Panic’s Next Editor
panic.com
panic.com
I believe that Panic will create a beautiful product and they have many supporters who will happily pay a license fee - I know I will!
But it’s not going to be an easy ride. There’s a lot to live up to here and they will need to have some killer features thrown in at the beginning.
The hardest part tho will be to make it an approachable tool that can hook the hobbyist but keep them on when they need more. I dropped Coda for a number of reasons, but it wasn’t because it wasn’t a great code editor.
Coda also suffered from persistent and potentially damaging bugs, like the failure of its project-files pane to open the “home” directory specified for your project when you opened the project. Instead, it apparently just showed whatever directory it last navigated to.
I do academic research on code editors.
Even though my current work is all Vue and Angular, with a backend that's little more than a REST facade for MongoDB, I still find Coda to be the best development environment available, and I continue to use it all day every day. Considering how strongly Coda was originally tied to the then-dominant LAMP stack, I think that's a pretty strong testament to the product. (Or perhaps just a testament to my stubbornness.)
I won't buy the next version of Coda sight unseen, but it's hard to imagine what Panic might do that would keep them separated from my money.
But I think they were going for hackability = other people will be more likely to develop plugins. The lower barrier to entry is basically one of the major upsides of Atom/VSCode: their plugins tend to have cutting edge support.
For example, iirc Atom was the first to have a good plugin for Elm lang (elm-jitsu). Meanwhile the Elm plugin for Jetbrains' IntelliJ came later as the result of the effort of two Microsoft employees spending billable time on the somewhat academic project.
A better example is that the creator of elmx ("JSX for Elm") was able to create an Atom plugin for their basically experimental library: https://github.com/pzavolinsky/elmx#atom-integration
I also think this differs from "hackability" when used with Vim/Emacs which does mean "you will be hacking together your .*rc file" which is definitely not how I'd characterize VSCode/Atom.
"Newest and greatest" can be achieved so easily, not sure what you're complaining about.
The real strong point is it has strong community of plugins to fill your use case which Coda is missing.
There is room for innovation in the rest of the web dev workflow, which has gotten a bit weird since almost everything involves a compilation step now. Not sure how this could be achieved, but I guess that's why I'm not the one doing it!
It may be hard to sustain it in the long run, but they both changed the landscape at the time.
But, I think the bar has been raised since those days.
Sublime's been Jon's fulltime work for a decade, and has probably 20,000+ hours of work on the core editor, at least an order of magnitude more work put into its extensions, and certainly millions of hours of real-world use and bug reporting.
That's kind of the minimum bar that newcomers need to approach or exceed just to get into the game in 2019.
Unless they are bringing something totally different to the table. For example, Atom's Electron base has drawbacks but it brought a new level (or at least a new kind of) hackability to the game.
In Sublime and Textmate's case, they too brought something unique to the game. While lacking the raw power and configurability and pedigree of vim and emacs, they brought something of that mentality to the world of GUI text editors. And their minimal GUIs allowed them to be flexible and powerful in ways that full-blown GUI monstrosities like Eclipse could not be.
Also, Sublime was Windows only at first IIRC, so I don’t think it was an answer to TextMate.
Unless you mean the "blog post headline" cake, in that case you might be right.
1. JSX <> Object convert
2. CSS <> Object convert
I don’t use a ton of plugins, but there are about 12 that really make my life far easier. That’s probably the same for everyone, but a different set of 5-20 plugins.
That, and the fact that Intellisense/Typescript features are about all that matters in terms of future productivity gain, and I can’t imagine why they’d choose to make this. By the time they release it they’ll be that much further behind the status quo in VSCode, which is far ahead and moving fast. Best of luck to them!
Hopefully it also has good PostgreSQL support and plugins / module support for languages / DSLs such as puppet, SQL, ruby etc... and decent git / GitLab integration.
I focus on the usability of dev tools, including features for navigation, refactoring, testing, and code reviewing. For example, a big part of my dissertation was Patchworks [1], which provides a never-ending carousel of code documents as an alternative to the traditional tab document-based editor.
Conversely, there are some seriously garbage native apps out there. I mean, geeze, just go use iTunes. Its old, granted, and some of the store pages make me think they're just embedded websites, but its also embarrassing given its relative simplicity and Apple's resources. Or go use the new News app. "Native" is relative. Nothing is "native", or maybe everything is "native", its just a word that gets thrown around to mean "it doesn't use the platform's first class UI libraries", even though, newsflash, the MacOS UI framework(s) aren't great.
