17 ms·
I'm going to be slammed for using these two words, but for any real work you need to have as few layers of indirection between the user and the machine as possi
by ZoomZoomZoom 6y ago
I'm going to be slammed for using these two words, but for any real work you need to have as few layers of indirection between the user and the machine as possible, and this includes the UX, in the sense that it is tailored to the fastest and most comfortable data entry and process monitoring.
I don't see any `web first` or Electron solution replacing Reaper or Blender in a foreseeable future. One exception I'm intrigued with is VS Code, which seems to be widely popular. May be I need to try it to form my own opinion.
- burke 6y agoAs an Electron hater, I’m constantly surprised at just how much VS Code doesn’t suck.
- ZoomZoomZoom 6y agoThe reason for this, I think, is developers of VS Code really understand the problem field in this case, as they are making the tool for themselves. Also, there's probably a ton of resources involved.
- mmmeff 6y agoInteresting past thread on Atom's performance struggles and how they got outplayed by the VSCode team: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14140421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14140421
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoMy personal evolution has gone from Sublime Text 3 to Atom to VS Code to Sublime Text 3. I've never been a heavy plugin user, mainly sticking to code highlighting. The thing I really like is speed. Sublime Text rarely chokes on me. I love being able to type `cat some_one_gigabyte_file | subl` and getting it to open up with little difficulty. VS Code chokes on files of non-trivial size, and that was the thing I liked about it the least. For anyone wondering why I'd open up a 1 GB file in a text editor, I guess the answer is largely because it's convenient. Big log file? No problem. Huge CSV? No problem. Complete list of AWS pricing for every product in every region stored as JSON? No problem.
- fartcannon 6y agoVim handles large csv files pretty good, as well. Not saying you should use it, just something that I found out years ago.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoI've tried pure text editors, but they haven't really grabbed me, and my fingers are quite clumsy.
- whowhatwhy 6y agoi just use less for big files, convenience is a matter of taste
- xwdv 6y agoI don’t open big files at all. There’s no point. Files exist as data made to be transformed from one form to another. It is only worth looking at a file in its final form unless you are making some kind of edit. And even then, I make edits on large files through a series of commands, never opening the file. By thinking of files in this way, it becomes easy to create programmable tool chains for manipulation.
- whowhatwhy 6y agonot everybody uses a computer for the same exact thing you use a computer for
- FpUser 6y agoSame here. I am all native guy, including back end C++ servers but VS code is very decent. But then again I think the level of developers who did the main task is way above the average. And MS itself wrote that they worked super hard to optimize it for memory and performance. Something that regular developer usually ignores / does not really know how to do due to their lack of understanding how lower level tech works.
- heywire 6y agoI love vs code, and its plugin system, but if I’m on my laptop without a charger, I use something else. When I’m running vs code, my battery life is cut nearly in half.
- noahtallen 6y agoWhat do you use instead? In my experience, normal IDEs (Android Studio, Xcode, Visual Studio) all perform worse than VS Code in terms of memory use and battery. :/
- api 6y agoIt doesn't suck, but try Jetbrains IDEs. C++ and other "not JS" language support is vastly superior including refactoring that actually works.
- nwatson 6y agoJetbrains IDEs (and others for that matter) provide so much more than the glorified text-editors, including extensive debugging support (both in my own code, library code, platform code), code-autocompletion, code navigation, code-formatting, refactoring, linting, static-analysis (works well for Python as well), great syntax highlighting, spell-check, a good plugin ecosystem. I'd never go back to editing code without that support. The Jetbrains ecosystem is real cheap too, I pay US$160/year for the personal-license all-product suite I can install and use anywhere ... and I use PyCharm (Python), IntelliJ IDEA (Java et al), and Datagrip (DB) extensively, dipping into CLion (C++/Rust) as well ... but they have IDEs for many other languages and ecosystems as well. It's definitely a good deal. Jetbrains suite, along with Docker, Atlassian SourceTree, and Homebrew (and connection to AWS/Kubernetes) are my main tools these days.
- Groxx 6y agoI keep periodically re-trying VSCode, but holy cow. It's a massive step down from a Jetbrains IDE, in every single language I've dev'd in. Jetbrains stuff works, VSCode mostly handles the basics if it's possible to configure it correctly. Which is quite the achievement, and it's a very reasonable option and far better than much that came before it. But it's not where I want to spend my time if I can avoid it.
- ninjakeyboard 6y agoYou're working with statically typed compiled languages tho. Once you try using a dynamic language you realize another editor is enough IMO. I use emacs for anything dynamically typed (including compiled languages like elixir) and intellij for scala/java.
- Groxx 6y ago
- 2muchcoffeeman 6y agoVSCode is Electron? I had no idea. That’s the only electron app I use willingly then! Good job MS!
- vb6sp6 6y agoThe first clue is a text editor that uses 180mb of ram :)
- wtallis 6y agoFor comparison, I just opened up an org-mode file in Aquamacs (Emacs with macOS native GUI) and it weighs in at 105MB, which is actually lower than I would have guessed.
