13 ms·

> and to be honest, I think their technical choice of going for Javascript will be their ultimate downfall, but that's a discussion for another day I'd like to

> and to be honest, I think their technical choice of going for Javascript will be their ultimate downfall, but that's a discussion for another day I'd like to see this discussion today ;)

adrusi 12y ago
It's not javascript. Modern javascript engines (like v8 which powers Atom) are well beyond fast enough. GC can cause occasional latency if the programmer is lackadaisical with allocations, but with care it's a non-issue. But Atom simply will not achieve performance competitive with Sublime while they are using the DOM. The DOM is too general-purpose for what is almost always just a grid of monospaced text. The overhead introduced by allowing plugins to render entire webpages inline with the text is just too much. I want so very much to like Atom --- a Free text editor that isn't vim or emacs and is actually powerful enough to replace them, but the imperceivable latency manifests as a gradual accumulation of stress.
- jlongster 12y ago
  So much this. The DOM is absolutely going to be the bottleneck more than JavaScript. I can't really provide any concrete benchmarks to support this because its a very complex topic, and you can really only come to that conclusion after trying to optimize the DOM for something as critical as a text editor.
- vbit 12y ago
  Just curious - why replace vim or emacs?
  - pmontra 12y ago
    Don't tell me, because I use both (mainly emacs), but maybe is to do something like this https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BITBUCKET/Edit+online https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BITBUCKET/Edit+onli... It can be strategic even if limited to quick edits and for some subsets of the repository now. Anyway I can think of a GitHub augmented with an IDE and integrated with a CI and CD system with deployment to a Heroku. It could let you write code from pretty everywhere, occasionally even on a tablet or a large phone. Somebody will use it.
    - couchand 12y ago
      GitHub has been slowly tricking me into doing more and more of those quick edits on their site. If they can work Atom in as seamlessly as their other updates I'm sold. Somehow I'm still circumspect.
  - crazychrome 12y ago
    emacs doesn't have decent support of jsx: the jsx-mode is actually for another tech with same name, the js2-mode is great except xml support. i love vim a lot (use evil in emacs), except vimscript. I hope oneday I could use neovim with atom/st2 as frontend.
    - mrkipling 12y ago
      I use web-mode to edit JSX. It's not bad at all actually - the indentation and highlighting are there. I've started using web-mode for its intended purpose, too (when editing templates that have CSS and JS snippets).
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Maybe I am too old to get this, but the idea of keeping bending the browser for native applications just doesn't make sense.
  - michaelt 12y ago
    Browsers give you cross-platform windowing. Without having installers that include adware (Java) or that seem borderline-unsupported (X11/Quartz) or that require funny multi-stage compiling (Qt).
    - PlzSnow 12y ago
      But that means the technology is being chosen to suit the developer, and not the end-user.
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      > Without having installers that include adware (Java) Only for developers that aren't savvy enough to know the multiple options to bundle the runtime or compile to native code. Or the users that don't install Java from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre8-downloads-2133155.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre8... or can't be bothered to read a dialog box. > or that seem borderline-unsupported (X11/Quartz) Since when is Quartz unsupported? > or that require funny multi-stage compiling (Qt). Since when do users compile GUI frameworks? Cross platform UI is nothing new, there are much more options to choose from than those you listed, and browsers can hardly offer more than a 90's GUI experience.
      - lobster_johnson 12y ago
        > Since when is Quartz unsupported? I think he was referring to X11.app — aka XQuartz — which has not been supported or included in OS X since 10.6 (Mountain Lion).
    - lmm 12y ago
      Qt only requires funny multi-stage compiling in C++. If you use it from Python it all just works.
- amarsahinovic 12y ago
  >"Free text editor that isn't vim or emacs and is actually powerful enough to replace them" Maybe not powerful enough to replace them but still worth a look http://foicica.com/textadept/ http://foicica.com/textadept/

> and to be honest, I think their technical choice of going for Javascript will be their ultimate downfall, but that's a discussion for another day I'd like to see this discussion today ;)

adrusi 12y ago

It's not javascript. Modern javascript engines (like v8 which powers Atom) are well beyond fast enough. GC can cause occasional latency if the programmer is lackadaisical with allocations, but with care it's a non-issue. But Atom simply will not achieve performance competitive with Sublime while they are using the DOM. The DOM is too general-purpose for what is almost always just a grid of monospaced text. The overhead introduced by allowing plugins to render entire webpages inline with the text is just too much. I want so very much to like Atom --- a Free text editor that isn't vim or emacs and is actually powerful enough to replace them, but the imperceivable latency manifests as a gradual accumulation of stress.

jlongster 12y ago
So much this. The DOM is absolutely going to be the bottleneck more than JavaScript. I can't really provide any concrete benchmarks to support this because its a very complex topic, and you can really only come to that conclusion after trying to optimize the DOM for something as critical as a text editor.
vbit 12y ago
Just curious - why replace vim or emacs?
- pmontra 12y ago
  Don't tell me, because I use both (mainly emacs), but maybe is to do something like this https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BITBUCKET/Edit+online https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BITBUCKET/Edit+onli... It can be strategic even if limited to quick edits and for some subsets of the repository now. Anyway I can think of a GitHub augmented with an IDE and integrated with a CI and CD system with deployment to a Heroku. It could let you write code from pretty everywhere, occasionally even on a tablet or a large phone. Somebody will use it.
  - couchand 12y ago
    GitHub has been slowly tricking me into doing more and more of those quick edits on their site. If they can work Atom in as seamlessly as their other updates I'm sold. Somehow I'm still circumspect.
- crazychrome 12y ago
  emacs doesn't have decent support of jsx: the jsx-mode is actually for another tech with same name, the js2-mode is great except xml support. i love vim a lot (use evil in emacs), except vimscript. I hope oneday I could use neovim with atom/st2 as frontend.
  - mrkipling 12y ago
    I use web-mode to edit JSX. It's not bad at all actually - the indentation and highlighting are there. I've started using web-mode for its intended purpose, too (when editing templates that have CSS and JS snippets).
pjmlp 12y ago
Maybe I am too old to get this, but the idea of keeping bending the browser for native applications just doesn't make sense.
- michaelt 12y ago
  Browsers give you cross-platform windowing. Without having installers that include adware (Java) or that seem borderline-unsupported (X11/Quartz) or that require funny multi-stage compiling (Qt).
  - PlzSnow 12y ago
    But that means the technology is being chosen to suit the developer, and not the end-user.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    > Without having installers that include adware (Java) Only for developers that aren't savvy enough to know the multiple options to bundle the runtime or compile to native code. Or the users that don't install Java from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre8-downloads-2133155.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre8... or can't be bothered to read a dialog box. > or that seem borderline-unsupported (X11/Quartz) Since when is Quartz unsupported? > or that require funny multi-stage compiling (Qt). Since when do users compile GUI frameworks? Cross platform UI is nothing new, there are much more options to choose from than those you listed, and browsers can hardly offer more than a 90's GUI experience.
    - lobster_johnson 12y ago
      > Since when is Quartz unsupported? I think he was referring to X11.app — aka XQuartz — which has not been supported or included in OS X since 10.6 (Mountain Lion).
  - lmm 12y ago
    Qt only requires funny multi-stage compiling in C++. If you use it from Python it all just works.
amarsahinovic 12y ago
>"Free text editor that isn't vim or emacs and is actually powerful enough to replace them" Maybe not powerful enough to replace them but still worth a look http://foicica.com/textadept/ http://foicica.com/textadept/