4coder editor is now fully open source

https://github.com/Dion-Systems/4coder

by leoncaet • 4 years ago

177 99 4 years ago

github.com

develatio• 4 years ago

For anyone else (like me) who doesn't know what this is, it seems like the website is http://4coder.net

bitva77• 4 years ago

I love (not) these posts that assume we know what it is.

capableweb3• 4 years ago

I love people who think everything has to be aimed for their consumption.

Some things are aimed at a group of people, and written with that in mind. Someone closing a project/stopping maintenance of something, usually write directly to the group of users of the software.

To expect everything to contain information about everything someone could not know, means everything would have to be extremely verbose. We have search engines, typing "4coder" and finding the website took me around 2 seconds, I'm sure you'd be able to do it just as fast.

jordanmorgan10• 4 years ago

They will tell stories of you

AdmiralAsshat• 4 years ago

I wish the stock README.md template for every project started with:

"What the hell is ________?"

zokier• 4 years ago

I find it bit of a peculiarity of HN that GH links, no matter how non-descriptive, are so often preferred over projects main home pages.

dspillett2• 4 years ago

From that page “Anticipated Next Version: 4.1.3 (beta), February 2020” so this release as open source along with the github repo being set to archive/read-only looks like an “I'm done. If a community wants to keep this alive, over to them…”. Nothing wrong with that, it is much better than complete abandonment in such a way as other people can't carry the torch even if they really want to, but it is a less positive situation than the headline suggests.

seanw4443• 4 years ago

I remember an Aussie game developer on YouTube uses this editor. I hadn't heard of it before, but it seemed interesting. I eventually settled on learning Emacs instead, because 4coder was closed-source at the time. No regrets. Now I'm probably with Emacs for life. Too unique. Too powerful. Too customizable.

Side note: it's funny how formerly closed-source projects always open up to have tons of spaghetti code and bad design planning.

_gabe_2• 4 years ago

Side note: it's funny how formerly closed-source projects always open up to have tons of spaghetti code and bad design planning.

I was curious after you said this, so I took a look at the 4coder source. It looks like very straightforward code. The files are clearly marked so you know exactly what they do, the APIs look simple and reasonable, and they have clearly marked folders containing all platform specific code. I'm not sure why you put this side note here, but it doesn't seem to hold water in this case. The code is definitely not spaghetti, and it looks like it was designed with quite a bit of forethought.

Edit: I would just like to add that I saw the author left several comments about the state of the code in the Readme that imply the code is very unstable. I think developers tend to be very critical of their own code, but when I took a cursory glance at the code from an outside perspective it seems much easier to follow then many other projects I've tried to take a look at. For example, for a quasi-open source project, ffmpeg is extraordinarily complex and hard to follow. So I definitely don't think OSS = super well designed code haha

seanw4443• 4 years ago

I'll admit, I didn't actually read the codebase. I just took the notes at face value. I agree. People are harsh in review of themselves.

To your second point: I think it's a matter of size for a project becoming spaghettified. ffmpeg is mature and massive, so it's no surprise it's jumbled at this point. For a project of 4coder's scale, I'd wager that being open source sooner would've benefitted its design.

But, it's in the past. I'm just glad the dev left the code in the community's hands before dropping it. A lot of devs don't even do that, and the project becomes history.

maccard10• 4 years ago

: I would just like to add that I saw the author left several comments about the state of the code in the Readme that imply the code is very unstable.

I dunno, I'm looking at their "4coder_base_types.h" header [0] and redefining basic types and builtin keywords for personal preference (yeah I know, static is overloaded) is a serious eyebrow raiser.

[0] https://github.com/Dion-Systems/4coder/blob/62fe17699a99f7d2...

lutrinus• 4 years ago

Regarding your side note, they're at least transparent about that. :)

I DO NOT recommend learning from this codebase, especially not with an uncritical eye. It may be a useful reference for certain algorithms and architectural ideas, and it certainly contains some cautionary tails. But if you are a beginner, I encourage you to aim for more than emulating the style and structure of this codebase.

seanw4443• 4 years ago

For sure. Perhaps I came off as way too critical. I write my fair share of spaghetti code. I think we all do. But at least in an open fashion, things are corrected far sooner with more eyes on it. That's all I'm saying.

The editor seems cool regardless.

pxeger1• 4 years ago

said Aussie game developer on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RandallThomas

hollerith2• 4 years ago

How well does 4coder support users who like using the mouse?

hulitu• 4 years ago

You can use On Screen Keyboard with the mouse.

hollerith2• 4 years ago

If you select an arbitrary extent of text with the mouse, is that extent highlighted?