- sachdevap 6y agoI am running Emacs on macOS, and it only takes 43 MB barebones, and my regular setup takes about 81 MB. Both opening the same org-mode file. Point being that it really depends on what you choose to run on Emacs, and it does not have to be about 100 MB. Just to add to that, I don't think anyone should be concerned about their text editor taking 200 MB anymore. I doubt it is worth worrying about.
- squiggleblaz 6y agoIf the electron apps that I ran were the main programs I'm using and weigh in at 200 MiB, I wouldn't worry. But they're mostly background apps - chat, music - that should be using limited resources since I want them on all the time without inhibiting me. Genuine background tasks. And they're using a lot more than 200 MiB. (I use PhpStorm and Visual Studio Pro and Rider as my main foreground apps. If Jetbrains products used a mere 200 MiB, I would be worried that something had broken and reset them or reinstall them. But they're not text editors.)
- jhasse 6y agoIt can do A LOT more than editing text.
- postfacto 6y agoAnything is capable of not sucking if you go out of your way to spend several man-decades optimizing it.
- p0nce 6y agoAs a Visual Studio user, I can't get into VS Code. For once, the interface moves constantly. Things resize at all times. It feels sluggish, however Visual Studio is becoming also worse so in the end VS Code end up feeling quicker... VS Code feels _very far_ from Sublime Text usability to me.
- madhadron 6y agoVSCode uses a C++ backend to get that performance.
- zingplex 6y agoI think you're confusing Atom and VS Code.
- robinduckett 6y agoVSCode uses the same c++ based regex parser for syntax highlighting as TextMate, Sublime, Atom, etc
- karlding 6y agoFor anyone interested, this is the Oniguruma [0] regex library written by K. Kosako. It's also used in Ruby and PHP. [0] https://github.com/kkos/oniguruma https://github.com/kkos/oniguruma
- fermentation 6y agoYes, Chromium.
- madhadron 6y agoNo, there's actually a C++ backend under there that implements the editor, if I recall correctly.
- orange8 6y agoA C++ backend, aka Electron.
- ur-whale 6y agoBlender in the browser. Ugh. <shudders>
- brachi 6y agoI don't find it that crazy, if properly compiled with web assembly. The thing is that Blender's UI is all synchronous python, so, yeah, that and the addons system would be to need rewritten. Python in the browser is a no-go performance-wise, of course.
- CharlesW 6y ago> Python in the browser is a no-go performance-wise, of course. "Running the Python interpreter inside a JavaScript virtual machine adds a performance penalty, but that penalty turns out to be surprisingly small — in our benchmarks, around 1x-12x slower than native on Firefox and 1x-16x slower on Chrome. Experience shows that this is very usable for interactive exploration."[1][2] [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/04/pyodide-bringing-the-scientific-python-stack-to-the-browser/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/04/pyodide-bringing-the-scien... [2] https://alpha.iodide.io/notebooks/300/ https://alpha.iodide.io/notebooks/300/
- p_l 6y agoSo, an already slow language made slower? No thanks.
- mr_toad 6y agoThe problem is not so much the run-time performance of the code, it's the overhead of loading the Python run-time environment over the network the first time you open the page.
- brachi 6y agoThe main point though, is that running Python in the browser it's an unnecessary abstraction because you get a crappier version of something that runs pretty well natively. If you're starting from scratch, I think that the browser might be close to native performance in some tasks. Porting existing applications is a pain when you start looking into the details.
- sime2009 6y agoOnShape (https://www.onshape.com/ https://www.onshape.com/) offers professional level CAD which runs in a browser. Works great.
- alkonaut 6y agoSo is Autodesk Fusion. But you won't see Autocad stop selling their desktop software. People don't buy extreme rigs to use for production, and then trade even 5% of the perf for convenience.
- namdnay 6y ago“Professional level” covers a lot of different uses... Juicero and Airbus both use CAD, I seriously doubt the latter are going to replace CATIA with OnShape
- pupdogg 6y agoI'm in agreement with @namdnay...I don't think it will replace enterprise packages like Siemens NX or CATIA anytime soon. I do all of my CAD design in Solidworks and I do like the out-of-the-box thinking/features of OnShape...but...their pricing model ends up being more expensive in the long run ($2100/year for Pro Version). I paid $4k for Solidworks in 2016 and it's paid itself off more than 10x times since then...all without the need for a forced upgrade! When a newer version substantiates its value for my workflow, I will upgrade. Not to mention, most of my work can easily be done in Solidworks 2008-2010 because that is the innate nature of CAD packages, regardless of the version, they will get the job done.
- neutronicus 6y agoWhat's your use-case? I work for an indirect competitor backed by the same commercial geometry kernel (Parasolid) and it did not do well with our models (which, granted, are pretty different from typical mechanical CAD models).
- robin_reala 6y agoFigma is pretty much replacing all web design applications precisely because it’s leveraging web tech for collaboration on a single document at the same time.
