4 ms·

Using Visual Studio as a native app felt quick, as if could really believe the metaphor that I was interacting with a predictable mechanical device that worked

Using Visual Studio as a native app felt quick, as if could really believe the metaphor that I was interacting with a predictable mechanical device that worked the same every time. VS Code I am constantly aware that I am interacting with a bunch of layers of sofware, like it might take 1 second or 10 seconds to do something.

Arainach 5y ago
Really? VS Code has been the best example of what Electron could be that I've seen. In practice it's just as responsive as Sublime Text 3 for files under 25MB.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- musicale 5y ago
  VS Code is indeed one of the best Electron apps. And it's also unpleasantly clunky and heavyweight, with unpredictable unresponsiveness as GP notes.
  - emerged 5y ago
    It’s been my daily IDE for a couple years and the only time it felt clunky or overweight is when I had installed a misbehaving extension. I remember feeling as you described, but after removing the bad extension it became snappy again. I think they actually have a tool for discovering which extension is the bottleneck?
    - hansvm 5y ago
      Even something as basic as code search is nightmarishly slow. I frequently resort to CLI tools when VSCode doesn't respond quickly enough. Thankfully it usually handles cancellation requests well so that I don't have to continue waiting for whatever god-forsaken process is running after I've already found my answer via other means, but I'm not going to pretend it isn't slow.
      - bluefirebrand 5y ago
        I've never had a full code search in VSCode run any slower than instant. Either you have a massive codebase that outstrips every one I've ever worked on, or something is really busted there.
        pleb_nz 5y ago
        It must definitely is. I use it daily, and if you compare speeds with something native like sublime, every single task is slower in execution. Most might only be milliseconds slower but it is perceptible in over all feeling. For me, I can live with it, but I definitely 'feel' it when I jump back into something native.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  In my experience it depends how you use VSCode. For one project (and only a few well behaved extensions), even if it’s quite large, it can perform very well. Working in multiple projects the proscribed way (workspaces) comes with a variety of caveats. Multiple windows can increase CPU and RAM load pretty fast.
- d13 5y ago
  I opened Sublime yesterday and it absolutely screams in comparison to VS Code.
Smeevy 5y ago
Maybe I'm just pining for the old days, but Visual Studio 6 is still my favorite IDE of all time. Intellisense was fairly new and it only activated if you pressed Ctrl-Space. I didn't have little pop-ups and type-aheads trying to steal my attention and all I did was think about the C++ code I was writing. This was around 1997, mind you. The build from the IDE still took almost 2 hours to complete. As it stands now, I still use IDEs. I try to disable every "convenient distraction" feature they have, but I've had had to settle for the fact that I can't make them work the way I want.
- codalan 5y ago
  It's not just VS, either. Every app has to have some attention-stealing, display obstruction mouseover. And it just seems to get worse and worse every year. So much noise for almost zero value. IIRC, in one of more recent versions of VS, hovering over a method param will show the type of the param. The same info that's already declared to the left of the param. How is this helpful at all? Even worse: There doesn't seem to be a way to even fine tune this. I don't need prompts in my face 100ms after I hover over something. They might be useful after 2000ms. But it seems to be all or nothing. I've been using Mads Kristensen's Disable Tooltips extension to preserve my sanity. If you want to see ugly, open the Azure portal sometime. Hovering too long (e.g. 200ms) over an element may open up a bigger dialog, and if you hover even longer, you get an even bigger dialog that blocks out other things that I might want to look at. It also has a nasty habit of clickjacking my intended target because of this. I think a lot of this garbage comes from this idea that you need to keep the user engaged for whatever metrics. The problem is that although this is fine for adverts and social media sites, this is exactly what you don't want for productivity. Unfortunately, it seems like these people change jobs/teams and end up bringing this mentality with them.
  - Smeevy 5y ago
    Thanks for the tip about the Disable Tooltips extension. I'm using Visual Studio for a couple of projects and you've just removed one minor annoyance from my life and I appreciate it very much. We use MyEclipse for a lot of our Java development and I found something in their latest release that gave me chills: selecting multiple lines of text in an editor will bring up a control to start a "CodeTogether" session. That can be disabled, but I really have to wonder about why selecting some code in my editor means that I need to "phone a friend." The Azure Portal is absolutely spiteful. I've been using that as an object example of poor UI design for my junior developers. All of that work they've put in to make it responsive and I still have to hit F5 to see if my VM really started...
bluefirebrand 5y ago
I have the complete opposite experience with VSCode versus Visual Studio. Visual Studio feels like I am using a clunky old slow piece of software, to me. Takes forever to build and run the solution, hell it takes forever to even open a workspace. Code feels blazing fast in comparison
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Parent may have been referring told older Visual Studio versions, back before MS web-ified it into a slow pile of garbage.

