mode,
but without it’s a non starter for me. These days I feel heavily handicapped
without it, just recently some tool dropped me into nano and I felt like a
child adding random characters to various places in the document while trying
to force myself to navigate the text correctly, muscle memory is a strange
beast.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
While this editor looks very nice I'm still confused on why I would use this
over sublimetext or vscode. It doesn't try to contrast at all just lists a
bunch of features that I already have in other editors.

~~~
YetAnotherNick
They answered that in the first line of the page

> native Mac code editor

Looks much more native and likely faster than electron based editors like
vscode or Atom.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
I use sublime though which is native as well.

~~~
pseudalopex
Native code but cross platform UI. It doesn't support Services[1], for
example.

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
guideline...](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
guidelines/macos/extensions/services/)

------
worldmerge
Edit: I think my performance with the background is a super niche one. It runs
fine in Microsoft Edge on my Windows install on a Macbook Pro 2015, but not on
Chrome.

The animation is really cool especially that onscroll effect!

~~~
dylan604
Maybe you have a spec of dust under one of the keys on your keyboard that is
causing the site to think you are trying to do something?

~~~
worldmerge
I don't think so. I've never had any site, even ones that use complex
animations like Stripe's site bring my machine to a crawl like this. I'm
pretty confident it's the Canvas animation causing this. I disabled JS and the
site runs fine.

~~~
dylan604
Sorry, I was just making fun of the specific model laptop. I'm on a 2016
model, and my s,d,f,t, and left-cmd key caps all come off while typing. I
would love to see how much it is going to cost me to have fixed, but I've had
to live with it since all of the Mac Stores in my area were closed. Now, I'm
just used to it even though my WPM has taken a major hit.

------
twic
> We don't have built-in diff yet, but it's on our list!

Fair enough - a good diff view has a lot of subtleties.

One of the things i love about IntelliJ is having access to most of the normal
editing tools in the diff view. If i'm reviewing my changes for a commit and i
realise a method name could be improved, i can refactor-rename it right there.
For some reason, possibly just keybindings, i can't use the broader set of
refactorings (extract, inline, etc) in the diff, and i wish i could use those
too. The diff could potentially be my main interface for programming.

~~~
sjwright
I haven't found a diff tool for macOS that is as good as WinMerge from fifteen
years ago.

Kaleidoscope is fairly close but you still can't merge individual lines from a
block of changes, and you can't make up for it with manual free-form editing
of the text. Sometimes I want to perform the merge by copying and pasting
segments myself. Sometimes I want to fix up indentation after merging.

~~~
sixstringtheory
Heavy Kaleidoscope user here. You can definitely edit the text in the merge
column, I've had to do it many times for exactly what you're describing!

~~~
sjwright
Really, how? I've got a Kaleidoscope merge open right now and I can't edit
text. Is there a mode I need to toggle or a button I need to press? I've
looked through all the menu items, preferences, all of the toggle switches in
the UI, and searched the documentation. I'm running version 2.3.2.

~~~
sjwright
Pressed on by your certitude, I tried googling it again and yep, you
definitely can't.

[https://twitter.com/kaleidoscopeapp/status/34193087090041651...](https://twitter.com/kaleidoscopeapp/status/341930870900416512)

(But you can when dealing with merge conflicts? Wow. Quite remarkable for a
seemingly basic bit of core functionality to stay humming on the to-do list
for seven years, despite the very same feature already implemented in a nearly
identical context!)

~~~
sixstringtheory
Ah, I’m so sorry. I said it was the exact thing you were describing, but I
misunderstood you. I indeed meant conflict resolution, and it is surprising
they left it out elsewhere.

------
michaelmarion
I’m going to be that guy: I would kill for a Java IDE that looked like this.

~~~
coryfklein
That's the first thing I looked for - Java support. Looks like it's not
available... for now?

~~~
michaelmarion
Seems like Panic is billing Nova as a text editor only—not necessarily an IDE.
They’d have to add in functionality for a whole host of other things to make
that a reality, including compilation, build, debugging, and so on. I doubt
all of that can be done with their build scripts and extension framework
alone, but, hey—I’ve been wrong before.

The state of the IDE landscape on Mac amazes me. It seems like there a
$#!*-ton of Java/C++ developers using standard-issue MacBooks at Big Corp,
Inc. who are staring at ugly IntelliJ windows for eight hours a day.

If there was a native-feeling, good-looking IDE for the Mac I can’t imagine
why it wouldn’t print money. (Or if XCode ever decided to branch out beyond
honest-to-goodness support for things other than Objective-C and Swift...)

~~~
AMC11
Is IntelliJ generally considered ugly?

