4 ms·

Early Thoughts on Atom

34 points by devonbarrett 13y ago

sdegutis 13y ago
My real gripe with using web rendering isn't that it doesn't look native (the "native look" changes every year, so who cares if we deviate)... no, it's that it's slow and sluggish and resource-hungry. I honestly don't feel comfortable running Atom on my laptop.
- ollyculverhouse 13y ago
  Does that mean that you haven't yet tried Atom on your laptop? I haven't however haven't heard complaints about performance...
  - lunixbochs 13y ago
    It's definitely slower than Sublime Text 3, but not by much and it's a pretty high bar.
    - ChristianBundy 13y ago
      How much slower? Slower doing what? It feels snappier to me at everything except for opening large files, but it's a beta – it's to be expected.
      - lunixbochs 13y ago
        The framerate is visibly slower on drag to select. Opening a window takes forever. The two major improvements for me are package management, and actual support for making GUIs.
  - sdegutis 13y ago
    I did try it on my laptop, but not for long enough to hear the fan running. However the CPU does go pretty crazy just using Chrome on my laptop, so I fear it'll do the same with Atom.
- danielsju6 13y ago
  I've not dealt with sluggish performance, while it may be resource hungry (I haven't looked at the resources it consumes, I have 16GB of ram in my laptop so what do I care) I appreciate the performance. Vim with syntax highlighting and a bunch of plugins has been getting painfully slow for me these days, I've been tempted to play around with the threaded branches. Atom seems quite speedy in comparison.
- crm416 13y ago
  Agreed. Even with small tasks, I've found Atom to be noticeably slower. Just as an anecdotal data point, it takes roughly a second to open a file or folder in Atom (i.e., after opening the app, the time b/w dragging any file or folder onto the icon and seeing it appear in the editor is about a second), while the same interval in Sublime is imperceptible.
llamataboot 13y ago
Sorry for the grovel, but still looking for an atom invite. Would like to try it out for myself, and of course I'm impatient.
- ChristianBundy 13y ago
  Email me at me@christianbundy.com. :)
  - ChristianBundy 13y ago
    After receiving 80+ emails, I'd like everyone to know that I don't have any more invitations. Check out ##atom-invitations on irc.freenode.net!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
bovermyer 13y ago
Great read, thanks for this. I haven't had a chance to play with Atom yet, and this kind of article keeps me in the loop.
zbruhnke 13y ago
RE: Sending info to google. When I got my invite to Atom it definitely mentioned that during the beta period it was automatically sending feedback and that it was a feature that could be disabled. So far Atom is not life changing for me but I do find it very useful and extensible, possibly the most interesting part is that I can already use it switching from Sublime Text 3 with almost zero issues because its so similar in feel. I think its got a great chance to be a wonderful editor and I'm rooting for Atom (and Github) on this one, but there is still a long way to go before giving everyone a compelling reason to switch (especially those coming from vim, etc.
- rjzzleep 13y ago
  every chromium embedded also uses the google dns fyi. having built a chromium embedded app it was puzzling to me that there's no way to disable that(or maybe there is and i haven't found it). i don't know if that's the case here though(since it's blocked in my firewall). in fact most of the so called privacy aware chromium builds also leak the dns information to google. This is not deliberate practice, it's usually hidden somewhere in the code, and unless your firewall prompts you you might not even ever notice.
purephase 13y ago
It's definitely slick. While comparisons with ST are obvious, I find it a touch more polished. One example is that the "find all" results page is automatically updated whenever you modify the results. So, if you replacing a bunch of text, the results are updated in real-time each time the files are saved. Two gripes that I have so far are: - The actual integration with GH does not work for me. E.g. Git blame does nothing. I haven't had a chance to troubleshoot yet. - I can't open files (or even see them) if they're in .gitignore. I can't figure out how to turn this off. All in all though, I like it so far. I'm excited that the community seems to have hopped on it so quickly with packages so it will be interesting to see where it goes.
- ChristianBundy 13y ago
  Settings (Cmd+,) -> Tree View -> Hide Ignored Names
jimhart3000 13y ago
Anyone know how quickly they're adding people to the beta at this point? Should I hold my breath on the invite I requested, or should I stop reading these articles that are making me increasingly jealous? :)
- canthonytucci 13y ago
  put your email in your profile :) or just email me. I have one left.
  - jimhart3000 13y ago
    I don't see your email, but I added to mine. (gmail, jimhart3000). :)
    - canthonytucci 13y ago
      All set. Sorry, I thought because I had entered one it would just show up. Anyway, Enjoy.
jareds 13y ago
How long is it taking to get an invite through the normal github signup? I'd like to try this out to see if it is accessible with screen reading software although the answer is probably not really.
davexunit 13y ago
The glaring ethical issue remains that the core of Atom is nonfree. From what I've read, the source code will be viewable but not redistributable and the public can submit pull requests. If this is true, it means that GitHub is intending to trick users into providing gratis labor for their product without retention of copyright for their contribution.
- paperwork 13y ago
  I don't think this rises to the level of an ethical issue.
- dchuk 13y ago
  I'm not well versed in the nuances of software licensing. Are there prominent examples of other projects using a similar setup? Or is Github unique in this? Or is it a case where Github's size/reach makes them unique in this at scale?
  - worldsayshi 13y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that some Microsoft products (.Net?) have a similar setup.
  - chimeracoder 13y ago
    We don't have any details of the Atom license yet, but it sounds like it will be equivalent roughly to Microsoft's shared source licenses for proprietary code: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source
- lispm 13y ago
  Which would be funny, here in Germany I can't give up my Copyright.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  If they are clear up front then it isn't really a trick. If they want to distribute the contributions, they will have to make it clear up front.
legohead 13y ago
> Is It Worth All of the Hype? Who really cares? well, me.. that's why I'm reading your blog
- derefr 13y ago
  It's a silly question to want the answer to, though. You can tell someone everything they need to know to judge something on its merits, and they'll still ask whether it's "overhyped" or "underhyped", or, I suppose, "just the right amount of hyped." Hype fluctuates over time and between different venues (e.g. right now Atom is being "hyped" on HN, but next month it might be the talk of /r/programming, etc.) Asking whether something is worth the hype requires the author to be aware of exactly the level of hype the reader has experienced, which requires, basically, being that individual reader.
sergiotapia 13y ago
I love this editor! Instantly switched to it - now to wait for some Gophers to create some neat packages for Go. This editor is so easy to extend that it took me three hours to learn how to tweak the UI from scratch (and I have NO Nodejs experience - dependencies are easy to install). https://github.com/sergiotapia/atom-darcula https://github.com/sergiotapia/atom-darcula Everything is tweakable using CSS and that's fantastic. It's super fast as well, no difference whatever between this and Sublime Text 3 for me. Love it and will gladly buy it once it leaves Beta.
gboone42 13y ago
The git integration could be a lot better but I like the green or amber hairlines next to the line number that give you a real-time git diff against HEAD. Cool feature. It is a bit slow, especially when opening files, I've noticed.
look_lookatme 13y ago
Does Atom have an emacs keybinding mode?

