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

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

[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

Emacs

[Meneth]

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

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).

But does it have...

[loony]

a vi compatible mode?

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?

[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?

"...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?

[dotancohen]

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

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

Prime Example of Software Bloat

[TyIzaeL]

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