[HN Gopher] Nova 9
___________________________________________________________________
Nova 9
Author : EduardoBautista
Score : 181 points
Date : 2022-03-16 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nova.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (nova.app)
| kstrauser wrote:
| Nova is absolutely gorgeous. I'm so done with Electron apps, even
| ones "done well". There's a lot to be said for fast, native apps
| that look and feel like they belong on the platform you're
| running them on.
|
| That said, Nova's Python support wasn't in the ballpark of VS
| Code's. But testing it for a while soured me on VS Code, and I
| ended up switching back to Emacs (which has _outstanding_ Python
| support via LSP these days).
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Unfortunately Nova didn't work on a large project for me with a
| lot of generated type definitions. It was a gigantic mobx
| project and that would make Nova really really slow to the
| point of being unusable. Somehow VSCode could still work with
| that.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I forget the exact details, but I also had problems getting
| things like Black, mypy, flake8, isort, etc. running. VS Code
| is really good about making that all work with minimal
| effort. Emacs is a bit more effort, but it's flawless with a
| tiny bit of tweaking. I never was able to get the same
| results out of Nova, and that's what ultimately pushed me
| away.
|
| I don't have anything bad to say about Nova, except that I
| personally didn't find it to be a great Python environment.
| Maybe it's brilliant for other languages? I hope so, because
| it's _really_ pleasant and I 'd like to see it succeed!
| css wrote:
| When Nova first came out I wrote a small extension [0] to
| provide an autopep8 formatting, but there is too much
| manual management on the user's end. Since there is no API
| to manage extension dependencies, the user has to manually
| install and specify the path to where `autopep8` is, which
| to my mind is a lot of friction.
|
| Compare that to VSCode, where there is a whole API [1] for
| formatting extensions!
|
| [0]: https://github.com/ReagentX/Nova-autopep8
|
| [1]:
| https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2016/11/15/formatters-
| be...
| kstrauser wrote:
| That matches my experience. I hope that gets straightened
| out!
| blakewatson wrote:
| Yeah this sort of thing was my experience as well. Despite
| being Electron, VS Code is faster and smoother for the main
| project I work on. Which sucks because I would love to use
| Nova more (I've owned it for over a year now).
| newlisp wrote:
| Emacs with EVIL? If so, do you like the integration?
| kstrauser wrote:
| Nope, regular Emacs without EVIL. Nothing against vi, and I
| use it regularly for tweaking files on remote machines, but I
| prefer the native Emacs experience.
| ziftface wrote:
| Emacs with evil is excellent. I don't use a lot of vim
| plugins but it has all the basics, change surround with cs,
| commenting with gc, going to definition and finding
| references with gd and gD respectively, etc. Unless you have
| some custom vim plugins you should be fine.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Does Emacs feel more macOS-y than VS Code?
| kstrauser wrote:
| In my opinion, yeah. In its minimalism (I've turned off the
| toolbar and other stuff), it has fewer GUI elements to get
| "wrong". VSCode has a gazillion widgets, and none of them
| look like other Mac apps, and is in an uncanny valley of
| looking like it might be a native app on some system I don't
| use. Emacs is definitely off on its own direction, but at
| first glance looks a lot like TextEdit, minus the toolbars.
| It's just a large text input waiting for me to start typing.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Agreed
| cpill wrote:
| you can have an interactive debugger for python in Emacs with
| break points and everything?
| kstrauser wrote:
| Yep! https://realpython.com/emacs-the-best-python-
| editor/#debuggi...
| lukifer wrote:
| I really want to love Nova, I was a Coda die-hard for many years,
| but there's been one thing holding me back: the lack of "sticky
| tab stops", in VSCode parlance, or what was called Atomic Soft
| Tabs in Atom. (The world may have forced me to capitulate to
| using spaces; but in my local editor, it's all tabs, all the
| time.)
| hit8run wrote:
| I bought a license some time ago because I want a native Mac IDE
| to succeed! I use Nova for Rails development and it feels quite
| pleasing.
|
| I also use Jetbrains and Sublime but avoid VSCode wherever I can.
| Too many plugins and not enough out of the box combined with less
| intelligent refactoring (Jetbrains is unbeaten here).
|
| Nova is amazing fresh air and whenever an update lands it's like
| a little present and I get excited what's included. It's good and
| they are constantly making it better with every release.
