6 ms·

What was wrong with VSCode?

by kowlo 5y ago

donatzsky 5y ago
That it's an Electron app, mostly.
- wayneftw 5y ago
  That's the reason it's excellent IMO. I get nearly the same exact experience on every platform... including when you embed it's components within a web app which is very useful.
  - dghlsakjg 5y ago
    I might be the Lone Ranger that agrees with you. I have a windows machine and a Mac machine. The electron apps are the ones most most likely to function exactly the same on both machines. Setting up vs code was a matter of copying and pasting config file.
    - wayneftw 5y ago
      Yes, perhaps we're alone in this thread but with 14 million users (out of an estimated 24 million) world wide we're probably in the majority. Picky users might complain but from what I see, most users are just fine with Electron apps. We all use Slack, Discord, etc. at work and everybody loves it.
- nimvlaj30 5y ago
  It's one of the best Electron apps I've used in my life, honestly. But it still lags a little behind what I would expect from the same software written natively.
burlesona 5y ago
For me the electron tax is frustrating. File switching and text input just feel sluggish compared to Sublime Text. The VS Code ecosystem is superb though.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  Its more the electron tradeoff. We have picked slightly slower software if it means more software at a cheaper price which works on more platforms and has more features. Vim and sublime still exists and yet people flock to VS code because they would rather get a more powerful laptop to run an electron app.
- westoncb 5y ago
  I wonder how much of this is just a psychological effect from knowing it's Electron beforehand. Sometimes I think I can almost perceive a little bit of slowness compared to e.g. Sublime—but then I lose sight of it. Certainly in comparison to any similarly fully-featured IDE I've used its feel is notably quicker.
reaperducer 5y ago
For me, running more than one Electron app at a time for too long is a recipe for kernel panic. I only have two on my machine: VSCode, and Microsoft Azure Explorer. If I run them both at the same time, there's a 20% chance I'm going to have to reboot that day. Microsoft has enough money and resources to make a real program, but it chooses to be lazy and cheap.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  I think there's a huge tragedy of the commons when it comes to RAM. I get all the arguments about unused RAM being wasted RAM, and that it is more effective to drop a cache at the last moment, just in case it would be used before then. But those arguments only apply if you have a single entity handling the allocations. Otherwise the program holding the memory has no idea that it should drop a cache to allow a different program to use the memory. If the single program is the OS, great. If there's a single large program using RAM such as a browser, then it's still workable but not so great. If you have more than one program each trying to eat 80% of the RAM available, then you're in a world of hurt. And of course, every program thinks that it's the one and only important program running on the computer, which is how we get into the situation we're in.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    IM applications are the worst offenders --- they are often left in the background and only for notification purposes, yet we somehow end up with monstrosities like Slack and Teams which use more RAM when idle than an entire computer a decade ago.
- hokumguru 5y ago
  I think the most infuriating thing is azure containers don’t really work with standard FTP clients like transmit But as long as the product is “good enough “we will see this trend more as most consumers of apps care more about features than performance
- Zababa 5y ago
  > Microsoft has enough money and resources to make a real program, but it chooses to be lazy and cheap. They made one of the best text editor/IDE and released it for free. I wouldn't call that being lazy and cheap.
irrational 5y ago
That’s it’s not IntelliJ? Honestly, it’s not bad, but I think the price is the main thing it has going for it.

What was wrong with VSCode?

by kowlo 5y ago

What was wrong with VSCode?

donatzsky 5y ago

That it's an Electron app, mostly.

wayneftw 5y ago
That's the reason it's excellent IMO. I get nearly the same exact experience on every platform... including when you embed it's components within a web app which is very useful.
- dghlsakjg 5y ago
  I might be the Lone Ranger that agrees with you. I have a windows machine and a Mac machine. The electron apps are the ones most most likely to function exactly the same on both machines. Setting up vs code was a matter of copying and pasting config file.
  - wayneftw 5y ago
    Yes, perhaps we're alone in this thread but with 14 million users (out of an estimated 24 million) world wide we're probably in the majority. Picky users might complain but from what I see, most users are just fine with Electron apps. We all use Slack, Discord, etc. at work and everybody loves it.
nimvlaj30 5y ago
It's one of the best Electron apps I've used in my life, honestly. But it still lags a little behind what I would expect from the same software written natively.

burlesona 5y ago

For me the electron tax is frustrating. File switching and text input just feel sluggish compared to Sublime Text. The VS Code ecosystem is superb though.

SilverRed 5y ago
Its more the electron tradeoff. We have picked slightly slower software if it means more software at a cheaper price which works on more platforms and has more features. Vim and sublime still exists and yet people flock to VS code because they would rather get a more powerful laptop to run an electron app.
westoncb 5y ago
I wonder how much of this is just a psychological effect from knowing it's Electron beforehand. Sometimes I think I can almost perceive a little bit of slowness compared to e.g. Sublime—but then I lose sight of it. Certainly in comparison to any similarly fully-featured IDE I've used its feel is notably quicker.

reaperducer 5y ago

For me, running more than one Electron app at a time for too long is a recipe for kernel panic. I only have two on my machine: VSCode, and Microsoft Azure Explorer. If I run them both at the same time, there's a 20% chance I'm going to have to reboot that day. Microsoft has enough money and resources to make a real program, but it chooses to be lazy and cheap.

MereInterest 5y ago
I think there's a huge tragedy of the commons when it comes to RAM. I get all the arguments about unused RAM being wasted RAM, and that it is more effective to drop a cache at the last moment, just in case it would be used before then. But those arguments only apply if you have a single entity handling the allocations. Otherwise the program holding the memory has no idea that it should drop a cache to allow a different program to use the memory. If the single program is the OS, great. If there's a single large program using RAM such as a browser, then it's still workable but not so great. If you have more than one program each trying to eat 80% of the RAM available, then you're in a world of hurt. And of course, every program thinks that it's the one and only important program running on the computer, which is how we get into the situation we're in.
- userbinator 5y ago
  IM applications are the worst offenders --- they are often left in the background and only for notification purposes, yet we somehow end up with monstrosities like Slack and Teams which use more RAM when idle than an entire computer a decade ago.
hokumguru 5y ago
I think the most infuriating thing is azure containers don’t really work with standard FTP clients like transmit But as long as the product is “good enough “we will see this trend more as most consumers of apps care more about features than performance
Zababa 5y ago
> Microsoft has enough money and resources to make a real program, but it chooses to be lazy and cheap. They made one of the best text editor/IDE and released it for free. I wouldn't call that being lazy and cheap.

irrational 5y ago

That’s it’s not IntelliJ? Honestly, it’s not bad, but I think the price is the main thing it has going for it.