16 ms·

10x C++ Editor

221 points by davikr 4y ago

MauranKilom 4y ago
I might give it a shot, but outside of how long opening a solution takes (which I therefore try to do as little as possible), Visual Studio + Visual Assist is a pretty strong combo that seems to offer all the benefits of 10x - except startup time.
pulse7 4y ago
Please fix broken links on the license site (https://10xeditor.com/License.htm https://10xeditor.com/License.htm)...
tempodox 4y ago
The page doesn't say, but this is Windows only.
- ant6n 4y ago
  Huh. I was gonna ask about vim/eMacs keybinding support, but I guess that’s kinda moot for a win only editor.
  - SanJacobs 4y ago
    You can enable VIM keybinds in 10x, and it's... ok.
  - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
    No it’s not. I have a history of RSI and wouldn’t even consider an editor without VIM bindings, regardless of the OS.
29athrowaway 4y ago
How does it compare to cscope?
CursedUrn 4y ago
This is very impressive! I tried it with a big Unreal project and it handled it without blinking. Much faster than any other editor I've seen. It doesn't look like it supports memory breakpoints? I end up tied to Visual Studio because of how powerful its debugger is.
ohnoesjmr 4y ago
I really wish someone worked on something like this for C#. There are large C# monoliths out there with 100+ projects per solution, where VS simply does not work (as in you can't open a solution), and Rider takes 30mins to load the solution, and then stops working over time (after 8 hours?), so your morning routine is to open the solution Rider and go grab a coffee.
- gavinray 4y ago
  Why not use VS Code C# plugin? I'm not a .NET dev by trade by I do dabble to keep up and I swap between Rider and VS Code fluidly I find VSC nearly as capable for most things, but much faster.
thomastay 4y ago
Like the idea and the vision but I'll admit I was initially turned off by the name which sounds really cringe. Went spelunking through the blog and found this line which explains the vision (which I like!): The kind of professional developer I’m talking about will probably fall into one of two categories. a: Someone who works on massive codebases b: Someone who writes a lot of code. I am targeting the small % of developers with very specific needs. So he's targeting professional developers and not novice developers, in fact he explicitly says so later in the post. Landing page is ok but why the animated swirling gif? Doesn't add much and draws my attention away.
elromulous 4y ago
10x marketing
MauranKilom 4y ago
I gave it a shot on some real code, and (more or less as expected, but I was ready to be surprised) the custom parsing code does not handle templates and overloads well at all. Example 1: template<class T> void foo(T t) {} struct X {}; void foo(X x) {} template<class T> int bar() { foo(T{}); } Example 2: template<class T> T getFoo(int); // (1) struct X {}; template<> X getFoo(int) { return {}; }; X getFoo(int a) // (2) { return getFoo<X>(a); // (3) } In both cases, "Rename" only affects a quasi-random subset of the foo/getFoo occurrences, depending on which one you select for renaming. It roughly looks like "match every name to the most recent definition of a thing with that name", but things like "go to definition" on (2) going to (1), or on (3) going to (2) is just pretty absurd. Yes, it's super fast (instant), but also super useless right now. When I use "Find References" or "Rename", I _need_ it to be 100% accurate. I have to be sure that I caught all uses. In cases of ambiguity (such as the templates above), it has to involve the user (e.g. "these are guaranteed matches, for these other ones it's not clear - select all that should be renamed"). Visual Assist is miles ahead here. And yes, I know, this is extremely difficult in C++ (and likely impossible to square with the "instant" speed goals). But being able to trust my tools in a complex code base has priority. Other feedback, in a "take it or leave it" fashion: - Automatic perforce integration is nice to see - timelapse and history commands don't work though... (not in PATH?) - Defaulting the title bar menu to only show on hover is weird imo. - The title bar menu items should be centered inside the buttons! - Opening header and cpp in different columns is a nice default. - Settings file editing is also surprisingly fun, thanks to the builtin suggestions. - Switch to a different colour scheme -> expand folder in workspace tree -> newly appearing elements have old theme... - I set the keybind for "close file" to Control W. Now pressing Control W always closes two files (?!) - Right click -> zoom -> that menu item and the submenu (except any submenu item you hover over) render as pure black... - STL include file paths are not found automatically for a VS solution. Forgiveable though. - Sometimes commands (e.g. Go To Definition) don't do anything. Sometimes it starts working eventually (parsing was incomplete?), sometimes not. There needs to be some kind of reaction/feedback ("definition not found"). Not necessarily a message box, but at least a toast or status bar message. - Ctrl + left click also does a range selection if you hold down LMB for slightly too long... - In a Citrix remote session, home/end lock up the entire session if the view needs to scroll horizontally and there are many long lines. - create new file, fill it with e.g. 60 long lines of e.g. A characters (something like 120 chars per line) -> navigation becomes extremely sluggish - No idea if this is primarily on Citrix or on 10x. Can't reproduce the same behavior in VS or Notepad++ though. Overall it seems well-made and (outside a few sharp corners) comes with a lot of polish, but for me the "speed over quality" approach to parsing is not a good fit for my daily C++ needs. I might try it a bit more for those "let me really quickly look up this detail a colleague is asking about" use cases, but with the current approach I won't use it for editing.
runjake 4y ago
If you're wondering why Stewart doesn't appear to have done a video in 2 years, be sure to click the Live tab on his YouTube page, for the more recent stuff. https://www.youtube.com/@puredevsoftware/streams https://www.youtube.com/@puredevsoftware/streams Apparently at some point, YouTube started putting them under separate tabs.
stewartlynch8 4y ago
I've uploaded the new website which hopefully addresses some of the questions/comments: https://10xeditor.com/ https://10xeditor.com/ There is now an about page: https://10xeditor.com/about.htm https://10xeditor.com/about.htm I'm still working on it though, and I'll be adding more in the next few days.
SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
Admirable goals, but doesn't keeping it limited to C++ keep the potential for backers limited? Whole-assing one thing is better than half-assing two I guess, but it's an interesting initial language. Is C++ tooling in particular that bad?
- fathyb 4y ago
  > Admirable goals, but doesn't keeping it limited to C++ keep the potential for backers limited? Agreed, feels like the C++ support could be packaged into an LSP server to support other languages, and let other IDEs benefit from its completion, increasing the number of potential backers. > Is C++ tooling in particular that bad? Yes, at least when it comes to IDE support. Visual Studio on Windows gave me the best experience, but it's Windows so I don't use it. Xcode is so slow and unstable, it's a shame, it used to be great. CLion doesn't scale well with huge projects.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Ah, OK. I assumed it was just a matter of adding the right extension to VSCode or Sublime and you were off to the races. If this fills a gap that's great.
    - bogwog 4y ago
      It's all about the build system. Sublime has built-in support for a few, with more available as extensions. Auto-complete works out of the box using Sublime's own language-agnostic implementation, which obviously isn't perfect, but you can also install an LSP.
    - kentonv 4y ago
      VSCode integrates with clangd for good jump-to-definition and auto-completion. The problem is VSCode, which is built on JavaScript/HTML, has become quite slow of late. The editor feels sluggish to respond to keypresses, especially in large files with lots of includes. It's always just on the edge of bearable.
fprog 4y ago
I wonder what the author thinks of Sublime Text. Fast everything (search, opening files, switching projects…) is a big part of Sublime’s value proposition, one that has so far survived the era of VSCode. And AFAIK it is written in C++, and can certainly be used to write C++.
- stewartlynch8 4y ago
  I've only tried sublime text briefly to be honest. I like its speed, but I need something that can open huge Visual Studio projects. I also wasn't sure about the C++ parsing which requires installing packages. Just to be clear, 10x supports syntax highlighting for many languages, it's only the parser that is C++ specific.
- Shorel 4y ago
  I wanted to try 10x, it doesn't exist for Linux. Sublime Text on the other hand, I purchased a licence for ST3, I am still using it with ST4, and I am happy with it. I use ST for C++, PHP, Python, LaTeX (it's actually great for LaTeX, with inline equations) and web stuff. Also use it to explore Rust, go, dlang, edit huge SQL files, JSON files, etc. I think at some point I will get a new ST licence. With regard to 10x, I don't use Windows to program, and I will not reboot the computer just to test it, as good as it could be.
- bogwog 4y ago
  I would definitely choose Sublime over this, only because Sublime isn't limited to/focused on a single language. However, if I were a paying CLion user, this editor might be a more compelling buy if it addresses some pain points, like performance. but then again, Jetbrains is working on their own "polyglot" editor called Fleet, which is aiming to be much faster and more lightweight than their existing dinosaur IDEs.
- Thaxll 4y ago
  Re-inventing the wheel is very common for IDE / editors, ofc this is already done by Sublime but I think in this crowded space it's all about perception, maybe Sublime missed the train and now you need a new "fresh" IDE to capture the audience.
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erlich 4y ago
I half-expected it to be written in Rust.
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- pohl 4y ago
  If you're interested in something like that, Lapce is looking pretty good, despite being in early stages of development.
nickelpro 4y ago
What features here are differentiated from any other editor? VSC isn't slow for me. Is "speed" the only thing on offer? Because giving up the plugin environment is a big ask for that.
- darknavi 4y ago
  > VSC isn't slow for me. How big is your project? With Visual Assist X and our solution it can take me upwards of 30 seconds before I can do anything after opening the project.
  - bigbillheck 4y ago
    How often are you opening projects?
    - darknavi 4y ago
