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It's a bit theoretical because no editors exist that are smaller that do all of what vs code does. And a lot of what it does relies heavily on the notion that i

It's a bit theoretical because no editors exist that are smaller that do all of what vs code does. And a lot of what it does relies heavily on the notion that it's running in a browser. So, just tossing that out won't fly since you kind of need it for at least some of the features. It's only when you subjectively remove all the features that you don't care about that it becomes doable to make smaller editors. And that's fine. But you can't have your cake and eat it. The reason most people don't care is because it simply doesn't matter. Not even a little bit. Laptops are cheap. Memory is cheap. CPU is cheap. Your time is not. And it takes investing your time to make this stuff more optimal and faster. And VS code just does a lot of nice things that make you more productive. I use Intellij myself which uses even more resources. But it's a bit smarter and saves me even more time. The point with both is that you lose more than you gain by replacing them with something faster. It's not worth it. My first computer was a commodore 64, so I'm well aware what that thing could do (and couldn't do). I'm writing this on a M1 macbook. Orders of magnitudes faster, doing things I could not imagine back when I had a commodore 64, etc. You can have one second hand / refurbished for next to nothing. Basically below my day rate when I'm consulting.

bigstrat2003 3y ago
My time is free. I'm not going to see a dime for any time I save by using this tool or that tool on my computer. Hardware, on the other hand, is not free, so I prefer to sacrifice time for being able to use less expensive hardware (within reason). Of course, Sublime Text exists and does everything I want from VSCode at a fraction of the hardware usage. So I don't have to choose one or the other, because actual good software exists.
- boomlinde 3y ago
  Consider an economy of time, where you have a finite amount of time to spend, so that time spent on one thing is time not spent on another thing. If you can spend money (or maybe earn less money) to avoid spending time doing things that are uninteresting, boring or unproductive, you are allowing yourself to spend more time on things that are interesting, fun or productive.
- saagarjha 3y ago
  If your time is free I think you're devaluing yourself ;)
vidarh 3y ago
Next to nothing of what VS code does depends on it running in a browser other than to the extent VS Code has made it so. It's not special. If anything it's one of the most clunky editor I've used because it tries to shoehorn everything into a convoluted UI. It's because my time matters to me I avoid VS Code as much as possible. The problem with VS Code is not that it's too slow, or too memory hungry. It could use far less, sure. And it could do so without losing any of the things about it that makes me dislike it.
- nox101 3y ago
  there are other advantages to running in the browser. The fact that the editor is written in JavaScript/Typescript html/css means it runs in any browser. It's why there's been an explosion of online IDEs like codesandbox.io, stackblitz, github codespaces, google code cloud, repl.it and 100s of others.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  Markdown and html, image, and other previews, documentation, connectivity, it's a lot more than you think. If you don't like it, use something else of course. But there are valid reasons for it being browser based and a lot of people choose to use it at this point.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    None of which requires VS code itself to be browser based, and of which do not benefit much from using a browser. A lot of people choosing to use it is besides the point being made, which is not that people won't use it, but that it could be a lot leaner without sacrificing functionality.
maccard 3y ago
Back in 2014 my company switched from Skype to this hot new tool called Slack for messaging. On my £10,000 workstation with dual xeon processors, 64GB memory and a 1TB SSD, you know what was the second most resource intensive app after my c++ compiler, and above my IDE? Slack. We used to close our chat program to compile to save the 1GB memory it was using. > It's a bit theoretical because no editors exist that are smaller that do all of what vs code does You can't ever compare two things if you look for all features to match. Sublime is a pretty good comparison - it's wicked fast, has a bunch of the same features and language extensions. Emacs handles unicode just fine and has a huge extension surface area. > The reason most people don't care is because it simply doesn't matter Hard disagree here - the reason people don't care is because features sell, and as you said, the alternative option isn't there. I work in Unreal Engine most of the time, and about 3-4 years ago, there was an almost overnight exodus of game programmers who would live and die by Visual Studio who switched to Rider, primarily because it was faster than VS+VAX. > Laptops are cheap. Memory is cheap. CPU is cheap. Your time is not This only applies with one application. Now add Slack/Teams, Postman, Outlook, FF/Chrome, Spotify in the mix, and all of a sudden I'm running 6 full web browsers duplicated with all their resources isolated, using more menoey and CPU than Intellij does. I'm fine with Intellij pegging my 32 core thread ripper to index millions of lines of code. I'm less fine with Postman using more CPU than Intellij to display a json document. > Im writing this on a M1 macbook Depending on what software you're working on, your users aren't using M1 Macbookd. My partner's work machine is a5 year old i3 with 8GB of RAM. It's borderline unusable with teams and Outlook running IMO. But the person who benchmarks teams is doing so on the M1 MacBook.
- dist-epoch 3y ago
  Since your time is so valuable and you are obviously very upset about this, your company should pay Spotify to write a more efficient app. Or your company should buy you a new 96 core Threadripper 1 TB RAM system so that when you use Spotify/Slack/Postman it doesn't impact your productivity.
  - maccard 3y ago
    If your only response is a personal attack, don't say anything at all.

