GitHub Sunsets Atom, Its Text Editor for Software Development (techcrunch.com) 94
GitHub has announced that it will sunset Atom, the text editor for software development that the company introduced in 2011. In a blog post, GitHub said that it will archive the Atom repository and all other repositories remaining in the Atom organization on December 15, 2022. From a report: Atom served as the foundation for the Electron framework, which paved the way for thousands of apps including Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Slack, GitHub's own GitHub Desktop. But GitHub asserts that Atom community involvement has declined as new tools have emerged over the years. Atom itself hasn't seen significant feature development for the past several months beyond maintenance and security updates.
Re: (Score:3)
If you don't use VIM you are a hack and should not be coding.
VIM is a workaround for people too dumb to learn ex
Re: (Score:2)
ex is a workaround for people who are too stupid to understand the error messages from ed.
Re: (Score:2)
ex is a workaround for people who are too stupid to understand the error messages from ed.
VIM is for people still attached to their DEC VT100 terminals at the crotch.
Re:VIM (Score:4, Funny)
Yuck! You use VT100s? Teletypes are the way to go, man!
Re: (Score:1)
Re:VIM (Score:5, Informative)
Real programmers use cat
That's what cats want you to think. In reality, cats use real programmers.
Re: (Score:2)
This is entirely permissible under the Treaty of Cat, signed by Cat the First in the blood of some poor Egyptian that was passing by at the time.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought it was the mice who were experimenting us, not cats! Iâ(TM)ll go back to feeding the dolphins fish.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Real programmers use butterflies [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:2)
?
Re: (Score:2)
3s/h/the
%p
Re: (Score:2)
That way I don't need to spend 5+ years learning all the arcane shortcuts and commands that are buried behind a text field.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
5+ years learning all the arcane shortcuts
If it takes you more than 30 minutes to master basic text editing in vi you're stupid. After a week you should have 99% of everything you'll ever need to know down pat.
Re: (Score:2)
There is quite a lot of them and some of them have quite esoteric uses.
The h,j,k,l instead of UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT is a good example.
So is gg instead of HOME to move to the beginning of something.
Re: (Score:3)
"There is quite a lot of them and some of them have quite esoteric uses.
The h,j,k,l instead of UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT is a good example.
So is gg instead of HOME to move to the beginning of something."
Pop quiz for the class: what do all of these oh-so-hard-to-remember vim shortcuts have in common?
That's right; they don't take your fingers off the home keys. If you touch-type, vim's command keys will be enormously faster.
Re: (Score:2)
If you touch-type, vim's command keys will be enormously faster.
But what if you Theremin-type?
Re: (Score:2)
Where do I get one? I want to wave my hands over the keyboard like Mentok the Mindtaker [youtube.com].
Re: (Score:2)
okay
do you remember, off the top of your head, how to prepend a number on, say, 50 consecutive lines starting from the current one, in hex, initial number, say, 7, prepended with 0x, padded to 4 digits, ending with a colon and space?
because on my favorite editor, that, is roughly 25 keystrokes. Repeating the process from a different starting line and a different line count is about 10 keystrokes, plus as many digits as the line count number has
Re: (Score:2)
:.,.+50s/^/0x0007: /
If you wanted the number to increment on each line (which I think you did, but you didn't say that), I admit I'd have to look it up, but I'm reasonably certain it's doable, if more complicated.
Word of advice: don't expect to win these sorts of games against ex-descended editors; it's what they're best at.
Re: (Score:2)
yes, the number increments, that's why i said "starting from"
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
That's right; they don't take your fingers off the home keys. If you touch-type, vim's command keys will be enormously faster.
If typing speed is the bottleneck for how long it takes to develop software, you are most likely writing really shitty software.
Re: (Score:2)
"Type faster" is not a solution for better software. In fact, it's probably the opposite.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"they don't take your fingers off the home keys. If you touch-type, vim's command keys will be enormously faster."
If touch typing is relevant, then you were entering large amounts of text. Therefore you need to exit the mode, most likely insert mode, by hitting escape *which is not on the home row*.
Re: (Score:3)
Preface: I don't say any of this as promotion of vim or anything. The history of things like vi and emacs is already an interesting read.