~~~
brailsafe
IntelliJ is definitely ugly, but not quite as bad as NetBeans or Eclipse. It's
really powerful though and I prefer WebStorm and PyCharm for a number of
things. I think it's because of how complex the interface is, combined with
looking like a cross-platform app. It feels to me like I'm using a Windows app
that happens to run on mac.

------
statictype
It looks great.

Very Panic-y.

I'm surprised that they didn't use Cmd-P, using Cmd-Shift-O instead.

What's the precedent for it? I thought Cmd-P was now universally used to
locate files. Do Mac apps like Xcode use Cmd-Shift-O instead?

------
Hoasi
Long-awaited. Enjoyed Coda for a long time, then switched to Atom. It looks
like a polished Atom version, and Nova is likely going to replace Atom for me.

~~~
czbond
Why? (asking curiously). I used some version of Jetbrains, then Goland, then
Atom.

~~~
Hoasi
Well, for one, many believe Atom development stalled/is slowly dying.

------
vscTA
Not that it's a bad thing but it looks like the extension API and architecture
has lifted a fair amount from VS Code.

I kind of wish they went all in on LSP and made their extension API via
additional JSON RPC methods on top of the base protocol. Because that's what
extension authors are using to share code between an extension/editor, LSP is
the only thing somewhat consistent and the client surface area is tiny.

~~~
zapzupnz
There is LSP support in Nova. I hope to see more plugins make use of it to
bring more languages in the next few weeks.

------
thebouv
I love Panic. Transmit was awesome when I needed a great sftp client gui. But
I don't need it anymore.

Coda was baller. But I don't need it anymore.

I think I'll go ahead and buy Nova to check it out and support them. But VS
Code does everything I need and I have no complaints about it. Plus I can use
the same editor on my Mac and on my Linux desktops.

I find it interesting they're getting into this space, but more power to them.

------
racedude
I won't be touching it until VIM support is a thing, it feels weird to see or
use an editor without support for basic VIM keybindings...

~~~
chipotle_coyote
It's not a matter of keybindings -- Nova is a modeless editor, and Vim is a
modal one, so you need to have an entirely different interaction model. Not
every editor's extension system is capable of that. (AFAIK, Vim itself isn't
capable of changing interaction models -- while I've seen "Emacs keybindings"
for Vim, they don't make Vim into a modeless editor.)

------
tripue
There's a little bug on the landing, you can't press any of the top bar
buttons as long as you haven't scrolled enough.

------
TimothyBJacobs
It looks great, but I really can't see myself ditching JetBrains. The
refactoring tools alone make it a better solution for me.

------
LeoPanthera
$100 to buy, and then $50/year for updates.

I'm surprised it has no support for bash, or any other kind of shell
scripting.

------
hivacruz
Coda was one of my first real editor. Sure it wasn't complete but it helped me
getting better before switching to Sublime Text.

I just pushed a theme for Nova called "Hivacruz", the same I created for other
applications. Hope it will please some developers.

It is a nice piece of software. Props to Panic.

------
hashbig
I just don't understand why all this work didn't go into making an iOS text
editor. Why did they choose Mac OS? It's the most saturated platform when it
comes to editors.

Meanwhile, the only thing that keeps me from using my iPad Pro full-time is
the lack of a serious text editor and terminal.

~~~
deergomoo
Probably because for most of the use cases, you couldn’t actually do anything
with the code you write without involving another machine. It’s not like you
can spin up a node server.

I too would like to use my iPad Pro for work stuff, but I would say the thing
standing in my way is _Apple_.

------
iansinnott
I'm a bit confused by the value prop here, or maybe I'm just missing it. There
seems to be much talk of theming and extensibility, features which every
existing text editor has.

This is not meant to put down the product—I've bought and enjoyed multiple
Panic products in the past.

------
manzu
I love Panic but I don’t see why I’d buy and use this instead of PHPStorm
which I get on Windows also.

------
habosa
I probably won't use this (I'm fine with my current editors) but I want to
give the creators credit for what looks like a _very_ complete and feature-
packed first release. So many things on day one! Nice to see software that
looks ready to use.

------
nxpnsv
Nova is pretty, i liked the synthwave neon mode (probably would not use it for
an extended amount of time though). Markdown preview was not great. App
crashed when I attempted a git commit. I think I'll wait for a little while
before trying it again.

------
can16358p
Does anyone have React Native + TypeScript development/debugging experience
with Nova? I'm currently using Vscode, and I'm wondering if I should have a
look at Nova for this. (Nothing wrong with Vscode, I'm a bit into adventure)

~~~
scarlac
I will be giving it a go for the next few days to see if it'll work for React
Native development.

~~~
can16358p
I'd love to know how it goes and any significant upsides/downsides.