Are there then commands that operate on the highlighted extent?

If you double-click a word, it that word highlighted?

pengaru• 4 years ago

While I'm not a user of this editor, this seems like great news.

4coder receives significant attention via the Casey Muratori's video streams like Handmade Hero, and opening it up is sure to produce some positive growth for the development/community side of the project.

The combination of popular development livestreams and FOSS tooling utilized in those livestreams seems like it could be an important part of making FOSS development more sustainable without involving big corporate sponsors.

capableweb3• 4 years ago

opening it up is sure to produce some positive growth for the development/community side of the project

This is not a "opening up" of anything but the source code, with a permissive license. You're free to fork and change anything you want, but it won't be upstreamed ever as the author did the open sourcing because they are stopping maintenance of the project.

So this is more of a "closing down" with the gift of leaving us with the source code. And for that Allen Webster, I thank you!

scotty79• 4 years ago

If there's a demand in the community for further development then the project will be immediately forked and this for will become new upstream.

lazypenguin• 4 years ago

Anyone know why development is being discontinued?

werner1886• 4 years ago

Just a stab in the dark but him (Allan) and Ryan Fleury are working on a much bigger project atm (https://dion.systems/index.html) which includes an editor too, so i'm guessing they just don't have enough time

098799• 4 years ago

I wonder how do people come to a decision that it's a good idea to start their own text editor when vim and emacs exist. For this one my guess is the author is a c/c++ developer and wanted to have their editor cusomizable in their desired language. Would that be enough?

It's also not a common thing for projects like that not to start as FOSS.

vinyl7• 4 years ago

Yea, being able to customize with C++ is peferable for some people compared to vimscript/lisp/etc. Then you have the issue where emacs and vim can choke under reasonable file sizes. The other part is vim/emacs aren't as performant as they could be

Koshkin• 4 years ago

Though good and powerful editors, there are reasons why emacs and vim have a very small user share. (Everyone I know prefer VSCode when not using an IDE.) Even JEdit and Sublime each have a dedicated but a comparatively small userbase.

usr1106• 4 years ago

Proably of the people you know also only a small share is active on HN. At least that's the case for me.

I'd guess amongst HN users the share of emacs and vim users might be higher than for developers in general.

cnity• 4 years ago

There's a sizeable cohort of people (that overlaps largely with the "handmade network") who are tired of hearing "don't reinvent the wheel" and see virtue in rebuilding software. I think it's a good attitude personally, since it's _how we get better things_.

pantulis• 4 years ago

I wonder how do people come to a decision that it's a good idea to start their own text editor when vim and emacs exist.

It's really a smaller decision compared with the point of view that text files as source code are "holding back our tools - https://dion.systems/dion_format.html

So these guys are really thinking big.

rtz1215• 4 years ago

If text files are holding you back. Smalltalk exists...

paskozdilar4• 4 years ago

I wonder how do people come to a decision that it's a good idea to start their own text editor when vim and emacs exist.

Vim/Emacs have a huge community and ecosystem, but they aren't exactly perfect. I don't see anything weird about people writing their own editor.

I'd personally love to have a Python-programmable editor a la Emacs, and if I ever write a text editor, it's gonna be like that.

tuckerpo• 4 years ago

Eh, it's part of the handmade effort. Sometimes building your own tool is just fun.

+ You don't need to learn a bespoke language to customize 4coder (vim_script in vim's case)

typon• 4 years ago

Both are dead in the water architecturally if you want to use a text editor that can render fonts and other graphics at 60 fps on a normal desktop.

rtz1215• 4 years ago

You don't need to render anything at 60fps. Emacs is not a game, it only renders when needed and that it does pretty fast.

alpaca128• 4 years ago

    - Fun
    - Learning new things
    - No decades old quirks & constraints through backwards compatibility
    - Same concept with fresh ideas & multithreading

A lot of good reasons imho, which is why I'm also tinkering with my own little editor. In the worst case I'll have learned a ton and have a small collection of useful libraries. Some innovation in modal editing after 30 years might be nice.

dividedbyzero• 4 years ago

Seems to be an emacs clone using C++ for customization instead of elisp.

unsafecast2• 4 years ago

From my very brief experience with it, and watching Casey hack on it, it's a _much_ more well-designed program. I've used emacs quite extensively, and while I don't tinker with it that much, every time I do it feels like a maze with a gazillion dead ends. It's a terrible experience most of the times, and an unremarkable one the rest.

Also, I feel like the C configuration opens the door to using other languages too, Lua comes to mind immediately. You can do that in emacs too, but it's not as straightforward.

