5 ms·

"and text editors have an insanely high bar to clear in terms of performance and responsiveness" For some reason that sentence really bothers me. Not because o

"and text editors have an insanely high bar to clear in terms of performance and responsiveness" For some reason that sentence really bothers me. Not because our standards are so high for text editors. But because they're so low for damn near everything else.

NhanH 12y ago
It might have something to do with the demographics. Text editor users are developers, power users, or at the very least, very tech savvy (there is also the other extreme of the spectrum, people who know nothing better, but you get my point). With that demographics, we (at least I know I do) tend to be more picky. The majority of people are content with coffee-making-loading-time for their OS, and the slug that is called Microsoft Word or Adobe Reader.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  MS Word is pretty responsive as an editor. Adobe Reader isn't even an editor.
- veidr 12y ago
  I'm not a fan, but Microsoft Word 2013 is massively more performant than Atom, at any basic task that both programs do (launching, opening files, find/replace, etc).
rtpg 12y ago
For this sort of thing, with a fixed amount of developer time: - Performance - Stability - Actually working you can pick 2. Also, if you pick performace, 50% of the time you can only pick 1. Everything is a tradeoff but it's a lot easier to sell something slow than to sell something that doesn't work, and a lot of the performance costs are due to general techniques encoded in these frameworks that reduce bugs. Another thing is that things do get faster. I think V8 has gotten 10x faster (at least) on real code since its inception. And that's despite JS not having changed.
- forrestthewoods 12y ago
  Sublime Text is all three.
  - couchand 12y ago
    vim has been all three for twenty years.
    - tinco 12y ago
      Vim is not performant. Try scrolling in Vim, then try scrolling in Sublime.
      - mackwic 12y ago
        Seems fine on my >500Go aggregated log file. Scroll line by line with no issues. Sed and matching is near instant. What's the issue ?
        tinco 12y ago
        I'm not sure why you would open a log file with vim, but that's besides the issue. The issue is with 500 line files. Open one up in Sublime and one in Vim. If you only use Vim you'll never discover what it to means to have a performant editor (I've used Vim for ~10yrs and still regularly do).
        elektronjunge 12y ago
        I have no idea what you are talking about. I opened a 26,000 line file (no I don't want to talk about it). In vim it opened instantly and my scrolling was only limited by my key repeat rate. The scrolling isn't as smooth looking because vim doesn't animate the scrolling between lines. Sublime took 2 seconds to open the same file, and scrolling was smooth. Maybe you are using to many vim plugins? I'll admit vim plugins are a real problem, the gui rendering desperately needs to be moved to its own thread.
DennisP 12y ago
My first text editor was usable on a machine 300,000 times slower with a million times less RAM. It bothers me that text editor performance is ever considered challenging at all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second#Timeline_of_instructions_per_second http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second#Timelin...
- nine_k 12y ago
  It's probably possible to build a text editor using JS that would be usable in Netscape 4 on a 8 MB machine under Windows 3.1. What Atom's authors aim is not just being usable; the try to make it comfortable. This a rather higher bar.

NhanH 12y ago

It might have something to do with the demographics. Text editor users are developers, power users, or at the very least, very tech savvy (there is also the other extreme of the spectrum, people who know nothing better, but you get my point). With that demographics, we (at least I know I do) tend to be more picky. The majority of people are content with coffee-making-loading-time for their OS, and the slug that is called Microsoft Word or Adobe Reader.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
MS Word is pretty responsive as an editor. Adobe Reader isn't even an editor.
veidr 12y ago
I'm not a fan, but Microsoft Word 2013 is massively more performant than Atom, at any basic task that both programs do (launching, opening files, find/replace, etc).

rtpg 12y ago

For this sort of thing, with a fixed amount of developer time: - Performance - Stability - Actually working you can pick 2. Also, if you pick performace, 50% of the time you can only pick 1. Everything is a tradeoff but it's a lot easier to sell something slow than to sell something that doesn't work, and a lot of the performance costs are due to general techniques encoded in these frameworks that reduce bugs. Another thing is that things do get faster. I think V8 has gotten 10x faster (at least) on real code since its inception. And that's despite JS not having changed.

forrestthewoods 12y ago
Sublime Text is all three.
- couchand 12y ago
  vim has been all three for twenty years.
  - tinco 12y ago
    Vim is not performant. Try scrolling in Vim, then try scrolling in Sublime.
    - mackwic 12y ago
      Seems fine on my >500Go aggregated log file. Scroll line by line with no issues. Sed and matching is near instant. What's the issue ?
      - tinco 12y ago
        I'm not sure why you would open a log file with vim, but that's besides the issue. The issue is with 500 line files. Open one up in Sublime and one in Vim. If you only use Vim you'll never discover what it to means to have a performant editor (I've used Vim for ~10yrs and still regularly do).
        elektronjunge 12y ago
        I have no idea what you are talking about. I opened a 26,000 line file (no I don't want to talk about it). In vim it opened instantly and my scrolling was only limited by my key repeat rate. The scrolling isn't as smooth looking because vim doesn't animate the scrolling between lines. Sublime took 2 seconds to open the same file, and scrolling was smooth. Maybe you are using to many vim plugins? I'll admit vim plugins are a real problem, the gui rendering desperately needs to be moved to its own thread.

DennisP 12y ago

My first text editor was usable on a machine 300,000 times slower with a million times less RAM. It bothers me that text editor performance is ever considered challenging at all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second#Timeline_of_instructions_per_second http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second#Timelin...

nine_k 12y ago
It's probably possible to build a text editor using JS that would be usable in Netscape 4 on a 8 MB machine under Windows 3.1. What Atom's authors aim is not just being usable; the try to make it comfortable. This a rather higher bar.