~~~
scarlac
Ok, so some feedback: I'm sad to report I stopped testing already. For my
particular job I tend to debug and work with large files, especially JSON. A
lot of debugging apps and looking through large crash logs, then looking at
application states. This is probably not typical, but it's crucial to me.

The transition is made hard because of the odd default key mappings (they
hotkey editor is very difficult to use. I went back and forward and couldn't
understand why my mappings weren't working only to find that it was due to
having to use the hotkey editor in a specific way). I really think a good
keymapping is the first hurdle people have to overcome, so shipping it with an
hotkey extension for Sublime, VSCode, etc. would be a big win off the line.

The autocomplete and jump to definition seemed to work well. I had a hard time
figuring out if "Find references" were working. It kept telling me to go to
some obscure tab or place somewhere but since it's all symbols, I don't know
where to actually go. VSCode is easy by comparison - a "peek" window shows up
prioritized references.

However, Nova is a no-go for me because it simply stalls when opening a >2 MB
JSON files. Forget about trying to search-replace - it's simply too slow. In
defense of Nova, Sublime also can't deal with it.

My impression going away from Nova is: It's like Xcode and VSCode had a baby.
Perhaps with time it'll improve in performance and be fine tuned to a point
where I can use it daily - but given it's primarily paid (not "free with nag
screen" like sublime), I can't review it any time soon again.

~~~
can16358p
I see. So I think I won't be giving it a shot too, at least for now. Let's see
where Nova evolves, if it does. If it becomes some obscure hipster tool where
developers with some niche need use, I'll leave it alone. If the baby of Xcode
and Vscode grows up to be a wonderful, mature IDE, sure, I'll give it a try.

Thank you for your detailed review, greatly appreciated!

------
hashkb
Panic should stop making editors, and if they _must_ make a new one, they
should not continue to make and market "web" editors.

There is a class of tech workers who find apps like this and then stop
exploring. As a result, they become marginally effective using Panic's
oversimplified workflows, and then stop exploring. I'm thinking in particular
of Coda's remote editing - and wouldn't you know it, remote file browser is a
promoted feature of Nova too! Built-in diffing is "on their list".

So I naturally assume that anyone who uses Panic's apps is incompatible with
any project I'd be working on; because they're going to try to educate me on
how much simpler and faster remote editing is than using a VCS. (Edit: and
it's not their fault, it's Panic's fault, for trying to make money off text
editors for people who are afraid of the command line.)

------
devit
How does it compare to VSCodium?

Given that it starts with the huge handicaps of being proprietary and
commercial, requiring a proprietary OS with very limited hardware support, and
having far less extensions than VSCodium, it seems very unlikely it can
compete.

------
josefresco
On another note, how was Panic able to get a registered trademark for "Nova"?

~~~
mtmail
Serial number 88490818 at [https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-application-
process/search-...](https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-application-
process/search-trademark-database)

"IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Downloadable web site development
software; Downloadable computer software development tools"

I guess the trademark it's very specific and not in conflict with let's say a
model of a car. But also other companies can challenge the trademark later if
they deem it in conflict with theirs.

------
bovermyer
I'm most interested in this as a competitor to Sublime Text, and also
PHPStorm.

------
jyriand
Landing page UI took me by suprise. It's refreshing in some sens, but little
bit broken. Can't really click on the items in the navbar. Have to scroll down
little bit first, and only then the links are clickable.

------
awill
I'm mixed on these Mac only apps. While they do look/feel better than cross
platform apps, I really, really love being able to use SublimeText on my work
laptop (Mac), and my personal desktop (Linux).