Electron can be done better than native. You just need a talented team, like any software project.
I would have thought peoples experience with Adobe would have made them wary of these sort of solutions.
The Web has too much engineering power behind the stack to really compete against now.
> Twelve years ago we introduced Coda, the world’s first web development editor.
It's hard to come up a charitable definition of 'web development editor' (inbuilt css editor? browser preview?) that wouldn't likely cover Dreamweaver.
Also they can create a plugin system similar to Sketchapp that exposes a JavaScript API.
WebStorm is IntelliJ Idea. It’s a full IDE with capabilities beyond that of a simple code editor: code analysis (for multiple languages), smart refactoring (for multiple languages), extensive plugin support, an extensive range of support for anything from eslint configs to understanding things like “oh, it’s an Angular app, let me help you connect all the pieces together”, etc. etc.
I don't care for the person they targeted, but I care for the casual abuse of a system that is already hurting content creators.
Edit: In fairness, clicking through to the Firewatch site does say "in cooperation with Panic," so it's not entirely a Panic product, but there's certainly a degree of involvement. I'm seeing other comments [1] placing those actions on the game studio, so I suppose my first impression was incorrect.
Obviously we can't know Panic's involvement in the debacle, but the Campo Santo founder did take ownership of the decision by announcing it on his personal Twitter account. In other words, it wasn't a faceless Campo Santo or Panic blog post.
At which point I think it's kinda unfair to poison the comment section on such an unrelated development. This is currently the top-voted thread on a post announcing a code editor. Meanwhile, Vanaman is a creative writer for Valve.
How many more times will HN discussion around this editor have to be side-tracked by Vanaman's tweets until HN considers Panic atoned?
https://twitter.com/cabel/status/907395474591703040 (thread) https://twitter.com/cabel/status/1047883132391682048 https://twitter.com/cabel/status/1047883847239589889
I don't give a damn about the person in that incident. I do give a damn about blatant political abuse of the law, particularly by people in our industry who have no excuse for not knowing better.
> poison the comment section on such an unrelated development.
You don't think ethics of the company's leadership are relevant, in situations involving products that they create or hold copyright or exclusive distribution rights to? Bringing it up is not just distaste for Sasser's politics, but a view into what may happen to users or reviewers of products sold by them. You may decide the risk is extremely low (it probably is) or that you don't care, but it doesn't seem entirely irrelevant to me.
Actually... https://twitter.com/vanaman/status/906984704892477440
As an example, in Canada, if you produced less than 50 of an item like a guitar, you could copyright it. Basically this is intended to cover an artist making sculpture. If you are making it for utilitarian purposes to be widely distributed, you use the other methods in the law for protecting your designs.
There's a lot of skepticism in the comments about the size of the undertaking and their ability to produce something significantly different in a crowded market. Isn't that what we all do to some degree? And I would argue they have a proven track record of doing that repeatedly (with some flops mixed in as well). Transmit didn't invent FTP interfaces, but the ease of use and speed were head and shoulders above the existing clients. They're getting some flack for their claims about Coda, but it really was a giant step forward over existing editors at the time.
One of the reasons I've always liked Panic is that they dog food their products and it shows. They have always been at the edge of web design and development (including the controversial margin on this page) and that comes from building and using an advanced toolset. Can't wait to see what comes next.
After a decade on Mac, I finally bought a Windows laptop. The think I miss most is the quality software. Apple users are willing to pay for software, so you have great apps like Scrivener, OmniFocus, Coda, etc. But the culture of “free” has overrun Windows, and for the most part, it’s a disaster. There is no revenue potential in many areas of software, especially B2C software, and it shows in a lack of quality.
Interesting that you say that: I just wrote to Literature & Latte (makers of Scrivener) asking about Linux, and they said they shut down development, which is a shame: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&.... I suggested a Kickstarter.
On Linux, Da Vinci Resolve replaces FCP X effectively, but Scrivener and Devonthink Pro seem to have no good replacements.
(The real key for DTP is its "see also" function: https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/devonthink-continued-94e972b...).
Scrivener is available for Windows (though I use Hemingway.)
