Panic actively encourages the opposite - they default you to “subscribing to updates”. Not hard to avoid it (just uncheck a box), but it’s pretty clearly their hope that you pay every year.
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Oh, thanks for the indirect heads up that Nova is on sale right now. 
I really prefer Nova to VSCode for my simplistic „edit an old PHP website once in a while“-needs (for which the vibrant extension ecosystem of VSCode is not as relevant), but at the same time, I couldn‘t justify spending that money for those few occurences when there‘s that free good-enough-solution.
I‘m not a fan of subscriptions and obviously, it would be even nicer if they were able to offer free bug fixes forever, just without access to new features. But that would probably add quite bit of complexity in such an already complex app.
They tell you exactly what you‘re getting into, and you will not be punished for cancelling your „not a subscription“. You can simply „rejoin“ at any later point in time, for example if they introduce a new feature you want to have - or, well, if there‘s a bug or incompatibility with a new macOS version. That seems fair to me.
Or to characterize it a different way, it’s $49.99 now, and a year’s updates are included. If you want to continue receiving updates, it’s $49.99 per year.
This is basically the model that Agenda developed, is it not?
Yes, but it’s not too dissimilar from the previously-annual releases for Adobe or Capture One.
But it’s a “subscription” piece of software because that’s the language and setup that Apple prefers for the App Store. But essentially the same thing as what used to be annual version numbers.
If you still have Nova, can you do me a favour and tell me if you have serious input lag with your keyboard? Because I forgot this was a thing in Nova and they still haven’t fixed it. I am curious if it’s just me, or if it’s the text engine they wrote for the app.
The input lag is the biggest reason I keep hopping back over to VS Code, despite the fact that it’s uglier and doesn’t include a couple Nova features I like. But for a typing interface, input lag is pretty unacceptable.
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Is it the speed (being native) why people here are preferring to use a paid app like Nova instead of VS Code which is pretty fast and has a huge community of plugins. I never faced lag in VS though.
For me it’s the fact Nova doesn’t handle everything anyone has ever thought of. It does what it does well (notwithstanding the issues mentioned by people above) and it’s clearly had some thought put into design. VS Code is… well, it’s from Microsoft. There are icons and text all over the place trying to signal every little aspect. The settings aren’t a traditional settings pane because there are so many that it requires a full-text search just to change simple things.
I use it at work for some side hustles because it is capable but I don’t enjoy using it because I’m constantly second-guessing what it’s telling me, where to go to change some behaviour, and whether I have just done what I intended. Adding tons of “do anything” plugins only makes this worse as you add them.
Capable, yes. Functional, yes. But not nice.
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I really want Nova to work for me. I’ve tried it 3 different times over the last few years but there’s always some hang ups. It looks so much better than anything else, but due to its lack of popularity the packages just aren’t where they are supposed to be. If I could get a couple more things working the way I need, I would switch over.
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I have to say, the answer to your question was in the details for me.
When I tried VS I tried to get it to support working with remote files via FTP/SFTP. I have to do this occasionally, and Nova does it natively.
Could it do it? A quick Google yielded that it could.
Was there a plugin available? I seem to recall there were a couple different ones. And BTW, that’s its own challenge.
Was the process for getting those plugins downloaded / installed / working even remotely clear? Not that I could find.
I futzed with it for awhile, and gave up. I’m sure I could’ve gotten it working, but my experience is that the more fiddling I have to do to set something up, the more likely more fiddling will be required in the future.
I’m currently on BBEdit. And I’d be very interested in something like Nova if it were a little more stable. 
I don’t, but I don’t recall any input lag issues. My only issue with it was instability. Of course I use a wired ergo keyboard, so input lag would be very bizarre in any circumstance.
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Even wired to the machine, I still get input lag in VS Code. It doesn’t feel like input lag; it just feels slow. Like the machine has run out of ram and is struggling to process my input. It’s bizarre. But input lag is the only concise way I know to characterize it.
I’d second what others have said about it being nice, though. For me, it’s got the best global search and replace tools out of all these apps for my purposes. I also love how it is smart enough to know how to automatically indent my code. (If I could get BBEdit to recognize the syntaxes I use and also auto indent code, I’d consider it for many of the same reasons I consider Nova.)
haha. I agree. Totally relatable
In the software world I find this usually translates to online sales copy of something like “its power lies in its configurability” 
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It’s noticeable—I don’t have the tools to accurately measure but it feels in the ballpark of ~50ms. By contrast, Sublime’s delay is unnoticeable to me.
Panic has fans, sure. If you mean the contributing game devs, definitely part of it. It’s like a collective art project. I don’t think there are many other alt handhelds with that mix of ‘bold’ design, extreme design constraint (minimal graphics plus the weird crank input) and enough market share to attract some talent. And ultimately there is going to be some fracture in preferred system to account for subjective taste.
BTW I apologize for explaining that scene to you, too. Your brief question/statement read as unfamiliar to me.
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oh it is definitely unique in that area but imo way overpriced for what one gets. it appears to be the fidget spinner of handhelds. but as you say, handheld tastes are subjective.
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Yeah, that sounds about right. I can’t handle it. As much as I prefer Nova in approximately a million other ways, if the typing interaction isn’t right, that’s not usable software.
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I HATE VS code’s auto indent. Atom had the best I’ve used so far. I’m willing to leave VS Code exactly for that reason.
Different strokes for different folks and all that! I’m glad we have lots of options. It’s funny the things we’re all picky about.
Agree. A lot of it, for me anyway, seems to boil down to the stuff that’s basically “muscle memory”.
For example, it took me forever to stop double-spacing after a period, because I’ve been doing that since I was about 6 or 7 years old. And of course the reason I was initially given for doing so had to do with the fact that it breaks text-justification software, so I wasn’t exactly eager to change decades of typing behavior because software authors wrote questionable code.
And for hardware, I hit the number 6 in the number row with my left finger. A lot of split keyboards put it on the other side, which means I kept hitting the plastic shell of the board when trying to use them.
Lots of stuff like that. It’s not that we can’t learn different behaviors. We can get used to almost anything. But I think there typically needs to be some sort of “payoff” where the value we get for our discomfort is more than the cost of acclimating to the “new way”.
Oh, ain’t that the truth! A colleague at work recently messaged me about the “new software to replace application X because X is too complex… has a 12 week training course for users.”
Oh you young whipper-snapper, you! I never paid a lot of attention to how far along I took my pen after lifting it from the paper when I was 6 or 7.
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Don’t get me started on that. I’ve been an Emacs user for 30 years. 
BTW, speaking of other text editors, when I want a mac-assed editor I resort to good old Textmate which is still around. I would put VS Code in the triumvirate of extensible, future-proof editors with Emacs and vim, but I just do not enjoy the ¿Electronness? to it.
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