------
unicornfinder
Panic is one of those developers that makes me genuinely jealous of Mac users

~~~
hu3
We feel the same about Windows users and gaming.

Take a glance at
[https://old.reddit.com/r/macgaming/](https://old.reddit.com/r/macgaming/)

------
aduitsis
Delighted that it includes Perl support!

(full list: CoffeeScript, CSS, Diff, ERB, Haml, HTML, INI, JavaScript, JSON,
JSX, Less, Lua, Markdown, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Sass, SCSS, Smarty, SQL,
TSX, TypeScript, XML, and YAML)

~~~
chipotle_coyote
Well, it has an extension system, so it can have anything somebody makes an
extension for. There's already surprisingly good Elixir support.

~~~
bigbassroller
Good to hear because that would be a deal breaker for me.

------
r053bud
Maybe I'm missing it, but also no support for breakpoints or debugging?

------
morelikeborelax
Been waiting for this for some time as a previous Coda 2 user for a while.

Looks good.

------
pier25
Looks like a more beautiful version of Sublime but macOS exclusive.

------
zobzu
I'm just happy to see Panic still exist. I loved their FTP client and most of
their macOS "classic" software. Apparently the FTP client still exists
actually :)

------
spdustin
The warp speed when you mouse over the "Download Nova for Free" CTA is
gorgeous. It's over the top, but it's gorgeous.

On Safari, anyway; on Chrome, it's very jittery.

------
SimDeBeau
I really wish there was c support. At least c syntax highlighting. Seems like
an awesome editor, but lacking c, c++ and rust support is a real bummer

------
ashton314
That website though—genuinely made me smile. I love the star field animation
and the warp-drive effect when you hover over the "download" button.

------
rglover
That call to action hover made me grin from ear to ear :)

------
bestest
Trying it out now. My findings so far:

\- no vertical tabs (ditto for vscode though);

\- no diff, unless I'm missing it;

I try to live without vertical tabs, but missing diffing is a show stopper.

------
deddo
How is this any different from say Sublime Text?

~~~
leadingthenet
It uses native Mac UI widgets, and feels very Apple-y.

------
chrysoprace
It's all well and good to strive to take advantage of a native OS but it
should not come at the cost of platform exclusivity.

~~~
marckohlbrugge
Why not? Most developers seem to work on one platform anyway.

It’s time someone built a good macOS-native editor. There are already plenty
of non-native solutions out there.

~~~
chrysoprace
Platform exclusivity should be a thing of the past, especially as technology
to make cross-platform apps has become so accessible. For me the app becomes
practically useless as soon as it's only on one platform as I frequently
switch between Linux and Windows.

The developers in my team work on a mix of MacOS, Linux, and Windows.

In the face of VSC, a MacOS-exclusive app simply does not compete.

~~~
rimliu
And for me any app that becomes cross-platform loses some appeal. I do not
swtich paltform when writing some code, so all those compromises and trade-
offs made in the name of being cross-platform are a loss to me, not some gain.

------
liendolucas
More and more I see new apps being released and having a subscription model.
Pay X for the tool plus Y every year to get updates. Paying 99$ and then 49$
each year is (at least for me) too much money and a no go. If after a year
bugs are discovered on the purchase that I initially made, why shouldn't I
receive that for free? Subscriptions are ok for services and I don't really
care, but products shouldn't be on a subscription model. Just my opinion.

~~~
jpcooper43
Agreed 100%

------
throwaway7281
The tools you use will shape the things you build. That's why I use vim
because I long for simplicity, clarity, reduction.

------
jpillora
Any know much about Nova, and how hard it would be to integrate the Go
Language Server with it? seeing as it conforms to LSP

------
xenihn
I will pay for this if I can use it to run Swift code without saving to a
file, in the same way that Textmate does.

------
hartator
> If you like it, keep it forever

What year is this. :)

------
cordite
That “and so much more” block on the end is such an SEO grab.. you can open
RSA and ECDSA keys? So can vi.

------
rdevnull
Just WOW!! just bought my copy..great idea to offer a discount for Coda 2
owners. Is just awesome!

------
ariosto
I've been waiting for this editor! Is there a way to run a nodejs debugger in
it?

------
hestefisk
Very interesting editor. I would love an editor like this on Windows! Please
please port it :)

------
sahoo
Will this be available in iPad. What does arm chips in mac means for iPad.

------
waffletower
I don't see Clojure(script) on the list of supported languages :(

------
fnord77
looks nice but highish CPU usage just typing some random sentences at my
slowish wpm... enough to set off the fans on my 2015 mbp.

Other editors I use (intellij idea, vs code) don't do this.

Hopefully it is something minor.

------
jpzisme
I'm a vim guy, but this looks very well done. Good job, y'all

------
spurgu
What the hell is this site doing? Fans blowing, 40-50% GPU usage.

------
ajavascriptdude
Keeps crashing on a large project. Extensions have a lot of bugs.