OmniFocus has many web-based alternatives...I use Trello, personally. (It's also a Windows app now!)
Coda -- well, there's Sublime Text, VS Code, or JetBrains' universe of IDEs.
This isn't a critique of what you said, by the way. I do think more info about what you're looking for would be great insight for the folks who read Hacker News -- some of whom might be willing to develop paid Windows apps if there's true demand in those areas.
There is really no good OmniFocus alternative on Windows. Most are too simple, or more focused on coordinating teams than having lots of tools for an individual juggling lots of things. E.g. Todoist (and many other web apps) doesn’t have proper sub-tasks. Almost none has a proper review mode. MyLifeOrganized is really good, but it lacks the polish of OnniFocus. (Likely because it has a much smaller team than Omni, because Windows users aren’t willing to pay.) Trello is great for what it does, but its calendar integration is an afterthought.
Stuff is a little better on the developer tool side, where there is still a willingness to pay for stuff like Jetbrains. VS Code though is a good example of how free products are worse (less features, Electron, etc.) than paid software (Visual Studio).
I wonder if they've ever published a breakdown on Mac vs. Windows users or if you're just making that up? They've stated they spend more on Windows development, although they evidently aren't getting enough out of it.
I love Trello, but it’s an OF ‘alternative’ at best. It is no way a replacement. OmniFocus is an order of magnitude more powerful. Even an app like Things doesn’t get close; I use both, and while I’d like to maintain an OF=home/Things=work separation, there are a bunch of things that I do that Things just can’t handle.
On the subject of quality software more generally, this is one of the major frustrations I have when forced to use Windows. On my Mac, if I need a bit of software to do a job there is generally – not always, of course, but generally – something well written, well supported, and beautiful. I find it, give the developer $5-$50, and enjoy a long and fruitful relationship.
If I need software on Windows, it’s a hot mess. I mean it’s just a fucking disaster. You Google what you want and get all sorts of shite. You risk your neck and download some file from Sourceforge. You ‘install’ it and have to reboot. Reboot? To install software? Wow. Okay. So you reboot then you launch the software and guess what? It’s a fucking turd.
I hate it. Viscerally hate it.
> You Google what you want and get all sorts of shite. You risk your neck and download some file from Sourceforge.
You are comparing buying an application from a commercial developer who - if nothing else - has at least an incentive to provide a good experience and downloading an application for free written by someone who may or may not care further about the program than dumping it in a shared hosting service and you are surprised that the former is better?
How about 'finding' equivalent commercial software for Windows?
> You ‘install’ it and have to reboot. Reboot? To install software?
Unless the program targets Windows 95/98, this is not necessary and the largest majority of programs designed for Windows 2000 and later should not need reboot (even during Windows 9x it was unnecessary most of the time and was there 'just in case').
> I hate it. Viscerally hate it.
Then do something about it: support the developers who write quality software.
My point was that it’s much, much easier to find good software for the Mac.
The pattern tends to be search, find, buy, enjoy, vs. Windows search, get frustrated, download some shite, hate life.
Yes it is harder to find good software, but it is far from impossible. One way is to look for sites dedicated to software and then look for comments about those sites in Reddit, etc and ignore those that have bad comments. Another way is to ask in communities like Reddit's /r/software - people will try to steer you towards cheap/halfass solutions and ask you why would you want to pay $1 to do X instead of spending a few weeks jury rigging the free Y+Z+W+4+5 (which btw are open source, thus have god given quality status) to do mostly the same thing except a little more broken, but if you insist about what you want, you'll often find good software there (i have found some nice apps through the subreddit myself).
TBH it has been years since i used a Mac extensively, but i do not remember finding quality Mac software being any different than quality Windows software - i mostly relied on sites and communities too.
As a result, none of the programs in my 2009 iMac work anymore - a few games, a few commercial applications (e.g. Pixelmator), etc, every time i upgraded macOS i lost one or two applications that were not compatible, until the point when macOS itself became not compatible with my iMac (and i am certain that if i try to move any remaining applications to another Mac, more stuff will not work). No matter what workarounds i tried to do, they didn't work.