The h,j,k,l instead of UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT is a good example
In case you are ever wondering where that came from. Comes from the original system's keyboard that vi was written for, the ADM-3A [wikipedia.org] keyboard. Modern vi implementations allow the arrow keys if you want, BUT the purist have "reasons" [superuser.com] they think you shouldn't use them.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean h,j,k,l in addition to the arrow keys. Both work. As does home in addition to gg.
But once you sit down with the editor for a while, and keep your hands in touch typing position, hjkl and gg will make a lot of sense. You can navigate without moving away from the home row, and you can quickly move text around without having to use the mouse.
Granted, if you hardly spend any time edition code or text, this is not of much use. But if you do, the few minutes spend learning, and the week spent practicing,
Re: (Score:2)
the few minutes spend learning, and the week spent practicing, will pay themselves back many times over in the first month of use.
Or... I can scroll around using a mouse wheel and click the mouse on the place where I want to change something.
Re: (Score:2)
I did mention that case. If you hardly do any coding or typing, that's good enough.
If you're doing lots of work on code and text, the vi keys will be a lot faster than constantly switching between mouse and keyboard, or even using only the mouse. Same applies for the really solid commands in emacs.
But the main advantage is that it become second nature to use the keyboard in a way the mouse never does. Using the mouse requires a lot more cognitive effort than a learned set of keyboard presses. Yes, there wil
Re: VIM (Score:2)
Why do I care about speed? Iâ(TM)m a software engineerâ¦. I get paid either way. :-D
Re: (Score:2)
I did mention that case. If you hardly do any coding or typing, that's good enough.
I do a lot of coding and typing.
I never felt my coding speed was limited by my typing speed.
Re: (Score:1)
Which is something else than what we're discussing here.
Re: (Score:3)
The h,j,k,l instead of UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT is a good example.
Did you know those navigation keys work on Slashdot? They work in many terminal applications as well. In other words it's fundamental knowledge expected of anyone competent with a convention unix-like terminal.
if everything else you need for basic editing in vi actually consumes the entire 30 minutes, you may have an additional 2 minutes to deal with h,j,k and l.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, the "/pattern - search for pattern" works with Google; press / it and focus move to the search box.
A basic understanding of vi demystifies many things in computing.
Re: (Score:2)
I prefer some of the more graphical [google.com] Vim cheat sheets.
I also remapped HJKL to IJKL since it feels more comfortable moving the middle finger up/down then the index finger left/right for vertical movement.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll never understand why the inverted 'T' arrangement took so damn long to develop. I guess the human factors guys didn't know how to touch type...
In the before time, I preferred 'OLK;'. Kids today probably want 'WASD'.
Re: (Score:2)
Computer tech goes through 3 phases:
1. Hardware
2. Software
3. QoL
Early home computers in the 70s didn't even have arrow keys. In the early 80's they had left/right before getting up/down (Apple 2) before we got dedicated T arrows by the mid 80's (IBM). The original Mac had no arrow keys.
Some early games had the inverted T shape -- Moria (1978) used AWD, Lode Runner (1981) used IJKL, Wizardry with AWD,
Looks like [wikipedia.org] the inverted T arrows were popularized by DEC?
Re: (Score:1)
If they are too lazy to find a simple keyboard overlay-cheatsheet chart for the commands...
But that is SOoo 1980s...no?
Re: VIM (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:No great loss, but a lesson (Score:4, Informative)
Imagine having bought into that (electron) crap and it's part of your daily workflow and suddenly the vendor says "ha ha, no more editor for you next year"
It's a MIT licensed project on GitHub. Some Atom user should make a GPLv3 fork so that they're sure that the abandoners won't take advantage of their name control to fork it back if it becomes popular again and then just maintain it as a separate project on GitLab with minimal fixes. If other people start changing and working on it, great. If not then at least there will be a place for people to contribute security fixes and compatibility updates.
This is exactly the reason we insist on FOSS software.
well, ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Atom itself hasn't seen significant feature development for the past several months beyond maintenance and security updates.
nothing wrong with that. on the contrary. feature creep just to stay relevant is the fastest way to turn any good software component into a bloated piece of crap.
anyway ...
