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pengaru
capableweb
> 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
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.
capableweb
Indeed, the community could fork it, change the name and carry on development. But it would no longer be "4coder" but based on/forked from "4coder", as "4coder" would no longer receive any updates from this point on.
dang
Related:
4coder, a modern text editor based loosely on Emacs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23444912 - June 2020 (16 comments)
develatio
For anyone else (like me) who doesn't know what this is, it seems like the website is http://4coder.net
AdmiralAsshat
I wish the stock README.md template for every project started with:
"What the hell is ________?"
zokier
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.
unsafecast
In this particular case, the github link makes a bit more sense, as the main topic of discussion was the fact that it's now open source.
I agree with you in general though.
hammyhavoc
Most probably because the GitHub content will outlive the project homepage, especially when you consider that 4coder is no longer maintained, and thus the source is being made available. Seems logical to me.
Barrin92
with smaller projects it's pretty common that HN hugs the site to death
dspillett
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.
bitva77
I love (not) these posts that assume we know what it is.
capableweb
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.
paskozdilar
I understand your perspective, but I disagree in this particular case. "Show HN" is obviously aimed at our consumption.
dspillett
> I love people who think everything has to be aimed for their consumption.
I love how people don't bother providing information that would be easy to provide, the URL to the website would be handy as here it isn't even included in the README on github, then people get all het up when others mention the lack of information.
masukomi
I love people who think that they have any semblance of an idea of who will see or read their stuff. It's so pre-Gutenberg of them. ;)
You don't have to write your things FOR EVERYONE but it isn't unreasonable to suggest that folks are going to link to random projects on github and that other folks may end up on said project through unexpected means, and with no context, or with unexpected context. It probably follows that that _maybe_ spending the time to write _one sentence_ to describe WTF you're looking if you want ANYONE to consume it isn't unreasonable.
jordanmorgan10
They will tell stories of you
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jcalabro
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.
dividedbyzero
Seems to be an emacs clone using C++ for customization instead of elisp.
unsafecast
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.
heywoodlh
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.
null4bl3
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
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
Have you looked into lite (https://github.com/rxi/lite)? It's quite minimal, but easily extensible and is very lightweight.
behiri
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.
eggy
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.
bilekas
> 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!
CyMonk
they are not on github, but there are builds available from itch.io as free downloads.
lazypenguin
Anyone know why development is being discontinued?
werner1886
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
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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.