GitHub Open Sources Atom, Their Text Editor Based On Chromium

First time accepted submitter aojensen (1503269) writes "GitHub has made good on promises to open source Atom, a programmer's text editor based on Chromium. Atom is released under the MIT license (source repository). GitHub announced the following on their blog: 'Because we spend most of our day in a text editor, the single most important feature we wanted in an editor was extensibility. Atom is built with the same open source technologies used by modern web browsers. ... But more importantly, extending Atom is as simple as writing JavaScript and CSS, two languages used by millions of developers each day.'

Apart from being extensible via HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, Atom also offers out-of-the-box Node.js integration, a modular design with a built-in package manager (apm), and extensive features such as file system browser, themes, project-wide search and replace, panes, snippets, code folding, and more. Launched only 10 weeks ago, Atom seems to have a well-established ecosystem of packages and extensions already." The editor is based on atom-shell, a more general framework for building desktop apps using JavaScript/HTML. Beware: according to the FAQ, by default it sends "usage data" to Google Analytics (which can be disabled at least).

Comments

Google Analytics?

[ButchDeLoria]

Maybe it's the past year getting to me, but I'm wary of a text editor that phones home. https://atom.io/faq

Re:Google Analytics?

[MightyYar]

So turn it off?

Re:Google Analytics?

[ButchDeLoria]

It's still scummy to have it on in the first place.

Re:Google Analytics?

[MightyYar]

I disagree. It can be helpful to authors of software to see how their product is being used. As long as they are up-front about it, I have no issue.

When they try to pull the wool over your eyes, then it gets into "scummy" territory.

Re:Google Analytics?

[MightyYar]

By the way, the data they are collecting:

A unique identifier that is generated by computing the SHA-1 of the machine's MAC address.
The screen width and height
The version of Atom being used
The name of each item opened in a pane such as EditorView, SettingsView, and MarkdownPreviewView
The amount of time the current window was open for
The amount of time the current window took to load
The amount of time the app took to launch

Re:Google Analytics?

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Should be off by default.

Re:Google Analytics?

[Anonymous Coward]

But just like every other thing from google, it will eventually take more and more of your data. In fact, it will ask for more rights to your data just as soon as the metrics tell google that you are totally using it.

Re:Google Analytics?

[MightyYar]

Opt-in always results in lower participation than opt-out.

Re:Google Analytics?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's open source. Fork it, remove "feature", release. Fixed. Isn't it nice when people give you their code for free?

Re: Google Analytics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely?

Re: Google Analytics?

[MightyYar]

Makes it pretty difficult to get good usage data for your software, doesn't it?

Re: Google Analytics?

[denmarkw00t]

Sure, but you should be asking your users if they would like to contribute that data, not assume that they want to. Steam asks me if I want to submit my hardware information, it doesn't assume I want to from the get-go. This has likely hurt "participation" but it keeps goodwill flowing between Steam and their users. Ultimately, metrics don't mean squat if no on uses it in the first place.

Re: Google Analytics?

[MightyYar]

I agree that is preferable on initial run of the app, but even then there are slimy options (like Flash installing that crap if you forget to uncheck the box) and there are harmless ones like the anonymized usage data this app collects. And while I will complain loudly that Flash installs crapware with their pre-selected checkbox, I would not object to these guys pre-checking the box because the behavior is so harmless.

Re:Google Analytics?

[Jane Q. Public]

A unique identifier that is generated by computing the SHA-1 of the machine's MAC address.

You do realize, do you not, that a MAC address is anything but random, and that deciphering an SHA-1 of a MAC address may take a little time but is essentially trivial?

Re:Google Analytics?

[Jane Q. Public]

Or, let me put it a different way, which is perhaps more relevant:

If you have any OTHER software that may make a hash out of your user's MAC address, such as a web browser for instance, you don't even need to decipher anything. You just compare one hash to the other.

Re:Google Analytics?

