I'd love to see tier 1 coding in Visual Studio.

Well I've been using Atom for most of the day and I have managed to add a tool bar (eventually)

Unfortunately I really can't get on with it and I really dislike it. The current version of Geany is so much more user friendly.

NotePad++, NPPExec takes care of the broadcast and compiler stuff and plugins are easy to write, its cross platform and highly configurable and out-of-the box comes with a tonne of functionality.

Atom is ok I did try it with AppGameKit, no complaints but I'd rather see NPP become the replacement, its my GoTo for most things



What's not to love about that?

Not as much love for Atom here as I'd have thought! Oh well, here are all of the major reasons that I can think of that I prefer it. Hopefully similar functionality can be included in whatever is used next, as it'd be nice to have this stuff in an officially supported editor.

- Retina/High DPI displays are supported
- Project file/folder structure is represented in the project panel
- Intellisense works for user defined functions, even when the file that defines the function is closed
- Creating, moving, copying, removing files and folders can be done directly in the project panel
- Autocomplete allows tabbing through named parameters, instead of displaying a tool-tip popup that's easy to get lost in
- Go to function definition on user functions, even when the file that defines the function is closed
- Copy file/folder project path or full path to clipboard from the project panel
- Editor splitting
- Less important, but image viewing directly in the editor has been useful

i'm not against any IDE that is STABLE, moves us forward and makes it more future-proof for AppGameKit without losing anything we've already got.

re: geany, is it me or are there very few plugins? i don't think that i have any of them installed/found any of them useful. why do (relatively few?) use geany over anything else? simply because it's lightweight?

"every" list i see shows VS as #1 (for Web development). where does VS Code fall? from what i see, VS Code usage will surpass VS. i know some here use VS so why don't you use VS Code?

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/whyvscode

I'd love to see tier 1 coding in Visual Studio.

I'm afraid Visual Studio is windows only. For MAc there is Xamarin and for Linux MonoDevelop - but these only support C#.
Another possibility would be Visual Code, which is available on all three systems.

NotePad++, NPPExec takes care of the broadcast and compiler stuff and plugins are easy to write, its cross platform and highly configurable and out-of-the box comes with a tonne of functionality.

I love this editor. But not necessarily as an IDE. Where did you read that it is CrossPlatform? I always thought it was only for Windows.

Oh dear, your right, I always thought is was cross platform, that's a shame as its a very versatile code editor

I think Atom is probably the best way to go then for the reasons outlined by hendron and as I understand, Atom is already setup and ready to go with AppGameKit so if its going to be the "chosen one" then any maintenance is the just plugin and not the whole IDE

is it me or are there very few plugins?

I use the split view, its very handy but that's about it all I find useful.

I've never tried Atom but having read Hedron's list of reasons to use it, I feel that it's definitely worth checking out.
I presume there is some setting up required?

I think visual studio code would also deserve a chance.
If an appropriate plugin were written.
For me, besides code editing, debugging is very important and the current Atom plugin can't do that.

debugging is very important and the current Atom plugin can't do that.

It can, but it's definitely very limited. Toggle breakpoints with f4 and check variables' status by typing them into the terminal while debugging. I wonder how complicated it'd be to extend into a fully featured debugger.

VSCode is great as well, though. Either one would be fantastic.

Some of my preferences:

- Industry standard and user-friendly UI controls, some examples:
> No skinny (hence, harder to click), arrowless, pageless, pillbar scrollbar. A fully functioning wide scrollbar.
> Clicking above or below the vertical scrollbar should page up or page down as in any other industry IDE.
> Arrow buttons at edges of vertical scrollbar to scroll line by line without losing the current cursor position.
> Control-I and Control-U indentation of highlighted text (not just tab, or at least remappable).
> Alt menu selection for top menu bar (example, Alt-F to open the file menu, arrow keys to navigate, enter select).
> Complete font and coloring options (especially the latter, should be fully customizable in menus).
> Persistent search box (no multi-step through a button search, just click in a field and type).
> Proper linking to errors and returning of line number indexes (as with current IDE's).

- No resource consumption when idle.
> Currently, even when set to 'Event based rendering', the Studio IDE eats a few tenths of CPU% and 0.7-2.4 GPU% on a powerful system. Less capable test systems lose more system resources. It also skips/jumps in resource use a lot. And it still misses some clicks/events. In contrast, the Geany based IDE in Classic behaves solidly in this regard.

- Not required or terribly important, but good for QOL factors:
> Labeled UI buttons would be nice, rather than just symbology/hieroglyphics.
> Print options for highlighted text, help docs, or entire source files.
> No news popup on -every- startup.

A newer version of Geany might be the preferred option, depending on ease of update and what impacts it may have on current functionality. Since it shares many of the same setup and configuration parameters, it may be an easier and less bug prone route.

debugging is very important and the current Atom plugin can't do that

I thought they did debugging through sockets?

It can, but it's definitely very limited. Toggle breakpoints with f4 and check variables' status by typing them into the terminal while debugging.

Yes, now that you mention it I can remember it again. But as you say it is not very comfortable.
For me a minimum would be the step by step, step into, step out and step over functionality.
Keeping the manually watching variables and automatically displaying the current local variables.

I tried Atom once or twice, then uninstalled it. Found it slow and awkward to use. (I didn't try it for AppGameKit code though.) I'd rather stick with geany than that unless Atom has improved recently.

I've found that I dislike Atom that much that I would prefer to use Studio if the Classic version is downgraded by using the Atom editor.