One last thing. One of my biggest gripes with emacs is the performance (I'm using a rather low-end computer). I'm making the assumption that a moderately-sized pile of C++ will perform better than a huge pile of elisp.

behiri• 4 years ago

I remember Casey Muratori was explaining his emacs key bindings in one of his handmade hero videos and he said something like 'I would use any editor that has these key bindings and split windows', so I guess that is when the 4coder idea came to life.

CyMonk• 4 years ago

they are not on github, but there are builds available from itch.io as free downloads.

https://4coder.itch.io/4coder

bilekas• 4 years ago

that there is a totally separate build system for the custom layer which is also a big gigantic mess of its own. It involves several stages of compilation, and a number of metaprograms.

Sounds like a handful to manage closed source solo!

jcalabro• 4 years ago

Ah this is great! Sad that it's not getting any future updates, but on to other projects. I tried using the Mac version of 4ed a couple times, but it never got the TLC that Windows did, plus the emacs-like setup was foreign since I use vim.

The author has a great YouTube playlist[0] as well, bringing you through some basics of their preferred methodology of programming. It's been interesting to follow along and check out how he does things.

https://www.youtube.com/c/Mr4thProgramming/videos

eggy• 4 years ago

I purchased it a few years back, and I was having fun, but a bug on the newest version of Windows derailed me from continuing with it. I was looking for a lean, C or C++-based coder to replace my Vim/Emacs habit! I'll have to check it out again.

maccard10• 4 years ago

I get that the whole handmade shtick is to avoid existing libraries to allow for better software, but when you see things like [0], you realise what cmake is for...

[0] https://github.com/Dion-Systems/4coder/tree/master/bin

dundarious6• 4 years ago

Those scripts are incredibly simple, and super easy to write and maintain. It's a breath of fresh air compared to other build systems. But I won't defend the cpp, and neither does the author really.

maccard10• 4 years ago

But the scripts don't work without the cpp - you can't really excuse the build system without excusing the cpp file. All of the actual logic for the build system is in the cpp file, and at least on windows it fails at the first hurdle - it blindly assumes cl.exe is in your path which is not as common on windows as it is on linux for example.

dang• 4 years ago

4coder, a modern text editor based loosely on Emacs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23444912 - June 2020 (16 comments)

obert• 4 years ago

note to future opensourcers: please, please, explain what the project does in your README. People get RTFM so often, maybe it’s time for WTFM too…

masukomi2• 4 years ago

yup. was reading the readme and going .... "yes, but WHAT IS IT?!?!"

opan2• 4 years ago

What is the license? I don't see it at a glance.

psydvl• 4 years ago

MIT

It's placed in README

opan2• 4 years ago

Thanks. I was looking for LICENSE or COPYING and didn't see either.

mclion• 4 years ago

Mit

lytedev• 4 years ago

Read on: it's MIT

null4bl3• 4 years ago

I would just prefer an open source alternative to vscode (that wasn't vscodium)

vscode to me is simply to bloated. They should have landed like a year and half ago.

gnubison• 4 years ago

An open source text editor that isn’t as “bloated” as VSCode? Sounds like … all of them, really, try Emacs or vim or nano or vi and maybe you’ll find something you like. But if what you want is “VSCode with all the features I use and none of the ones I don’t,” you’ll probably have to make it yourself (or at least be more specific).

wion531• 4 years ago

Have you looked into lite (https://github.com/rxi/lite)? It's quite minimal, but easily extensible and is very lightweight.

erung88• 4 years ago

Happy to see another code editor goes open-source! Kudos to 4coder team.

Sakos• 4 years ago

Is there any reason to use this over, say, Sublime Text or VS Code?

heywoodlh• 4 years ago

I'm a huge advocate for making everything open source so good for 4coder!

I feel like a couple of posts on HN the past few months have been "X is going open source". It makes me question why projects that aren't open source when they initially release switch over to open source later. I understand keeping a repo private before having a working/stable product, but why release a product as closed source and then open it up later? Why not just keep the product off the market until it is ready to be released and make it open source before or at launch time?

I totally have space that I'm just crazy but as someone who tries to keep my stack as open source as possible I find myself not really interested in products that start closed source and eventually open up. Is it just me?

Just to reiterate: I'd rather a project go open source later vs never.

EDIT: I just realized the context for 4Coder was that it was a "we're ending this product so here's the source for anyone who wants it" -- I am super grateful for closed-source products that do this. But my question is still relevant for other projects that have done what I described above.

4coder editor is now fully open source

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