      Unfortunately VS is dogshit in other areas. We have to run cmake to add/remove new files to the solution and that causes a full project reload.
hoistbypetard 4y ago
This feels super-spammy.
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artisanspam 4y ago
It would be nice if the website put the donation links below the demo images instead of having them be the first thing you see. That was a big turn off when I first loaded the page.
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tejohnso 4y ago
> The 10x philosophy: Every operation, from opening projects to searching for text should be instant. You can get that with basic VIM and some grepping shortcuts. Maybe I'm just not working in sufficiently large code bases. But shouldn't a C++ specific editor have some philosophy that is specific to C++? Like awareness of ownership semantics for syntax / lint checks? Maybe not the best example, but "be fast" doesn't seem like a great differentiator.
- steeleduncan 4y ago
  I think at this point speed is a great differentiator. I've been happy with the featureset and design of all C++ IDEs I've tried for a decade or so now, but they never seem to get any faster. An IDE designed specifically for speed, with an ongoing committment to keep it fast, solves the biggest issue I have with C++ coding right now.
- ljw1004 4y ago
  I presume it means things like "does cross-file go-to-def and find-all-references work instantly after opening a file?" In most IDEs these things take seconds or minutes to become available, depending on project size
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TheArcane 4y ago
What's with every paid software product being a monthly subscription now? I just wanna buy and forget, not be reminded of it every month on my credit card statement.
- stewartlynch8 4y ago
  I understand the resistance to a monthly subscription, but it's the only way I can continue to work on 10x. I've been working on 10x for 6 years now, and even with the generous support from the beta subscribers I can't go on indefinitely like this. Hopefully the subscription will seem worth it with all of the bug fixes and features that are planned. I will continue uploading new versions regularly, as I have been doing: https://10xeditor.com/versions.htm https://10xeditor.com/versions.htm
- Gys 4y ago
  You do not want updates that solve bugs? Some support in case you have questions or problems? Maybe also some new features (usually the word changes and also your experience and expectations)?
  - zbrozek 4y ago
    I want low-bug-density software I buy once and don't receive updates for until I pay again.
    - aix1 4y ago
      Exactly this, thank you for articulating it so well.
    - wnkrshm 4y ago
      We should pay for features not for fixes
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    - someguydave 4y ago
Koshkin 4y ago
emacs is no longer constantly swapping, either.
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kvathupo 4y ago
Given all the idioms in C++, I don't think constraining the editor to one language is a bad idea *if* it caters to these unique constructs. E.g. I had a templated PImpl class [1] whose template parameter was the implementation. It was a pain to `grep` for the classes specializing it, especially when other classes extended this PImpl class (sometimes extending a specialization, sometimes not). [1] - https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/pimpl https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/pimpl
make3 4y ago
vscode, the main competition to this I assume, is very fast to me. would be curious to know how they compare
- weakfortress 4y ago
  Try to open a large text file in VS Code and watch it grind to a halt. While VS Code offers a buffet of features that are cool and convenient it has a lot of problems.
  - __float 4y ago
    I find I occasionally look at "huge" text files in my day job, but they're almost never source files -- so I don't need syntax highlighting, jump to definition, etc. Is this something you do often in your C++ development?
    - weakfortress 4y ago
      I work with data, so it's not uncommon to load a large file either deliberately or accidentally. Highlighting isn't the issue. Even a CSV on the order of 100-200MB kills VS code dead. I assume this is because it's an electron app. Other apps do not have this problem.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  That's very surprising. I've found VS Code to be considerably slower than Sublime Text or VIM for just about everything. I don't think there would be much overlap at all between VS Code users and people who would want something like this.
franky47 4y ago
If you use it, does that make you a 10x engineer? (I'll see myself out)
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BaculumMeumEst 4y ago
I would need to see a side-by-side comparison of 10x and vs code performing equivalent tasks in a large codebase before investing time and money in this tool.
weakfortress 4y ago
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stan680 4y ago
I've been using this fulltime for a few months so I can provide some perspective from real-world experience: Firstly, on speed, I really recommend giving it a try. There's things like launch time / time to syntax highlighting which are nice to have and make it a joy to use but then there's things like instant 'Find References' and workspace search that I think contribute to a qualitative difference to the way I work - I simply would not use these features as much or in the same way if they took seconds (as they do in VS). Seen some discussion comparing to things like Sublime - 10x understands c++ code much much better than sublime and that's crucial for making some of its best features like 'Rename' and 'Find references' work so well. The other thing I think is worth mentioning is just how active and responsive the developer is. Bug-fixes and improvements often get implemented within hours of reporting. As an example, I've always been annoyed by how impossible it is to make VS do 'tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment' - after a brief discussion, this got sorted in 10x quickly. I think that's a serious advantage over Visual Studio, that often has annoying issues/bugs languishing for literally years.
- olig15 4y ago
  I’m a heavy Visual Studio user (work for a AAA game dev, C++), and find VS without extensions horrible to use, but after Installing the ‘Visual Assist’ (which seems to be an industry standard in game dev at this point) extension it gives me all of the advantages you mentioned. Have you tried using this (admittedly paid for) extension?
  - jim90 4y ago
    Yeah, I have been a VAX user for years... took me 15 minutes of testing out 10x before I purchased it.
  - Zenity 4y ago
    What got me into 10x is actually how similar the default setup is to Visual Assist (including default shortcuts). And since it supports Visual Studio solutions, 10x will just work out of the box with any Unreal project or many other similar large C++ projects. You could even switch back and forth without a problem while evaluating 10x, which is what I did the first couple of months or so when I started using it. It has already come a long way since then though, and I've been using 10x exclusively for quite a few months now (full time working on an Unreal project and some personal side projects). The developer is a former game dev himself, so he understands our particular needs quite well and is very responsive to them. The fact that 10x can easily manage those kind of codebases is what really differentiates it from other "lightweight" text editors in my book. Building and debugging still goes through Visual Studio for VS projects (with good integration and no required setup), so switching causes no disruption. Compared to Visual Assist it may not have all the bells and whistles yes, but especially the code navigation (which to me is the most important aspect) and code completion is quite advanced already and incredibly fast, even compared to Visual Assist. Parsing the entire UE4 codebase for the first time (in the background) takes a couple of minutes. Opening it from cache is practically instant, all search operations / code completion are also near instant with no stalls whatsoever. In terms of refactoring it is more limited, but renaming symbols works well and that covers about 99% of the cases were I regularly use refactoring tools anyway. And unlike Visual Studio or JetBrains IDEs, 10x is so fast and lightweight that I would like to use it for all of my text editing needs. That makes customizing it much more satisfying as well, which is quite easy to do with a straightforward Python API. As you can probably tell I really love this editor, it has had a quite dramatic impact on my enjoyment of work already. It won't be for everybody (and it doesn't try to), but I would encourage everybody to give it a try. If it is the kind of editor you are looking for, I think you will be very happy with it.
synergy20 4y ago
how is it better than vim, or vscode, or clion to qualify itself as 10x?
- synergy20 4y ago
  I don't know why is this downvoted, a genuine question from me actually, if it's truly revolutionary and helpful I'm willing to purchase then.
  - fhd2 4y ago
    Can't tell why you're downvoted either - could have been a bit more constructive, like your second post, I guess. Otherwise I agree: 10x certainly invokes the mythical "10x programmer" to me, but looking through the list of features, it's pretty basic. USP seems to be speed, probably competing against the heavy IDEs, not Emacs and Vim. But getting there took some guesswork, the website didn't answer these questions well for me.
  - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
    I downvoted the comment because the article explicitly mentioned speed, which VS Code and Clion both struggle with. Either the gp didn't read TFA or didn't have experience with the kinds of code bases it discussed.
    - synergy20 4y ago
      well I spent a few minutes checking its website and could not find that 'speed' keyword, plus I don't have a speed issue with vscode and clion though I don't use them often, as I'm a vim user.
      - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
        The very top blurb is: > A high-performance C++ Editor > Smooth and fast editing > Built to handle the largest C++ projects Then right below that, the title of the first image is: > Fast Workspace Load Just a little bit further down is: > Navigation > Quickly navigate around the largest projects > Instant Search > Find what you want - fast! Just which part of the page did you read, out of curiosity?
xrayarx 4y ago
It seems that there is no unique selling proposition. Practically any editor can do this for any language. Also there are many free editors, that fulfil the requirements.
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fefe23 4y ago
