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You'll see people complaining about memory usage for editors and IDE's. A few years ago it was Emacs, "the memory hog". Today it's Atom. The usual complaint

by melling 10y ago

You'll see people complaining about memory usage for editors and IDE's. A few years ago it was Emacs, "the memory hog". Today it's Atom. The usual complaint is often "you shouldn't need a modern computer to use an editor". What people fail to realize is that Moore's Law and memory eventually make the problem go away. Spend a little extra on memory today and don't make memory requirements a deciding factor.

nine_k 10y ago
If you need an editor, use notepad.exe, nano, or an equivalent. You run emacs / vim / sublime / atom exactly because it's much more than a simple text editor, it's a development environment of sorts.
- melling 10y ago
  Why wouldn't use simply use the editor you leave open on your desktop for the "small editor" tasks? What kind of person says "this is a job for nano, while this is a job for emacs?"
  - noir_lord 10y ago
    > What kind of person says "this is a job for nano, while this is a job for emacs?" Me, I use nano for quick edits over SSH and a different editor/IDE for everything else (which is done locally and pushed, I (incredibly) rarely edit anything on the server.
  - nine_k 10y ago
    Indeed, if you use emacs, you just keep it open forever and use it for everything. Such is the culture. (Some people even try to use emacs as their entire desktop environment.)
  - yumaikas 10y ago
    I have a very specific example of jobs for nano vs vim. When I need to copy paste some code into a server and I don't have clipboard access over ssh, nano is better for that than vim, because vim tends to keep tabs indented, so I'll use nano to paste the file into, and then go into vim to edit it. I'm sure there are other examples.
    - OMGWTF 10y ago
      Use ":set paste" before you paste. (Disable with ":set nopaste".) See also: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Toggle_auto-indenting_for_code_paste#Paste_toggle http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Toggle_auto-indenting_for_code_pas... Or, if your terminal emulator supports "bracketed paste", use something like this: https://github.com/ConradIrwin/vim-bracketed-paste https://github.com/ConradIrwin/vim-bracketed-paste
  - npsimons 10y ago
    > What kind of person says "this is a job for nano, while this is a job for emacs?" Depends on what you're used to. Even I as a seasoned die-hard Emacs user who is aware of both TRAMP and emacsclient will still fire up VIM (or vi) for various reasons: because it's what I grew up on, because I can't remember how to use TRAMP to edit that file remotely or as root, or the system is really not up to the task of running emacs.
- Roboprog 10y ago
  Maybe we disagree about scale :-) Vim is my "little" editor; JetBrains (and the like) are my "big" editor (albeit with vi[m] plugin to avoid the mental context switch). Somewhere an emacs user is laughing at me, but I'll get over it.
jstewartmobile 10y ago
Moore's law already has one foot in the grave. Multi-core, GPGPU, FPGA, etc. are reactions to this.
Dylan16807 10y ago
Money can make a lot of problems go away, but it's still worth complaining about. Especially bad is to have computers get better and better while the user experience stays as laggy as ever. Then you can only improve things by being ahead of the curve, wasting really large amounts of money.
npsimons 10y ago
> What people fail to realize is that Moore's Law and memory eventually make the problem go away. Spend a little extra on memory today and don't make memory requirements a deciding factor. What's interesting to consider, though, are unintended consequences. Even though the problem is old, take a look at Bufferbloat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat Basically, as RAM got cheap, switch manufacturers started shoving more into switches, packets got delayed to where it broke protocols, and things had to be rethought. This wasn't just some off the cuff hacked together protocols either: it severely hampered TCP, one of the most widely tuned and tested protocols out there.

by melling 10y ago

nine_k 10y ago

If you need an editor, use notepad.exe, nano, or an equivalent. You run emacs / vim / sublime / atom exactly because it's much more than a simple text editor, it's a development environment of sorts.

melling 10y ago
Why wouldn't use simply use the editor you leave open on your desktop for the "small editor" tasks? What kind of person says "this is a job for nano, while this is a job for emacs?"
- noir_lord 10y ago
  > What kind of person says "this is a job for nano, while this is a job for emacs?" Me, I use nano for quick edits over SSH and a different editor/IDE for everything else (which is done locally and pushed, I (incredibly) rarely edit anything on the server.
- nine_k 10y ago
  Indeed, if you use emacs, you just keep it open forever and use it for everything. Such is the culture. (Some people even try to use emacs as their entire desktop environment.)
- yumaikas 10y ago
  I have a very specific example of jobs for nano vs vim. When I need to copy paste some code into a server and I don't have clipboard access over ssh, nano is better for that than vim, because vim tends to keep tabs indented, so I'll use nano to paste the file into, and then go into vim to edit it. I'm sure there are other examples.
  - OMGWTF 10y ago
    Use ":set paste" before you paste. (Disable with ":set nopaste".) See also: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Toggle_auto-indenting_for_code_paste#Paste_toggle http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Toggle_auto-indenting_for_code_pas... Or, if your terminal emulator supports "bracketed paste", use something like this: https://github.com/ConradIrwin/vim-bracketed-paste https://github.com/ConradIrwin/vim-bracketed-paste
- npsimons 10y ago
  > What kind of person says "this is a job for nano, while this is a job for emacs?" Depends on what you're used to. Even I as a seasoned die-hard Emacs user who is aware of both TRAMP and emacsclient will still fire up VIM (or vi) for various reasons: because it's what I grew up on, because I can't remember how to use TRAMP to edit that file remotely or as root, or the system is really not up to the task of running emacs.
Roboprog 10y ago
Maybe we disagree about scale :-) Vim is my "little" editor; JetBrains (and the like) are my "big" editor (albeit with vi[m] plugin to avoid the mental context switch). Somewhere an emacs user is laughing at me, but I'll get over it.

jstewartmobile 10y ago

Moore's law already has one foot in the grave. Multi-core, GPGPU, FPGA, etc. are reactions to this.

Dylan16807 10y ago

Money can make a lot of problems go away, but it's still worth complaining about. Especially bad is to have computers get better and better while the user experience stays as laggy as ever. Then you can only improve things by being ahead of the curve, wasting really large amounts of money.

npsimons 10y ago

> What people fail to realize is that Moore's Law and memory eventually make the problem go away. Spend a little extra on memory today and don't make memory requirements a deciding factor. What's interesting to consider, though, are unintended consequences. Even though the problem is old, take a look at Bufferbloat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat Basically, as RAM got cheap, switch manufacturers started shoving more into switches, packets got delayed to where it broke protocols, and things had to be rethought. This wasn't just some off the cuff hacked together protocols either: it severely hampered TCP, one of the most widely tuned and tested protocols out there.