Cool project but sublime text is not free software and a nag screen isn't exactly fun to see quite often especially for kids.
I guess you can legally say you're trying it out for any amount of time but it's still unethical.
I'd use Sublime any day of the week over Gedit even if it wasn't "cool"
Geany, on the other hand is everything a beginner needs and without proprietary concerns.
You probably don't want to depend on a PPA, but it's a place to start.
Right now I cannot even launch it. I didn't install it from the PPA though, but from a recent commit.
I've never used a .desktop file for atom and had no problems launching it until a recent update from the master repo. Guess I'll try installing the PPA package to see if that works.
How would you suggest developing a text editor with a well-designed yet powerful user experience for a beginner?
Don't be lazy. There are many many many many many projects that thrive with _zero_ cash flow, of which many are found in ChromeOS already. There is no reason for there to be a single drop of proprietary software on a laptop besides the user opting for it.
I'm going to hijack this comment to add that your opinion that money is the only reason to develop software is one of the worst things to ever happen to computing. If creativity and desire to help the world isn't enough for you, pass the torch to somebody else, because they will do a better job.
Jck argued against the use of a particular text editor on the grounds that it was proprietary. I defended the use of of a proprietary editor in general on the grounds that: 1) It is important that the editor a beginner uses be well-designed. 2) Good design comes only from skilled people spending significant amounts of time on something. 3) In order for a person to spend significant amounts of time on something, they need to have something paying their monthly expenses. That could be a company's salary, student stipend, family, or kickstarter. 4) The most reliable way that I can see to get the money for a project like a text editor to support the monthly expenses of its core developers is by charging for the license to use the software.
If there is a more well-designed-for-a-beginner editor that is not proprietary, then my point #4 is false or irrelevant because some project has figured out a way to support development without blockading users from the source code.
When really starting with coding, you want something with autocompletion and easy library access for lookups. For Python I think Ninja-IDE is really good, it covers all the ground necessary, is cross platform, and has the python docs built in. Something IDLE or any terminal based editor won't have.
For general purpose editors, Geany / Gedit, and Kate / Kwrite give you all the tools you need to build software in a multi-application environment once you graduate from the first stages. Having used both, I still vastly prefer Kate to Sublime for how easy it is to theme languages how I want, the vim keybinds, the huge number of plugins that include things like git diffs and documentation lookup built in, etc.
And then you can graduate to full IDEs when you want to just "do work", like Monodevelop, Eclipse, Netbeans, IntellaJ, Kdevelop, Qt Creator....
sudo apt-get install geany geany-pluginsI imagine a world where closed source software is looked down on in disgrace as unsafe and nonsensical. Soon we're going to see more and more successful closed source software companies switch to an open source model. One day hopefully people will have the knowledge to realize we can code everything our selves. 90% of our goods and services can be augmented or automated. We could and should have 3 hour work days and we should be retiring after 4-5 years.
I don't hold that opinion. I hold the opinion that money is the only way to make developing software a full-time endeavor. Otherwise, I'd have to find some other way to support myself. As it stands now, I can cake my living writing proprietary software and try to use the time I have left over to write free software. But I also have to go grocery shopping, spend time with my wife, help my family out with things, maintain relationships with friends, understand and contribute to policy discussions in my community, exercise, sleep, cook, eat, and many other things besides software that contribute to a healthy life. Without being paid to write software, I would spend as much time on it as I spend playing the Irish drum...which happens to have been 0 for the past month. I'm sad about this. As I'm sad that I can't spend all day working on OpenHatch. You seem to be asserting that creativity and desire are enough for someone to engage in significant amounts of labor, however enjoyable. I ask you: How do you pay your monthly expenses? How do you think most developers of software, libre, gratis, or otherwise do so?
I'm writing this while running Chome in an Xmonad window on top of Ubuntu GNU/Linux. I'm not ignorant of Free Software.
There is a problem however - children need to be educated in matters of licensing, which is why I believe starting with an open-source editor makes sense. The real power with open-source is that as a developer you've got control over it and that it never dies. We wouldn't even have this discussion if we were talking about a proprietary programming language with no open-source clone.
So there's a risk associated with picking something proprietary - those risks are sometimes worth it, Sublime Text is surely a good editor and much friendlier than Emacs and if it dies or gets too expensive, then the lock-in is not that great, but children at some point need to learn about licensing and the pros and cons of the choices they make.
But no, I don't think it's unethical.
Imo, I already think it's too expensive for the age group their targeting (7-17) though. But I agree with you that instead of just starting them with a proprietary text editor that nags you, it's better to educate about licensing beforehand. Otherwise, it'll just perpetuate the notion the 'nagging' dialog doesn't matter, until they found out when it's probably too late (as in they're already locked in due to habit).
What if they agree that free software is ethically better? They might not (they probably don't care), but shouldn't we at least tell them what they're getting into just in case?
1) developers are not paid accordingly to their contributions and I'm thinking here especially of indie games developers that suffer the most from this
2) open-source is not as popular as it should - for example whenever a Gimp vs Photoshop thread comes up in which Gimp is said to "suck" by comparison, it infuriates me immensely since I bet that a large percentage of Photoshop users are pirating it and so Gimp doesn't get the credit or the attention that it deserves. Actually piracy limits competition, since this is a problem for all Photoshop alternatives, not only for open-source.
3) monstrosities like DRM which end up punishing well behaved people, since DRM doesn't really work except for lock-in purposes, but hey, companies get away with it because piracy
4) closed platforms that mandate the installation of apps from app stores, because safety and piracy
In general I do not agree that piracy is like stealing, but it does real harm and children should be taught not to pirate, primarily out of respect for other human beings.
I would suggest using Geany, it is great editor especially for beginners and in the debian/ubuntu repos.
Not to mention, you should use Chromium rather than Chrome.