I have no interest in this (happy with vim, developing under Linux) but I installed it anyway and the first impression is absolutely impressive. The installer is comparatively small. It loads quickly. Doesn't ask any useless questions. Installs quickly. The app also loads quickly and feels snappy. People tend to underestimate the importance of first impressions. This guy gets it. Now if this was open source and built and ran on Linux, I'd be interested. uninstall :-)
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- Johanx64 4y ago
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  - chlorion 4y ago
    Free software has nothing to do with money or not paying for a product. You can educate yourself with the following resource: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
    - IshKebab 4y ago
      It doesn't have nothing to do with it. It's much easier to sell software if it's closed source. Some people manage to sell open source software but it's obviously pretty hard to compete with some guy who just compiled your software, changed the name and is giving it away for free.
      - SanJacobs 4y ago
        Which would be illegal with a rights reserved license
  - fefe23 4y ago
    Uh... what? I said open source, not free. Google the difference. I also didn't demand any features. I also didn't say or imply that I don't want to pay. However, this editor will have to compete with free, full featured, mature software like vim and emacs. That's a tough sell. Companies who don't care about the desires of future potential customers tend to fail. Maybe I misunderstood what you were trying to say here.
linhns 4y ago
For $10 a month (I assume tier 2 is what most people find acceptable for use), what would I get for this editor? No roadmap, not even an about page and the last HN post was from last year so a definite no from me.
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- CursedUrn 4y ago
  There is a roadmap on the website
xrayarx 4y ago
Which version(s) of c++ does the 10x parser support? Are there independent performance measurements? What are your reference projects for “largest projects”? Which GUI Toolkit do you use? Do you support LSP?
- stewartlynch8 4y ago
  I've written the parser myself, adding features as needed. The C++ spec is incredibly complex so I'm not exactly sure which versions are fully supported. But hopefully it covers most things. I measure the 10x performance all the time. But it's not possible to compare like-for-like with other editors unfortunately. 10x has been tested on Unreal Engine source from the start, which is many millions of lines of C++. I don't use a GUI tookkit. I write the UI system myself. It doesn't support LSP.
  - JonChesterfield 4y ago
    > I've written the parser myself Awesome. I'd estimate a C++ parser at multiple lifetimes of engineering. An incremental one more so. Can you sketch how that's implemented? Did you build the parser in C++?
    - stewartlynch8 4y ago
      Yeah, it sometimes feels like it :-) The parser is written in C++. I don't use any standard parsing techniques, it's all custom stuff. It's hard to explain, but I talk about it a lot in my live streams: https://10xeditor.com/vlog.htm https://10xeditor.com/vlog.htm
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lholden 4y ago
I love seeing new editors come up. Always curious to see what people have planned for them. With that said... I do have to say that the landing page for this was a turn off for me. Digging through the landing page, the focus seems to be on how to support it and there just isn't enough time spent talking about why this project is cool or worth supporting. From what I can gleam from the page this seems to have a GPU backed renderer and have fast startup times. It seems intended for C++ but doesn't really talk about C++ specific features. (Ex, CMake integration, integration with doctest/catch/etc). The one C++ specific thing it mentions is "full C++ parser for syntax highlighting, autocomplete, goto-definition, find references and a lot more". Does this support C++20? Is it using it's own engine for this or is integrating with clang or something similar. What is this doing that all of the other editors with C++ syntax support don't have? I consider CLion to be a "gold standard" for features and functionality as a editor/IDE for C++. The only thing it doesn't do for me is "be fast and light". I'm also a long time VIM user and I generally default to VIM when I want something "fast and light". If there was an editor/ide that had many of the features of CLion and the speed of VIM, I would certainly consider that to be "10x".
- czx4f4bd 4y ago
  This is one of my biggest gripes with a lot of open source [edit: and also non-open source] projects. It's sort of baffling to me when I come across a project that the maintainers clearly want to be used, but there's no clear and concise explanation of what the project is, why you'd want to use it, and how it compares with major alternatives.
  - ranting-moth 4y ago
    Agree. Imagine the free publicity of hitting HN front page. I've closed countless of them because they don't get to the point once I'm there. I'm doom scrolling on HN. I click interesting links. I'm not (usually) going to waste 5 minutes on your project just to figure out what it is exactly.
  - __float 4y ago
    Do note that this project isn't open source: for something like an editor, this is a bit of a negative for me since it significantly reduces how it can be customized if need be.
pantalaimon 4y ago
Does this also work for C?
- Zenity 4y ago
  Yes, with some minor limitations as it receives much less testing. I was using 10x with The Machinery (RIP) for some time and the developer was super responsive fixing any C-specific issues (and even added some TM specific features when I asked nicely). If more people start using it for C and report any issues found, it should get even better. I would say it may even be better suited for C to some extent since that is a much simpler language with less chances for the parser to get confused by some obscure corner case. C++ really is the worst case scenario for a parsing engine, so once it works reliably for that, support for other languages should also become much more feasible.
- scombridae 4y ago
  It's hard to imagine a C programmer so professionally ignorant that he's yet to realize C++ is a superset of C.
  - anthk 4y ago
    Ironically your comment it's the ignorant one. Try compiling a large C codebase with g++.
  - stan680 4y ago
    lots of good examples of why this is wrong here: https://floooh.github.io/2019/09/27/modern-c-for-cpp-peeps.html https://floooh.github.io/2019/09/27/modern-c-for-cpp-peeps.h...
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  - lowbloodsugar 4y ago
    >It's hard to imagine a C programmer so professionally ignorant that he's yet to realize C++ is a superset of C. Ooof. restrict keyword enters the chat. C and C++ are two languages that evolve together, but one is not a superset of the other.
Kukumber 4y ago
The editor that puts to shame visual studio, if you can afford to, consider supporting Fast software deserve all of our support
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anilcanglk 4y ago
it is rapid fast and efficient to use. I've been using it for one year
tkuraku 4y ago
The monthly cost is kind of a nonstarter for me. The sublime text model seems like a good alternative. ~$100 for ~3 years of updates with perpetual ownership of the latest version at the end of your subscription.
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- Zenity 4y ago
  The monthly cost is for supporters and to get priority support on Discord (absolutely worth it IMO given how fast the dev responds to issues and requests). AFAIK the final pricing model for the release is not decided yet.
sam0x17 4y ago
Some web design advice: I looked for a tab called "Screenshots", didn't find one, didn't find any general info about what this is other than the buy now stuff, so I hit the Back button. Edit: I re-visited and scrolled down past what I thought was the end of the page only to find everything I was looking for. This is the problem with these huge scrolling marketing pages. You gotta lead with the content and then try to sell me at the bottom.
- detrites 4y ago
  Exact same thing happened here. Only went back because I saw your comment.
  - sam0x17 4y ago
    Yeah, I think people take "single page application" a little too literally these days
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- DrewADesign 4y ago
  Yeah. These folks should probably hire a designer. They clearly put a lot of fancy looking elements in it to attempt to replicate the look of a designed page, but that's not how it works. Many developers think design is like air freshener for a page-- an aesthetic improvement based on personal preference and taste that's distantly secondary to the real content. But colors, relationships between elements, placement of elements, and all of those things communicate about your product. If they're inexpertly or sloppily put together, it communicates that your product is inexpertly or sloppily put together well before they visually parse your copy and screenshots. Here's a free first impression breakdown for them: A page's social media link stripe is commonly at the bottom of the page as a final "ok you're not going to buy this right now, but at least keep us in mind" call to action, or at the very top of a page as a nav element. Gray is a common color for page terminal stripes or other perfunctory, de-emphasized components because nothing stands out against it as much as it would stand out against something else. Pricing schemes are either on a standalone page or at least after some introduction explains what they are. Seeing the gray stripe of social media links under the pricing block is like a stop sign to your brain. Beyond that, the "more options" button at the bottom of the page only reveals more options at the top of the page. The section of tiny screenshots half covered up with those boxes in that same "not important" gray is very off-putting. Not only does varying shades of gray text on white or various shades of gray background scream "don't pay attention to me," it's irritating to read, and their #969696 text on white on the purchase page even fails WCAG AA color contrast guidelines for headlines. Many elements are slightly misaligned. The complete lack of visual hierarchy beyond the project name and purchase section title leads users to subconsciously say "not worth the cognitive load to figure out what's going on here," and leave... and that was a sub 5-minute analysis. Most bounced users don't consciously think about why they left. They'll never complain about it because they'll never think about you again. There's a damn good reason big businesses put a lot of time and resources into that stuff, and as much as folks like to think otherwise, having developers as your customers doesn't change that. Developer-targeted FOSS projects get away with undesigned websites because it's free as in speech, and most people are probably looking at the very thoughtfully designed Github, et al interface instead. Even subconsciously, broken buttons, misaligned elements, uncomfortably obfuscated elements, and miscommunication of navigation cues through poor color choice does not communicate "high-quality paid software product that beats the vast array of free competition."
