4 ms·
It's mostly hearsay. Electron is highly optimized (it's chromium after all). Making an electron app doesn't make it automatically slow and clunky. That's absurd
by thecodrr 5y ago
It's mostly hearsay. Electron is highly optimized (it's chromium after all). Making an electron app doesn't make it automatically slow and clunky. That's absurd. Sure it is a browser and it takes a little more Ram than you are used to (but most machines nowadays have 8 to 16 gigs of RAM so not a huge issue).
What does make an electron app slow is the app itself. Obviously. You have VSCode that is blazing fast even for humongous files and you also have some other not so fast apps.
Another huge issue raised is size. To be honest, 100 MB isn't abnormal for a desktop app. Look at any Qt app, it can be around 100 MB too. Same for dotnet.
Of course native is better but most developers don't have the resources for that.
Edit: I see people down voting without giving any reason. I know this is an unpopular opinion but come on. The days when you could use VSCode as an example of slow, clunky Electron app are gone. What's slow and huge is Jetbrains IntelliJ or Visual Studio; both native. VSCode proved that you can make a fast electron app; it just needs work like any other thing.
- dsissitka 5y ago> I see people down voting without any reason. What makes you think they didn't have a reason? I didn't downvote you but you've made a few divisive assertions. For example, your "blazing fast" is my "performs acceptably".
- thecodrr 5y agoA typo. I meant "without giving any reason". Also, I'd be interested to know what you count as blazing fast.
- infinityplus1 5y agoTry opening a big complex html file and scroll immediately in VS Code and in Sublime text. Sublime Text blows VS Code out of water. This lag made me switch back to Sublime Text from VS Code.
- da39a3ee 5y agoAre you referring to the way VS Code is slow to display the syntax highlighting on file open sometimes? (Is that when it's getting highlighting via LSP?)
- infinityplus1 5y agoYes. While syntax highlighting is getting rendered, scrolling lags a lot which is really annoying when you want to get to a specifc part of the file quickly. Once I noticed this, it was very hard not to see the same lag everywhere. LSP-I don't know how this works.
- jakear 5y agoCurious if you tried with extensions disabled? I just attempted opening both a 100k and 1m line html file in both VS Code and ST, in the 100k case they both were quick to open but Code was a bit smoother in scrolling, in the 1m case ST took a long time to open (showed a loading progress bar for a few seconds before anything), and while Code was choppy to scroll ST was almost unusable. That being said, with extensions enabled it can be a totally different story - some extensions will try to load the text content on every editor opening or even edit, which gets unusable very quickly. (Yes they run in a separate process, but that’s not a cure-all) Tested on 2018 MBP. (On VS code team, had nothing to do with the editor perf)
- billyjobob 5y agoIntelliJ is not native, it’s Java, which ironically used to be considered a slow VM unsuitable for desktop apps, until Electron came along and was like “you think that’s slow? Hold my beer!” Now I much prefer Java desktop apps over Electron ones.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoVS Code is the exception to the rule. MS has spent lots of time optimising it. However most apps don't, and even MS' other apps are total crap, like MS Teams. If it was so easy to take the lessons learned from VS Code and apply it to their other apps they would do so I'm sure.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoI meant MS' other electron apps by the way. Can't edit anymore. Skype for Business for Mac also comes to mind. Sometimes it takes up 800MB of memory. For an IM app..... :X