- ZoomZoomZoom 6y agoI think we can safely exclude 'collaborative web design' applications from the set of hardcore tools not gaining much from being implemented as web apps for understandable reasons.
- CharlesW 6y agoAnd yet it is a hardcore tool, and does gain a lot from being implemented as a web app. Another example might serve your point better.
- ZoomZoomZoom 6y agoOk, I see my point being not so understandable, after all. I didn't mean Figma isn't a hardcore tool, I meant that we exclude it because it specifically concerns with web technology (being a tool for web design) and leverages web to implement collaborative usage. So it's probably logical for it to be a web app.
- blehn 6y agoYou're still way off. It's not a "web" design tool; it's a visual design and prototyping tool. Folks are designing a lot more than websites and web apps with Figma.
- CharlesW 6y ago> So it's probably logical for it to be a web app. Ah, gotcha. Although I'd have assumed that Figma is used more to design native apps that web apps, this helps me understand where you're coming from.
- blehn 6y ago
- psds2 6y agoVSCode, because of electron, doesn't allow you to have multiple windows that share state while working on a project. This makes it terrible with multiple screens.
- camccar 6y agoIt’s not because of electron. They could have multiple windows but it would be a massive over haul of the architecture . So they say just use another instance
- kristiandupont 6y agoI would argue that it is, because Electron doesn't allow you to share a js context across windows. So while it is not impossible, it is much more involved than it would be in most other frameworks. In fact, this is my only gripe with Electron where I think the normal HN objections about performance, bloat and lack of native UI elements are overstated and not something that bothers me.
- gimboland 6y agoThat's basically the whole reason I'm sticking with PyCharm these days. Apart from that VSCode seems to tick all my boxes, but it's a deal-breaker for me. There's some kludgey workaround possible involving workspaces but it's rubbish.
- KaoruAoiShiho 6y agoVS Code is slow at basic things like having characters show up on screen after hitting the key. It's good at everything else though so that lag doesn't matter as much.
- boardwaalk 6y agoIt probably depends on your hardware. I have an "older" (several years at least) Windows work laptop with iGPU that is quite sluggish with VS Code when hooked up to an external 4K display. However, it's snappy compared to Microsoft Teams in the same situation. Meanwhile, my similar era MacBook with dGPU hooked up to the same screen is very snappy and I honestly would probably not be able to tell the difference in a blind test between VS Code and typing in a native text box (like the one here in Safari). I'd consider myself pretty anal about latency -- I was never able to deal with Atom's, for example (disclaimer: I haven't tried it in years). I even dumped Wayland for X11 when I had a Linux desktop because of latency (triple buffering or something?) I couldn't get rid of. But VS Code is not bad.
- KaoruAoiShiho 6y agoI'm using a 5K iMac with Radeon Pro 580 8 GB. I'm making the comparison vs Sublime Text which has no lag and is my standard.
- baddox 6y agoUsually professionals using text editors for their work are not concerned with the absolute keystroke-to-screen latency. It’s totally fine if it’s fast enough, and it is.
- j88439h84 6y agoDisagree on both points
- kristiandupont 6y agoThat lag matters to me, but in my experience it's no worse than, say, VIM with the number of plugins that I normally run. Fully bare-bones I imagine vscode is performant as well.
- digi59404 6y agoBoth VS Code and Atom use significant amounts of WebAssembly and low level libraries to achieve that performance. In addition to that they've written their own view layer for an IDE in modern JS which makes it more performant and stable. I despise electron and html-wrapper apps. But I gotta give credit where it's due. VS Code is pretty good. With the advent of the new WinUI, React+Native on Windows, and Blazer. I'm betting the future of windows is more web based technologies mingled with low-level native libraries.
- madeofpalk 6y agoI guess this is a semantics thing, but WinUI/React Native is not “web based”. It is JavaScript building “native UIs”.
- sime2009 6y ago> Both VS Code and Atom use significant amounts of WebAssembly and low level libraries to achieve that performance. Atom has some internal data structures written in C++. VSCode uses a native executable to do the file search, but no further low level magic is used to make it go fast. I don't think any of them are using WebAssembly yet.
- _bxg1 6y agoIt's quite simple to use the web view process for nothing but the actual UI, and to move any intensive logic to a separate process (or even native code). It's also very possible to make that UI code quite performant (this takes more work, but VSCode has shown that it's possible).
- kuon 6y agoIf you don't see web app replacing Blender, give a try to OnShape. I was so surprised by it. It is slower than comparable desktop app, but it is usable for real world projects.
- bufferoverflow 6y ago> It is slower than comparable desktop app, but it is usable for real world projects Which means that under a high enough load it will be unusable, while Blender will deal with it just fine.
- ajflores1604 6y agoThis writeup from a few years back caught my attention and gave me hope of near natively fast, cross platform electron apps https://keminglabs.com/blog/building-a-fast-electron-app-with-rust/ https://keminglabs.com/blog/building-a-fast-electron-app-wit...