Redundant products (Score:5, Interesting)
vscode vs Atom; it's all Microsoft.
So it works well and is in a good state? (Score:3)
Yes, _that_ is exactly the time to abandon it. Obviously these people are not after doing good engineering, they just want a quick buck.
Re:So it works well and is in a good state? (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft owns it because they bought GitHub, but they're clearly only interested in keeping VS Code around. Atom was on a timer the moment that purchase went through.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nice. By now I can apparently recognize the Microsoft cancer when I do not even have a clue it may be in there.
Well, any good product Microsoft ever had was something they bought. And then they either killed it or made it worse.
Re: (Score:3)
That sounds like Adobe...
Re: (Score:2)
That sounds like Adobe...
These days, yes. And some others.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I, for one, am fine with them abandoning it while it has an open source license and hasn't been horribly broken and ruined first.
Fork it and carry on.
For Atom users, what will you move to, if anythin? (Score:2)
I'm old and like to code in a terminal to my Linux machines. But, Atom is my default IDE for programming in Windows. I was never overly attached to it, as it always seemed fidgety and buggy. Maybe this is the prod that I needed to move on to something better. What do you Atom fans intend to switch to? VsCode? I've heard great things about WebStorm, but I am just not into the idea of having yet another subscription.
Re:For Atom users, what will you move to, if anyth (Score:5, Informative)
Definitely VSCode. (If you want a version without as much "Microsoft" in it, you can use https://vscodium.com/ [vscodium.com] instead. VSCodium is to VSCode as Chromium is to Google Chrome.)
I used Atom for a while, but I found it very slow. A big part of what set VSCode ahead of Atom was how much work the VSCode developers put into making it more performant. (Of course, now we can squander that performance by installing thousands of extensions, but that's optional.)
Re: (Score:2)
That's a good endorsement. Atom would randomly crash and many of the extensions would suddenly stop working or cause other issues. Does VSCode suffer from the same "option overload" that Atom has where there are too many extensions available that claim to do the same thing?
Re: (Score:2)
So first you concoct a stupidly slow "platform" and then build an application on top, and you then put a a lot of work into the application to make it "performant" again? It seem rather... well, perhaps this is the modern way, where resources like disk, cpu, memory are seen to be "free" or at least "cheap" (for you, and nevermind your users) but, you know, if you work just a little harder, use better algorithms, exercise your cleverity and showcase your smartness and so on, your application can be not totally slow again. If I had a lawn I'd tell you to get off of it, yes, sure.
I think you're wrong. The resource you failed to consider is "extension-developer time". VSCode, Atom, Vim, Emacs, all have high level languages with which to write plugins -- languages that you'd call slow. The world doesn't have enough available extension-author developer-hours to write all the extensions it needs in C or Rust. It does however have enough to write the extensions it needs in Javascript or Typescript or Emacs Lisp or Vimscript.
The VSCode team made exactly the write call to expose their API
Re: (Score:2)
I used Atom for a while, but I found it very slow.
Apparently there's a whole HTML/JavaScript framework behind it. (But I'm not an expert on Atom, please don't fact-check me... :-p)
I mean, nothing translates to "lean & simple" like "runs a browser in the background"... /s
Captcha: simplify :-)
Re:For Atom users, what will you move to, if anyth (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently there's a whole HTML/JavaScript framework behind it. (But I'm not an expert on Atom, please don't fact-check me... :-p) I mean, nothing translates to "lean & simple" like "runs a browser in the background"... /s
I am an expert! I implemented LSP support for Atom, and wrote two language services (for Flow and Hack) for both Atom and VSCode.
The reason for Atom's slowness is completely unrelated to what you're talking about. Proof is that VSCode has the same HTML/JS framework but is fast. Therefore, the reason must be something different.
The reason is instead primarily an architectural one. Atom runs its plugins synchronously within its main editor loop - i.e. you type a keystroke, and all the extensions get their say on it, and only once they've done will it appear in the buffer. VSCode runs its plugins asynchronously in a separate process - i.e. you type a keystroke, and it appears immediately in the buffer, and concurrently it gets sent off to extensions to take their own sweet time and come back eventually with say an autocomplete popup or whatever they want to do.
