Nova 9

[kstrauser]

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]

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.

[cpill]

you can have an interactive debugger for python in Emacs with break points and everything?

[newlisp]

Emacs with EVIL? If so, do you like the integration?

[gtirloni]

Does Emacs feel more macOS-y than VS Code?

[Melatonic]

Agreed

[lekevicius]

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.

[qbasic_forever]

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.

[JohnBooty]

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.

[reaperducer]

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.

[pipework]

Panic is pretty much exactly a “Native MacOS” company. It’s in their blood, it’s in their history.

[kmlx]

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.

[kinghuang]

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.

[nfadili]

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?

[egypturnash]

"We don't have built-in diff yet, but it's on our list!" - halfway down the front page of nova.app

[steve_adams_86]

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.

[yboris]

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/

[nier]

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.

[azinman2]

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.

[outcoldman]

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]

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]

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. :(

[hit8run]

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.

[sparker72678]

I really want to use Nova for my Rails projects but keep going back to RubyMine because the code completion/jumping just isn’t even close, imo.

[herrherrmann]

Tried out Nova once again today after a long break since version 1. I’m a web developer who primarily uses TypeScript and I’m unfortunately still pretty disappointed about Nova. Things like autocompletion and file browsing are significantly slower and more tedious than in VS Code and I can only cover about 50% of the features and extensions I use on a daily basis (e.g. there seems to be no way to find all instances/usages of a function aside from a plain text search).

I’d love for Nova to happen because competition is important and it’d be great to have more native alternatives but in its current state I can’t recommend Nova to anyone yet.

[ozarker]

I think it’s commendable to be pushing native purpose-built apps in this day and age.

[systemvoltage]

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.

[parkersweb]

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.

[kstrauser]

I'd probably pay good money for this. Mail.app is "good enough" that I haven't bothered switching to another client, especially as the ones I'd otherwise consider have security issues I'm uncomfortable with. I'm certainly open to it, though.

[Koshkin]

No built-in support for C/C++ (or even Rust).

[georgehaake]

bbedit does these pretty well along with addressing the above complaints if you want native

[ProAm]

Thought this was the Nova Launcher for Android.

[cestith]

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.

[siva7]

How does it compare to VS code?

[rched]

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]

Smooth, but lacking

[seumars]

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]

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.

[TomMasz]

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.

[lukifer]

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.)

[btreecat]

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.

[procinct]

Developers using a mac is probably a larger audience size than you are imagining.

[speedgoose]

You should try Rancher Desktop instead of Docker Desktop.

[eddof13]

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]

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.

[lelandfe]

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

[eyelidlessness]

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.