------
Impossible
It'd be awesome if they give it first class Playdate support

------
jonny383
No vim key bindings. No extension for vim key bindings :(

------
LeoNatan25
They call it “native”, but I don’t know, those screenshots look nothing native
to me. Being “native” doesn’t just mean having a C++ codebase, it also means
using the native OS UI frameworks.

~~~
zapzupnz
It does look like it uses Cocoa. What are you seeing that doesn't look like
Cocoa? Custom controls doesn't count; those can still be based on NSView and
use other Cocoa controls in their implementation.

~~~
LeoNatan25
Even if NSView-backed, custom views that replace basic functionality aren’t
really native to me. Here, the entire window frame, all widgets, etc. are not
native. It looks, to me, like an Electron or RN “app”.

~~~
zapzupnz
> Custom views that replace basic functionality

The only custom controls I see are the tabs, tab bar, and a few modals (like
when opening a new tab), and a handful of buttons and segmented controls in
the sidebar. Everything else is native, unmodified Cocoa controls: NSWindow,
preference window and its contained controls, the sidebar, etc.

I actually am a bit curious about the decision to have those NSButtons with
custom backgrounds … they don't really look right both on Catalina or Big Sur.
Native-looking NSButtons are used everywhere else, though.

> the entire window frame

About the only thing that looks unusual here is the custom buttons at the top-
left with the diagonal lines. No more custom than Xcode, iTunes.

If the problem is that the toolbar seems to be in the titlebar, that's been an
accepted, Cocoa-supported window style for a long time — and much more
prevalent in Big Sur.

It has the correct translucency behaviour in Big Sur. Maybe one day they'll
update it to use Big Sur-style full-height sidebars.

> It looks, to me, like an Electron or RN "app"

Electron and React Native apps wish they could integrate with Cocoa as well as
this.

Those never look like anything more than a plain NSWindow with a plain, thin
titlebar with a web view inside — or worse, not even an NSWindow but one
painted with custom controls.

~~~
LeoNatan25
Electron “apps” don’t have much of a choice; they can’t even add toolbar
items. This is why it puzzles me why a Cocoa app would choose a unique look. I
am just not a fan. Regarding theme frame, it looks like a different gradient
to me. It certainly isn’t how it looks like Bug Sir.

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stakkur
Is this not just Coda reworked?

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rimliu
who cares?

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czbond
Adding support for Go(lang)?

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saos
No thanks. Sticking to VSC

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theCodeStig
Lost me at mini-map...

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chriscaruso
Just use VSCode

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yepthatsreality
Test your site out on Firefox, then we'll talk.

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ridiculous_fish
The site seems to work fine for me on Firefox 80, both Mac and Windows - what
problem do you see?

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yepthatsreality
All the text was squished into the bottom. Once you scrolled up it would pull
the text from this giant text-blob. It seems to have been fixed since.

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markstos
Watch out BBEdit!

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stephc_int13
They are cutting themselves from so many users...

I don't think that macOS has anything special today.

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dewey
They are a Mac developer shop from day one and that's what they are good at.
If they'd start building some hybrid cross-platform solution they'd compete
with VSCode and all the other free or cheap editors. Doesn't make sense at
all.

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johnghanks
With all due respect you gotta come out with a grand slam to get me off of
VSCode. This ain't it.

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The_rationalist
Ever tried intellij? It's objectively order of magnitude smarter

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etaioinshrdlu
I don't mean to complain about Nova, but I don't think being platform-specific
is something to be applauded (in itself). It's like making your webapp only
for Chrome -- that's not a feature, per-se.

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liquidise
Platform specificity typically comes with native performance and, in the case
of Panic, a UI that closely follows OSX conventions. For some (many?) these
are meaningful value-adds.

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etaioinshrdlu
But isn't it better to be native on multiple platforms? Like Chrome itself, or
Photoshop, or Sublime Text, and many others?

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rimliu
You are never native on multiple platforms. You are always alien on all of
them.

Unless you have separate code base for each.

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ryanSrich
Ah yes. Nova, the team that sent me the most pompous “rejection email” I’ve
ever had for a product.

“You weren’t randomly chosen for the Nova Private beta”

“After six months, our Nova Private Beta is gradually drawing to a close.
Unfortunately, we had far more people apply to test than we could reasonably
accept as testers.

We’re sorry to report that you were not randomly chosen for testing this
time.”

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TheGallopedHigh
How is that pompous? Seems rather straight forward to be honest.

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ryanSrich
A rejection email for a product that's positioned like I just got turned down
for a job? How is that not pompous?

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matchbok
It doesn't sound like that, and it isn't.