bigstrat2003 3y ago

My time is free. I'm not going to see a dime for any time I save by using this tool or that tool on my computer. Hardware, on the other hand, is not free, so I prefer to sacrifice time for being able to use less expensive hardware (within reason). Of course, Sublime Text exists and does everything I want from VSCode at a fraction of the hardware usage. So I don't have to choose one or the other, because actual good software exists.

boomlinde 3y ago
Consider an economy of time, where you have a finite amount of time to spend, so that time spent on one thing is time not spent on another thing. If you can spend money (or maybe earn less money) to avoid spending time doing things that are uninteresting, boring or unproductive, you are allowing yourself to spend more time on things that are interesting, fun or productive.
saagarjha 3y ago
If your time is free I think you're devaluing yourself ;)

vidarh 3y ago

Next to nothing of what VS code does depends on it running in a browser other than to the extent VS Code has made it so. It's not special. If anything it's one of the most clunky editor I've used because it tries to shoehorn everything into a convoluted UI. It's because my time matters to me I avoid VS Code as much as possible. The problem with VS Code is not that it's too slow, or too memory hungry. It could use far less, sure. And it could do so without losing any of the things about it that makes me dislike it.

nox101 3y ago
there are other advantages to running in the browser. The fact that the editor is written in JavaScript/Typescript html/css means it runs in any browser. It's why there's been an explosion of online IDEs like codesandbox.io, stackblitz, github codespaces, google code cloud, repl.it and 100s of others.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Markdown and html, image, and other previews, documentation, connectivity, it's a lot more than you think. If you don't like it, use something else of course. But there are valid reasons for it being browser based and a lot of people choose to use it at this point.
- vidarh 3y ago
  None of which requires VS code itself to be browser based, and of which do not benefit much from using a browser. A lot of people choosing to use it is besides the point being made, which is not that people won't use it, but that it could be a lot leaner without sacrificing functionality.

maccard 3y ago

Back in 2014 my company switched from Skype to this hot new tool called Slack for messaging. On my £10,000 workstation with dual xeon processors, 64GB memory and a 1TB SSD, you know what was the second most resource intensive app after my c++ compiler, and above my IDE? Slack. We used to close our chat program to compile to save the 1GB memory it was using. > It's a bit theoretical because no editors exist that are smaller that do all of what vs code does You can't ever compare two things if you look for all features to match. Sublime is a pretty good comparison - it's wicked fast, has a bunch of the same features and language extensions. Emacs handles unicode just fine and has a huge extension surface area. > The reason most people don't care is because it simply doesn't matter Hard disagree here - the reason people don't care is because features sell, and as you said, the alternative option isn't there. I work in Unreal Engine most of the time, and about 3-4 years ago, there was an almost overnight exodus of game programmers who would live and die by Visual Studio who switched to Rider, primarily because it was faster than VS+VAX. > Laptops are cheap. Memory is cheap. CPU is cheap. Your time is not This only applies with one application. Now add Slack/Teams, Postman, Outlook, FF/Chrome, Spotify in the mix, and all of a sudden I'm running 6 full web browsers duplicated with all their resources isolated, using more menoey and CPU than Intellij does. I'm fine with Intellij pegging my 32 core thread ripper to index millions of lines of code. I'm less fine with Postman using more CPU than Intellij to display a json document. > Im writing this on a M1 macbook Depending on what software you're working on, your users aren't using M1 Macbookd. My partner's work machine is a5 year old i3 with 8GB of RAM. It's borderline unusable with teams and Outlook running IMO. But the person who benchmarks teams is doing so on the M1 MacBook.

dist-epoch 3y ago
Since your time is so valuable and you are obviously very upset about this, your company should pay Spotify to write a more efficient app. Or your company should buy you a new 96 core Threadripper 1 TB RAM system so that when you use Spotify/Slack/Postman it doesn't impact your productivity.
- maccard 3y ago
  If your only response is a personal attack, don't say anything at all.