On the other hand, i have Windows software from a decade before my iMac even existed that still works perfectly fine under Windows 10 exactly because Microsoft cares about backwards compatibility. For example i have a boxed version of Paint Shop Pro 7 (the last great version of PSP with the best UI for an image editor, IMO) which comes with the application itself as well as a couple of addons (an animation editor and an image organizer) and all of them work literally out of the box (some older applications might need a few tweaks here and there but they usually work easily, but others like PSP7 work with no tweaks at all).
For me this is a big reason why i stopped buying software on macOS: with their behavior towards API compatibility, Apple forces an expiration date to the software. On the other hand i do not even care if the company behind some piece of Windows software will exist or not in 5 years, since chances are i'll be able to run it regardless (assuming there is no need for Internet-based activation or some bullshit like that, which is why i avoid that type of software too).
I guess Linux is kinda similar here, partly because Linus insists on backwards compatibility but also because even if the APIs change you can still compile the older libraries, although that is talking from a purely personal perspective (this would be very high on the "tweak difficulty" for most people) and in practice nobody sells stuff i'd be interested on Linux anyway so i haven't experienced it beyond trying some older game demos from very early 2000s (which mostly worked after i installed an OSS emulator and an older C++ library, with the exception of -IIRC- a Shogo port that needed Gtk1 for the launcher - which i could compile or copy from Slackware that still provides packages for it, but i lost interest).
Still i'd trust Windows more to stay compatible and even under Linux i'd trust Wine before any other API.
And note that in all that i ignore Apple changing CPU architecture every few years (which, according to rumors, are going to do again soon).
It's probably true that if you really need binaries built during the Clinton administration to work, the Mac isn't for you. That such binaries still run on Windows is, to me, evidence of a problem in that world, not a feature.
I'd make an argument that Apple's willingness to do "big jumps" and cut ties with the past (in controlled ways, with long lead times and compatibility layers supported for a while after) is a strength of the platform, and leads to a more coherent and more stable environment.
Especially since most users have no need for ancient programs.
>f something is undocumented it is free for all to axe it regardless of how many applications use it.
This in particular seems like a feature. If it's not a documented part of the programming environment, use it at your peril.
>i ignore Apple changing CPU architecture every few years
Here's where I actually laughed at you. Characterizing "twice since 1984" as "every few years" is absurdly unreasonable.
I get it. You like that Windows is still basically the same house-of-cards system it was in 1995. Lots of people, though, don't think of this as a good thing. The Mac has thrived, I'd argue, BECAUSE of Apple's willingness to shift for the greater platform benefit -- off 68x to PPC for power; off PPC to Intel for both power and strategic reasons; into the BSD-based OSX for stability, power, and growth. Microsoft could learn a lot here.
Notice that i'm talking about macOS being unable to run applications released less than 10 years ago. Of course older stuff would be even better, but macOS cannot do a third of that.
> That such binaries still run on Windows is, to me, evidence of a problem in that world, not a feature.
To me, as someone who actually wants to use the software and not wax about theoretical benefits (that in practice do not apply since macOS is these days - or at least was until a year or so ago, i didn't bother with it much since then - woefully unstable), this isn't just a feature, it is THE feature. The main reason i use Windows.
> I'd make an argument that Apple's willingness to do "big jumps" and cut ties with the past (in controlled ways, with long lead times and compatibility layers supported for a while after) is a strength of the platform, and leads to a more coherent and more stable environment.
That'd be nice if the environment was actually stable, but the last version that was approaching decent stability was Snow Leopard, everything after that is a downhill (especially since Apple decided to switch to periodic releases, as if an OS is a comic magazine).
> Especially since most users have no need for ancient programs.
There is no such a thing as "most users", different people have different needs and people do not care about something until the moment that something turns around and bites them.
> If it's not a documented part of the programming environment, use it at your peril.
You seem to not understand, this "you" who are talking about is not me, it is the developer of the program i am using.
I am not talking as the developer of the program, the developer can change it and it'll keep working.
I am talking as the USER of the program, a program whose developer might not even exist anymore or may have decided to screw me over and not fix their bugs. But this sort of developer wont care about Apple breaking their program, it is the users who will have to suffer the program not working.
Backwards compatibility is 90% for the users and only 10% for the developer (which is most likely why most developers do not care much about it, unless they become personally affected of course - and probably why most inexperienced developers do not see any issue with breaking backwards compatibility at all).