Personally I would prefer a newer version of Geany or stick to the current version as it's rare that the IDE receives updates anyway.

I've found that I dislike Atom that much that I would prefer to use Studio if the Classic version is downgraded by using the Atom editor.

Different strokes. I like my modern text editor conveniences and the AppGameKit Geany editor makes me feel like I'm stuck about 10 years in the past. I gave the Studio IDE a fair shake as well, used it for about a month. Actually found it to be worse than Geany in a lot of ways, but at least it looks ok on a high dpi display. Honestly though, I don't care what they use as long as I don't have to have every source file open in the editor just to jump to a function definition or for autocomplete to work, lol.

I agree about Studio being worse than Geany. it will be interesting to see what TGC decide to do if anything at all. I only program on laptops so I have not experienced any issues with high DPI but I appreciate that Geany wouldn't look good. Have you tried the latest version 1.38 of Geany to see if that looks better?

Have you tried the latest version 1.38 of Geany to see if that looks better?

I just gave v1.38 a try. Here are my first impressions (running on a 2018 Macbook Pro with OS 11.6 for context)

+ Interface is modern and clean.
+ Looks nice and crisp on the Retina display.
+ Small install size.
+ Quick to open.
+ Toolbar by default. This isn't really a pro or a con for me as I hardly ever use it (prefer keyboard shortcuts), but I can see how a lack of one would turn people off. I'm glad it can be hidden, unlike the Studio IDE's (unless I missed the option somehow).

+/- Editor splitting. It can be done by enabling the split window plugin, but it's limited to only 2 files. Personally I prefer Atom's drag and drop docking system.

- Typing doesn't feel as snappy to me as it does in Atom, like there is a slight input lag that is just noticeable enough to be off putting. I've yet to try it on my desktop PC, so it may be different there.
- Scrolling with the MBP touch pad is awkward, it feels laggy. I have the same issue with the AppGameKit version of Geany.
- It appears that it's still not possible to create/manage folders and files directly in the side panel, even with the file browser plugin enabled. Maybe I just missed it?
- I could not get the zoom-in keyboard shortcut to work. Zoom-out worked fine, but no amount of [cmd +] or [cmd shift +] would do anything.

Hi guys, I'm the creator of the Atom AGK package, which is basically an AppGameKit plugin for Atom. At the time, I chose Atom because it's one of the editors that I use, besides Vim, and also it's professional-grade, allowing you to install lots of useful plugins.

The thing is, Atom is slowly dying, because of VSCode. In my opinion, even though I don't like VSCode much, I think it would be more sensible to write a VSCode plugin, if you do go that route. Many languages, like Go, have VSCode as their official editor/IDE.

VSCode might be more overwhelming than Atom though, but I think you can always create your own instance with the plugins you want, and make it easy for the user to use. So users would be able to either just download a pre-configured editor, or install it as a plugin.

The advantage of Atom and VSCode is that it's pretty much platform independent. The plugin itself will run in macOS, Windows and Linux without much hassle. Another massive advantage is the huge plugin ecosystem. Users which are already developers will most likely already use some plugins, and they get to keep a familiar development environment.

can atom broadcast? ...

Yeah and it shouldn't even be that hard to implement, that has to do just with talking to the compiler. I just didn't have it high in my priority list because I don't use it personally

It can, but it's definitely very limited. Toggle breakpoints with f4 and check variables' status by typing them into the terminal while debugging. I wonder how complicated it'd be to extend into a fully featured debugger.

The debugger is definitely minimal. It can definitely be done to be like Visual Studio, where you step through code, I think VSCode has native support for that, and Atom supports it through plugins. At the time it consumed a lot of time to implement that in Atom, and given I'm used to Ruby and dynamic languages where you just drop in a debug line, run some code to see what the state is, then go back to the program execution, I just implemented that way, which is more than enough for my needs.

I've found that I dislike Atom that much that I would prefer to use Studio if the Classic version is downgraded by using the Atom editor.

I wonder, what you do in Geany that you can't in Atom? (Besides lacking plugin features, like broadcasting)

- It appears that it's still not possible to create/manage folders and files directly in the side panel, even with the file browser plugin enabled. Maybe I just missed it?

It is possible, you just have to right click, create file, create folder, or use ctrl-p, and type "file" or "folder" to create whatever you want. You can also drag and drop them around as you like.

For me, besides code editing, debugging is very important and the current Atom plugin can't do that.

While it's not a traditional stepping debugger it does provide a simplistic debugging feature, where you can dynamically inspect the values rather than declaring them upfront. It's not the same user experience but I wonder what can you do with the other way that it's not possible just inspecting values?

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Again, I like Atom but I think VSCode is the way forward. But that's just one option. If you guys want to go with your own thing (using something like Scintilla), I think the biggest disadvantage would be that your editor would be separated from the rest of the world, kind of like it is now. ATM in the Geany editor, you can't install other plugins, you get that editor with a few configuration options and that's it.

Also making a good editor is a massive task, living as a plugin to an existing IDE/Editor could make things way faster, easier, extensible (with plugins) and cross-platform. Yet another alternative would be something like Eclipse, not a big fan but the option exists

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I have been using Geany for over 12 months and I can do everything I need to do so far. I used Atom for 2 days and I just didn't like it and found it difficult to use even setting up the toolbar was time consuming and not very successful. I use broadcasting a lot so Atom was definitely a downgrade for me. it comes down to personal choice I suppose.