fckgnad 4y ago
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xigoi 4y ago
What does it offer over Neovim with some plugins and a C++ language server?
- deleted 4y ago
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forrestthewoods 4y ago
Lots of comments from people here who haven’t tried the editor. I’ve been using it full time for about a month, so here are some assorted thoughts. I don’t use vim or emacs. I probably never will. Sorry. This editor is made for C++ game devs on Windows. If you are a C++ gamedev on Windows then it is likely the best editor in the market. An example of this is it has integrated Perforce support but not Git. 10x can open .sln files natively and invoke its builds. Very slick. I’m pretty sure 10x is the best editor on market for Unreal Engine projects. It’s so much faster then Visual Studio or Rider. It has a custom C++ parser. It’s the fastest and most reliable one I’ve come across. It blows my mind. The solo dev is insanely responsive. I filed a bug on GitHub and he responded in literally one minute (I checked the time stamps). He sent me a custom debug build which I ran out o get info and had a crash fix published to the world in under 30 minutes. Stellar stuff. The downsides: it’s just a C++ editor for Windows and it does have bugs. It’s not a debugger, just a text editor. I’ve been using RemedyBG which is good, but not as far along as 10x. Support for additional languages is listed as a possibility for the future. I will keep using it happily for C++. If in the future it supported more languages to the same level of quality that would be awesome.
reisse 4y ago
As a C++ developer, I don't really see how it is going to compete against VS Code + LSP, Visual Studio, or even CLion. From my experience, if you work on C++ codebase large enough that indexing it is a problem, compiling and linking it is a problem of the same order. And as you need beefy hardware to compile and link your code anyway, you can reuse the same hardware for indexing and editing. Sure, VS Code + LSP may be dog slow on a typical "power consumption-optimized crappy business laptop" like T-series or X-series ThinkPads, but on such hardware, even if I had fast code editor, it'd be a pain to develop due to very long compile times anyway. And on a 12c20t workstation with 64 gigs of RAM any editor works like a charm. Yes, `clangd` eats 20 threads and 20 gigs of RAM for indexing, but go to definition works instantly, and I don't really care about hardware resources. Then, parsing C++ properly is really hard. Even JetBrains had to admit it as they've integrated clang++ frontend into the CLion. I don't believe that one person can create both a good code editor and a fully compliant C++ parser. Maybe they piggyback on EDG or clang++ frontends, but from their website it seems that everything is written from scratch. Another problem I see is that very few of large codebases are C++-only. Usually it's some C++, some Python (or Perl, if the code is old enough) scripts, maybe some Java interop code, few Go tools, with a bit of Lua on top. And a lot of make/CMake/whatever build system files. "Big" IDEs and editors either support all of that from the box or have plugins to fill the gaps. I don't know if the paid-only closed-source product can gain traction big enough to have a vibrant plugin community.
- stewartlynch8 4y ago
  The way I see 10x competing is by general speed and responsiveness, and the robustness of the parser. The parser may not be fully C++ compliant, but it is dependable and scales well. I don't want to be specific here, but my experiences with some other IDEs is that they can stall, lock up and operations can take seconds to complete regardless of the hardware. All this can break the flow. I think you really have to try 10x on a large project to notice the difference. The instance search feature alone can be a game changer. > I don't believe that one person can create both a good code editor and a fully compliant C++ parser Believe me, I question this myself almost every day. A small hobby project turned into a 6 year marathon and here we are. The parser will probably never be fully compliant, but hopefully it's good enough for most code. And the speed and robustness will hopefully compensate for this. > Another problem I see is that very few of large codebases are C++ only Even though I market 10x as a C++ editor, it has syntax highlighting for many other languages. And you can add more languages using the regex system. I'll hopefully be adding some parsing for other languages after the 1.0 launch.
ahepp 4y ago
Does HN really allow posting just a purchase link? Not even a discussion of why anyone would use this over vim/VS code + LSP? I have to scroll below the fold to even see what it claims the features are. Sorry to be that guy, but this one should have been caught in the spam filter.
- deleted 4y ago
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stephc_int13 4y ago
Subscription model is not a good idea for this type of tool. The Sublime Text licence is not cheap but is in a better spot, IMHO.
- deleted 4y ago
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- user2342 4y ago
  As I understood it, the subscription for the beta is optional and intended to support development until the first release. I would expect a more traditional license model with the release version.
gauddasa 4y ago
At least mention "Windows only" somewhere on home page or even better just below the Download buttons. It was shocking to see exe file being downloaded without any prompt or warning about operating system. Had to dig into FAQ to see that Linux and MacOS support are planned.
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CodeVisio 4y ago
>10x is written from the ground up in C++, with a custom UI system and GPU rendering. It would be interesting to know which custom UI.
- stewartlynch8 4y ago
  I mean custom as in "I wrote it myself". It's not based on a slow and bloated UI framework. Hopefully it's fairly standard from a Windows point of view though. If you want to know more, I have lots of dev videos on my youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@puredevsoftware https://www.youtube.com/@puredevsoftware
  - CodeVisio 4y ago
    retained or immediate mode?
    - stewartlynch8 4y ago
      retained
- thewebcount 4y ago
  Yeah, whenever I see something like that, my first thought is, “Doesn’t work like other apps on your OS, so will be a pain to get used to, will have weird inconsistencies, and won’t integrate properly with OS features that come standard with all other apps you run.
  - CodeVisio 4y ago
    I know. In theory, custom UI doesn't necessarily mean to have such freedom to "change" what UI's rules of the OS has been established. It should sound more like, I don't use your way of rendering stuff.
- twobitshifter 4y ago
  To me that’s a turnoff, you might get an IDE where the speed is faster, but updates and fixes will be slow to come because the team could not get over NIH.
djmips 4y ago
Great name for your product!
nice__two 4y ago
Did anyone try opening LibreOffice master in it? LO has a reputation as an IDE-killer, as it’s so large and complex.
- heywhatupboys 4y ago
  I hope it is shorter than the startup time for LO itself
- Zenity 4y ago
  This got me curious, so I gave it a try. It opens instantly (as always) and parsing the complete codebase in the background took about two minutes. After that everything is practically instant and there is no problem searching through the code, finding references, code completion, etc. Reopening the project is also instant and it takes less than ten seconds to fully load the cache in the background. Since I don't know the code I can't really comment on whether everything got parsed correctly, but the random bits I tried seemed to be right. This doesn't seem to be worse than the Unreal codebase, which 10x also handles with ease. I highly doubt that there is a codebase in existence which could bring 10x to its knees. It does use quite a bit of memory, but nothing a modern setup shouldn't be able to handle. Currently it seems to be about 4GB for both Unreal and LO each, with LO being just slightly larger. This of course are extreme cases, so you can imagine what performance for "normal" projects is like.
  - shaklee3 4y ago
    the three accounts that are praising this editor, including the one from the developer, are all new hn accounts. are you the same person?
    - Zenity 4y ago
      Nah just some early adopters who found this post because it was shared on the 10x Twitter and Discord after it made the HN homepage. I don't know why none of us had accounts before, it may have something to do with the particular niches most of us are from (game dev etc), where HN may not be as popular as you might expect. I only signed up because I saw a lot more questions than people reporting their experiences with it, so I figured you would like to hear from people who actively use it (and why). Some of us then prodded Stewart (the dev) to also sign up so he could answer the more specific questions.
theLiminator 4y ago
Looks pretty great, I won't personally use it, but best of luck to the author. I've been very impressed by lapce's pace of development. Imo, open source text editors are going to fully supplant closed-source. Perhaps 10x is a killer app if you only use C++, but for a modern day polyglot experience, I'm betting on lapce.
- Shorel 4y ago
  Lapce seems like a great new project. It is probably more important to legitimize Rust than to change the editors landscape, but if it does both, it can be awesome. Thanks for the heads-up!
liquidify 4y ago
Can we get a "namespace" tree that shows namespaces as folders (similar to how Intellij works with packages)?
- stewartlynch8 4y ago
  Do you mean a navigation bar at the top that shows the scopes? If so that is planned after the 1.0 release.
enqk 4y ago
Been using it daily at work on a relatively large C++ codebase for a 20 year old native application, and it's really nice to have an IDE that starts instantly, indexes and searches quickly and integrates well with Visual Studio's sln. The performance is just beyond what normal IDEs end up with
nine_k 4y ago
What instantly jumps at me is the fact that the software is subscription-based, with a monthly cost. Small, admittedly, if you're in the US, or maybe in Switzerland, and have a job (not a student, etc). I'm more and more reluctant to admit any tools that are not open-source into my long-term stack. And a text editor is usually a very long-term commitment: you want to commit it to your muscle memory, and most of your daily development workflow hinges on the editor.
- fasterik 4y ago
  I thought the same thing at first (the website could be clearer). But it's actually a free beta. The subscription is there for people who want to help fund development and get priority support.