[MightyYar]

Yes, they should probably salt it. Right now they seem to simply apply the SHA-1 hash:
getUserId: (callback) ->
        require('getmac').getMac (error, macAddress) =>
            if error?
                callback require('node-uuid').v4()
            else
                callback crypto.createHash('sha1').update(macAddress, 'utf8').digest('hex')

Re:Google Analytics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Random huh ?

https://www.google.com/search?q=XXXSS+attack+MAC+address

You mean like with XXXSS attacks, where they can tell where your house is on Google Maps using that same MAC Address ?

Re: Google Analytics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pre-checking IS the behavior.

100 year language

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm reminded of Paul Graham's interesting article: 100 year language. Everyone is sure it all be some formally convoluted stander based off Isabella, or dependent types etc. JS is a great utility language and offers programmers something that isn't trying to save the world. It may be around a lot longer than people think. As for Dart, it's really just JS rebranded under Google afaik.

Re:100 year language

[TheRaven64]

As for Dart, it's really just JS rebranded under Google afaik.

The only part of this that's correct is the Google part. Dart is StrongTalk with curly braces. The object model, type system, and core functionality are exactly like StrongTalk, the lead developer on both projects is the same, and the VM is based on the StrongTalk VM (open sourced under a BSD license by Sun).

Re:100 year language

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Paul Graham's answer to any language question was "Lisp"!

Re:100 year language

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Heh, I wasn't interested in Dart all that much, but the StrongTalk mention sure got my attention! If this is indeed the case, then it's definitely worth a look.

Re:100 year language

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Recently, asking PG this question has become very arcward.

Re:100 year language

[Anonymous Coward]

K. S. Kyosuke ya bigmouth: Yer bein called out (why ya runnin "forrest"?) http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:100 year language

[Anonymous Coward]

K. S. Kyosuke: You've been called out (for tossing names) & you ran "forrest" from a fair challenge http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Why is usage data in quotes?

[IamTheRealMike]

Usage data is all Google Analytics can be used for. The product literally does not support collection of anything else. What's more, it's not like this is a rare or unusual practice. For instance video games have been collecting telemetry by default for ages now. It helps the studios figure out where they screwed up and made the game too hard, causing players to drop out.

Re:Why is usage data in quotes?

[buchner.johannes]

Should be with the users consent though, that a program starts sending data. For games, this consent probably comes with accepting the EULA.

Re:Why is usage data in quotes?

[RobertLTux]

yeah the 18000 word document that exactly NOBODY reads completely and competently.

i could write a program and require that you on demand send me a picture of you in a Ballet Performance quality leotard and platter tutu and nobody would even KNOW about it until i tried to enforce it.

EMACS 2.0

[serviscope_minor]

Remember back when EMACS stood for Eight Megs and Constantly Swapping. It seemed quite funny to build an OS and language first and then turn it into an editor. With all the jokes about how it's a great OS shame it has no decent editor etc etc.

Well this is just EMACS circa 2014. But instead of elisp we have Javascript. And instead of the emacs-platfrom-which-has-no-name we have a browser.

Anyway, here's a few lines from my top window:
13226 user 20 0 902280 187184 27300 S 0.0 18.3 57:49.63 firefox
26114 user 20 0 35532 8680 4344 S 0.0 0.9 0:12.53 gvim

see the difference?

(but hey it's in a browser so it's officially cloud and webscale and at least web 3.1.0-RC2)

Re:EMACS 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep.
They should adopt the slogan:
"Atom - For people to stupid to learn elisp"

I would guess that's the motivation behind it.

Re:EMACS 2.0

[serviscope_minor]

Actually, my post is a bit mean spirited and I shouldn't be pissing on other people's parade just because I can.

It is still very much like emacs in architecture, but with a browser as the platform, not the emacs platform as a platform. This will make it quite resource hungry, but frankly now as then if it's a good editor, people won't care and will use it anyway. It's an instance of hardware being cheap relative to developers and it's not like it will be running on 1e6 servers so it's worth optimizing by rewriting in C++ or anything.

I expect a reasonable number of people will try it because it's new and cool and a reasonable number of them will stick with it. It will then jon the ranks of all the other editors out there and may get a decent following.

I won't be joining them just yet because I happen to really like vim, and it's reached the stage where I don't regularly feel "if only it had feature X".

Re:EMACS 2.0

[Momomoto]

It's even worse! Atom can't handle file sizes larger than 2MB!

