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> designed for modern hardware with a focus on responsiveness and performance Not sure why a text editor needs modern hardware to be performant. I’m working o

> designed for modern hardware with a focus on responsiveness and performance Not sure why a text editor needs modern hardware to be performant. I’m working on a text editor myself, and aspire to vim on the performance front as it is fast as one would reasonably want. If anything, my physical body is the bottleneck. There are edge cases such as really large files (100+ million lines) or ones having super long lines that makes certain data structures choke, but vim can do random access on 180m line files just fine on my M1. Point being, performance is a weak selling point to switch text editors, and I question whether it should even be predicated on “modern” hardware ( GPU accelerated rendering ? ). The selling point has to be something else. This is why the editor wars is a dichotomy between Emacs and Vim. Emacs strives for many things, but speed isn’t one of them, and that’s perfectly okay. The main selling point of my editor, built for myself, is native support for Org-like files without the rabbithole of Emacs.

Semaphor 4y ago
Most people use neither Emacs, nor Vim [citation needed, but I’d bet some money on it]. And for me, performance is most certainly a selling point. The main reason I use my windows text editor (EmEditor [0]) despite having no formatting and only barebones syntax highlighting, is that it’s faster than any other editor I’ve ever seen (though I think the large file handler tops out at 256 GB). Well, that and its superior CSV handling, though Notepad++ comes close with plugins ;) [0]: https://www.emeditor.com/ https://www.emeditor.com/
- anticodon 4y ago
  I've seen voting results on one of niche Linux sites, and was surprised that majority of users use vim/neovim or vim bindings in other editors/IDEs. But I'm pretty sure that most Windows users wouldn't use any editor resembling vim.
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    Visiting niche Linux sites often enough to take part in such a poll is probably introducing a very strong selection bias here.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gigatexal 4y ago
Yeah -- while not mainstream compared to VSCode -- it'll take something very big and impactful to move me away from neovim + alacritty. It works amazingly well.
- noloblo 4y ago
  What is neovim + alacritty
  - bloopernova 4y ago
    neovim is a fork of vim. https://neovim.io/ https://neovim.io/ alacritty is a terminal application. https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty
    - gigatexal 4y ago
      What blooper said. I use alacritty as a gpu-accelerated terminal and neovim plus the LSP stuff from VSCode
      - gazsp 4y ago
        I'm on Kitty + Lunarvim. Nice and fast / responsive.
z3t4 4y ago
Text rendering is very expensive. That's why you need hardware acceleration.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  It's amazing then how much writing of both code and prose I and many others did on machines that were much less capable than today's. I wrote considerable amounts of code on the Z80 Apple II add on in the early '80s and never felt that the editor was too slow. My wife wrote a novel on our Osborne 1 (CP/M, Z80, 5 1.4 inch floppies) in Wordstar. Speed was never a problem for editing.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Bitmap rendering is incredibly fast. Old computers were so slow it was the only viable method.
    - kwhitefoot 4y ago
      So new computers are slow because it is no longer the only method? Do they spend a lot of time on each frame dithering over how to do it?
  - naasking 4y ago
    > It's amazing then how much writing of both code and prose I and many others did on machines that were much less capable than today's. Sure, on machines with low resolution screens with simple fonts and no anti-aliasing. I'm not saying accelerated graphics are necessary for text editors today, just that the context has changed considerably so the comparison isn't obviously fair.
    - CyberDildonics 4y ago
      Are you really trying to say that 100 times the pixels (and a lot less in a window that isn't full screen) cancels out 10,000-20,000 times the CPU power (per core)?
imiric 4y ago
Performance in text editors used for programming is important. If there's a delay between pressing a key and something happening, it's a worthwhile goal optimizing for that. Consider how many things can happen in modern editors with a single key stroke: changing large blocks of text, executing a macro, rendering syntax highlighting, communicating with an LSP server, rendering code completion, executing plugins, etc. All those things should happen in as few milliseconds as possible for the experience to be considered "responsive". I use Emacs on a daily basis, and even with the recent native compilation change and relatively few packages, some common actions feel noticeably slower than in Vim or other editors. Is this a dealbreaker? No, I made a conscious decision to get the flexibility of Emacs at the expense of performance, but I would jump at the opportunity to use something with the same featureset that _does_ prioritize performance. It's not about how productive it would make me, but how enjoyable the experience of using it would be.
Aeolun 4y ago
> Point being, performance is a weak selling point to switch text editors You’ve never worked with IntelliJ I see. If someone builds the exact same thing but any amount faster I’ll switch in a heartbeat. I’m using Zed more and more, even though it has barely any of the features I use, purely because it’s so fast.