> Lots of people, though, don't think of this as a good thing. The Mac has thrived, I'd argue,
Your argument would be wrong considering the ridiculously gargantuan majority of desktop and laptop computers are using Windows only because they can run the programs the users care about.
Software is what makes an OS relevant, nothing else. The only purpose for an OS is to run the users' programs.
> Microsoft could learn a lot here.
If the lesson learned ends up in breaking people's programs, i'd rather them learning nothing.
Oh, is that what I'm doing? Gosh, all this time I thought I was doing meaningful work using the software.
>woefully unstable
Is that really your experience? I mean, I run OSX on all the machines in my house, and work in it all day every day, and I haven't found it to be unstable at ALL. It might not be as rock-solid as it was 5 years ago, but it still manages to stay up and reasonable for months at a time, so it's a distinction without a difference.
My Windows machines can barely manage a few days without something coming along that requires a reboot to resolve.
>There is no such a thing as "most users"
That's not how math works.
When I said "If it's not a documented part of the programming environment, use it at your peril," I absolutely mean the developer. Don't use undocumented behavior. It's a dumb idea, and it absolutely WILL bite you. I mean, this isn't hard; if $vendor says "that's not documented or supported, and we can and will change that behavior," then it's malpractice to build a product that depends on it.
That MSFT has been less strict about this is a problem, not a feature.
>Your argument would be wrong
It, like all arguments, might well be -- but you certainly haven't demonstrated that it is.
Windows still enjoyed desktop hegemony because of momentum, and because you can buy a shitty Windows laptop for $200. It's not because Paint Shop Pro from 1999 still runs on it.
>i'd rather them learning nothing.
Well, you're absolutely getting your wish, because that appears to be what they've learned.
Read this on Thurrott’s blog?
Like a decent editor, I tried coda and found it extremely limited no plugins, limited language support and no configuration. This has been my experience with all mac software.
Friends have recommended different software but when I tried to install it through iTunes I found the developers had went bankrupt or it was not available in my country, searching for apps on google seems to be a dead end.
I tried to find software so that I could use a normal mouse at a decent speed but again found them broken, relying on system calls that are undocumented. I found one which worked until I updated to Mojave but then they removed the system calls it used an it no longer works, so theres $100 down the drain.
Im not a fan of window but its so easy to just search google download it for free and it works your done.
Linux you just search your package manger download it for free configure it to do exactly what you want and it works your done.
> found them broken, relying on system calls that are undocumented
> they removed the system calls it used an it no longer works, so theres $100 down the drain
And that is why backwards compatibility is important and why only Microsoft seem to get it (and Linus but sadly that doesn't extend to the userspace, except X11 but dumbheads want to remove that too) - it doesn't matter if the company is bankrupt after you get your program, it will keep in working doing what it always did. It doesn't matter if the OS gets updated with new features and driver support because the APIs will keep working for the older programs that use them (and sometimes even get new features since new programs may also use these APIs - although Microsoft doesn't have a great record here with introducing new GUI APIs every few years, but at least older stuff do not get abandoned). Your $100 (or whatever) wont be down the drain, it'll be spent on something that works for many years to come. In the meanwhile macOS will break half of its APIs and go through three different CPU architectures, ensuring nothing will work.
* The closest I've found to Coda on Windows is HTMLPad 2018 - though it took a while for me to discover "mappings" so I could get the in-app browser preview working. It doesn't have the polish Coda does - eg lots of icons are too tiny in HiDPI mode.
* Cyberduck is the closest I've found to Panic Transmit, but it's also blurry in HiDPI modes, and has a nasty bug where large files over 100MB uploaded to Backblaze B2 won't complete & terminate as corrupted.
* Windows start menu sort've replaces Alfred App, but it's not as easy to do things like type quick math equations (it sends them out to Bing instead of calculating locally, so it's much slower)
* I really, really miss Cathode by Secret Geometry. It costs $5 but I'd easily pay $20. If I have to use the terminal I'd like to do it in style. Cathode is a terminal app that emulates CRT displays, including flicker, jitter, static & curvature. Cool Retro Term is closest, but there's no Windows version, and certainly not without lots of hacks to try and make the Linux version work through Windows Subsystem For Linux.
(I'm sure there's others I've missed, but that's the first that leaps to mind.)