(Source: http://reza.jelveh.me/2014/02/...)

Re:EMACS 2.0

[fph il quozientatore]

If the comment systems on the internet have taught me anything, it is "if you are insulting someone in your post, make sure that your spelling and grammar are flawless".

Re:EMACS 2.0

[_xeno_]

It's not so much that it can't, but that it won't. I got a beta invite, so one of the first things I tried to do was open a 6MB CSV file to see what would happen. It pops up a cryptic error message which you can decode using the developer tools: files larger then 2MB aren't allowed.

The reason is simple. Atom is slow. Really, really, really slow. Now granted the MacBook Pro (remember, it's also Mac-only) is a couple years old, which in Apple terms means it's time to be replaced (can't wait to stop receiving updates for it and getting yelled at by IT for that), but it absolutely and noticeably drags editing text.

Scrolling is slow. Editing is slow. Searching is slow. Everything is just - slow.

In a text editor. In 2014.

Re:EMACS 2.0

[dotancohen]

Remember back when EMACS stood for Eight Megs and Constantly Swapping.

The new acronym is:
A
Ton
Of
Memory

Re:EMACS 2.0

[ArhcAngel]

Yep. They should adopt the slogan: "Atom - For people to stupid to learn elisp"

I would guess that's the motivation behind it.

too

Re:EMACS 2.0

[0123456789]

Well this is just EMACS circa 2014. But instead of elisp we have Javascript. And instead of the emacs-platfrom-which-has-no-name we have a browser.

Anyway, here's a few lines from my top window: 13226 user 20 0 902280 187184 27300 S 0.0 18.3 57:49.63 firefox 26114 user 20 0 35532 8680 4344 S 0.0 0.9 0:12.53 gvim

see the difference?

(but hey it's in a browser so it's officially cloud and webscale and at least web 3.1.0-RC2)

It doesn't run in the browser - it's a standalone app. FWIW, it's using 5.7Mb on my computer at the moment - while emacs is using 41.2Mb. Your emacs analogy is perhaps more apt than you realise though: it's essentially emacs using HTML/javascript/CSS instead of lisp.

Re:EMACS 2.0

[TheRaven64]

FWIW, it's using 5.7Mb on my computer at the moment

I find that a bit hard to believe. I've just launched it and not even given it input focus. Atom is using 55MB (33.1MB private), and there are three Atom Helper processes, each consuming 57.9MB, 34.4MB, and 21.4MB (56.2MB, 20.6MB and 10.4MB private) each. So that's a total of over 100MB for a text editor with one window, one tab, and no files open.

Re:EMACS 2.0

[friedmud]

To be fair... Emacs 10.7 running on my Mac is currently consuming 150MB...

We've moved on past the days where we care how much memory this stuff takes up. If you're a developer you've probably got a pretty decent machine anyway.

I personally want more features... and more features means more memory and I'm happy to give it.

I did try Atom for a week and it wasn't quite ready for what I wanted to do with it and so I moved back to Emacs. I'm going to keep any eye on it though because the extensibility is CRAZY easy so there are going to be TONS of plugins built over time...

Re:EMACS 2.0

[rpdillon]

Emacs 10.7? What are you running? I have a a couple of dozen file buffers open, a Magit session, and some ag buffers and Emacs is reporting 39,748k. Meanwhile, my IntelliJ instance is reporting 1,341,992k with three files open. Each of my two Firefox instances is reporting between 450,000k and 500,000k, with less than 5 tabs each. When every basic application assumes it can grab between a few hundred megs and a couple of gigs or RAM, Emacs claiming 40 megs is sort of nice.

Re:EMACS 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL, thanks. Now I won't even try it out lol.

Re:EMACS 2.0

[Darinbob]

I was thinking about the description of atom, and basically it sounded like the principles of emacs only doing it badly by using javascript instead of lisp.
The only "advance" here I think is that it allows more UI customization (presumably that's what the CSS is for).

