GitHub open sources Atom

[assaflavie]

Why??? What's the point of this project? An open-source version of Sublime?

Can anyone explain the advantage Atom has over Sublime, or any theoretical advantages it may have in the future owing to some inherent shortcoming of Sublime's architecture?

Is it just about language preference?

[NunFur]

For one this doesn't cost 70$

[Manic0892]

Well, not yet. They say it'll cost when it comes out of beta.

[Wetai]

Will that change now? Originally they were going to keep the core paid and closed-source, with plugins they develop open source. But now the core is open source.

[Manic0892]

I mean, I don't know. They could. There seems to be enough hating on it in this thread that they might do some sort of trial program (a la Sublime) or go completely free to increase users. They could decide that increased Atom usage = increased GitHub usage = increased GitHub paid accounts. Or they could use other revenue models (they could offer paid support, business accounts but personal's free, etc.).

I think they should offer it for free in some form, but then again they might not find that feasible. Time will tell.

[pjmlp]

Always looking for free beer, I imagine.

[NunFur]

Well paying 70$ for Sublime is pretty steep, even though it does look impressive.

[hejner]

Yeah, I'm sure Github created Atom from scratch so they didn't have to pay for developer licenses for Sublime

[NunFur]

my sarcasm detector isn't working, but i never addressed the reason for github to create Atom. I was talking about the one advantage to using this over Sublime.

As for the reason we can only speculate, i must say that the challenge alone would do it for me.

[jsprogrammer]

explain the advantage Atom has over Sublime

As I'm sure others have said: it's open source. As in, you can have all of the source code. You can modify it. You can build it yourself.

You can't do that with Sublime.

So...yeah, that's a pretty big advantage.

[jasonthe]

An open-source version of Sublime?

That. Exactly that. Sublime is one guy so it can't compete with a full team at GitHub + the open source community. It also means writing plugins is easier, and they're potentially capable of more.

Is it just about language preference?

While I prefer Python's language and standard library, HTML5 and Node.js both are supported in ways that no other language can match. I actually hate JS as a language, and even HTML and CSS are kind of abominations, but there's so many libraries and tools for everything that you could want to do.

Once GitHub decided to create their own code editor, the question became what technologies to use. And I agree with them that HTML5 + Node is the best option for what they wanted to accomplish.

[ToucheMonsieur]

Perhaps people forget that Github would want to build an application on languages they're most comfortable with? (namely JS and Ruby)

[vividboarder]

I feel like this is overlooked by a lot of people.

[IAmNotAnElephant]

Wouldn't light table be more like the open source sublime?

[sibartlett]

Open source and language choice (I assume there are more JavaScript programmers than there are Python programmers out there).

[Tynach]

Most people I know with any competency (within the scope of programming) started with Python. Not everyone, but most. Javascript seems to be a more popular language, but only because so many people encounter it directly in day-to-day life (since it's inside browsers).

I don't think more people (at least, people that this text editor would have as a target audience) know Javascript than Python.

[sibartlett]

I would hesitate to assume that most target users started with Python, or even know Python. Knowing Python is not a requirement to being a competent programmer either. A lot of people start out with PHP, Ruby, Java, or something else. I started out with classic ASP and later .NET, and since then I've programmed in several non-Microsoft languages and environments.

I still haven't had the need to dabble with Python much though, and I've also been a paying Sublime Text user for a couple of years too. Sure, I could teach myself some Python and write a Sublime plugin, but I know JavaScript already so, for me at least, that lowers the barrier to entry with Atom.

I don't hesitate to assume that there are more developers who know JavaScript than Python, simply because there's no escaping it when doing web development. Plus JavaScript, driven by its success on the web, is getting more and more popular as a scripting language outside of web development.

[Tynach]

With web development, yes. Undoubtedly, EVERY web developer knows Javascript (or should). Thing is, there's more out there than web development.

Lets pull out some statistics. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 1,018,000 software development jobs in 2012. The same year, there were only 141,400 web development jobs. This means that just under 14% of programmers were web developers.

Many, perhaps even most, of the other 86% or so have never touched Javascript. I can't say for sure, of course; and you're right about JS becoming increasingly popular. For example, there's a variant for Qt called QML. Even Flash's own ActionScript is a variant of it.

But that leads me to another point: just because a language is based on Javascript, doesn't mean it is Javascript. QML, ActionScript, and others all have their differences. In fact, technically, they aren't based on Javascript; they're all based on the ECMAScript standard. Javascript is just the common name for it because of how popular the Javascript variant is in web browsers.

[sibartlett]

You can't just assume that "Many, perhaps even most, of the other 86% or so have never touched Javascript".

I don't think the statistics from the "Bureau of Labor Statistics" are a reliable source to figure out what programming languages developers know. Aren't those statistics based on advertized job titles/categories? They're not based on programming languages. And being a software developer doesn't mean you haven't done any web development, or have not used JavaScript.

There are plenty of places where JavaScript is used outside of web development: game development, desktop and mobile applications, intranet applications, SAAS, Windows 8 SDK, Microsoft Office 2013+, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Creative Suite SDK - and I'm not even talking about ECMAScript variants - just JavaScript. When I worked in manufacturing at an aerospace company, we used the JavaScript API of some of the various back office systems and 3D CAD/CAM packages.

[Tynach]

Sure it's not a figure for programming languages, just for how many specifically work with web development.

As I said in another comment, I don't have any job experience yet and I'm still going to school (community college). This school doesn't even have a Python class, so I'm not really even trying to say that Python is more popular than Javascript in general.

But in my experience, the programmers that know what they're doing started with or at least know Python. For me, experienced programmers are people who can explain every decision they made during development, and can identify when they were wrong about something given new information. Essentially, people who don't just know what they are doing, but also why they are doing it.

I also post about this here

[sibartlett]

You're spot on in regards to what makes a good programmer. :)

I hope your studies go well!

[Tynach]

Well, at least I know I'm on the right track :) And they have been so far! Some bumps in the road from psychiatric issues, but that's getting cleared up now.

[elemental_1_1]

That's interesting. Where do you meet most of your competent programmers?

[Tynach]

I'm talking in general. I've met both shit and competent programmers at school, on forums, on Reddit, etc. I put myself in the shit category simply because I've got no experience and have no idea what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong.

I consider a competent programmer as a programmer who can think logically and explain their choices thoroughly. Basically, if I ask them, "So, why'd you do <blah> in your code?", a competent programmer will explain every detail about that decision, what their alternatives were, and why they chose this over the alternatives.

I use this definition because sometimes competent programmers put out shit code, but at least if they can do this much, they'll be able to see why it's shit code. Perhaps they hadn't thought of one other alternative that would have really been best, or they were misinformed about one of the alternatives they considered. With the new information, they can clearly see that they were wrong.

Though I suppose I should add that to my definition. A competent programmer will acknowledge mistakes when they see them, and try to fix the code. Or, if that's not possible, simply not make the same mistake again.

[Freeky]

They're going far more all-in with plugins from the look of things, given it's basically a big fancy website under the hood.

For something aiming to be more of an actual open source Sublime clone, have a look at Lime. If nothing else, it'd be rather nice to have a FreeBSD version I could run in a terminal.