4 ms·
The latency issue is very real. I work in Linux, Mac and Windows on fairly fast computers and programming in VSCode is so annoying because of the latency . On
by myth_drannon 3y ago
The latency issue is very real. I work in Linux, Mac and Windows on fairly fast computers and programming in VSCode is so annoying because of the latency .
On my 486 in Borland Turbo C++ ide, I click on a key and I see it instantaneous.
Of course if you never tried it, you wouldn't notice the difference and think I have some sort of OCD. But it is really noticable. I don't know if it's 100ms or 200 ms but there is a difference.
- gbear605 3y agoTrying any editor other than VSCode might help; it’s notoriously slow.
- myth_drannon 3y agoEmacs is the same. I'm not talking about slow loading time or changing tabs which I understand. It's the act of clicking on a key.
- 2b3a51 3y agoEmacs? Keyboard lag? Is that with some kind of LSP or other itegration? I find that Emacs keyboard responsiveness on text (on a 17 year old core duo laptop) is indistinguishable from vi or nano.
- kitsunesoba 3y agoWhat they're getting at is that the latency is caused by overhead from the OS and USB, increasing it across the board regardless of editor — each keystroke has more layers to pass through compared to a machine from the 70s, 80s, or 90s, plus USB by the nature of how it works unavoidably adds latency that's variable depending on CPU load, since USB is CPU-dependent. There's also more layers in the display stack, increasing the amount of time it takes for what's actually displayed on screen to match machine state. A Core 2 Duo era laptop specifically might not suffer as much as its desktop counterpart though, because laptops from that era often used PS/2 for their internal keyboard+trackpad connection and thus don't suffer USB latency increases unless the laptop's motherboard was doing something weird like implementing PS/2 via an onboard adapter attached to the USB bus.
- raron 3y agoWell, maybe web and javascript is not the best tool to create an IDE with. Do you feel the same latency with eg. Notepad++, Qt Creator, or Kate?
- thomastjeffery 3y agoGet a high refresh rate (<1ms latency) LCD/LED monitor. This is by far the most important. It took a while to catch up to CRT latency, and it's still sold as a niche product, but we are there. If you are in Linux, you may want to turn off your display compositor (KDE/XFCE), or use a lightweight xorg window manager like fluxbox or i3. This isn't necessary when using a fast GPU, but even then you may dislike animations. Use a text editor with a real GUI toolkit (not electron or similar) like emacs or gvim/nvim-qt. Unfortunately, emacs can struggle rendering syntax highlighting, but outside that it is lean and snappy. Hopefully the recent progress with tree-sitter will resolve that. I have met very few people who care about latency the way I do. I think most of it comes from my nostalgia of DOS-era computing. The most satisfying hardware purchase I have ever made is a good looking 2K IPS/VA 120hz/144hz+ freesync display. Millions of hours of my life experience were noticeably improved.
- kitsunesoba 3y agoI'm looking forward to the day that display tech, GPUs, and connection standards have gotten to the point that high PPI (@2x UI scaling) high refresh rate microLED displays are practical. It's going to be so nice to have text with as much contrast, cripsness, and accurate letterforms as print with as little latency as is possible on a modern system.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoIt's not as comfortable as print, due to backlighting, but you just described the phone screen I'm typing this comment on.