Hello, world!
As developers, we spend a huge portion of our time interacting with our programming environment. Some use the most basic of editors, while others go for full IDEs. If you’re anything like us, you know exactly what features would go into your dream setup. But, you also probably haven’t managed to find that setup quite yet. Our ideal development tool checks three boxes:
- Feels great on the Mac
- Includes deep language integration
- Has a design that doesn’t feel like an afterthought
There are many existing solutions that hit two out of three points above. And as they say, that ain’t bad. But, these are tools that are essential for our work, and we didn’t want to compromise. So, we decided to start a company to build our ideal. For months, we’ve been hard at work trying to turn this vision into a reality. We’re excited, and nervous, to announce that a beta version of our product is nearly ready.
We’d like to introduce you to Chime, an editor built for macOS.
Language Support
One of the core aspects of our ideal editor is excellent language support. Syntax highlighting isn’t even getting started. We want to offer autocomplete, navigation, refactoring, documentation and other features that all feel purpose-built for the language. Chime is tuned to provide detailed semantic information about your code, while also being fast and forgiving. All of this is much easier to do when you support fewer languages. This means that Chime is not an every-language-under-the-sun kind of text editor.
In fact, we’ll be launching with exactly one: Go.
Wow, just Go?
There’s no doubt that this is bound to be an area of contention. And, make no mistake, we’re not ruling out support for additional languages in the future. But, we’re serious about prioritizing depth over breadth, and that translates into considerable effort for a language. We also happen to love the Go community, and think we can offer something compelling.
If you are a Go user with a Mac, Chime was built for you.
Looking for Feedback
The base set of functionality an editor needs is just enormous. Many highly complex features are considered a given. Chime isn’t going to have every feature your current editor has. But, we are aspiring to do something different. We want to deliver a high-quality macOS app with top-notch Go support.
On a higher level, we want to build a great tool. One that adds some joy to the process of creating software. We sincerely hope that Chime can be a companion on your path to building something great.
There is still a fair amount of work to be done before Chime reaches 1.0. However, we are at the stage where we need more external beta testers. Right now, there are still some real gaps in functionality, and some serious bugs. But, if you’d like to give it a shot, please get in touch via email or Twitter. We’re also really interested in feedback, in general. So, don’t be shy to drop us a line.
You can also check out our site and sign up for our mailing list if you’re into that kind of thing. We’ll have more to say about an official launch in the coming months.