221 points by davikr 4y ago

I might give it a shot, but outside of how long opening a solution takes (which I therefore try to do as little as possible), Visual Studio + Visual Assist is a pretty strong combo that seems to offer all the benefits of 10x - except startup time.

pulse7 4y ago

Please fix broken links on the license site (https://10xeditor.com/License.htm https://10xeditor.com/License.htm)...

tempodox 4y ago

The page doesn't say, but this is Windows only.

ant6n 4y ago
Huh. I was gonna ask about vim/eMacs keybinding support, but I guess that’s kinda moot for a win only editor.
- SanJacobs 4y ago
  You can enable VIM keybinds in 10x, and it's... ok.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  No it’s not. I have a history of RSI and wouldn’t even consider an editor without VIM bindings, regardless of the OS.

29athrowaway 4y ago

How does it compare to cscope?

CursedUrn 4y ago

This is very impressive! I tried it with a big Unreal project and it handled it without blinking. Much faster than any other editor I've seen. It doesn't look like it supports memory breakpoints? I end up tied to Visual Studio because of how powerful its debugger is.

ohnoesjmr 4y ago

I really wish someone worked on something like this for C#. There are large C# monoliths out there with 100+ projects per solution, where VS simply does not work (as in you can't open a solution), and Rider takes 30mins to load the solution, and then stops working over time (after 8 hours?), so your morning routine is to open the solution Rider and go grab a coffee.

gavinray 4y ago
Why not use VS Code C# plugin? I'm not a .NET dev by trade by I do dabble to keep up and I swap between Rider and VS Code fluidly I find VSC nearly as capable for most things, but much faster.

thomastay 4y ago

Like the idea and the vision but I'll admit I was initially turned off by the name which sounds really cringe. Went spelunking through the blog and found this line which explains the vision (which I like!): The kind of professional developer I’m talking about will probably fall into one of two categories. a: Someone who works on massive codebases b: Someone who writes a lot of code. I am targeting the small % of developers with very specific needs. So he's targeting professional developers and not novice developers, in fact he explicitly says so later in the post. Landing page is ok but why the animated swirling gif? Doesn't add much and draws my attention away.

elromulous 4y ago

10x marketing

MauranKilom 4y ago

I gave it a shot on some real code, and (more or less as expected, but I was ready to be surprised) the custom parsing code does not handle templates and overloads well at all. Example 1: template<class T> void foo(T t) {} struct X {}; void foo(X x) {} template<class T> int bar() { foo(T{}); } Example 2: template<class T> T getFoo(int); // (1) struct X {}; template<> X getFoo(int) { return {}; }; X getFoo(int a) // (2) { return getFoo<X>(a); // (3) } In both cases, "Rename" only affects a quasi-random subset of the foo/getFoo occurrences, depending on which one you select for renaming. It roughly looks like "match every name to the most recent definition of a thing with that name", but things like "go to definition" on (2) going to (1), or on (3) going to (2) is just pretty absurd. Yes, it's super fast (instant), but also super useless right now. When I use "Find References" or "Rename", I _need_ it to be 100% accurate. I have to be sure that I caught all uses. In cases of ambiguity (such as the templates above), it has to involve the user (e.g. "these are guaranteed matches, for these other ones it's not clear - select all that should be renamed"). Visual Assist is miles ahead here. And yes, I know, this is extremely difficult in C++ (and likely impossible to square with the "instant" speed goals). But being able to trust my tools in a complex code base has priority. Other feedback, in a "take it or leave it" fashion: - Automatic perforce integration is nice to see - timelapse and history commands don't work though... (not in PATH?) - Defaulting the title bar menu to only show on hover is weird imo. - The title bar menu items should be centered inside the buttons! - Opening header and cpp in different columns is a nice default. - Settings file editing is also surprisingly fun, thanks to the builtin suggestions. - Switch to a different colour scheme -> expand folder in workspace tree -> newly appearing elements have old theme... - I set the keybind for "close file" to Control W. Now pressing Control W always closes two files (?!) - Right click -> zoom -> that menu item and the submenu (except any submenu item you hover over) render as pure black... - STL include file paths are not found automatically for a VS solution. Forgiveable though. - Sometimes commands (e.g. Go To Definition) don't do anything. Sometimes it starts working eventually (parsing was incomplete?), sometimes not. There needs to be some kind of reaction/feedback ("definition not found"). Not necessarily a message box, but at least a toast or status bar message. - Ctrl + left click also does a range selection if you hold down LMB for slightly too long... - In a Citrix remote session, home/end lock up the entire session if the view needs to scroll horizontally and there are many long lines. - create new file, fill it with e.g. 60 long lines of e.g. A characters (something like 120 chars per line) -> navigation becomes extremely sluggish - No idea if this is primarily on Citrix or on 10x. Can't reproduce the same behavior in VS or Notepad++ though. Overall it seems well-made and (outside a few sharp corners) comes with a lot of polish, but for me the "speed over quality" approach to parsing is not a good fit for my daily C++ needs. I might try it a bit more for those "let me really quickly look up this detail a colleague is asking about" use cases, but with the current approach I won't use it for editing.

runjake 4y ago

If you're wondering why Stewart doesn't appear to have done a video in 2 years, be sure to click the Live tab on his YouTube page, for the more recent stuff. https://www.youtube.com/@puredevsoftware/streams https://www.youtube.com/@puredevsoftware/streams Apparently at some point, YouTube started putting them under separate tabs.

stewartlynch8 4y ago

I've uploaded the new website which hopefully addresses some of the questions/comments: https://10xeditor.com/ https://10xeditor.com/ There is now an about page: https://10xeditor.com/about.htm https://10xeditor.com/about.htm I'm still working on it though, and I'll be adding more in the next few days.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago

Admirable goals, but doesn't keeping it limited to C++ keep the potential for backers limited? Whole-assing one thing is better than half-assing two I guess, but it's an interesting initial language. Is C++ tooling in particular that bad?

fathyb 4y ago
> Admirable goals, but doesn't keeping it limited to C++ keep the potential for backers limited? Agreed, feels like the C++ support could be packaged into an LSP server to support other languages, and let other IDEs benefit from its completion, increasing the number of potential backers. > Is C++ tooling in particular that bad? Yes, at least when it comes to IDE support. Visual Studio on Windows gave me the best experience, but it's Windows so I don't use it. Xcode is so slow and unstable, it's a shame, it used to be great. CLion doesn't scale well with huge projects.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Ah, OK. I assumed it was just a matter of adding the right extension to VSCode or Sublime and you were off to the races. If this fills a gap that's great.
  - bogwog 4y ago
    It's all about the build system. Sublime has built-in support for a few, with more available as extensions. Auto-complete works out of the box using Sublime's own language-agnostic implementation, which obviously isn't perfect, but you can also install an LSP.
  - kentonv 4y ago
    VSCode integrates with clangd for good jump-to-definition and auto-completion. The problem is VSCode, which is built on JavaScript/HTML, has become quite slow of late. The editor feels sluggish to respond to keypresses, especially in large files with lots of includes. It's always just on the edge of bearable.

fprog 4y ago

I wonder what the author thinks of Sublime Text. Fast everything (search, opening files, switching projects…) is a big part of Sublime’s value proposition, one that has so far survived the era of VSCode. And AFAIK it is written in C++, and can certainly be used to write C++.

stewartlynch8 4y ago
I've only tried sublime text briefly to be honest. I like its speed, but I need something that can open huge Visual Studio projects. I also wasn't sure about the C++ parsing which requires installing packages. Just to be clear, 10x supports syntax highlighting for many languages, it's only the parser that is C++ specific.
Shorel 4y ago
I wanted to try 10x, it doesn't exist for Linux. Sublime Text on the other hand, I purchased a licence for ST3, I am still using it with ST4, and I am happy with it. I use ST for C++, PHP, Python, LaTeX (it's actually great for LaTeX, with inline equations) and web stuff. Also use it to explore Rust, go, dlang, edit huge SQL files, JSON files, etc. I think at some point I will get a new ST licence. With regard to 10x, I don't use Windows to program, and I will not reboot the computer just to test it, as good as it could be.
bogwog 4y ago
I would definitely choose Sublime over this, only because Sublime isn't limited to/focused on a single language. However, if I were a paying CLion user, this editor might be a more compelling buy if it addresses some pain points, like performance. but then again, Jetbrains is working on their own "polyglot" editor called Fleet, which is aiming to be much faster and more lightweight than their existing dinosaur IDEs.
Thaxll 4y ago
Re-inventing the wheel is very common for IDE / editors, ofc this is already done by Sublime but I think in this crowded space it's all about perception, maybe Sublime missed the train and now you need a new "fresh" IDE to capture the audience.

