True Blue

LFG that was something I’ve been hoping got added! I’m not even a big gamer, but I like it when I do game.

The line between IDE and text editor is kinda blurry nowadays anyway. I don’t know that much about Geany, but many of the text editors I’ve used were basically full IDEs, except that the IDE features were opt-in.

Currently I use VScodium as my editor, and I’ve been happy with it. I hear a lot of good things about Kate too, and as a KDE user, I feel like I should try it some time. Kate to me looks like the same spirit of text editor as Geany. Maybe if you’re comfortable with that style of editor, give it shot.

The 2 editors that have really been catching my eye lately have been Helix and Lapce. I think it’s really cool that Helix went with a Kakoune style “selection → action” system instead of the normal vim style “action → selection”. I think Lapce is trying to be a similar style of editor to Vscode, with simple IDE features by default, but then an extension sytem to expand that. Maybe an editor like that would be approachable to you. Although unlike Helix, Lapce seems to be less production ready for now, so maybe wait on that.

For now you could of course just try VScode (or VScodium if you’re like me and want open-source software) since that’s a popular one right now.

I’m really interested in the idea of these different kinds of websites being interoperable because of ActivityPub. Like the different websites are basically different frontends for people who prefer link aggregators or micro-blogs or other kinds of websites. It’s a really cool idea!

For anyone who’s interested in an alternative, check out https://codidact.com . It’s much smaller right now, but it’s open-source and the community is nice.

I have an account, but I don’t really use it much. Not because I don’t like it, but because I don’t have much to say really. I’m more of the lurker type.

The important thing about Matrix is to think of it like email. Homeservers are like your email provider, like Hotmail or Gmail or Protonmail. You look for a homeserver, then you just make an account on that homeserver. The “main” homeserver is matrix.org, but it’s recommended not to make an account on there if you can avoid it. Remember that making accounts on these homeservers is free, so there’s no reason not to make accounts on a few of them to try out.

The other thing to think about is your matrix client. This is similar to an IRC client or an email app. Luckily, this matter even less than the homeservers since you can freely switch between these anytime with basically no issues. If none catch your eye, Element is the sort of “reference implementation” so you can just try that one if you want. It has a web version too: https://app.element.io

There’s some cool more advanced features like spaces and threads, but you don’t have to worry about those much at first.

Federation definitely feels like the next major stepping stone of the internet’s evolution. Protocols like ActivityPub and Matrix feel like a bit of a “new beginning” for communities on the internet.