If I have the option to choose between WinSCP and Transmit, Transmit is the obvious choice. CyberDuck interface isn't as bad as those Windows only ones but not as polished.
http://www.techtoolsforwriters.com/hemingway-app-a-proofread...
Assuming that’s the tool you meant.
More to the point, Sublime Text, Visual Studio Code, Atom and other competitors for panic's editors are fine apps themselves. Visual Studio Code is free and open and it is as good as any editor that Panic can create or has created in the past. There is a ton of free and open and good software out there. Like Linux, Kubernetes, or dotnet, or golang to name a few.
Maybe if you qualified your statement to consumer apps, you may have more of a point.
You'll find that literally impossible to prove.
I'm speaking more generally rather than any given product.
If you're an Indie macOS or iOS dev, you've got so many places to drum up news about your app. If you're on Windows? There's Windows Central, and a few smaller blogs (and Reddit, but rules against self-promotion in most subs mean you're very likely to get your post whacked). Promotion is a huge challenge for Windows desktop devs
There is room for niche stuff, but this blog post is too vague to determine what niche they are now trying to fill.
As a previous coda user and someone whose spent a considerable amount of time with many IDEs/text editors, it looks like they forked vscode and are trying to see if people want them to develop a new app.
If they are actually using something internally that was good, then, as a development software selling company, they would be promoting the product’s actual benefits instead of writing this fluff about considering/reluctantly releasing their ‘awesome internal tool’. How many companies make their own internal editors anyway?
I'd also like it to use iCloud for sync. Panic explained a little bit about why it uses its own platform in a blog post I found recently, but it was kind of vague.
Even so, as much as I like Panic, I don't know if I'd quite support that claim. Dreamweaver did a lot of those things sans the terminal, even if it did a lot of them less elegantly. (And I'm sure someone will explain how Emacs could technically have done all this since 1953 or whatever. I kid, I kid!)
Having said that, I'm still interested in seeing what they manage to come up with. I admire their products even when I don't regularly use them. (This includes Coda.)
(Semi-funny anecdote: when I switched to the Mac around 1999 or so, I emailed Allaire--this was before Macromedia bought them--and asked if there would ever be a Mac version. They wrote back nicely enough to explain that they really couldn't do one because it was written in Delphi, which had no Mac version, but that I should consider looking into BBEdit. I still use BBEdit regularly to this day.)
If you think it's crazy to run a whole VM to edit text files, consider that as it uses half a gig of memory, can load from cold to an editable window in a few seconds, and the UI is hilariously snappy, running an XP VM is competitive with running Eclipse. And that is saying something.
Much like George R.R. Martin who still uses WordStar for DOS, it's just the consequence of what we're comfortable with—and who cares what tools you use as long as the output isn't compromised.
PageMill is a contender too, from 1995. Dreamweaver in 1997. I remember using both of those in one of my first jobs.
The issue is the competition is a bunch of free Github project templates, and that git workflows are standardized now. (Plus I've been using Macs since the cro magnon era and VS Code works great for me despite not being "native"). So I'm interested what they come up with but I'm suspecting it will target a very specific workflow & type of customer.
I'm pretty sure my first HTML editor (Arachnophobia) which I used in 1995 or 96 sort of era supported those things too.
I used to love that editor. It was basically Notepad++ but HTML specific and written long before Notepad++ was a thing. And super fast too what with it being a Windows native application (back then - I think it was since rewritten in Java for whatever reason).
https://insecure.org/sploits/Microsoft.frontpage.insecuritie...
(Edit: I originally said it auto-installed this. I misremembered what was going on and corrected.)
Also it is misleading, the linked page is about the server-side Frontpage Extensions, if you used Frontpage as an HTML page editor you'd just get a static site which is as secure as any other site made of static HTML files.
> It put the tools you needed to make a web page together in one app, and nobody had ever done that before.
All I did was ask if Dreamweaver supported one particular aspect of this, given that I'm not familiar with Dreamweaver's features beyond "WYSIWYG editing".
Before that I used the old Netscape WISYWIG editor.
It was actually a really sophisticated tool when it was released but it was more aimed at non-programmers in that it's primary usage was code generation. So those of use who prefer to write the code ourselves would have given it a wide berth.
It may have added those features later, but I only used it back when .shtml “sheetmetal” was the state of the art.
1: I don't remember whether it was FTP over TLS or SSH FTP. You might assume the former, but this was a very weird age for file uploads, and I remember being surprised more than once...