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erlich 4y ago

I half-expected it to be written in Rust.

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pohl 4y ago
If you're interested in something like that, Lapce is looking pretty good, despite being in early stages of development.

nickelpro 4y ago

What features here are differentiated from any other editor? VSC isn't slow for me. Is "speed" the only thing on offer? Because giving up the plugin environment is a big ask for that.

darknavi 4y ago
> VSC isn't slow for me. How big is your project? With Visual Assist X and our solution it can take me upwards of 30 seconds before I can do anything after opening the project.
- bigbillheck 4y ago
  How often are you opening projects?
  - darknavi 4y ago
    Unfortunately VS is dogshit in other areas. We have to run cmake to add/remove new files to the solution and that causes a full project reload.

hoistbypetard 4y ago

This feels super-spammy.

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artisanspam 4y ago

It would be nice if the website put the donation links below the demo images instead of having them be the first thing you see. That was a big turn off when I first loaded the page.

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tejohnso 4y ago

> The 10x philosophy: Every operation, from opening projects to searching for text should be instant. You can get that with basic VIM and some grepping shortcuts. Maybe I'm just not working in sufficiently large code bases. But shouldn't a C++ specific editor have some philosophy that is specific to C++? Like awareness of ownership semantics for syntax / lint checks? Maybe not the best example, but "be fast" doesn't seem like a great differentiator.

steeleduncan 4y ago
I think at this point speed is a great differentiator. I've been happy with the featureset and design of all C++ IDEs I've tried for a decade or so now, but they never seem to get any faster. An IDE designed specifically for speed, with an ongoing committment to keep it fast, solves the biggest issue I have with C++ coding right now.
ljw1004 4y ago
I presume it means things like "does cross-file go-to-def and find-all-references work instantly after opening a file?" In most IDEs these things take seconds or minutes to become available, depending on project size
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TheArcane 4y ago

What's with every paid software product being a monthly subscription now? I just wanna buy and forget, not be reminded of it every month on my credit card statement.

stewartlynch8 4y ago
I understand the resistance to a monthly subscription, but it's the only way I can continue to work on 10x. I've been working on 10x for 6 years now, and even with the generous support from the beta subscribers I can't go on indefinitely like this. Hopefully the subscription will seem worth it with all of the bug fixes and features that are planned. I will continue uploading new versions regularly, as I have been doing: https://10xeditor.com/versions.htm https://10xeditor.com/versions.htm
Gys 4y ago
You do not want updates that solve bugs? Some support in case you have questions or problems? Maybe also some new features (usually the word changes and also your experience and expectations)?
- zbrozek 4y ago
  I want low-bug-density software I buy once and don't receive updates for until I pay again.
  - aix1 4y ago
    Exactly this, thank you for articulating it so well.
  - wnkrshm 4y ago
    We should pay for features not for fixes
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Koshkin 4y ago

emacs is no longer constantly swapping, either.

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kvathupo 4y ago

Given all the idioms in C++, I don't think constraining the editor to one language is a bad idea *if* it caters to these unique constructs. E.g. I had a templated PImpl class [1] whose template parameter was the implementation. It was a pain to `grep` for the classes specializing it, especially when other classes extended this PImpl class (sometimes extending a specialization, sometimes not). [1] - https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/pimpl https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/pimpl

make3 4y ago

vscode, the main competition to this I assume, is very fast to me. would be curious to know how they compare

weakfortress 4y ago
Try to open a large text file in VS Code and watch it grind to a halt. While VS Code offers a buffet of features that are cool and convenient it has a lot of problems.
- __float 4y ago
  I find I occasionally look at "huge" text files in my day job, but they're almost never source files -- so I don't need syntax highlighting, jump to definition, etc. Is this something you do often in your C++ development?
  - weakfortress 4y ago
    I work with data, so it's not uncommon to load a large file either deliberately or accidentally. Highlighting isn't the issue. Even a CSV on the order of 100-200MB kills VS code dead. I assume this is because it's an electron app. Other apps do not have this problem.
AlchemistCamp 4y ago
That's very surprising. I've found VS Code to be considerably slower than Sublime Text or VIM for just about everything. I don't think there would be much overlap at all between VS Code users and people who would want something like this.

franky47 4y ago

If you use it, does that make you a 10x engineer? (I'll see myself out)

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BaculumMeumEst 4y ago

I would need to see a side-by-side comparison of 10x and vs code performing equivalent tasks in a large codebase before investing time and money in this tool.

weakfortress 4y ago

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stan680 4y ago

I've been using this fulltime for a few months so I can provide some perspective from real-world experience: Firstly, on speed, I really recommend giving it a try. There's things like launch time / time to syntax highlighting which are nice to have and make it a joy to use but then there's things like instant 'Find References' and workspace search that I think contribute to a qualitative difference to the way I work - I simply would not use these features as much or in the same way if they took seconds (as they do in VS). Seen some discussion comparing to things like Sublime - 10x understands c++ code much much better than sublime and that's crucial for making some of its best features like 'Rename' and 'Find references' work so well. The other thing I think is worth mentioning is just how active and responsive the developer is. Bug-fixes and improvements often get implemented within hours of reporting. As an example, I've always been annoyed by how impossible it is to make VS do 'tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment' - after a brief discussion, this got sorted in 10x quickly. I think that's a serious advantage over Visual Studio, that often has annoying issues/bugs languishing for literally years.

olig15 4y ago
I’m a heavy Visual Studio user (work for a AAA game dev, C++), and find VS without extensions horrible to use, but after Installing the ‘Visual Assist’ (which seems to be an industry standard in game dev at this point) extension it gives me all of the advantages you mentioned. Have you tried using this (admittedly paid for) extension?
- jim90 4y ago
  Yeah, I have been a VAX user for years... took me 15 minutes of testing out 10x before I purchased it.
- Zenity 4y ago
  What got me into 10x is actually how similar the default setup is to Visual Assist (including default shortcuts). And since it supports Visual Studio solutions, 10x will just work out of the box with any Unreal project or many other similar large C++ projects. You could even switch back and forth without a problem while evaluating 10x, which is what I did the first couple of months or so when I started using it. It has already come a long way since then though, and I've been using 10x exclusively for quite a few months now (full time working on an Unreal project and some personal side projects). The developer is a former game dev himself, so he understands our particular needs quite well and is very responsive to them. The fact that 10x can easily manage those kind of codebases is what really differentiates it from other "lightweight" text editors in my book. Building and debugging still goes through Visual Studio for VS projects (with good integration and no required setup), so switching causes no disruption. Compared to Visual Assist it may not have all the bells and whistles yes, but especially the code navigation (which to me is the most important aspect) and code completion is quite advanced already and incredibly fast, even compared to Visual Assist. Parsing the entire UE4 codebase for the first time (in the background) takes a couple of minutes. Opening it from cache is practically instant, all search operations / code completion are also near instant with no stalls whatsoever. In terms of refactoring it is more limited, but renaming symbols works well and that covers about 99% of the cases were I regularly use refactoring tools anyway. And unlike Visual Studio or JetBrains IDEs, 10x is so fast and lightweight that I would like to use it for all of my text editing needs. That makes customizing it much more satisfying as well, which is quite easy to do with a straightforward Python API. As you can probably tell I really love this editor, it has had a quite dramatic impact on my enjoyment of work already. It won't be for everybody (and it doesn't try to), but I would encourage everybody to give it a try. If it is the kind of editor you are looking for, I think you will be very happy with it.

synergy20 4y ago

how is it better than vim, or vscode, or clion to qualify itself as 10x?

synergy20 4y ago
I don't know why is this downvoted, a genuine question from me actually, if it's truly revolutionary and helpful I'm willing to purchase then.
- fhd2 4y ago
  Can't tell why you're downvoted either - could have been a bit more constructive, like your second post, I guess. Otherwise I agree: 10x certainly invokes the mythical "10x programmer" to me, but looking through the list of features, it's pretty basic. USP seems to be speed, probably competing against the heavy IDEs, not Emacs and Vim. But getting there took some guesswork, the website didn't answer these questions well for me.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  I downvoted the comment because the article explicitly mentioned speed, which VS Code and Clion both struggle with. Either the gp didn't read TFA or didn't have experience with the kinds of code bases it discussed.
  - synergy20 4y ago
    well I spent a few minutes checking its website and could not find that 'speed' keyword, plus I don't have a speed issue with vscode and clion though I don't use them often, as I'm a vim user.
    - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
      The very top blurb is: > A high-performance C++ Editor > Smooth and fast editing > Built to handle the largest C++ projects Then right below that, the title of the first image is: > Fast Workspace Load Just a little bit further down is: > Navigation > Quickly navigate around the largest projects > Instant Search > Find what you want - fast! Just which part of the page did you read, out of curiosity?

xrayarx 4y ago

It seems that there is no unique selling proposition. Practically any editor can do this for any language. Also there are many free editors, that fulfil the requirements.