| seumars wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Panic but I really hope they tone down the
| quirkyness of the UI. I don't mind the diagonal dividers, but the
| icons look like Tide pods of different shapes and colors.
| rched wrote:
| I think the biggest thing holding Nova back from being a great
| code editor for most Mac users is their lack of investment in the
| extension ecosystem. The extension library has no curation which
| results in outdated, broken, and duplicate extensions. As far as
| I can tell Nova is maintained by a tiny team and extension bugs
| or feature requests are slow to be resolved.
|
| It's hard to see many folks switching from VSCode if the
| extensions they rely on are unreliable in Nova.
| outcoldman wrote:
| Tried v1 two years ago. Even purchased an year subscription. Send
| some bug issues, feature requests. Got reply in 3 months, at
| which point I was back on Sublime Text 4 and IntelliJ.
| fnordsensei wrote:
| Almost exactly my story.
|
| I also found the API limited regarding writing extensions to
| improve the support for my favorite language, which is not one
| of the few they focus on.
| rwl4 wrote:
| I actually got a few replies to a text formatting issue I was
| having. I sent pictures and even little screencasts of the
| problem, but the support guy kept misinterpreting my problem
| and I finally gave up.
|
| Such a beautiful app. I've been a HUUGE Panic fan too, so it
| was sad to somewhat mentally give up on them. I just recommend
| JetBrains products now.
|
| I really wish it didn't have to be that way. :(
| TomMasz wrote:
| This certainly looks nice. But the courses I teach require
| students to use VS Code with Python and Java, which means I have
| to use it, too. It doesn't work well with PyTest and while it's
| pretty good with JUnit, dealing with external libraries like
| JavaFX completely flummoxed a lot of the students. Sometimes good
| enough is good enough.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Hmmm. No Clojure, LISP or Scheme support, apparently, not even
| for syntax highlighting?
| eddof13 wrote:
| I tried it and couldn't get into it, like opening files
| (command-p in VScode) didn't work as expected for me, and the
| file explorer wasn't there yet either. I'll check again in a
| couple years perhaps
| stmpjmpr wrote:
| This is exactly backwards, IMO. Command-P is "print" on the
| Mac, and always has been; Command-O is open. This is the kind
| of thing that makes non-native apps stand out as poor platform
| citizens.
| mattlondon wrote:
| It is "p" for pallette IIRC. Same as in Chrome devtools and
| others.
|
| In a development context, I _do not want_ platform-specific
| quirks. Consistency is really important for me otherwise it
| is a jarring context switch when e.g. copy-paste _changes_
| when moving between OSes (which I do hundreds of time a day -
| laptop is Mac, developer workstation is in the office and is
| Linux, so I remote desktop into it for code, but "office
| productivity" stuff is on the mac). MacOS is _really_
| irritating in this regard (different keyboard layout for
| fundamental things (copy paste etc) compared to Linux /win,
| different _physical_ key layout compared to every other
| physical keyboard in the UK, different functions for home
| /end compared to Linux/win, different position of window
| controls compared to Linux/win, different position of menu
| bar compared to Linux/win etc)
|
| I look on with confusion when I see people ranting about
| wanting more native UI elements - I want the opposite! VS
| Code & Chrome look and act identically on Linux and windows
| and Mac (more or less) and that's how I want it to stay! And
| indeed I would encourage further abstractions away from OS-
| specific allowances (e.g. position of window controls is
| still wrong on Mac)
| rahoulb wrote:
| It sounds like an OS-specific tool would be entirely the
| wrong choice for you as you work cross-platform.
|
| (Personally, I love the fact that copy/paste work in my
| Terminal with the same keys as every other app)
|
| And, if you weren't aware, the keystrokes and design pre-
| date most other GUI systems in use today (Ctrl-C/V/X and
| things like dialogue boxes and menus work were part of
| IBM's CUA standards which, in turn, were an imperfect copy
| of the existing MacOS guidelines).
|
| Likewise, MacOS used to have a hugely important rule;
| because in English we read from top-left to bottom-right,
| important stuff should be bottom right and stuff we use
| infrequently or is dangerous at the top-left.
