The problem was the extension architecture, that they leaned into heavily. It encouraged basically every part of the system to interact with every other part of the system, like having free reign over the whole DOM. That’s what the creators meant by a “hackable” editor.
VS Code is much faster, largely because of its much more sane extension architecture. Extensions are much better isolated, with a much smaller API surface by which they can interact with the editor. And the LSP design means core IDE-like features can be lifted into a privileged part of the system, and implemented once with performance in mind, while the actual analysis is done asynchronously in subprocesses.
If you actually use both Atom and VS Code configured to feature parity, you would notice that VS Code is miles ahead of Atom. Microsoft did an amazing job proving that you can build complex performant software on Electron.
Yes, Electron 2.0.0 was a great update, but it’s not the reason for performance. The reason was better software architecture.
I hope it gets there. I was a sublime user until vs code’s integrations got so far ahead that the productivity gains outweighed the slowness, but I really want it to be faster.
Do zed plugins have to be written in rust? If they do then that will slow community contributions since it’s not as popular as JavaScript for vs code.
And yet vs code is barely slower than editors with practically no features. Silly thing to argue about, but it’s certainly very fast considering the featureset
extensions tend to be the slow part in my experience. after a couple heavy extensions on an already struggling work laptop I’ll frequently outpace it’s input handling and have to wait for it to catch up
Vs code will get annoyingly slow even in vanilla setups when editing large files. Personally I can tell the difference in did compared to sublime text even without plugins, it’s not enough to be too annoying which is why I was ok with switching, but it just feels better when it’s lighting fast since the input lag piles up in a text editor since you’re typing really quick the whole time.
They certainly can be. Admittedly over time I’ve installed a lot of extensions but also gotten better hardware along the way. All I know is that despite having like 20 extensions installed I can startup vs code in just 3-5 seconds
Depends on what you’re used before I guess. I came from sublime text which was written in C++ and was blazing fast. You could throw any size file at it, I still use it when I need to edit a large file. I can notice the input lag in vs code even in small files with a vanilla setup. After adding plugins the lag can become even more noticable and in certain use cases it straight up slows you down. It’s not so slow that it’s unusable, but it’s noticably slower, and leaves me desiring more speed. But speed alone isn’t enough, it needs really good plugins which is why I traded speedy sublime text for vs code in the first place.
If it were just millisecond advantages I would gladly use VSCode, but in large projects the difference is massive, it takes minutes to fully load a project and several seconds to perform certain actions.
Can confirm that’s it’s very fast. Just lacking plugins at the moment.
I will watch it with great interest
Sounds exactly like atom… until they killed atom
Atom was never fast
Exactly.
Atom being open source was why I switched to it from Sublime.
Atom’s shitty performance was why I switched away to VS Code.
It was Electrons problem. VSCode was basically Atom. When MS made Electron2 or whatever it got much faster.
It was not Electron’s problem.
The problem was the extension architecture, that they leaned into heavily. It encouraged basically every part of the system to interact with every other part of the system, like having free reign over the whole DOM. That’s what the creators meant by a “hackable” editor.
VS Code is much faster, largely because of its much more sane extension architecture. Extensions are much better isolated, with a much smaller API surface by which they can interact with the editor. And the LSP design means core IDE-like features can be lifted into a privileged part of the system, and implemented once with performance in mind, while the actual analysis is done asynchronously in subprocesses.
If you actually use both Atom and VS Code configured to feature parity, you would notice that VS Code is miles ahead of Atom. Microsoft did an amazing job proving that you can build complex performant software on Electron.
Yes, Electron 2.0.0 was a great update, but it’s not the reason for performance. The reason was better software architecture.
I hope it gets there. I was a sublime user until vs code’s integrations got so far ahead that the productivity gains outweighed the slowness, but I really want it to be faster.
Do zed plugins have to be written in rust? If they do then that will slow community contributions since it’s not as popular as JavaScript for vs code.
Vs code is slow? Literally the entire reason I switched to it years ago is because it’s very fast.
Yep, VSCode is slow because it is built on Electron which is just a another browser.
Aware. V8 is fast.
V8 is heavy
And yet vs code is barely slower than editors with practically no features. Silly thing to argue about, but it’s certainly very fast considering the featureset
VSCode is only fast if you’re comparing it to Atom.
extensions tend to be the slow part in my experience. after a couple heavy extensions on an already struggling work laptop I’ll frequently outpace it’s input handling and have to wait for it to catch up
Vs code will get annoyingly slow even in vanilla setups when editing large files. Personally I can tell the difference in did compared to sublime text even without plugins, it’s not enough to be too annoying which is why I was ok with switching, but it just feels better when it’s lighting fast since the input lag piles up in a text editor since you’re typing really quick the whole time.
They certainly can be. Admittedly over time I’ve installed a lot of extensions but also gotten better hardware along the way. All I know is that despite having like 20 extensions installed I can startup vs code in just 3-5 seconds
Depends on what you’re used before I guess. I came from sublime text which was written in C++ and was blazing fast. You could throw any size file at it, I still use it when I need to edit a large file. I can notice the input lag in vs code even in small files with a vanilla setup. After adding plugins the lag can become even more noticable and in certain use cases it straight up slows you down. It’s not so slow that it’s unusable, but it’s noticably slower, and leaves me desiring more speed. But speed alone isn’t enough, it needs really good plugins which is why I traded speedy sublime text for vs code in the first place.
VSCode is fine
Maybe for you. I personally am quite picky about tools I use all day every day.
Cool story. Same here. Did you want to get into an internet Snapfish at which tool has millisecond advantages over another?
If it were just millisecond advantages I would gladly use VSCode, but in large projects the difference is massive, it takes minutes to fully load a project and several seconds to perform certain actions.
How large are we talking?
Yeah, it’s fine, I said I use it didn’t I? But it’s just fine, so I’d prefer something even better.
Codium