15 ms·

Does Atom still feel slower? I've used Atom before and it did feel sluggish, and using VSCode for TypeScript really felt lightyears ahead from Atom. (maybe a bi

Does Atom still feel slower? I've used Atom before and it did feel sluggish, and using VSCode for TypeScript really felt lightyears ahead from Atom. (maybe a bit unfair of a comparison since it's most likely nicely integrated for it, but whatever) To be fair I haven't caught up with their current versions (I'm a vimmer, I just tried them) but I think I tried Atom after the React move.

rattray 10y ago
Atom has gotten incrementally faster and I have few problems using it as my main editor at work, on a Macbook Pro with 16GB of RAM. It isn't pleasant to use on my personal laptop (MBA with 4GB RAM) where I frequently switch projects. While I am a happy Atom user, I am disappointed with performance; I think there's an order-of-magnitude jump in overall speed that the editor could really use.
- Loic 10y ago
  You are talking about 16 GB of RAM, rights? My emacs is very happy with 32 MB of RAM and my vim with even less. I understand that Atom is doing a lot, but if you need 16 GB of RAM to run your text editor, this simply means that the developers have not been using the right data structures to manage the state of the application or maybe the new code editors have an implementation of an AI coding for you so you can outsource yourself.
  - Longhanks 10y ago
    That's the price you pay for Electron.
    - rattray 10y ago
      The reason we're talking about Atom on this thread is because VSCode, which also uses electron, does not have performance issues.
      - vortico 10y ago
        Which makes me think, Atom is giving Electron a really bad reputation for its speed. Sure, it consumes tons of RAM, but it's not that slow by default.
  - rattray 10y ago
    Many people use full IDE's to do their work - JetBrains, VS, etc - which are dramatically more resource intensive than Atom.
    - siddhant 10y ago
      Yes but they are IDEs, while Atom/Vim/Emacs are plain text editors.
      - teacup50 10y ago
        ... and Emacs really is an IDE; the distinction between it and GUI IDEs has more to do with user interface than any limitation of Emacs. e.g. live libclang-based code completion for Emacs: https://github.com/Sarcasm/irony-mode https://github.com/Sarcasm/irony-mode
        adrusi 10y ago
        Atom is essentially the same class of editor as emacs. Both have designs that can accomodate IDE features (so does vim, but it's more of an afterthought in that case), but normal usage is not IDE-like. Atom is essentially emacs built atop javascript+web rather than lisp+unix.
        fallenshell 10y ago
        This is more holy war material than anything really. Emacs is just an editor.
      - daigoba66 10y ago
        > plain text editors I don't think that's a fair assessment given the what is now minimum expectations around syntax highlighting, syntax/grammar validation, autocomplete, etc. We're no longer dealing with "plain text".
        cyphar 10y ago
        So that's even less of an excuse for Atom's resource hogging. Vim and neovim use so little memory and are probably the most responsive editors I've ever used.
  - rkangel 10y ago
    I was going to say that my emacs uses an awful lot more memory than that, but actually it's got 190 files open in at least 3 languages and it's using 89.8 Mb of RAM at the moment. Atom is at a fundamental disadvantage - it's built on a much more complicated and abstracted stack of technologies. Javascript engines do spectacular things these days but they have a harder job to do than executing compiled lisp, and that's before you look at the whole of the rest of the stack involved.
  - toomanybeersies 10y ago
    And to think people used to say emacs stood for Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping.
    - ank_the_elder 10y ago
      And let's not forget: Editor for Middle Aged Computer Scientists Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift Tt's still my favourite, though.
  - fallenshell 10y ago
    I've been an avid Sublime user for many years and still am, and this is what puts me off any electron based editor or app in general. The requirements for the most trivial things are so high, it is insane. Try running Atom on a AMD E1 laptop. TLDR, not very nice.
  - bbcbasic 10y ago
    It's new paradigm - bloatier than an IDE, as slow as a web page but without the advantage of storing / running anything i n the cloud.
- caconym_ 10y ago
  Last time I seriously tried using it, it seemed unnecessarily CPU-hungry and my battery life suffered as a result. That fact alone was enough to get me to stop using it. I have a weird thing about inefficient software in general, but in this case its inefficiency was actually inconveniencing me. With my good old Vim+tmux workflow, my 12" Macbook claims it'll go for 14-15 hours, though I haven't ever fully tested that claim.
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  I used Atom for 3 months over New Year's on a 4 GB 2015 MBA. I had no issues whatsoever. Interestingly enough, Atom seems to really struggle on my Windows laptop, it's often incredibly choppy. It actually runs better in a Linux VM than natively on Windows.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 10y ago
    The only consistent issue that I have had with Atom since I started using it in late 2014 was the handling of large files. It has gotten incrementally better, as others have stated, but trying to open up, for instance, a JSON file larger than 10-20 megabytes in the editor causes the editor to be brought to a grinding halt.

rattray 10y ago

Atom has gotten incrementally faster and I have few problems using it as my main editor at work, on a Macbook Pro with 16GB of RAM. It isn't pleasant to use on my personal laptop (MBA with 4GB RAM) where I frequently switch projects. While I am a happy Atom user, I am disappointed with performance; I think there's an order-of-magnitude jump in overall speed that the editor could really use.

