It could be argued that language-specific efforts such as this are redundant in the face of more generalized solutions like VS Code or Sublime Text, but I think they’re pretty great at spurring innovation and raising the bar for quality. Chime looks great!
I agree that language-specific tools can seem like a funny choice. But, it's just really hard to support one language well. This is probably why jetbrains does what it does. Of course, they surely have a large shared base, but tooling customized for one language and environment can work well.
We haven't discounted the possibility of expanding to other languages, but the general editor market is so well served that specialized tools just seemed like a better fit for what we were trying to do.
The linked medium article is 2017, should probably be noted in the post. Seems the editor is not available for download in 2020. One of their criteria is a little questionable:
> Has a design that doesn’t feel like an afterthought
Of course, who is going to want a design that feels like an afterthought? But, this doesn't define what they do want, just what they don't.
Hello! I'm the author of this article, and one of the people that works on Chime. I'm not certain how this ended up on hacker news now, but oh well.
It is true, we're still not quite ready for general availability, but getting Real Close Now. If you'd like to check out the beta, we have contact info at chimehq.com.
As for our design goals, it's true that it can be very hard to put those kinds of things into words. We've tried to convey our aesthetic goals better on our website. Usually, this kind of thing is easier to show than to tell.
We're shooting for fewer features, built with more polish and style. Lots of people don't prioritize that kind of thing from their editor. But, I hope that we can connect with the few that are.