Semaphor 4y ago

Most people use neither Emacs, nor Vim [citation needed, but I’d bet some money on it]. And for me, performance is most certainly a selling point. The main reason I use my windows text editor (EmEditor [0]) despite having no formatting and only barebones syntax highlighting, is that it’s faster than any other editor I’ve ever seen (though I think the large file handler tops out at 256 GB). Well, that and its superior CSV handling, though Notepad++ comes close with plugins ;) [0]: https://www.emeditor.com/ https://www.emeditor.com/

anticodon 4y ago
I've seen voting results on one of niche Linux sites, and was surprised that majority of users use vim/neovim or vim bindings in other editors/IDEs. But I'm pretty sure that most Windows users wouldn't use any editor resembling vim.
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  Visiting niche Linux sites often enough to take part in such a poll is probably introducing a very strong selection bias here.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

gigatexal 4y ago

Yeah -- while not mainstream compared to VSCode -- it'll take something very big and impactful to move me away from neovim + alacritty. It works amazingly well.

noloblo 4y ago
What is neovim + alacritty
- bloopernova 4y ago
  neovim is a fork of vim. https://neovim.io/ https://neovim.io/ alacritty is a terminal application. https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty
  - gigatexal 4y ago
    What blooper said. I use alacritty as a gpu-accelerated terminal and neovim plus the LSP stuff from VSCode
    - gazsp 4y ago
      I'm on Kitty + Lunarvim. Nice and fast / responsive.

z3t4 4y ago

Text rendering is very expensive. That's why you need hardware acceleration.

kwhitefoot 4y ago
It's amazing then how much writing of both code and prose I and many others did on machines that were much less capable than today's. I wrote considerable amounts of code on the Z80 Apple II add on in the early '80s and never felt that the editor was too slow. My wife wrote a novel on our Osborne 1 (CP/M, Z80, 5 1.4 inch floppies) in Wordstar. Speed was never a problem for editing.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Bitmap rendering is incredibly fast. Old computers were so slow it was the only viable method.
  - kwhitefoot 4y ago
    So new computers are slow because it is no longer the only method? Do they spend a lot of time on each frame dithering over how to do it?
- naasking 4y ago
  > It's amazing then how much writing of both code and prose I and many others did on machines that were much less capable than today's. Sure, on machines with low resolution screens with simple fonts and no anti-aliasing. I'm not saying accelerated graphics are necessary for text editors today, just that the context has changed considerably so the comparison isn't obviously fair.
  - CyberDildonics 4y ago
    Are you really trying to say that 100 times the pixels (and a lot less in a window that isn't full screen) cancels out 10,000-20,000 times the CPU power (per core)?

imiric 4y ago

Performance in text editors used for programming is important. If there's a delay between pressing a key and something happening, it's a worthwhile goal optimizing for that. Consider how many things can happen in modern editors with a single key stroke: changing large blocks of text, executing a macro, rendering syntax highlighting, communicating with an LSP server, rendering code completion, executing plugins, etc. All those things should happen in as few milliseconds as possible for the experience to be considered "responsive". I use Emacs on a daily basis, and even with the recent native compilation change and relatively few packages, some common actions feel noticeably slower than in Vim or other editors. Is this a dealbreaker? No, I made a conscious decision to get the flexibility of Emacs at the expense of performance, but I would jump at the opportunity to use something with the same featureset that _does_ prioritize performance. It's not about how productive it would make me, but how enjoyable the experience of using it would be.

Aeolun 4y ago

> Point being, performance is a weak selling point to switch text editors You’ve never worked with IntelliJ I see. If someone builds the exact same thing but any amount faster I’ll switch in a heartbeat. I’m using Zed more and more, even though it has barely any of the features I use, purely because it’s so fast.