Re:EMACS 2.0

[Darinbob]

Because nothing out-of-the-box will be a fit for everyone. Thus you want, or rather need, customization. Once you have customization you want more customization. So you end up with Emacs (or atom, or vim, or any of a countless number of other extensible editors). So instead of one editor for C, another for Java, a third one for HTML, a fourth for Fortran, other modes for plain text, and so on, you have just one editor that can do it all (remember emacs was developed back when programmers were expected to know many languages rather than being monolingual wannabes).

Plus the customization allows experimenting with new features easily, features that become widely used after awhile. For example, auto-indentation for code came from extensible editors first. We wouldn't have things like refactoring tools in editors or IDEs if there was no one who experimented with the concepts in extensible editors.

Re:EMACS 2.0

[Jane Q. Public]

I tried Atom when this was first announced a month or so ago.

It's nice in some ways. But not only is it big, as you point out, it's also very S - L - O - W and uses a HUGE amount of CPU resources for a mere editor. It's like trying to kill an ant with a cannon. A big, heavy cannon.

I tried it out for a few minutes, looked at the memory and more importantly CPU usage, and wiped it from the hard drive. It might be useful if you have a computer that is less than a few years old. But for now, I think I'll stick to editors that were written in a nice, fast, CPU-friendly compiled language.

Re:EMACS 2.0

[narcc]

If you're a developer you've probably got a pretty decent machine anyway.

I develop on the crappiest machine I can tolerate. It's a not-so-subtle way to encourage me to keep apps fast and light.

Re: EMACS 2.0

[gTsiros]

i feel really really sorry for using this phrase, but in this case i also feel it fits perfectly:

epic fail

Re:EMACS 2.0

[angel'o'sphere]

And it requires Mac OS X 10.8 or newer.

How an application based on HTML, JavaScript and Node.js needs one of the most recent OSes is bejond me (running 10.6.8)

Emacs

[Meneth]

Reminds me of Emacs; a decent operating system. All it lacks is a good text editor.

Re:Emacs

[TheRaven64]

Like EMACS, it comes with a reasonable vim mode, although not a very well tested one (o creates two new lines and switches to insert mode, rather than one). The rest of the (non-vim) key bindings are a bit odd (e.g. command-N creates a new tab, not a new window), but it seems useable.

The thing currently that makes it worse than Vim is the lack of libclang integration for autocomplete. I don't know how easy it is to write add-ons that link to a C library (not very, I'd imagine) and without that the autocompletion will suck for [Objective-]C[++].

Re:Emacs

[Shados]

Node.js (what this is built on) has very easy ways to load C++ add-ons, and those can link to C libraries just fine. In fact a lot of node package are done that way.

Re:Emacs

[TheRaven64]

Sounds good, but it's a very odd omission for an initial release of a text editor aimed at developers. Maybe they just figure most developers don't write C-family language code...

Re:Emacs

[Shados]

The primary target audience is closer to web developers and app devs in general. That said, there's 800+ add-ons and packages that were created during the beta...if none of those are in, then yeah: most developers don't have any interest in using this kind of editor to write C code.

It kind of make sense if you think about it: the whole draw is you can use web technologies to hack it. There aren't a whole lot of C developers who could care.

Re:Emacs

[q4Fry]

I maintain that Atom cannot possibly be targeting web developers if matching html tag open/closes is still a feature request 3 months after its suggestion. It frankly shouldn't need to be suggested at all.

But does it have...

[loony]

a vi compatible mode?

Re:But does it have...

[erapert]

It does, actually: http://blog.atom.io/

What another crap summary...

[TFlan91]

Here is a link to the actual website:

https://atom.io/

ps: it's only available for Macs

Re:What another crap summary...

[denmarkw00t]

Why troll? Also, not only Macs but apparently only 10.8 and up so...no go for me.

mac only?

[rogoshen1]

Hmm currently only available for Mac..

On one hand, smacks of hipsterism. on the other.. as a windows user, now i know how it feels.

Re:mac only?

[ilikenwf]

Just use Komodo...it's less likely to spy on you by default, as it's based on Mozilla...more mature, too.

Re:mac only?

[Guybrush_T]

The fact that it is only available on Mac makes me wonder if Atom is that great ...

Unless I didn't understand the idea (not easy to find out what Atom is, actually), they're developing a javascript editor on top of Chromium. How could that NOT work on Linux and Windows ?