For example, connecting to a remote server was a weird proprietary complex thing in Dreamweaver, whereas in Coda it was straight up basic FTP. And Coda even shipped with HTML and CSS reference manuals built in.
I used Frontpage a bit too. I have to say the handwringing here over which was “the first” is silly and a waste of time. Coda was, at least for this Mac user, a major step forward from Dreamweaver, Frontpage, etc. Panic is not a threat to Adobe... let them claim what they want IMO. No one needs to defend Dreamweaver.
Coda landed in a pretty short window in my web development world, between the end of using Dreamweaver templates, but before using git and local development workflows. I never tried Coda 2; I went to the command line for git and stayed there for nano, vim, SSH, etc.
Is it really the low barrier of entry that comes with free and low learning curve? We spend so much time as professional developers with these tools that dropping a few bucks on a IDE or spending some time developing good vim or emacs skills seems like a obvious investment. These lighter editors seem like a low investment, low return choice.
It's all part of a continuum. With Emacs often more on the side of IDEs, and Sublime more on the side of text editors.
For me and many others, text editors have been preferable over IDEs for all sorts of reasons, but we do like a lot of the features that IDEs offer. To some extent that's been solvable through plugins, but for many VSCode in particular hits the sweet spot of being a text editor that has a bunch of IDE-like features as first-class citizens on top of the many extensions available.
The success of VSCode really highlights why these 'light editors' are so popular, I think. Unlike IDEs, it doesn't offer you every possible feature under the sun in a confusing, often slow package and interface. But unlike Vim/Sublime/Emacs, it does offer sensible defaults, and well-integrated 'core' plugins that most developers will want anyways. And through various plugins we get vim keybindings and many of the other features of IDEs too.
It's a bit like the framework/library discussion. The best approach is usually "it depends", but in my experience, for my editor needs, a minimal framework is the sweet spot. I don't want Rails, but I also don't want Express.js.
(I really want Phoenix, actually, but that's not relevant)
If they stuck with Apple through all that, I can't see why they'd be worried now.
Some Linux distro seems more likely but I have yet to encounter a DE that gets everything right (for me) right out of the box or anything close to that. A ridiculous amount of config tweaking is required to get things into a state that suits my preferences, and even then there’s tons of stupid little annoyances that I’ll never be able to fix short of forking a bunch of stuff.
So I don't think targeting macOS is by any means a bad idea. Based on the echo chamber that is HN you'd think everyone was jumping ship to Surface tablets and WSL but it's really not as common as you think.
I personally have noticed that in the UK the Mac is more of a "fashion computer" to be seen with in the oh-so-trendy coffee shop. Like a handbag.
I'd also question who those people sitting in the coffee shop on a weekday are? Are they a representative sample of professional coders, or are the professional coders actually at work - you know, at the office - rather than hanging out at the coffee shop?
I use a Linux and Mac professionally for coding, and a Windows machine personally for coding. Particularly with Linux running natively on windows now, there isn't really any difference these days apart from the OS's UX IME. Mac laptops are physically nice machines I agree (there is that fashion again!) but I personally find OSX to be a nightmare to use for real work as it seems designed to make multitasking difficult (hiding multiple windows under one icon in the dock, every app sharing the menu bar, beach-balling, touchbar and F- keys, no escape key, no native window layout/arranging/snapping etc etc). It's great if you are just doing one thing at a time, but start to need to have multiple windows/apps at once and I find it frustrating as hell to deal with, while Win10 and photon or cinnamon on Linux are just fine.
I consider Dunkin Donuts a coffee shop, which drastically changes this picture.
But that’s not the way it is everywhere (was just at a Chicago hack night). And Windows is not only still the dominant base, but Microsoft’s direction is more trending toward in favor of everyday developers than Apple’s.
It’s not just a matter of market viability, but having enough of a user base to create and perpetuate a good ecosystem (e.g. plugin development) around the app.
Transmit for iOS was a particularly big loss for me, so much so that I personally am going out of my way to avoid their products.
[1] https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-status-board/
[2] https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-transmit-ios/
"Luckily" it was replaced by Prompt 2 that was basically the same thing slightly improved (but "rebuild from the ground up" for reasons unknown) that you had to buy afresh.
That was not nice.
