[jitl]

What sets this apart from the other WebKit-based text editors, LightTable and Brackets? In general it seems like there's been an explosion of new text editors with this style since TextMate went into hibernation around 2008. It's great to have options, but there's lots of these TextMate clones now.

[1qaz2wsx3edc]

LightTable is different then most editors by design, in that it tries to reproduce Bret Victor's idea on "the future of programming".

Brackets is really neat, it just attempts to be a good editor, it has some unique features like toggling css inline from an html file for example and other jazz.

So Atom isn't something that's really set apart from webkit-based editor, but I don't think that's what's important here. It's the potential the stack offers us.

There's also not as much competition in this area, but it's sorely needed. I feel vim, emacs, textmate, sublime and most the editors are generally closed source or have huge code bases, and they are hampering the process of innovation by creating walled gardens or creating a barrier to entry. With a editor based on web technologies things really open up a lot.

Think about an editor where you can write a feature, pass the tests, and have a hot reload. No compiling, no closed source or plugin system. Just simple coffeescript/javascript some html and css. And bam, you've rewritten your status bar without effecting work in progress. That's something an editor should give us.

I digress, I'm just excited by this.

[roryokane]

As a side note, it seems like Vim will get a little better soon in terms of its barrier to modifying it and creating plugins. Someone has started a credible project to create a fork, Neovim, which will be easier to modify and extend: https://www.bountysource.com/fundraisers/539-neovim-first-it....

[swift]

I realize that vimscript or elisp may not be your cup of tea, but you can already have exactly this "hot reload" experience with both vim and emacs.

[benaiah]

You seem a little harsh on Emacs, but I'm with you in general. (To be fair, Emacs is an enormous pain to get into, has a bunch of legacy cruft, has odd terminology that is difficult to learn, and has a terrible default config. To be fair, Emacs is also leagues ahead of its competitors [referring to Light Table, Brackets, Sublime, and this] in terms of plugins and maturity).

I really just want something with Emacs' principles that doesn't have as much cruft and runs on the web. Light Table seems to be the best bet so far, but this looks interesting as well.

[ollysb]

I'd love to see a good pair-programming environment. Floobits has been having a good crack at this but has the disadvantage of having to co-ordinate both the git commits and the workspace edits on multiple remote machines. GitHub won't have this problem so I expect that pair programming remotely is about to get a ton easier.

[netghost]

TextMate is still alive: https://github.com/textmate/textmate

But to your main point, I would assume this has really really really good github integration...

[bsimpson]

True, but until Sublime started eating his lunch, TM2 was being developed so quiet and slowly that a bunch of people thought it was vaporware. I believe that's what the OP meant by "in hibernation".

[jbranchaud]

What sets it apart? We will find out when it is released. I doubt GitHub would waste there time building a TextMate clone unless they have something intriguing or new to bring to the table.

For one thing though, we can probably expect incredible GitHub integration.