Review: Panic's Nova 2021 - Is this a VS Code and Sublime Text beater?

[@justacookie]

Thanks for the thorough review! Happy to have stumbled upon this video. After you pointed out the sidebar lag, I can't unfeel it! The same applies to resizing the window. Sublime Text is still unmatched when it comes to performance and smoothness despite being cross-platform vs. Nova as a native app built specifically for Mac.

[@benfrainuk]

Ha! Sorry to have ruined the sidebar for you. Hopefully it’ll get addressed soon 👍🏻

[@MagicHawkeye]

@@benfrainuk - I'm pretty sure that the sidebar "lag" is engineered. It's an animation, after all. Some delay had to be selected, otherwise it'd simply snap open/closed. On the company's website, they ask for user feedback. I'm wondering, Ben, if you've shared your various suggestions for improvement with them?

[@benfrainuk]

@@MagicHawkeye yes, I’ve discussed via private message on Twitter with them.

[@MagicHawkeye]

@@benfrainuk - I'm glad to hear that. Although the sidebar lag isn't an issue for me, several of your other suggestions were. Happy to hear they're aware of the issues. Thank you!

[@emberchord]

I really dislike the ecosystem-argument when it comes to anything tech. Because it change in an instant - it is not a constant. Most arguments that people make _for_ VS Code are the same arguments that they made for atom and sublime for that matter a few years ago. I mainly write HTML & CSS and to me VS Code feels much more like a JavaScript Editor than anything else. I've written Code on PhpStorm for the last 5 years and that was much more capable of handling complex SCSS Code than VS Code. I'm really happy to have found this review of Nova. That was _very_ helpful! I was a huge Coda2 user for many years.

[@nomadtrails]

Sorry, don't have a dog in the fight. Love Sublime, love VS Code. But what do you even mean "more capable of handling complex SCSS"?

[@jonbikaku6133]

I had been on VSCode since university but 2 years as a full time coder I switched to neovim for few months. Once I had the plugins and configs setup, it was literally one of the best 'IDE' experience I've gotten. But for some reason I guess the vim's way of insertion/visual mode isnt the most efficient for me so I switched to sublime 4 and enabled hardware acceleration. Its literally just as fast as neovim and gives me a full IDE experience too. Highly recommended

[@benfrainuk]

Have you tried github.com/NeoVintageous/NeoVintageous? If you find you miss Vims modal approach I’ve found that to be a great compromise to get the best of both worlds 👍🏻

[@jonbikaku6133]

@@benfrainuk I see. Looks quite interesting tbh. I would love to jump back onto Neovim once I learn some handy shortcuts.

[@Aselia-q6w]

Great video, and amazing quality with amazing audio, since the issue with the videos on youtube, even bigger channles with 30K subs, the audio sucks and it is bad and clips, but you have it spot on! Now, I'm with you 100% (Sublime text is the KING), and I hate VS Code, it was never my thing or for me, but I was drone to Nova, but I kinda steered away from it, when you said, it crushes, and that is the main reason I sublime text, because it never crashes, yet if NOVA does crush, that is not something I want use. Great video, subbed!

[@benfrainuk]

Yes, I’m amazed people put up with VSCode. I know it’s very capable but you can literally watch it draw in the Syntax highlighting for a file when you switch tabs. I just can’t bear to see that! 👍

[@techtipsuk]

Brilliant overview. Totally know what you mean about the Mac apps of yesteryear. Still think you do get that so much more than with Windows where it’s none existent

[@daniel_weiss95]

for the terminal u can take ur mouse and press the tab of the terminal hold it down and drag it down to the bottom so it shows in a window in the bottom like it does in vscode

[@chrisrosser9179]

Terrific review, thank you! Subbed

[@MhLiMz]

I see many features in Nova that its predecessor Coda has. And in your list of things you don't like about Nova, there are some things Coda does the way you would like it to be. Pitty that Panic stopped the development of Coda. Thanks for the review!

[@peace2941]

Well, VSCodium is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft's editor VSCode. no data sent to Microsoft. but I agree nothing beats the speed of sublime.

[@Sekhmet6697]

Nova would be great if it didn't randomly crash to the desktop. This has made me switch to vscode, which hasn't crashed once in the 5 months I've been using it. One thing that always struck me as odd with Panic's Nova (and Coda before), is the constant stream of bugs fixed on each point release. I mean bugfixing and constant updates are nice, but maybe the software is just too buggy/unstable in general.

[@benfrainuk]

I agree that instability is a really poor attribute. No matter how seldom it occurs. They are working on a Vim mode too so hope that extra functionality doesn’t cost more stability!

[@MagicHawkeye]

Ben, Thank you for your review. I'm looking around for a new text editor, and your review is helpful. You mentioned Text Wrangler and BBEdit. I think that, at the time you made this, BBEdit 14 hadn't yet been released. I'm wondering if you've had a look at it since making this video? I too value speed in an editor, and nothing is going to be faster than a native MacOS app. More importantly, though, is how quickly am i able to do what i need to do, with the least amount of effort? The ability to customize and automate common tasks is therefore important. As far as i can see, BBEdit 14 blows the competition out of the water, at least for things i want to do (i.e. text documents, HTML coding, UNIX shell scripting, Perl scripting, grep patterns, etc.) I particularly like BBEdit's grep pattern prototyping area, MPW Worksheets, and it's extensive scripting support (e.g. AppleScript, Automator, Perl, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, shell scripting). The ability to leverage the brawny text processing capabilities of Perl and Unix shells is significant. BBEdit's HTML validation and prototyping tools look pretty useful as well. It appears Panic left out AppleScript support for Nova. That's a serious limitation, in my view. I hate writing AppleScripts, but love having the ability to do so. Helps with all sorts of automation.