What the incentive for doing yet another editor ?

Having an editor running inside a web browser to develop javascript code could be a nice idea (especially to instant-test code), but looking at their website I'm a bit puzzled ...

Re:mac only?

[quietwalker]

I'm actually surprised that I had to dig down into the Faqs to see text that said "Mac only right now". I thought maybe my adblockers was hiding anything but the 'download for mac' button.

I don't know about other folks but Mac has never been the assumed default for any program I ever download, especially editors aimed at developers. The ones that are actually say it up front. Otherwise we assume windows, being that it's still the majority desktop OS. Failing that, slashdot links tend to point at linux apps.

I don't think we can ever say that it's 'hipster' to expect the majority opinion.

Re:mac only?

[Anonymous Coward]

BBEdit, because it doesn't suck.

Re:mac only?

[Evardsson]

I don't know about other folks but Mac has never been the assumed default for any program I ever download, especially editors aimed at developers.

(emphasis mine)

I think maybe they only provide the Mac binaries because us Mac users are (in their opinion) too stupid to build from source?

https://github.com/atom/atom

You will see all the requirements in the readme there for building on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Have we, as developers, collectively forgotten how to build from source?

Re:mac only?

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Seconded for Komodo. At work and home I use it for practically everything, the exception being when I have to spend time in .net land.

Re:mac only?

[Austerity Empowers]

I just replaced BBedit with Atom, because I'm a PC/Unix user stuck using a Mac by my employer and I find BBedit to be less than ideal. I want to highlight a line by pressing shift-end, BBedit won't do that and can't be configured to it. But it's the default in atom. BBedit isn't terrible, it certainly was the best of breed before atom. Yes, it's a resource hog relatively speaking, but nothing compared to the 4 dual display desktops full of stuff I have open and running.

Granted I have bettertouchtool and keyremap tool installed to otherwise make my keyboard 'feel' like a PC keyboard, so there are a lot of things external to the program that I'm doing to make my mac behave like a PC, but this one feature is worth almost 10 minutes a day.

Re:mac only?

[kthreadd]

Their readme speicies requirements for building on Windows/NT and GNU/Linux. It could be that they have notyet created binary packages for other distributions.

Re:mac only?

[friedmud]

It will be on more platforms soon - they just chose Mac first because that's primarily what's used at GitHub.

Re:mac only?

[kthreadd]

BBEdit, because it doesn't suck.

I tried to use BBEdit but BareBones refused to give me a copy of its source code. TextMate is much better in this regard; it's under GPL since a couple of years ago.

Re:mac only?

[friedmud]

That's not it - I've been in the beta for a long time... they are just targeting Mac first.

In the web develop / startup world around San Francisco (where GitHub is) Apple computers are fairly popular... and that's apparently what GitHub primarily uses.

Re:mac only?

[Shados]

While it can be used for everything, since its built on node/chromium in pretty much all JavaScript, the majority of heavy JavaScript development ends up done on Macs, for better or worse (node.js originally didn't work on windows, and a lot of people don't want to deal with Linux UI....that leaves Macs).

Not saying I agree, but thats basically why. Bleeding edge web development is overwhelmingly done on Macs.

Re:mac only?

[Shados]

When you use it you can't tell its running in Chromium. Its the same development model used for the Blizzard launcher for Diablo/WoW/Starcraft, for a lot of Adobe applications, etc. Run in node.js, use a Chromium window (that looks like a native window) as the rendering canvas.

Developing in node still ends up calling native code (for I/O and stuff), and that has edge cases. A naive example would be, let say, if you didn't properly handle slash vs backslash, then you could break things in Windows vs Unix (its not the issue in this case, I'm just giving an example).

As to why another editor, its basically riding the javascript + node train, and giving an editor thats moddable with people on that train.

Re:mac only?

[hobarrera]

Indeed, Linux distributions have binaries in their repositories. It's just windows that was left out, and, being developer-oriented, it's far from being the first time this happens.

Re:mac only?

[Tailhook]

You will see all the requirements in the readme there for building on Linux, Mac and Windows.