> And then, incredibly, a new Coda arrived on the scene — a reimagined document at coda.io — and we reached an agreement to let them have the name.
And the email newsletter has a strong "last chance to buy" call to action so maybe there's a time limit on how much they can market around it?
Not saying this like it's a bad thing: a new name makes good strategic sense. If it also makes commercial sense because, so much the better.
Here's the new Coda name-holders: https://coda.io/
But reading this product announcement gave me a real feeling for the genuine care and quality that these people put into their work that I'm curious enough to figure out a way to try their product. As banal as another editor might seem to some, the care of craftsmanship that this post exudes is refreshing.
I primary do DevOps today, and I think if their new editor implemented some DevOpsy features could be huge selling point. Remote SSH and running commands, terminal integration, git integration.
Good luck to them, but I don't think vscode is doing well because it is free. It is genuinely a very good editor.
Also it's manifestly un-Mac-like in noticeable ways. For example it's hard to know if I've saved a file, because Command-S doesn't highlight the menubar, no matter how many times I press it. Basic Mac features, MIA.
I'm ready for something that just works, so you'll find me camping outside Panic's digital store.
Sublime Text may not have BBedits ability with massive files but for 99% of the time it is lightning quick and rock solid.
As such, I think a natively coded Mac editor could nail the requisite speed but also enjoy some novel features beyond the spartan default environment of Sublime.
I’m looking forward to it.
0: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/a-whole-new-world
Somehow the letter feels very defensive, like someone accused them of being hopelessly behind and having no chance to ever be relevant again.
It would seem a better investment to make the go to IDE-y thing on iPad Pro.
It seems that (at least up to January 2018) the market for (relatively expensive) pro apps on iPad is just too small.
If this new editor isn't free out of the gate, I am doubtful I'll even try it. I love the stuff of theirs that I own, but I'm not sure I'm willing to gamble on their apps any longer. At least the Mac versions tend to have free trials.
In the age of iCloud, Dropbox, and 200 other services and alternative ways to move stuff, why would one want to use a FTP client (like the Transmit above) on the iPad?
The market for FTP clients is small enough on the desktop...
(Heck, I'm a developer, I have a Transmit license since 2006 or so, I work with dozens of remote machines, and seldom ever use it. It's either sftp on the command line, or something like an Ansible wrapper etc).
Not the kind of mass market app the general iPad users would buy en masse.
The point is that convenient file transfer is a long solved problem with nice foss tools that are never going to stop working because of consumer market shifts.
Nobody is "de-prioritizing the line".
They also have ads about how you can load a eSIM on your Apple Watch and make calls without an iPhone. But they aren't deprioritizing the iPhone any day soon...
I'm using VScode, i don't know if there's an extension for that yet.
"Twelve years ago we introduced Coda, the world’s first web development editor. It put the tools you needed to make a web page together in one app, and nobody had ever done that before."
section {
transform: skew(-2deg);
}On mobile that font is barely readable and that green…
But I'm rooting for them anyway.
It's like some people are sensitive to latency and some aren't.
I've also been told it's impossible to tell the difference between 60hz and 144hz. I can tell. I know this for a fact because my hackintosh will occasionally "forget" and switch my monitor back to 60hz when I wake it up from sleep. I notice immediately.
I can also pick up on different refresh rates, and I was extremely sensitive to it on CRTs back in the 90s and early 2000s. I had to run at least 75Hz on a CRT or I'd have too much "shimmy" in the image and would get a headache in a few minutes of work. 60Hz on an LCD doesn't typically bother me unless its grey-to-grey response time is poor, and produces ghosting. Even with that I don't seem to get headaches from LCDs.
Thank goodness VR came along with its extreme latency-sensitivity and suddenly everyone else cared about maximum frame time too.
Atom seemed promising and fast enough (I couldn't perceive any slowness), but once I started adding plugins to match the features I liked out of Sublime, I found Atom got really sluggish. I haven't tried any other electron-based editors, but I doubt it has the plugin ecosystem to compete with Sublime to VS, or any other big players.
I didn't realize how important having a responsive text-editor is, though. We expect a lot to happen with each keystroke, and we expect it all to happen before we press the next key. This is why I don't think that text editors are best done in JS.
That said, if this new text editor doesn't have features that compare with Sublime, then it isn't much better than Atom is to me.