[@techtipsuk]

Just been using this app for a week or two. One of my main annoyances is the size of the mini map!!! It's huge. On my 27" monitor it just takes up far too much horizontal space.

Vs Code is open source, there's a fork foss project called vs codium that has the telemetry stripped. I've used Sublime Text for a very long time, Vs Code isn't that slow on linux. Nova seems to be a fork of Vs Code also.

[@benfrainuk]

Nova is definitely not a fork of VSCode

[@tonyhawk123]

One frustration so far is I can't for the life of me see where to specify local folder. It has defaulted to my computer's home folder which is obviously useless for uploading/downloading to server, and there is no dual pane local/server view like there was in Coda 2 unless I'm missing something. I see in this video, in project settings there is an option to specify Local Path. Why can't I see these options on mine! All I see for Project options is Project Name and the icon artwork. That's it. In the first few minutes of using Nova, it's not gripping me. The tacky old school iconography doesn't help either.

[@tonyhawk123]

OK to answer my own question. Don't bother importing projects from Coda 2 when it asks. It's useless and just ends up confusing matters. Just create a new project in Nova and set it up from scratch. I see all the project options now.

[@brnktv]

It's funny to me when I hear people say VS Code is slow. I've never experienced that, and I work in huge projects every day. And Electron is not the memory hog everyone claims it is. Not anymore. It's been optimized to death, because Chrome has been optimized to death. But when I go into a terminal, get to the directory I want, and hit 'code .' it opens instantly. My old iMac, my M1 Max MBP, my old 6600k rig, 12900k rig, it's just lovely across all of those platforms. And that's the winner, right there. I can use it on any platform, it syncs across all of them. Themes, hotkeys (even converts cmd > ctrl and vice versa for syncing between Mac and Windows), extensions, etc, on every machine I have. I can pop open VS Code, and it's ready to go. I must have 25-30 extensions installed, still loads like a champ. The icing on the cake is I can use it on my iPad, iPhone, Android, or damn near anything with a web browser built-in and STILL work on any project I want. Do I wish it was native? Sure. But the problem with products like Nova is it caters to such a small group, in a time when things are evolving, they're pulling a "Sketch" and only focusing on Mac. And like most apps on a Mac, they're $99, unless you want updates, then you pay more. Something about developers strictly in the Mac ecosystem that just can't help but charge for something that exists in so many other forms for free, and work just as well. Meh. However, I suppose if the majority of extension developers moved to Nova, I'd move to Nova. I go where the community support is, as that typically generates the best product.

[@benfrainuk]

I hear you. Most people I know love Code and it’s undeniably powerful and well supported. But your evaluation of slow is clearly different to mine. I can’t stand Code’s redraw of the syntax highlighting when you open a new file. Or when the terminal first opens. I notice it every time. I’m used to Sublime and Neovim where everything is instant and I just can’t put up with anything with any greater latency. It’s also demonstrably slower on startup, not that that would be sufficient reason alone to avoid it. Anyway. Have to agree to disagree. Use whatever tools you find most productive I say, we’re lucky to have so much choice 👍

[@garnerfinnemore5047]

The one thing I liked about Coda was its instant live preview (I use it mainly too build emails). Nova needs a save, and then the page shoots up to the top when it reloads which is a little annoying.

[@benfrainuk]

It’s definitely a good choice for some. Certainly if I did web stuff more casually (rather than all day, every day) then I’d perhaps have it as my editor. I’m certainly glad it exists too as I hate to see nothing but VSCode on every ones workstations

[@bigggarner]

When the files are brought into Nova as a project then the live preview works as before. It’s actually a better way of working with multiple files.

[@_jdfx]

what happened to NeoVim? I watched your video and got my config all setup with Lua so thank you for that!

[@benfrainuk]

I’m still on Neovim. I just like to try other interesting editors as they come along 👍

[@tinybandit5203]

for someone who s into weird keyboards and layouts like you seem to be, I was expecting to see vim / neovim here !

[@benfrainuk]

Funnily enough I’ve had spells with NeoVim before (few long posts on my blog on that subject). Been playing with NeoVim 0.5 today! Very impressive. Might do a video on setting that up if people might be interested. Would be beginner focused, perhaps for people not used to NeoVim 🤔

[@tinybandit5203]

@@benfrainuk I think you should try it out and see if it talks to you. if it doesn t it s fine, id love a longer term review on the moonlander (decided to go dygma instead because small hands) In all cases, I like your videos, they re really good quality, Keep up the good work !

[@hasanhuseyinyurdagul5403]

I dont really understand a giant like microsoft used electron to create vscode it is not even a web app, when it comes to Nova I dont think a text editor cost money but I guess that is why they online target MacOS so it has a price. Great video btw

[@tonyhawk123]

“VS code feels very Windows-like. Which isnt necessarily a bad thing.” …yeah, it is ;-)

[@designobservatory]

I see nothing I need in Nova that I did not already have in Coda. Novas project window and the directory panel are annoyingly bad made. But both editors feel prett primitive to me. Despite I know/use no other editor for html. I would wish autocomplete to not be so darn limited. It should include files and css names.

[@lucasfoster1471]

For Mac's fans, maybe Nova is worth it to try. Your video titles need to be updated so that Linux-Unix users like me (like us) are not misled!

[@richards_256]

I was about to ask about the Dalai Lama's bedroom, but alas...

[@antonjw]

Not sure I had to pay those annual fees to keep Coda up-to-date. I dislike that model. I do still like Coda 2. Lovely editor. It's running at 92Mb of system resources, btw…

[@edcarlo]

vscode beats chrome

[@JohnSmith-zl8rz]

VSCode = Microsoft Sucks!, Nova is great.