These instructions work as well. I got it to run in OpenSUSE 13.1 in a few minutes. No problem if you have clues.

as developers

Mostly just office trolls around here now.

From the GP:

I'm actually surprised that I had to dig down into the Faqs to see text that said "Mac only right now".

You haven't been keeping up. OS-X is widespread among open source developers today. Watch a presentation related to open source work made any time in the last five years and you'll see Macs everywhere. Windoze is rare. Linux is ubiquitous in pseudo terminals. Otherwise the only time you see Linux is at Linux conferences.

This isn't surprising either. OS-X is developer friendly. You get Xcode, the Apple equivalent of Visual Studio, out-of-the-box on OS-X, a POSIX environment with a desktop environment that doesn't suck.

Anyhow, running Atom for a few minutes I definitely get an EMACS hit. No crashes so far, but it feels young. I imagine this thing will acquire a fair bit of mind-share in the next few years. Nothing wrong with the MIT license, either.

Re:mac only?

[Kethinov]

Try out Brackets http://brackets.io/

Very similar to Atom's architecture, also open source, more mature community, better visual design (IMO).

Re:mac only?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the record I'm from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and I work in Berlin, Germany, and in the "startup" world of both cities that also holds true.

Disclaimer: Personally I'm a Linux guy, and while OS X is annoyingly less customisable at the UI level, at the CLI level they're both UNIX and as devs in this day and age that's really all that matters.

Re:mac only?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked you can't scroll horizontally in the file tree view in Komodo. Important feature if you have lots of subfolders and don't want to be constantly resizing that side pane. That and the complete lack of anything resembling speed keeps me off Komodo.

Re:mac only?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not it - I've been in the beta for a long time... they are just targeting Mac first.

In the web develop / startup world around San Francisco (where GitHub is) Apple computers are fairly popular... and that's apparently what GitHub primarily uses.

WHITE PRIVILEGE =D

"...we spend most of our day in a text editor..."

[QilessQi]

Man. And I thought my cubicle was cramped...

Komodo Anybody?

[ilikenwf]

I'm here at work using it right now...anyway, Komodo runs on Linux, Mac, Windows and is based on Mozilla...it has also been free and around for quite a while...extensibility? Yep...

I don't get why everyone reinvents the wheel when they could instead make something that already exists, but is more complete better.

Re:Komodo Anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had mod points

Re:Komodo Anybody?

[dotancohen]

Komodo doesn't support Google Analytics, and it would be difficult to convince people to install it as a plugin.

Re:Komodo Anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if serious or trolling.

Re:Komodo Anybody?

[Jesus_666]

Having used both programs, there is one big difference between them (apart from the fact that one is an IDE and the other one is "just" a fancy editor): Atom seems to be easier to extend. The entire UI in Atom is an HTML document. If you want to change how things work you can mess with the stylesheet and voila, it works differently. Or you just outright replace part of the DOM. You even get the Chromium developer tools so you can see how everything works in detail.

In principle it should be possible to implement graphical editors for just about everything on top of Atom as long as you write them in JavaScript. It's kind of like emacs in that regard.

Re:Komodo Anybody?

[dotancohen]

Not sure if serious or trolling.

That means that I've done a good job.

Well at least

[marcello_dl]

At least the advantage is honestly described: web technologies are familiar to a lot of people, so the environment doesn't pose a high barrier for entry.

If the accent had been instead on being a "web platform", I'd feel compelled to ask how much of it is compatible/portable to other browsers. Chromium and node.js are sure open source but much in control of a single company, did they choose to mess with it, forks would happen but they would be painful. Other projects are sure in control of a single company but they either have already forks like java, mysql, or have a company that is too little to start thinking like the average evil megacorp.

Requirements

[Hypotensive]

I wonder whose requirements this targets.

My own requirements are:

• split second loading, saving, editing and searching of large text files
• can log into any host via SSH and just use it
• (nice to have) syntax highlighting and smart indenting

Therefore: vi or vim. Virtually no other editor even comes close with respect to point 2.

Re:Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

hah, I know enough vi commands to use it to fix the host's networking or package manager config and then install emacs!