Re: (Score:2)
I used Atom for a while, but I found it very slow. A big part of what set VSCode ahead of Atom was how much work the VSCode developers put into making it more performant. (Of course, now we can squander that performance by installing thousands of extensions, but that's optional.)
The way Atom worked was that plugins/extensions got invoked "inproc" within the main message loop, and hence every extension had the potential to slow things down.
VSCode only ever invokes extensions asynchronously in a separate "extension host" process. Therefore, even the slowest thousand extensions in the world are unable to degrade the core editing speed, of typing a character and having it appear in the buffer.
(Of course, they're able to slow each other down!)
Re: (Score:2)
Zed.
Hasn't worked for me for months (Score:2)
Sometime in the last couple months, Atom stopped working for me. It shows an empty white window.
Searching forums for other people with issues led me to believe Atom isn't used by many people.
I like Atom, but I don't have time to track down esoteric bugs in my IDE. I had to make the switch and abandon it.
Re: (Score:2)
I use atom every day, it still works. But as other commenters point out, some of the extensions are cancer and can hang it up or whatever.
It's still my preferred editor for when I want a GUI. I'll have to find something else at some point, I knew from day 1 it was built on quicksand.
Re: (Score:1)
"Sunset?" (Score:2)
The reason I ask is that I'm getting a little advanced in years, and don't have time or energy to keep up on the latest tech jargon. I lost synergy with that paradigm many moons ago, and am no longer able to leverage it in my interfacings, whether touching base or just having a pow-wow.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Perhaps you should buy a dictionary.
https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Whoosh"? You don't know what a word has meant since before you were born, and that's my fault?
Re: (Score:2)
"US". Yeah, they like turning every noun into a verb.
Re: (Score:2)
Sunset was run up the flagpole recently, and people saluted.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They almost got it right (Score:2)
Atom itself hasn't seen significant feature development for the past several months beyond maintenance and security updates.
That's how you're supposed to do it: get it to maturity and just do maintenance and security updates afterwards. If you're adding new features beyond this point, you're making your product worse, not better.
Not sad. (Score:2)
Not sad. I gave it a fair trial and it's actually quite decent except for being a Javascript marvel, which nobody can ever successfully conceal. After it just good too annoying with the really rare glitchy bugs that Javascript is famous for, plus shitting resource wasting tasks all over my system, plus being stupidly bloated, I just round filed it along with Electron and my system thanked me.
Please give me one in Rust. Oh shit, thanks (Score:2)
Yeah, I was just going mention in my previous post that what I really want is something like Atom but written in Rust so it doesn't suck. So there's Zed [zed.dev]. Yeah baby! Installing now, lets see if this dog can hunt.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I was just going mention in my previous post that what I really want is something like Atom but written in Rust so it doesn't suck.
Text editors have been around a long time before Rust was a language. How would re-coding one in Rust make it better than it was before? And if you were using it, would you be able to tell that it was written in Rust instead of some other language?
Re: (Score:2)
How would re-coding one in Rust make it better than it was before?
I liked how Atom worked as an editor. It did not like the stupidly heavyweight system footprint and all the weird little glitches that keep happening Javascript-style. Get it now?
Re: (Score:2)
VSC is using 88MB on my system right now. Mattermost, 92MB. Both electron apps.
iTerm2 uses more fucking RAM.
You're like a fucking archaic dumbshit wanna-be computer nerd trope vomiting machine. Get it now?
Carry on, soldier.
Re: (Score:2)
OMG not that DK poster child again. Go fuck yourself you ignorant self obsessed piece of shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, I have to lol one more time. "Javascript-style" glitches. Please, tell us what a "javascript-style" glitch is.
You're seriously such a fucking bullshitter, lol
The answer is YES. (Score:3)
Yes, it dan well is your father's Microsoft. They've not changed one iota, except maybe for the worse.
Ridiculous —so when is the 'Atomic' Editor f (Score:1)
It has a huge user base, it works just fine. I prefer it over VScode —for one, the VIM mode is better than in VScode.
Microsoft just wants to push VScode.