4 ms·

I agree with all, but this is a misrepresentation: > Electron may be new but it's as efficient as software has always been: insultingly, laughably so Electron

I agree with all, but this is a misrepresentation: > Electron may be new but it's as efficient as software has always been: insultingly, laughably so Electron is definitely bloated, but it's possible to write sufficiently fast¹ software like Visual Studio Code. It can't be put on the same basket ("insulting") as Sage Payroll. ¹="sufficiently" fast, not "blazing" fast

eyegor 5y ago
As far as I recall, VSCode had to fork electron in order to make it acceptably performant. The team tried to use stock electron but the performance was not good. And they're probably going to move to because electron is still slow and terrible. https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/118308 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/118308
- pizza234 5y ago
  > The team tried to use stock electron but the performance was not good. Can you provide references of this fork? It you actually look at the VSC manifest, you'll find that the vanilla "electron" is a dependency. > And they're probably going to move to because electron is still slow and terrible. I take you haven't used Visual Studio Code. As I wrote, it's certainly not the fastest editor, but it's fast enough for professional usage. It's actually faster (or comparable at least) to other "famous editors". > https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/118308 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/118308 This doesn't have any actual technical content; it's essentially a variation of Rewrite It In Rust.
  - cassianoleal 5y ago
    Much lower memory consumption and startup time cut down to ~50% sound like technical enough reasons to me.
  - eyegor 5y ago
    So I know that currently they use electron, but I vaguely recall them working on a fork of electron to replace chromium etc. across all their products (edge, code, others?). I can't seem to find public references to it related to code, it might have been discussed more in regards to the edgehtml/chakra implementation. I may also be mixing things up, that was around 2015 I think.
- marwis 5y ago
  Untruths. https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/main/package.json https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/main/package.json -> "electron": "13.5.1", Referenced github issue seems to have only random people unaffiliated with the project team.
  - eyegor 5y ago
    Yes I'm aware that they currently use stock electron, I was referring to earlier development. Maybe like 2015 or so. Could be mistaken, I'm not sure that work was ever published.
proactivesvcs 5y ago
I've recently installed Visual Studio for the first time and it uses up 3-5% CPU while doing nothing. It takes an age to load. It uses heaps of RAM with no projects open. I'm not sure if VS is also Electron but it's another black mark against Microsoft either way. I beg to differ on Electron: I have never seen a single use of it where it doesn't use an extraordinary amount of RAM and there mere concept of using an embedded web site browser for a GUI is simply an unacceptable thought, let alone a realisation of modern-day software. It should have never have happened.
- pizza234 5y ago
  > it uses up 3-5% CPU while doing nothing This is meaningless without context, as editors typically run indexing processes in the background. I used to use $beloved_native_editor, which in some cases ran at 100% single-thread for extended amounts of time (due to indexing). > It takes an age to load. It uses heaps of RAM with no projects open [...] I have never seen a single use of it where it doesn't use an extraordinary amount of RAM I've taken some real-world measurements, with the disclaimer there is no universal interpretation of measuring memory: > Private + Shared = RAM used > > 8.9 MiB + 9.1 MiB = 18.0 MiB > 17.0 MiB + 17.3 MiB = 34.3 MiB > 119.2 MiB + 149.4 MiB = 268.6 MiB > --------------------------------- > 321.0 MiB > ================================= > Private + Shared = RAM used > > 332.1 MiB + 519.2 MiB = 851.3 MiB > --------------------------------- > 851.3 MiB > ================================= > Private + Shared = RAM used > > 124.0 KiB + 176.0 KiB = 300.0 KiB > 1.1 MiB + 1.1 MiB = 2.1 MiB > 95.5 MiB + 200.2 MiB = 295.6 MiB > 1.3 GiB + 1.3 GiB = 2.5 GiB > --------------------------------- > 2.8 GiB > ================================= Startup times (approximate), before being able to type: 0.3", 1.2", 4.7". The editors are vanilla installations, and I've opened the directory of a relatively large project. The machine is a modern desktop one. The editor that people love to hate is not the one you'd expect.

eyegor 5y ago

As far as I recall, VSCode had to fork electron in order to make it acceptably performant. The team tried to use stock electron but the performance was not good. And they're probably going to move to because electron is still slow and terrible. https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/118308 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/118308

pizza234 5y ago
> The team tried to use stock electron but the performance was not good. Can you provide references of this fork? It you actually look at the VSC manifest, you'll find that the vanilla "electron" is a dependency. > And they're probably going to move to because electron is still slow and terrible. I take you haven't used Visual Studio Code. As I wrote, it's certainly not the fastest editor, but it's fast enough for professional usage. It's actually faster (or comparable at least) to other "famous editors". > https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/118308 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/118308 This doesn't have any actual technical content; it's essentially a variation of Rewrite It In Rust.
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  Much lower memory consumption and startup time cut down to ~50% sound like technical enough reasons to me.
- eyegor 5y ago
  So I know that currently they use electron, but I vaguely recall them working on a fork of electron to replace chromium etc. across all their products (edge, code, others?). I can't seem to find public references to it related to code, it might have been discussed more in regards to the edgehtml/chakra implementation. I may also be mixing things up, that was around 2015 I think.
marwis 5y ago
Untruths. https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/main/package.json https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/main/package.json -> "electron": "13.5.1", Referenced github issue seems to have only random people unaffiliated with the project team.
- eyegor 5y ago
  Yes I'm aware that they currently use stock electron, I was referring to earlier development. Maybe like 2015 or so. Could be mistaken, I'm not sure that work was ever published.

proactivesvcs 5y ago

I've recently installed Visual Studio for the first time and it uses up 3-5% CPU while doing nothing. It takes an age to load. It uses heaps of RAM with no projects open. I'm not sure if VS is also Electron but it's another black mark against Microsoft either way. I beg to differ on Electron: I have never seen a single use of it where it doesn't use an extraordinary amount of RAM and there mere concept of using an embedded web site browser for a GUI is simply an unacceptable thought, let alone a realisation of modern-day software. It should have never have happened.

pizza234 5y ago
> it uses up 3-5% CPU while doing nothing This is meaningless without context, as editors typically run indexing processes in the background. I used to use $beloved_native_editor, which in some cases ran at 100% single-thread for extended amounts of time (due to indexing). > It takes an age to load. It uses heaps of RAM with no projects open [...] I have never seen a single use of it where it doesn't use an extraordinary amount of RAM I've taken some real-world measurements, with the disclaimer there is no universal interpretation of measuring memory: > Private + Shared = RAM used > > 8.9 MiB + 9.1 MiB = 18.0 MiB > 17.0 MiB + 17.3 MiB = 34.3 MiB > 119.2 MiB + 149.4 MiB = 268.6 MiB > --------------------------------- > 321.0 MiB > ================================= > Private + Shared = RAM used > > 332.1 MiB + 519.2 MiB = 851.3 MiB > --------------------------------- > 851.3 MiB > ================================= > Private + Shared = RAM used > > 124.0 KiB + 176.0 KiB = 300.0 KiB > 1.1 MiB + 1.1 MiB = 2.1 MiB > 95.5 MiB + 200.2 MiB = 295.6 MiB > 1.3 GiB + 1.3 GiB = 2.5 GiB > --------------------------------- > 2.8 GiB > ================================= Startup times (approximate), before being able to type: 0.3", 1.2", 4.7". The editors are vanilla installations, and I've opened the directory of a relatively large project. The machine is a modern desktop one. The editor that people love to hate is not the one you'd expect.