Re:Requirements

[TheRaven64]

split second loading, saving, editing and searching of large text files

Depends on the use. I'm increasingly using binary formats for things like CPU streamtraces, which can grow very quickly into the hundreds of MBs, and not using a text editor for exploring them. Source files tend to be a few KB, tens of KB if they're in dire need of refactoring, hundreds of KB if they're machine generated (and therefore rarely - but occasionally - hand-edited). As such, I don't mind my text editor having a size limitation too much. It does mean that I can't use it for everything, but most of what I edit is source code of one form or another (including LaTeX).

can log into any host via SSH and just use it

I do this a lot, but I really dislike the fact that I do it. SSH for text editing is an ugly hack to work around the fact that we still can't do file sharing well. I'd much prefer to use sshfs for the editing and only use SSH when I want to build / run code remotely. If Atom came with a nice file browser for remote files, I can imagine changing my workflow.

syntax highlighting and smart indenting

Definitely important. Vim can only do somewhat-smart indenting. Its APIs don't allow you to distinguish between indenting for semantic blocks and indenting for alignment. I like to format my code so that the reader can adjust the tab size without breaking the formatting, so, for example:

if (someLongCondition() &&
andTheNextBit())

(Slashcode's 'code' tag seems to eat spaces and tabs and expand nbsp, so I've no idea how to actually do the indenting) Both lines would start with one tab (or more, depending on the current indent level), the second line would then have 4 spaces. The s and the a line up whatever tab width you want to view the code with. I generally prefer 4, lots of people prefer 8, and some prefer 2 and so this allows people to set whatever they want.

Vim's integration with clang for autocompletion is also somewhat clunky. OS X has nice autocompletion APIs in the text view, but I don't know how well these are exposed to JavaScript. It's likely to be a lot easier to add nice autocomplete support to Atom than to Vim though.

Re:Requirements

[Hypotensive]

SSH for text editing is an ugly hack to work around the fact that we still can't do file sharing well.

Many of the files I edit via SSH are configuration files in /etc, or relatively large generated files (output files). For the first case I would not want to share /etc with other hosts. For the second I would not want to have to transfer a large amount of data between hosts when it is unnecessary (and probably slow) to do so. For clarification, I could use a pager to view the second case files since I will not typically modify them, but the syntax highlighting is useful in that case.

Prime Example of Software Bloat

[TyIzaeL]

• Notepad++: 7.3MB
• Sublime Text: 7.6MB
• BBEdit: 12.5MB
• Atom - 67MB

Re:Prime Example of Software Bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

C:\UTIL>dir ted.com
Directory of C:\UTIL\.
TED COM 7,082 28-03-1992 0:02

OK, so I only use it when I'm running DOSBox, but it was my favorite editor back in the day.
Now I use Kate.

Re:Prime Example of Software Bloat

[Dan East]

It takes a lot of Sleep(1) calls to pad a program out to that many megabytes.

Re:Prime Example of Software Bloat

[friedmud]

And my current Emacs: 150MB

What's your point?

You don't have 100MB of RAM to spare?

Re:Prime Example of Software Bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this up.

Re:Prime Example of Software Bloat

[darkain]

Not only this, but considering how uninformative this site is, I'm trying to figure out just what I would gain, if anything at all, over Sublime Text right now. Visually from their screen shots, it looks mostly the same? So, besides that, what features ARE there that make this project unique compared to other offerings?

Re:Prime Example of Software Bloat

[mcrbids]

I have 8 GB of RAM. I would never notice 67 MB of RAM.

Re:Prime Example of Software Bloat

[segedunum]

It's a fucking text editor.

Re:Prime Example of Software Bloat

[segedunum]

You'd notice how slow it is though. It's a t-e-x-t e-d-i-t-o-r.

Re:Prime Example of Software Bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

And my current Emacs: 150MB

What's your point?

You don't have 100MB of RAM to spare?

The point is, you have to upgrade your computer to run your text editor. Your programs aren't getting any faster or better, they just use more memory. Think about that.

Modular design == flying spaggetti monster

[Anonymous Coward]

From the atom.io site:
"Modular design: Atom is composed of over 50 open-source packages that integrate around a minimal core."