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fefe23 4y ago

I have no interest in this (happy with vim, developing under Linux) but I installed it anyway and the first impression is absolutely impressive. The installer is comparatively small. It loads quickly. Doesn't ask any useless questions. Installs quickly. The app also loads quickly and feels snappy. People tend to underestimate the importance of first impressions. This guy gets it. Now if this was open source and built and ran on Linux, I'd be interested. uninstall :-)

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Johanx64 4y ago
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- chlorion 4y ago
  Free software has nothing to do with money or not paying for a product. You can educate yourself with the following resource: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
  - IshKebab 4y ago
    It doesn't have nothing to do with it. It's much easier to sell software if it's closed source. Some people manage to sell open source software but it's obviously pretty hard to compete with some guy who just compiled your software, changed the name and is giving it away for free.
    - SanJacobs 4y ago
      Which would be illegal with a rights reserved license
- fefe23 4y ago
  Uh... what? I said open source, not free. Google the difference. I also didn't demand any features. I also didn't say or imply that I don't want to pay. However, this editor will have to compete with free, full featured, mature software like vim and emacs. That's a tough sell. Companies who don't care about the desires of future potential customers tend to fail. Maybe I misunderstood what you were trying to say here.

linhns 4y ago

For $10 a month (I assume tier 2 is what most people find acceptable for use), what would I get for this editor? No roadmap, not even an about page and the last HN post was from last year so a definite no from me.

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CursedUrn 4y ago
There is a roadmap on the website

xrayarx 4y ago

Which version(s) of c++ does the 10x parser support? Are there independent performance measurements? What are your reference projects for “largest projects”? Which GUI Toolkit do you use? Do you support LSP?

stewartlynch8 4y ago
I've written the parser myself, adding features as needed. The C++ spec is incredibly complex so I'm not exactly sure which versions are fully supported. But hopefully it covers most things. I measure the 10x performance all the time. But it's not possible to compare like-for-like with other editors unfortunately. 10x has been tested on Unreal Engine source from the start, which is many millions of lines of C++. I don't use a GUI tookkit. I write the UI system myself. It doesn't support LSP.
- JonChesterfield 4y ago
  > I've written the parser myself Awesome. I'd estimate a C++ parser at multiple lifetimes of engineering. An incremental one more so. Can you sketch how that's implemented? Did you build the parser in C++?
  - stewartlynch8 4y ago
    Yeah, it sometimes feels like it :-) The parser is written in C++. I don't use any standard parsing techniques, it's all custom stuff. It's hard to explain, but I talk about it a lot in my live streams: https://10xeditor.com/vlog.htm https://10xeditor.com/vlog.htm
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lholden 4y ago

I love seeing new editors come up. Always curious to see what people have planned for them. With that said... I do have to say that the landing page for this was a turn off for me. Digging through the landing page, the focus seems to be on how to support it and there just isn't enough time spent talking about why this project is cool or worth supporting. From what I can gleam from the page this seems to have a GPU backed renderer and have fast startup times. It seems intended for C++ but doesn't really talk about C++ specific features. (Ex, CMake integration, integration with doctest/catch/etc). The one C++ specific thing it mentions is "full C++ parser for syntax highlighting, autocomplete, goto-definition, find references and a lot more". Does this support C++20? Is it using it's own engine for this or is integrating with clang or something similar. What is this doing that all of the other editors with C++ syntax support don't have? I consider CLion to be a "gold standard" for features and functionality as a editor/IDE for C++. The only thing it doesn't do for me is "be fast and light". I'm also a long time VIM user and I generally default to VIM when I want something "fast and light". If there was an editor/ide that had many of the features of CLion and the speed of VIM, I would certainly consider that to be "10x".

czx4f4bd 4y ago
This is one of my biggest gripes with a lot of open source [edit: and also non-open source] projects. It's sort of baffling to me when I come across a project that the maintainers clearly want to be used, but there's no clear and concise explanation of what the project is, why you'd want to use it, and how it compares with major alternatives.
- ranting-moth 4y ago
  Agree. Imagine the free publicity of hitting HN front page. I've closed countless of them because they don't get to the point once I'm there. I'm doom scrolling on HN. I click interesting links. I'm not (usually) going to waste 5 minutes on your project just to figure out what it is exactly.
- __float 4y ago
  Do note that this project isn't open source: for something like an editor, this is a bit of a negative for me since it significantly reduces how it can be customized if need be.

pantalaimon 4y ago

Does this also work for C?

Zenity 4y ago
Yes, with some minor limitations as it receives much less testing. I was using 10x with The Machinery (RIP) for some time and the developer was super responsive fixing any C-specific issues (and even added some TM specific features when I asked nicely). If more people start using it for C and report any issues found, it should get even better. I would say it may even be better suited for C to some extent since that is a much simpler language with less chances for the parser to get confused by some obscure corner case. C++ really is the worst case scenario for a parsing engine, so once it works reliably for that, support for other languages should also become much more feasible.
scombridae 4y ago
It's hard to imagine a C programmer so professionally ignorant that he's yet to realize C++ is a superset of C.
- anthk 4y ago
  Ironically your comment it's the ignorant one. Try compiling a large C codebase with g++.
- stan680 4y ago
  lots of good examples of why this is wrong here: https://floooh.github.io/2019/09/27/modern-c-for-cpp-peeps.html https://floooh.github.io/2019/09/27/modern-c-for-cpp-peeps.h...
- deleted 4y ago
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- lowbloodsugar 4y ago
  >It's hard to imagine a C programmer so professionally ignorant that he's yet to realize C++ is a superset of C. Ooof. restrict keyword enters the chat. C and C++ are two languages that evolve together, but one is not a superset of the other.

Kukumber 4y ago

The editor that puts to shame visual studio, if you can afford to, consider supporting Fast software deserve all of our support

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anilcanglk 4y ago

it is rapid fast and efficient to use. I've been using it for one year

tkuraku 4y ago

The monthly cost is kind of a nonstarter for me. The sublime text model seems like a good alternative. ~$100 for ~3 years of updates with perpetual ownership of the latest version at the end of your subscription.

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Zenity 4y ago
The monthly cost is for supporters and to get priority support on Discord (absolutely worth it IMO given how fast the dev responds to issues and requests). AFAIK the final pricing model for the release is not decided yet.

sam0x17 4y ago

Some web design advice: I looked for a tab called "Screenshots", didn't find one, didn't find any general info about what this is other than the buy now stuff, so I hit the Back button. Edit: I re-visited and scrolled down past what I thought was the end of the page only to find everything I was looking for. This is the problem with these huge scrolling marketing pages. You gotta lead with the content and then try to sell me at the bottom.

detrites 4y ago
Exact same thing happened here. Only went back because I saw your comment.
- sam0x17 4y ago
  Yeah, I think people take "single page application" a little too literally these days
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DrewADesign 4y ago
Yeah. These folks should probably hire a designer. They clearly put a lot of fancy looking elements in it to attempt to replicate the look of a designed page, but that's not how it works. Many developers think design is like air freshener for a page-- an aesthetic improvement based on personal preference and taste that's distantly secondary to the real content. But colors, relationships between elements, placement of elements, and all of those things communicate about your product. If they're inexpertly or sloppily put together, it communicates that your product is inexpertly or sloppily put together well before they visually parse your copy and screenshots. Here's a free first impression breakdown for them: A page's social media link stripe is commonly at the bottom of the page as a final "ok you're not going to buy this right now, but at least keep us in mind" call to action, or at the very top of a page as a nav element. Gray is a common color for page terminal stripes or other perfunctory, de-emphasized components because nothing stands out against it as much as it would stand out against something else. Pricing schemes are either on a standalone page or at least after some introduction explains what they are. Seeing the gray stripe of social media links under the pricing block is like a stop sign to your brain. Beyond that, the "more options" button at the bottom of the page only reveals more options at the top of the page. The section of tiny screenshots half covered up with those boxes in that same "not important" gray is very off-putting. Not only does varying shades of gray text on white or various shades of gray background scream "don't pay attention to me," it's irritating to read, and their #969696 text on white on the purchase page even fails WCAG AA color contrast guidelines for headlines. Many elements are slightly misaligned. The complete lack of visual hierarchy beyond the project name and purchase section title leads users to subconsciously say "not worth the cognitive load to figure out what's going on here," and leave... and that was a sub 5-minute analysis. Most bounced users don't consciously think about why they left. They'll never complain about it because they'll never think about you again. There's a damn good reason big businesses put a lot of time and resources into that stuff, and as much as folks like to think otherwise, having developers as your customers doesn't change that. Developer-targeted FOSS projects get away with undesigned websites because it's free as in speech, and most people are probably looking at the very thoughtfully designed Github, et al interface instead. Even subconsciously, broken buttons, misaligned elements, uncomfortably obfuscated elements, and miscommunication of navigation cues through poor color choice does not communicate "high-quality paid software product that beats the vast array of free competition."

fckgnad 4y ago

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xigoi 4y ago

What does it offer over Neovim with some plugins and a C++ language server?