Loic 10y ago
You are talking about 16 GB of RAM, rights? My emacs is very happy with 32 MB of RAM and my vim with even less. I understand that Atom is doing a lot, but if you need 16 GB of RAM to run your text editor, this simply means that the developers have not been using the right data structures to manage the state of the application or maybe the new code editors have an implementation of an AI coding for you so you can outsource yourself.
- Longhanks 10y ago
  That's the price you pay for Electron.
  - rattray 10y ago
    The reason we're talking about Atom on this thread is because VSCode, which also uses electron, does not have performance issues.
    - vortico 10y ago
      Which makes me think, Atom is giving Electron a really bad reputation for its speed. Sure, it consumes tons of RAM, but it's not that slow by default.
- rattray 10y ago
  Many people use full IDE's to do their work - JetBrains, VS, etc - which are dramatically more resource intensive than Atom.
  - siddhant 10y ago
    Yes but they are IDEs, while Atom/Vim/Emacs are plain text editors.
    - teacup50 10y ago
      ... and Emacs really is an IDE; the distinction between it and GUI IDEs has more to do with user interface than any limitation of Emacs. e.g. live libclang-based code completion for Emacs: https://github.com/Sarcasm/irony-mode https://github.com/Sarcasm/irony-mode
      - adrusi 10y ago
        Atom is essentially the same class of editor as emacs. Both have designs that can accomodate IDE features (so does vim, but it's more of an afterthought in that case), but normal usage is not IDE-like. Atom is essentially emacs built atop javascript+web rather than lisp+unix.
      - fallenshell 10y ago
        This is more holy war material than anything really. Emacs is just an editor.
    - daigoba66 10y ago
      > plain text editors I don't think that's a fair assessment given the what is now minimum expectations around syntax highlighting, syntax/grammar validation, autocomplete, etc. We're no longer dealing with "plain text".
      - cyphar 10y ago
        So that's even less of an excuse for Atom's resource hogging. Vim and neovim use so little memory and are probably the most responsive editors I've ever used.
- rkangel 10y ago
  I was going to say that my emacs uses an awful lot more memory than that, but actually it's got 190 files open in at least 3 languages and it's using 89.8 Mb of RAM at the moment. Atom is at a fundamental disadvantage - it's built on a much more complicated and abstracted stack of technologies. Javascript engines do spectacular things these days but they have a harder job to do than executing compiled lisp, and that's before you look at the whole of the rest of the stack involved.
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  And to think people used to say emacs stood for Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping.
  - ank_the_elder 10y ago
    And let's not forget: Editor for Middle Aged Computer Scientists Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift Tt's still my favourite, though.
- fallenshell 10y ago
  I've been an avid Sublime user for many years and still am, and this is what puts me off any electron based editor or app in general. The requirements for the most trivial things are so high, it is insane. Try running Atom on a AMD E1 laptop. TLDR, not very nice.
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  It's new paradigm - bloatier than an IDE, as slow as a web page but without the advantage of storing / running anything i n the cloud.
caconym_ 10y ago
Last time I seriously tried using it, it seemed unnecessarily CPU-hungry and my battery life suffered as a result. That fact alone was enough to get me to stop using it. I have a weird thing about inefficient software in general, but in this case its inefficiency was actually inconveniencing me. With my good old Vim+tmux workflow, my 12" Macbook claims it'll go for 14-15 hours, though I haven't ever fully tested that claim.
toomanybeersies 10y ago
I used Atom for 3 months over New Year's on a 4 GB 2015 MBA. I had no issues whatsoever. Interestingly enough, Atom seems to really struggle on my Windows laptop, it's often incredibly choppy. It actually runs better in a Linux VM than natively on Windows.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 10y ago
  The only consistent issue that I have had with Atom since I started using it in late 2014 was the handling of large files. It has gotten incrementally better, as others have stated, but trying to open up, for instance, a JSON file larger than 10-20 megabytes in the editor causes the editor to be brought to a grinding halt.