7 ms·
I assume the new syntax highlighter is way, way faster than pygments. It's written in C++ rather than Python. (Atom uses the same grammar format, but a Node imp
by cespare 12y ago
I assume the new syntax highlighter is way, way faster than pygments. It's written in C++ rather than Python. (Atom uses the same grammar format, but a Node implementation.)
- walterbell 12y agoWhy not give existing users the choice of migration and timing?
- scott_karana 12y agoGiving users the choice of "slow" in a webapp means that both hardware and software deployment/management/purchasing is greatly complicated.
- walterbell 12y agoExisting users are being served by existing hardware and software. It wasn't "slow" for them before. Many companies provide existing users with advance notice of technology migration, so they can plan and adapt. Why is advance customer notice incompatible with Github ops planning?
- __david__ 12y agoIt's not like they broke git, or some actual important interface. They stopped syntax highlighting on non mainstream languages until new lexers can be written. What on earth would you as a customer have done if they had said, "syntax highlighting in the browser for <your-favorite-language> is going to go away in a week"? Are you going to migrate away from github? Or shrug and say, "bummer"? Github did the most efficient thing: break it and let the people who actually care fix it.
- walterbell 12y ago> It's not like they broke git, or some actual important interface Does the vendor or the customer decide what's important to the customer?
- JetSpiegel 12y agoGitHub is free, the repo owners are not the customer.
- lmm 12y agoMany of us are paying GitHub for private repos.
- technomancy 12y agoSeems unlikely that this is true for the affected languages like Racket though.
- soegaard 12y agoI for one am a paying customer :-)
- username223 12y ago"Web 2.0: don't like it? Tough shit." That's the nice thing about actual software with actual versions that you actually install: it doesn't change out from under you at someone else's whim. No sane person would use a "Cloud" C compiler. Of course, GitHub is just a mashup of online backup and Facebook, so it doesn't matter if it breaks.
- walterbell 12y agoDear downvoters, have you heard of the Streisand effect? This thread now has the most downvotes (-14) of the many comments I've posted on HN. There is nothing factually incorrect in my posts. Why does this question deserve five downvotes? > Why not give existing users the choice of migration and timing? Edit: -20 downvotes. Previous record was -3.
- skrebbel 12y agoPeople are downvoting you because you're bikeshedding like a madman. The post I'm replying to will soon be downvoted too, because you're whining about getting downvoted.
- walterbell 12y agoThanks for the explanation, and the new word.
- skrebbel 12y agoHere to help :-)
- Buge 12y agoThis situation is very different from the Streisand effect. In the Streisand effect a single party is trying silence everyone else. Here everyone is trying to silence you. They are nearly opposite situations. A minority trying to silence a majority vs a majority trying to silence a minority. In both situations the majority wins.
- walterbell 12y agoThat is true if all downvoters are independent. Keep in mind that HN has cultural norms for downvoting, it is explicitly not for "silencing" opinions.
- DanBC 12y ago
- dhaivatpandya 12y agoI don't think it is necessary for Github to provide choice for this sort of thing. It isn't a ground-breaking, massive change to their main product. To me, it seems like an unnecessary choice that would only create confusion and make their product more difficult to navigate and use.
- cremno 12y agoYour assumption is correct. The blog post links to an issue in which an official statement (and a graph) can be found: https://github.com/github/linguist/issues/1717#issuecomment-63681177 https://github.com/github/linguist/issues/1717#issuecomment-... >By using TextMate grammars we also get some nice features like highlighting SQL inside Ruby heredocs. But the main motivation was improving performance.
- joemaller1 12y agoMost important link in this thread.
- wbond 12y agoWhat is actually being used for syntax highlighting now? Linguist doesn't appear to contain any C++.
- lexcorvus 12y agoThe new highlighter may be faster, but is syntax highlighting frequently a bottleneck at GitHub? That seems unlikely.
- pjc50 12y agoGiven the discussion going on at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8650952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8650952 , this sounds like it might also increase the risk of exploit.