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forrestthewoods 4y ago

Lots of comments from people here who haven’t tried the editor. I’ve been using it full time for about a month, so here are some assorted thoughts. I don’t use vim or emacs. I probably never will. Sorry. This editor is made for C++ game devs on Windows. If you are a C++ gamedev on Windows then it is likely the best editor in the market. An example of this is it has integrated Perforce support but not Git. 10x can open .sln files natively and invoke its builds. Very slick. I’m pretty sure 10x is the best editor on market for Unreal Engine projects. It’s so much faster then Visual Studio or Rider. It has a custom C++ parser. It’s the fastest and most reliable one I’ve come across. It blows my mind. The solo dev is insanely responsive. I filed a bug on GitHub and he responded in literally one minute (I checked the time stamps). He sent me a custom debug build which I ran out o get info and had a crash fix published to the world in under 30 minutes. Stellar stuff. The downsides: it’s just a C++ editor for Windows and it does have bugs. It’s not a debugger, just a text editor. I’ve been using RemedyBG which is good, but not as far along as 10x. Support for additional languages is listed as a possibility for the future. I will keep using it happily for C++. If in the future it supported more languages to the same level of quality that would be awesome.

reisse 4y ago

As a C++ developer, I don't really see how it is going to compete against VS Code + LSP, Visual Studio, or even CLion. From my experience, if you work on C++ codebase large enough that indexing it is a problem, compiling and linking it is a problem of the same order. And as you need beefy hardware to compile and link your code anyway, you can reuse the same hardware for indexing and editing. Sure, VS Code + LSP may be dog slow on a typical "power consumption-optimized crappy business laptop" like T-series or X-series ThinkPads, but on such hardware, even if I had fast code editor, it'd be a pain to develop due to very long compile times anyway. And on a 12c20t workstation with 64 gigs of RAM any editor works like a charm. Yes, `clangd` eats 20 threads and 20 gigs of RAM for indexing, but go to definition works instantly, and I don't really care about hardware resources. Then, parsing C++ properly is really hard. Even JetBrains had to admit it as they've integrated clang++ frontend into the CLion. I don't believe that one person can create both a good code editor and a fully compliant C++ parser. Maybe they piggyback on EDG or clang++ frontends, but from their website it seems that everything is written from scratch. Another problem I see is that very few of large codebases are C++-only. Usually it's some C++, some Python (or Perl, if the code is old enough) scripts, maybe some Java interop code, few Go tools, with a bit of Lua on top. And a lot of make/CMake/whatever build system files. "Big" IDEs and editors either support all of that from the box or have plugins to fill the gaps. I don't know if the paid-only closed-source product can gain traction big enough to have a vibrant plugin community.

stewartlynch8 4y ago
The way I see 10x competing is by general speed and responsiveness, and the robustness of the parser. The parser may not be fully C++ compliant, but it is dependable and scales well. I don't want to be specific here, but my experiences with some other IDEs is that they can stall, lock up and operations can take seconds to complete regardless of the hardware. All this can break the flow. I think you really have to try 10x on a large project to notice the difference. The instance search feature alone can be a game changer. > I don't believe that one person can create both a good code editor and a fully compliant C++ parser Believe me, I question this myself almost every day. A small hobby project turned into a 6 year marathon and here we are. The parser will probably never be fully compliant, but hopefully it's good enough for most code. And the speed and robustness will hopefully compensate for this. > Another problem I see is that very few of large codebases are C++ only Even though I market 10x as a C++ editor, it has syntax highlighting for many other languages. And you can add more languages using the regex system. I'll hopefully be adding some parsing for other languages after the 1.0 launch.

ahepp 4y ago

Does HN really allow posting just a purchase link? Not even a discussion of why anyone would use this over vim/VS code + LSP? I have to scroll below the fold to even see what it claims the features are. Sorry to be that guy, but this one should have been caught in the spam filter.

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stephc_int13 4y ago

Subscription model is not a good idea for this type of tool. The Sublime Text licence is not cheap but is in a better spot, IMHO.

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user2342 4y ago
As I understood it, the subscription for the beta is optional and intended to support development until the first release. I would expect a more traditional license model with the release version.

gauddasa 4y ago

At least mention "Windows only" somewhere on home page or even better just below the Download buttons. It was shocking to see exe file being downloaded without any prompt or warning about operating system. Had to dig into FAQ to see that Linux and MacOS support are planned.

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CodeVisio 4y ago

>10x is written from the ground up in C++, with a custom UI system and GPU rendering. It would be interesting to know which custom UI.

stewartlynch8 4y ago
I mean custom as in "I wrote it myself". It's not based on a slow and bloated UI framework. Hopefully it's fairly standard from a Windows point of view though. If you want to know more, I have lots of dev videos on my youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@puredevsoftware https://www.youtube.com/@puredevsoftware
- CodeVisio 4y ago
  retained or immediate mode?
  - stewartlynch8 4y ago
    retained
thewebcount 4y ago
Yeah, whenever I see something like that, my first thought is, “Doesn’t work like other apps on your OS, so will be a pain to get used to, will have weird inconsistencies, and won’t integrate properly with OS features that come standard with all other apps you run.
- CodeVisio 4y ago
  I know. In theory, custom UI doesn't necessarily mean to have such freedom to "change" what UI's rules of the OS has been established. It should sound more like, I don't use your way of rendering stuff.
twobitshifter 4y ago
To me that’s a turnoff, you might get an IDE where the speed is faster, but updates and fixes will be slow to come because the team could not get over NIH.

djmips 4y ago

Great name for your product!

nice__two 4y ago

Did anyone try opening LibreOffice master in it? LO has a reputation as an IDE-killer, as it’s so large and complex.

heywhatupboys 4y ago
I hope it is shorter than the startup time for LO itself
Zenity 4y ago
This got me curious, so I gave it a try. It opens instantly (as always) and parsing the complete codebase in the background took about two minutes. After that everything is practically instant and there is no problem searching through the code, finding references, code completion, etc. Reopening the project is also instant and it takes less than ten seconds to fully load the cache in the background. Since I don't know the code I can't really comment on whether everything got parsed correctly, but the random bits I tried seemed to be right. This doesn't seem to be worse than the Unreal codebase, which 10x also handles with ease. I highly doubt that there is a codebase in existence which could bring 10x to its knees. It does use quite a bit of memory, but nothing a modern setup shouldn't be able to handle. Currently it seems to be about 4GB for both Unreal and LO each, with LO being just slightly larger. This of course are extreme cases, so you can imagine what performance for "normal" projects is like.
- shaklee3 4y ago
  the three accounts that are praising this editor, including the one from the developer, are all new hn accounts. are you the same person?
  - Zenity 4y ago
    Nah just some early adopters who found this post because it was shared on the 10x Twitter and Discord after it made the HN homepage. I don't know why none of us had accounts before, it may have something to do with the particular niches most of us are from (game dev etc), where HN may not be as popular as you might expect. I only signed up because I saw a lot more questions than people reporting their experiences with it, so I figured you would like to hear from people who actively use it (and why). Some of us then prodded Stewart (the dev) to also sign up so he could answer the more specific questions.

theLiminator 4y ago

Looks pretty great, I won't personally use it, but best of luck to the author. I've been very impressed by lapce's pace of development. Imo, open source text editors are going to fully supplant closed-source. Perhaps 10x is a killer app if you only use C++, but for a modern day polyglot experience, I'm betting on lapce.

Shorel 4y ago
Lapce seems like a great new project. It is probably more important to legitimize Rust than to change the editors landscape, but if it does both, it can be awesome. Thanks for the heads-up!

liquidify 4y ago

Can we get a "namespace" tree that shows namespaces as folders (similar to how Intellij works with packages)?

stewartlynch8 4y ago
Do you mean a navigation bar at the top that shows the scopes? If so that is planned after the 1.0 release.

enqk 4y ago

Been using it daily at work on a relatively large C++ codebase for a 20 year old native application, and it's really nice to have an IDE that starts instantly, indexes and searches quickly and integrates well with Visual Studio's sln. The performance is just beyond what normal IDEs end up with

nine_k 4y ago

What instantly jumps at me is the fact that the software is subscription-based, with a monthly cost. Small, admittedly, if you're in the US, or maybe in Switzerland, and have a job (not a student, etc). I'm more and more reluctant to admit any tools that are not open-source into my long-term stack. And a text editor is usually a very long-term commitment: you want to commit it to your muscle memory, and most of your daily development workflow hinges on the editor.

fasterik 4y ago
I thought the same thing at first (the website could be clearer). But it's actually a free beta. The subscription is there for people who want to help fund development and get priority support.