4 ms·

Ask HN: What technical decisions make VS Code a better Electron app?

56 points by ValentineC 9y ago

I was inspired by the recent article on how Slack (which is built with Electron) is a RAM hog, but I've always wondered how things were done differently when compared to Atom too.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
samueldavid 9y ago
I think it all comes down to the developers abd how they optimize their codebase
akmittal 9y ago
1. They are doing things lazily. Like only render(and check for errors) the part which is inside viewport first. 2. They are not creating layers of JavaScript. They are using native code wherever necessary. 3. VS code has more control over what extensions can do so that they don't adversely affect the performance.
- pitaj 9y ago
  I'm not sure where you're looking, but as far as I can tell, VS Code uses practically zero native code. When looking to the git repository, all I see is TS, JS, CSS, and some misc stuff.
  - jplatte 9y ago
    I know they use ripgrep¹ for their project-wide search feature. I'd imagine that the other native code would also be separate processes whose output is parsed, or in C / C++ / Rust libraries that live in their own repos and that they use via bindings which would themselves only be JS / TS code (and might live in separate repos as well). ¹: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
nimish 9y ago
They used good engineers and a major part of the spec was that speed matters and is the ultimate feature. So when they used the Monaco component the engineers behind it made sure to prioritize speed and efficiency (it didn't hurt that they could rely on microsofts years of dev tool experience) Technically they didn't do anything insane, the real trick is to measure test and improve metrics they care about and not let it become slow.
wodenokoto 9y ago
While we are at it, can we compare those approaches to native web app with that of R-studio? I was quite surprised to see the right-click menu item "inspect element" open up a DOM-inspector of the entire app! I had not suspected it to be like that.
dsschnau 9y ago
On that note, I haven't heard much about Atom in a long time. Is anyone still using it?
- ezekg 9y ago
  A couple weeks ago I switched from Atom to VS Code due to the abysmal performance of Atom. I wish I had switched earlier.
  - w4tson 9y ago
    I find both sluggish compared to sublime text. I flipping love that tool.
    - roryisok 9y ago
      Sublime is definitely the king of start times. Vscode feels like more like a full IDE though
- seattle_spring 9y ago
  Everyone at my company uses it with Nuclide, which still seems to be the best IDE combo for codebases that use Flow.
type0 9y ago
It's based on https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-editor https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-editor But there's also another promising project that uses monaco https://github.com/theia-ide/theia https://github.com/theia-ide/theia
samblr 9y ago
Vs code had its share of performance problem. A while ago there was a hog caused by blinking cursor in editor.
- roryisok 9y ago
  I got downvoted for saying this last time but I think that was only on mac

56 points by ValentineC 9y ago

I was inspired by the recent article on how Slack (which is built with Electron) is a RAM hog, but I've always wondered how things were done differently when compared to Atom too.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

samueldavid 9y ago

I think it all comes down to the developers abd how they optimize their codebase

akmittal 9y ago

1. They are doing things lazily. Like only render(and check for errors) the part which is inside viewport first. 2. They are not creating layers of JavaScript. They are using native code wherever necessary. 3. VS code has more control over what extensions can do so that they don't adversely affect the performance.

pitaj 9y ago
I'm not sure where you're looking, but as far as I can tell, VS Code uses practically zero native code. When looking to the git repository, all I see is TS, JS, CSS, and some misc stuff.
- jplatte 9y ago
  I know they use ripgrep¹ for their project-wide search feature. I'd imagine that the other native code would also be separate processes whose output is parsed, or in C / C++ / Rust libraries that live in their own repos and that they use via bindings which would themselves only be JS / TS code (and might live in separate repos as well). ¹: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

nimish 9y ago

They used good engineers and a major part of the spec was that speed matters and is the ultimate feature. So when they used the Monaco component the engineers behind it made sure to prioritize speed and efficiency (it didn't hurt that they could rely on microsofts years of dev tool experience) Technically they didn't do anything insane, the real trick is to measure test and improve metrics they care about and not let it become slow.

wodenokoto 9y ago

While we are at it, can we compare those approaches to native web app with that of R-studio? I was quite surprised to see the right-click menu item "inspect element" open up a DOM-inspector of the entire app! I had not suspected it to be like that.

dsschnau 9y ago

On that note, I haven't heard much about Atom in a long time. Is anyone still using it?

ezekg 9y ago
A couple weeks ago I switched from Atom to VS Code due to the abysmal performance of Atom. I wish I had switched earlier.
- w4tson 9y ago
  I find both sluggish compared to sublime text. I flipping love that tool.
  - roryisok 9y ago
    Sublime is definitely the king of start times. Vscode feels like more like a full IDE though
seattle_spring 9y ago
Everyone at my company uses it with Nuclide, which still seems to be the best IDE combo for codebases that use Flow.

type0 9y ago

It's based on https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-editor https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-editor But there's also another promising project that uses monaco https://github.com/theia-ide/theia https://github.com/theia-ide/theia

samblr 9y ago

Vs code had its share of performance problem. A while ago there was a hog caused by blinking cursor in editor.

roryisok 9y ago
I got downvoted for saying this last time but I think that was only on mac