|
| Which is why the Apple menu and the window close button are
| top-left, why the primary button in any dialogue box is
| bottom-right. (And there is research, for example eye-
| tracking studies, showing that this helps significantly
| with user comprehension of what's on screen). However,
| Apple gave up on all this research when His Steveness
| returned and now just wings it - but it's this user-centric
| stuff that people refer to when talking about the "Macness"
| of an app.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I definitely see the appeal of cross-platform apps for
| people using multiple systems. I suspect that's a small
| portion of users, though: most of us work on one primary
| platform. In my case, I'd be happy to throw money at a
| native Mac app that looks, feels, and moves like a native
| Mac app.
| lelandfe wrote:
| macOS hotkeys have been ossified over decades. That's
| consistency.
|
| Just remap them if you need, macOS offers great support for
| this.
| windpower wrote:
| You're in the minority, is the thing. Most computer users
| don't use multiple platforms on a regular basis. That's
| something that's really only common among some very
| specific niches, like web developers. Consistency across
| platforms is a bad thing for most users who want all the
| software on the one platform they choose use to behave
| consistently.
|
| I'll also point out that the Mac had the same copy and
| paste keyboard shortcuts before Windows and Linux existed,
| so if any platform should be criticized for not matching,
| it'd be the one(s) that copied the shortcuts but added
| their own changes.
|
| I don't use a Mac because everything about its UI is
| exactly the same as Windows and Linux, it's precisely the
| opposite. I use it because it's different (and IMO, better
| for me).
|
| (And calling the window controls placement on macOS "wrong"
| is a bit rich. The platform that basically created the GUI
| can't be "wrong" about something so subjective as which
| side of the window those controls belong on.)
| [deleted]
| lelandfe wrote:
| Cmd-Shift-O for opening files. It's also remappable.
|
| I also bounced off of Nova for other reasons, but saying the
| hotkeys differ from one's favorite editor is a strange
| complaint
| [deleted]
| ProAm wrote:
| Thought this was the Nova Launcher for Android.
| cestith wrote:
| My first thought before seeing the version number was it was
| something about the Nova compute service in OpenStack, but
| that's on 25.0.something right now.
| nfadili wrote:
| Deal breaker for me (last time I checked it out) was the lack of
| a built in git diff. I don't need anything fancy, but I can't
| live in an editor without it. Does anybody know if this is
| planned or workable in later versions?
| azinman2 wrote:
| I swear by the native version of the GitHub app. It's now
| unsupported but does everything I need and is stable. I prefer
| it over anything in app, personally.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I know it's not what you asked for, but I used to use the one
| is VS Code exclusively. Now I use Sublime Merge 90% of the time
| and it's been a huge benefit to my workflow. I didn't expect it
| to win me over, but I instinctively reach for it now.
| procinct wrote:
| +1 for sublime merge. I used to purely use the terminal for
| git but had tried other GUI clients extensively like
| GitKraken. Sublime Merge is just on a completely different
| tier of software. It has no abstractions really over git
| itself (you can see the commands it executes) and it is fast
| as all hell. It was the first GUI client that I feel actually
| improved my git usage. Outstanding piece of software.
| yboris wrote:
| Try _diff2html-cli_ -- you alias in your terminal "diff" to
| the _diff2html_ command and you get a beautiful HTML diff
| (side-by-side or inline) of the current changes you 've made
| (or against a branch you choose).
|
| https://diff2html.xyz/
| egypturnash wrote:
| "We don't have built-in diff yet, but it's on our list!" -
| halfway down the front page of nova.app
| nfadili wrote:
| Yeah... that was there when they launched it if I recall
| correctly. Oh well
| mattl wrote:
| It launched about a year ago.
| nier wrote:
| That feature used to be in Coda. It's hard for me to understand
| why it isn't higher up the list or already implemented.
| ozarker wrote:
| I think it's commendable to be pushing native purpose-built apps
| in this day and age.
| SomeCallMeTim wrote:
| Commendable..? Or short-sighted?
|
| I exclusively use Linux and Windows; I see something like this
| and ... it's a disappointment.
|
| I think what's "commendable" is cross-platform development,
| breaking out of walled gardens to support everyone.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| When I last tried Nova, debugging and tasks were the biggest gaps
| for my workflows in VSCode. I'm excited to give it another try!
| I'd happily buy a license to switch to a native macOS editor/IDE.
| OnionBlender wrote:
| I was hoping this was going to be about the game Nova 9.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_9:_The_Return_of_Gir_Drax...
| benatkin wrote:
| Glad to see Deno listed there!