34 points by devonbarrett 13y ago

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

ollyculverhouse 13y ago
Does that mean that you haven't yet tried Atom on your laptop? I haven't however haven't heard complaints about performance...
- lunixbochs 13y ago
  It's definitely slower than Sublime Text 3, but not by much and it's a pretty high bar.
  - ChristianBundy 13y ago
    How much slower? Slower doing what? It feels snappier to me at everything except for opening large files, but it's a beta – it's to be expected.
    - lunixbochs 13y ago
      The framerate is visibly slower on drag to select. Opening a window takes forever. The two major improvements for me are package management, and actual support for making GUIs.
- sdegutis 13y ago
  I did try it on my laptop, but not for long enough to hear the fan running. However the CPU does go pretty crazy just using Chrome on my laptop, so I fear it'll do the same with Atom.
danielsju6 13y ago
I've not dealt with sluggish performance, while it may be resource hungry (I haven't looked at the resources it consumes, I have 16GB of ram in my laptop so what do I care) I appreciate the performance. Vim with syntax highlighting and a bunch of plugins has been getting painfully slow for me these days, I've been tempted to play around with the threaded branches. Atom seems quite speedy in comparison.
crm416 13y ago
Agreed. Even with small tasks, I've found Atom to be noticeably slower. Just as an anecdotal data point, it takes roughly a second to open a file or folder in Atom (i.e., after opening the app, the time b/w dragging any file or folder onto the icon and seeing it appear in the editor is about a second), while the same interval in Sublime is imperceptible.