Arainach 5y ago

Really? VS Code has been the best example of what Electron could be that I've seen. In practice it's just as responsive as Sublime Text 3 for files under 25MB.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
musicale 5y ago
VS Code is indeed one of the best Electron apps. And it's also unpleasantly clunky and heavyweight, with unpredictable unresponsiveness as GP notes.
- emerged 5y ago
  It’s been my daily IDE for a couple years and the only time it felt clunky or overweight is when I had installed a misbehaving extension. I remember feeling as you described, but after removing the bad extension it became snappy again. I think they actually have a tool for discovering which extension is the bottleneck?
  - hansvm 5y ago
    Even something as basic as code search is nightmarishly slow. I frequently resort to CLI tools when VSCode doesn't respond quickly enough. Thankfully it usually handles cancellation requests well so that I don't have to continue waiting for whatever god-forsaken process is running after I've already found my answer via other means, but I'm not going to pretend it isn't slow.
    - bluefirebrand 5y ago
      I've never had a full code search in VSCode run any slower than instant. Either you have a massive codebase that outstrips every one I've ever worked on, or something is really busted there.
      - pleb_nz 5y ago
        It must definitely is. I use it daily, and if you compare speeds with something native like sublime, every single task is slower in execution. Most might only be milliseconds slower but it is perceptible in over all feeling. For me, I can live with it, but I definitely 'feel' it when I jump back into something native.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
In my experience it depends how you use VSCode. For one project (and only a few well behaved extensions), even if it’s quite large, it can perform very well. Working in multiple projects the proscribed way (workspaces) comes with a variety of caveats. Multiple windows can increase CPU and RAM load pretty fast.
d13 5y ago
I opened Sublime yesterday and it absolutely screams in comparison to VS Code.

Smeevy 5y ago

Maybe I'm just pining for the old days, but Visual Studio 6 is still my favorite IDE of all time. Intellisense was fairly new and it only activated if you pressed Ctrl-Space. I didn't have little pop-ups and type-aheads trying to steal my attention and all I did was think about the C++ code I was writing. This was around 1997, mind you. The build from the IDE still took almost 2 hours to complete. As it stands now, I still use IDEs. I try to disable every "convenient distraction" feature they have, but I've had had to settle for the fact that I can't make them work the way I want.

codalan 5y ago
It's not just VS, either. Every app has to have some attention-stealing, display obstruction mouseover. And it just seems to get worse and worse every year. So much noise for almost zero value. IIRC, in one of more recent versions of VS, hovering over a method param will show the type of the param. The same info that's already declared to the left of the param. How is this helpful at all? Even worse: There doesn't seem to be a way to even fine tune this. I don't need prompts in my face 100ms after I hover over something. They might be useful after 2000ms. But it seems to be all or nothing. I've been using Mads Kristensen's Disable Tooltips extension to preserve my sanity. If you want to see ugly, open the Azure portal sometime. Hovering too long (e.g. 200ms) over an element may open up a bigger dialog, and if you hover even longer, you get an even bigger dialog that blocks out other things that I might want to look at. It also has a nasty habit of clickjacking my intended target because of this. I think a lot of this garbage comes from this idea that you need to keep the user engaged for whatever metrics. The problem is that although this is fine for adverts and social media sites, this is exactly what you don't want for productivity. Unfortunately, it seems like these people change jobs/teams and end up bringing this mentality with them.
- Smeevy 5y ago
  Thanks for the tip about the Disable Tooltips extension. I'm using Visual Studio for a couple of projects and you've just removed one minor annoyance from my life and I appreciate it very much. We use MyEclipse for a lot of our Java development and I found something in their latest release that gave me chills: selecting multiple lines of text in an editor will bring up a control to start a "CodeTogether" session. That can be disabled, but I really have to wonder about why selecting some code in my editor means that I need to "phone a friend." The Azure Portal is absolutely spiteful. I've been using that as an object example of poor UI design for my junior developers. All of that work they've put in to make it responsive and I still have to hit F5 to see if my VM really started...

bluefirebrand 5y ago

I have the complete opposite experience with VSCode versus Visual Studio. Visual Studio feels like I am using a clunky old slow piece of software, to me. Takes forever to build and run the solution, hell it takes forever to even open a workspace. Code feels blazing fast in comparison

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Parent may have been referring told older Visual Studio versions, back before MS web-ified it into a slow pile of garbage.