Yeah, just what I need, an editor which is as complex as 50 other projects combined, which probably takes memory like 50 other programs, and which probably doesn't have any features because it has a "minimal core".

"web-based"

[Anonymous Coward]

if it runs in a browser, why is it OS X only? someone missed the point.

Re:"web-based"

[Evardsson]

Or you could download the source (https://github.com/atom/atom) and build it locally. (I can verify that it builds and runs in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS). I think maybe the package managers for various *nix have gotten too simple, too many of us have forgotten how to do the configure, make, make test, make install dance.

Re:"web-based"

[friedmud]

It does not run in the browser. It's a standalone application that is based on web technologies.

Re:"web-based"

[Shados]

it only runs in a browser in the sense that its using a chromium window. Its still a client app that runs locally, and hooks up into native code for some operations.

They don't need to do a whole lot to make it work in other operating systems, just a few edge cases (and some people already got it to run in Linux and stuff).

Slashdot

[Charliemopps]

So when's Slashdot going to fix this text editor?

Oh that's right, Beta...

Yet another editor

[SuperTechnoNerd]

Why would anyone need this when we have vi/vim?

Re:Yet another editor

[kthreadd]

Some people don't prefer it.

Re:Yet another editor

[Shados]

This one is targeted more to people who would use something like Sublime Text. A bit more graphical than GVIM and stuff.

Also, in this particular case, everything is in CSS/Html/Javascript running on Node with Chromium. Want to change the color of your modified files (git) in the treeview? Its just a CSS selector away. Want to add a right click menu that does something completely custom? Javascript. Want to add a new screen? HTML.

Considering a lot of people who would use this editor do front end web development or node.js stuff, its a lot more palatable for modding (as can be seen by the insane amount of packages that are already out even though its currently Mac-only and was in closed beta... its that easy to write a plugin for without needing to learn anything new)

Weak

[NapalmV]

It would had been so much more interesting to hear "Intel open sources Atom".

Re:journalists-are-overwhelmingly-liberal

[Anonymous Coward]

It's no wonder that Republicans are so hated around here, where so many of you geeks and nerds are young and have barely begun paying taxes and a often fresh out of university.

Sorry, I'm 35 and vote Libertarian because I've frankly had it with Republican hypocrisy and lies. I'm sick of being told I've got the freedom to do whatever you tell me to do. I'm sick of hearing about state's rights, as long as the states don't use them. I'm sick of being told how evil government is, now bend over while the government thug snaps on his rubber glove for your safety. I'm sick of spending billions of dollars on the war against our own citizens, I'm sick of spending trillions of dollars on the war for oil, I'm sick of claiming the moral high ground while acting as bad as the people we claim to be against.

BTW, I was home schooled.

what is so bad about individual liberty

As long as you don't use that liberty to harm anyone else, I've got nothing against it.

natural rights

Like the stuff growing in my backyard?

and limited government

LOLOLOLOLOL

unplug that cable from the back of your heads for a few minutes and let reason take over for a bit, and to see what comes from that?

Reason, you say?

JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

But more importantly, extending Atom is as simple as writing JavaScript and CSS, two languages used by millions of developers each day.

Nope. JavaScript and CSS is not used by any developer. It is used widely by web designers however... at least that's what I heard ;-)

True path, was emacs

[maestroX]

13226 user 20 0 902280 187184 27300 S 0.0 18.3 57:49.63 firefox
26114 user 20 0 35532 8680 4344 S 0.0 0.9 0:12.53 gvim
0 root -20 0 2 1 20 Ss 0.0 1e-10 0:10.00 ed
-> Patrick J. LoPresti

A replacement for Sublime Text

[spiralx]

A lot of the reason behind developing Atom is that Sublime Text has become very popular in the last few years with people wanting something between a text editor and an IDE, however Sublime Text is not open source, has a pretty poor extension API, has basically no documentation at all, and the developer ignores 99.9% of attempts to communicate with him. This situation isn't ideal, hence the development of Atom as an open source alternative - when it gets up to spec I'll probably switch over myself.

EMACS

[bussdriver]

EMACS:
"An OS inside an OS"
"The Emacs operating system needs a better editor."
"Linux is just the bootloader"