llamataboot 13y ago

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

ChristianBundy 13y ago
Email me at me@christianbundy.com. :)
- ChristianBundy 13y ago
  After receiving 80+ emails, I'd like everyone to know that I don't have any more invitations. Check out ##atom-invitations on irc.freenode.net!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

bovermyer 13y ago

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

zbruhnke 13y ago

RE: Sending info to google. When I got my invite to Atom it definitely mentioned that during the beta period it was automatically sending feedback and that it was a feature that could be disabled. So far Atom is not life changing for me but I do find it very useful and extensible, possibly the most interesting part is that I can already use it switching from Sublime Text 3 with almost zero issues because its so similar in feel. I think its got a great chance to be a wonderful editor and I'm rooting for Atom (and Github) on this one, but there is still a long way to go before giving everyone a compelling reason to switch (especially those coming from vim, etc.

rjzzleep 13y ago
every chromium embedded also uses the google dns fyi. having built a chromium embedded app it was puzzling to me that there's no way to disable that(or maybe there is and i haven't found it). i don't know if that's the case here though(since it's blocked in my firewall). in fact most of the so called privacy aware chromium builds also leak the dns information to google. This is not deliberate practice, it's usually hidden somewhere in the code, and unless your firewall prompts you you might not even ever notice.

purephase 13y ago

It's definitely slick. While comparisons with ST are obvious, I find it a touch more polished. One example is that the "find all" results page is automatically updated whenever you modify the results. So, if you replacing a bunch of text, the results are updated in real-time each time the files are saved. Two gripes that I have so far are: - The actual integration with GH does not work for me. E.g. Git blame does nothing. I haven't had a chance to troubleshoot yet. - I can't open files (or even see them) if they're in .gitignore. I can't figure out how to turn this off. All in all though, I like it so far. I'm excited that the community seems to have hopped on it so quickly with packages so it will be interesting to see where it goes.

ChristianBundy 13y ago
Settings (Cmd+,) -> Tree View -> Hide Ignored Names

jimhart3000 13y ago

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

canthonytucci 13y ago
put your email in your profile :) or just email me. I have one left.
- jimhart3000 13y ago
  I don't see your email, but I added to mine. (gmail, jimhart3000). :)
  - canthonytucci 13y ago
    All set. Sorry, I thought because I had entered one it would just show up. Anyway, Enjoy.

jareds 13y ago

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

davexunit 13y ago

The glaring ethical issue remains that the core of Atom is nonfree. From what I've read, the source code will be viewable but not redistributable and the public can submit pull requests. If this is true, it means that GitHub is intending to trick users into providing gratis labor for their product without retention of copyright for their contribution.

paperwork 13y ago
I don't think this rises to the level of an ethical issue.
dchuk 13y ago
I'm not well versed in the nuances of software licensing. Are there prominent examples of other projects using a similar setup? Or is Github unique in this? Or is it a case where Github's size/reach makes them unique in this at scale?
- worldsayshi 13y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that some Microsoft products (.Net?) have a similar setup.
- chimeracoder 13y ago
  We don't have any details of the Atom license yet, but it sounds like it will be equivalent roughly to Microsoft's shared source licenses for proprietary code: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source
lispm 13y ago
Which would be funny, here in Germany I can't give up my Copyright.
maxerickson 13y ago
If they are clear up front then it isn't really a trick. If they want to distribute the contributions, they will have to make it clear up front.

legohead 13y ago

> Is It Worth All of the Hype? Who really cares? well, me.. that's why I'm reading your blog

derefr 13y ago
It's a silly question to want the answer to, though. You can tell someone everything they need to know to judge something on its merits, and they'll still ask whether it's "overhyped" or "underhyped", or, I suppose, "just the right amount of hyped." Hype fluctuates over time and between different venues (e.g. right now Atom is being "hyped" on HN, but next month it might be the talk of /r/programming, etc.) Asking whether something is worth the hype requires the author to be aware of exactly the level of hype the reader has experienced, which requires, basically, being that individual reader.

sergiotapia 13y ago

I love this editor! Instantly switched to it - now to wait for some Gophers to create some neat packages for Go. This editor is so easy to extend that it took me three hours to learn how to tweak the UI from scratch (and I have NO Nodejs experience - dependencies are easy to install). https://github.com/sergiotapia/atom-darcula https://github.com/sergiotapia/atom-darcula Everything is tweakable using CSS and that's fantastic. It's super fast as well, no difference whatever between this and Sublime Text 3 for me. Love it and will gladly buy it once it leaves Beta.

gboone42 13y ago

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

look_lookatme 13y ago

Does Atom have an emacs keybinding mode?