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Time to give it another try!
|
| But I struggle to use it without a git diff view. It can't come
| soon enough.
| yboris wrote:
| Try _diff2html_ - just a single npm install command away from
| viewing your diffs in your browser whenever you run
| "diff2html" in your terminal (pro tip: alias "diff" to the
| command).
|
| https://diff2html.xyz/
| kinghuang wrote:
| I use and pay for Nova primarily because it's a fully native app,
| even though it is lacking features compared to Visual Studio
| Code. Even on the new MacBook Pro with a M1 Pro, simple things
| like resizing a VSC window is just so much laggier than Nova. I
| personally value the native implementation of Nova over the
| features of VSC.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I tried Nova and it's wonderful. Unfortunately, it just can't
| compete with JetBrains.
|
| Creators of Nova/Panic - please extend updates for 3 years and
| I'll purchase it. Once it is mature up to PyCharm levels, 1 year
| subscription is fine.
| Koshkin wrote:
| No built-in support for C/C++ (or even Rust).
| georgehaake wrote:
| bbedit does these pretty well along with addressing the above
| complaints if you want native
| gvil wrote:
| clion still the best for rust
| lekevicius wrote:
| I'm happy to see them try, but rationally, I just don't
| understand why Panic is even trying. The trade-offs are just too
| steep. They won't ever have the ecosystem of open-source,
| Electron-based editors. And whatever you gain from being mac-
| native is just not enough of a benefit for almost all
| development.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I want this to be wrong _so badly_ , but I grudgingly admit it
| to be true.
|
| I _want_ the native app from a boutique software shop to
| somehow be better than the open-source alternatives.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Absolutely. Also, I want a small company to succeed against
| Big Tech (VSCode) and Big Dog (JetBrains).
| the_other wrote:
| > I want the native app from a boutique software shop to
| somehow be better than the open-source alternatives.
|
| In a very loose sense, it already is. The apps I've seen it
| compared with in this thread are VSCode and Emacs. The former
| has the backing of onenof the largest corporations in the
| world, and the latter has 40 years of development time put it
| it. That you can even use Nova, Emacs and VsCode in the same
| sentence, despite Nova being two-four years old and only have
| a small core dev team is really impressive.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I think the takeaway is that an new editor has to be a
| platform, not just an app. Emacs was an OS for running Lisp
| code from the beginning, and it was trivially easy for end
| users who weren't Emacs developers to add their own
| extensions to it. VSCode has a rich enough API that
| JavaScript devs were able to do the same with it, and while
| I think Lisp >>> JS, there are a lot more JS devs out there
| who can add and tweak extensions, so it grew a huge fan
| base quickly.
| SomeCallMeTim wrote:
| Some of us learned Lisp and really hated it too.
|
| TypeScript, though? TypeScript I love.
| kstrauser wrote:
| No argument from me. I prefer Lisp, but hey, we all have
| preferences. What I meant was that regardless of
| preference, there are a lot more JS users than Lisp users
| these days, so leveraging that as an extension language
| makes a lot of sense for new editors (even though it
| means I'm personally less likely to make an extension for
| it).
| dljsjr wrote:
| Nova has a JS-based extension API as well.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Right, and I think that's what makes it viable at all. A
| similarly pretty editor without an API would be a non-
| starter, at least to me. It's not _that_ hard to make
| something that can let you edit syntax highlighted text.
| Well, _I_ couldn 't do it, but judging by the number of
| working text editors on the planet, it seems like there
| are plenty of people who can. I think the more important
| part is that other people can make it act like they want
| it to, and without having to patch the editors internal
| code themselves.
| [deleted]
| kmlx wrote:
| i find electron-based editors to be subpar compared to an IDE
| like intellij idea. if nova's target is a full blown IDE like
| idea then for sure there's a market.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| IMHO they should pivot it into a beautiful native or electron
| UI for neovim. Rebuilding all the LSP, task, etc. stuff in a
| bespoke editor is clearly a ton of work and maybe not paying
| off in the long run. Get all that stuff for free from neovim.
| Make a plugin that starts users off in a more familiar mode-
| less editing experience so the switch isn't noticeable.
| cercatrova wrote:
| You might be interested in Onivim then (https://onivim.io/)
|
| Edit: Ah it seems they actually ran out of money. I'd assume
| the project is deprecated now as I don't see any updates in
| the recent past.
|
| https://github.com/onivim/oni2/issues/3811#issuecomment-9103.
| ..
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| It's exactly what I'm thinking of but development on it has
| stopped and it isn't clear if there's a future for it (see
| the update here:
| https://github.com/onivim/oni2/issues/3811).
|
| I'd love to see a company like Panic put some dollars and
| development power behind a native UI for neovim. Neovim is
| built explicitly to support these kind of custom frontend
| UIs. It's basically a backend for a fully-featured text
| editor and IDE but with a minimal console only frontend UI.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Ah it seems they actually ran out of money. I'd assume
| the project is deprecated now as I don't see any updates
| in the recent past.
|
| https://github.com/onivim/oni2/issues/3811#issuecomment-9
| 103...
| halostatue wrote:
| Onivim is not vim or even neovim. neovim + VSCode
| extensions doesn't really work as well as it should, and
| the configuration story (to me) was a nightmare.
|
| There aren't many software purchases I regret, but this is
| one of them. (I'd never ask for a refund, because I paid
| for _access_. I just didn't like what I paid for.)
| pipework wrote:
| Panic is pretty much exactly a "Native MacOS" company. It's in
| their blood, it's in their history.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Not everyone lives on the SV scale-at-all-costs treadmill.
|
| Some people are happy building quality tools for a discerning
| audience.
|
| That's pretty much what Panic has been doing for the last 20+
| years.
| camgunz wrote:
| I totally agree. There are multiple definitions of success,
| and "we became the most popular <blank>" is just one. It
| doesn't say anything less of someone that they don't reach
| that goal, or don't set it in the first place.
| lekevicius wrote:
| I understand that, and I've been buying their software for at
| least 10+ years, starting with CandyBar.
|
| My point is, for the effort it requires, I don't see it
| paying off. I would bet money that Nova will be discontinued
| in less than 5 years, while VS Code will not.
| tra3 wrote:
| If we put aside get-rich-quick options, if they are
| breaking even, for some value of breaking even, then why
| not?.. But you're right it doesn't seem to be sustainable
| long term with a wealth of free options available.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Perhaps you and the people at Panic have different
| definitions of "paying off."
|
| Keeping a company afloat, bring proud of your work, working
| with a good group of people, and providing for one's family
| sound like pretty good payoffs to me.
|
| Much better than obsessing over all the things that FAANG-
| types talk about on HN: What "level" engineer I am, pre-
| counting stock options (fake money) before vesting, or
| worrying about whether the project I work on will be
| cancelled because it "only" makes $10 million profit a
| year.
| [deleted]
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| It seems pretty likely they will either continue to develop
| Nova, or replace it with a newer app, indefinitely. They've
| been consistently shipping a code editor (Coda until 2020,
| now replaced with Nova) since 2007. Apart from
| uncharacteristically losing interest, I think the only
| reason they'd stop developing Nova or some spiritual
| successor is becoming unsustainable as a business.
| Fortunately for Panic, there are still a lot of Mac users
| who are happy to pay for quality native apps.
| lekevicius wrote:
| Coda was quite dead before relaunch as Nova. Even if not
| outright discontinued, if Nova got to the stage Coda 3
| was, that would not be great.
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| titlefixer wrote:
| Fixed title: "Nova 9: latest release of a native MacOS code
| editor"
| [deleted]
| parkersweb wrote:
| There was a rumour some years ago (based on a tweet from a member
| of staff there) that Panic were working on an email app for
| mobile devices.
|
| Even now I still hope that rumour is true - a genuinely well
| designed email app made the usual high standard of polish
| synonymous with Panic software would be amazing.
| btreecat wrote:
| Docker on mac just...sucks. So I don't develop on mac. Remote
| debugging sucks, so I don't like to setup a pure remote env for
| development.
|
| Maybe I just have Linux-colored lenses but I am not sure I see
| this product having huge growth potential given it's
| intentionally small target audience.
| speedgoose wrote:
| You should try Rancher Desktop instead of Docker Desktop.
| procinct wrote:
| Developers using a mac is probably a larger audience size than
| you are imagining.
| siva7 wrote:
| How does it compare to VS code?
| rched wrote:
| In my experience it is a bit of a mixed bag. The speed and "Mac
| feel" are great overall. It seems to work pretty well for the
| natively supported languages. Unfortunately the LSP support is
| nowhere near as good as VSCode and they seem to be slow to add
| features and fix bugs for LSP. This makes it a much worse
| editor for most languages.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Smooth, but lacking
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