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Atom 1.6 Released with Pending Pane Items, Async Git and Top and Bottom Bar API

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Re: Atom 1.6 Released with Pending Pane Items, Async Git and Top and Bottom Bar API

#101

Post by altano »

voltagex_ wrote: post #38
DigitalSea wrote: post #30

The new features and updates are great, but the one thing holding me back from using it is the fact it is extremely slow and laden with performance issues. Anyone who has ever attempted to open a file with a lot of lines of code will attest to the fact that Atom has issues. Ironically, Microsoft's open source Visual Studio Code editor is based in part of some aspects of Atom and it has exceptional performance and is…

I've been trying to work out what makes VSC so much faster than Atom. Whatever magic Microsoft did really needs to make it back upstream because it'll make using Electron-based apps much less frustrating.

This is a common misconception. Electron is a really tiny slice of these two text editors. Atom and VS Code are text editors and they have completely different code bases for the text editing, so there isn't anything that can be moved upstream.

Monaco, the text editor at the heart of VS Code, is just a lot better (and older and more mature) than Atom's. Perhaps Atom will eventually catch up or simply switch over to Monaco.

Re: Atom 1.6 Released with Pending Pane Items, Async Git and Top and Bottom Bar API

#102

Post by riscy »

skybrian wrote: post #97
riscy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> went through a few files (each with 500-1000 LOC), did some editing and... didn't have a single problem with performance. Pfft, 1000 lines of code? If Atom couldn't handle tiny files like that, you couldn't even call it an editor. Try working with a 10-20k+ line file (very common for me when looking at compiler output) and your heart will skip a beat when you realize that you had unsaved changes in another file bef…

Like the doctor said, if it hurts when you do that, don't do that. I use Atom for reading source code because there's a language-specific plugin I like (for Dart). I also use Sublime for looking at output logs when I don't care about IDE-like features, and occasionally emacs or vi from the terminal.

Yea, that's basically what I'm doing now. My larger files are auto-generated source code so all I want is syntax highlighting. I'd like to use Atom for everything because it's pretty slick otherwise, but it's not there yet.

Re: Atom 1.6 Released with Pending Pane Items, Async Git and Top and Bottom Bar API

#103

Post by spdustin »

hacker_9 wrote: post #77
drylight wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should believe them and others on here. Atom is slow. No way around it. If you or others say that it's fine, then you're suffering from Stockholm syndrome, having been taken in to the cult of Atom.

Did you not read my original post? I only just downloaded Atom for the first time.

So, no "real world" assortment of plugins for today's multilingual developer? Is that a valid assumption?

Re: Atom 1.6 Released with Pending Pane Items, Async Git and Top and Bottom Bar API

#104

Post by spdustin »

tbrock wrote: post #96
modulus1 wrote: post #32

Lack of MRU tab switching and preview tabs are two reasons I haven't switched from sublime. Glad they are listening to requests.

Dude read the change log, this is explicitly added in the new 1.7 beta.

I believe he knows that, was acknowledging that those issues were blockers in the past, and complimented the devs for listening to requests like his.

Re: Atom 1.6 Released with Pending Pane Items, Async Git and Top and Bottom Bar API

#105

Post by Klathmon »

SwellJoe wrote: post #33
melling wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sublime is written in C++ while Atom is written in JavaScript. Atom is going to be slow by design. Emacs uses 'slow" elisp to implement major functionality, but the critical functionality is written in C. Perhaps that approach could be taken with Atom?

Given that VSCode is fast on the same Electron core also written in JavaScript, I think it's a lazy approach to simply dismiss it as, "Must be JavaScript! Case closed!" And, there have been editors written in a variety of higher level languages for decades, many that are slower than JavaScript, that aren't (as) slow as Atom. There's more to it than language choice.

I'm convinced it has something to do with the syntax highlighting.

Disable that, and it runs flawlessly on 10+GB files.

I looked into it a bit a few weeks ago but got distracted. It uses regex and many of the statements could be improved. Plus they use a fairly off the wall regex engine that has pretty poor performance but they use it because it supports every damn encoding under the sun.

I think if that can be figured out, the only "sluggish" part left will be startup (which IMO is acceptable at this point, but improvements would always be welcome)

Re: Atom 1.6 Released with Pending Pane Items, Async Git and Top and Bottom Bar API

#106

Post by PeCaN »

voltagex_ wrote: post #38
DigitalSea wrote: post #30

The new features and updates are great, but the one thing holding me back from using it is the fact it is extremely slow and laden with performance issues. Anyone who has ever attempted to open a file with a lot of lines of code will attest to the fact that Atom has issues. Ironically, Microsoft's open source Visual Studio Code editor is based in part of some aspects of Atom and it has exceptional performance and is…

I've been trying to work out what makes VSC so much faster than Atom. Whatever magic Microsoft did really needs to make it back upstream because it'll make using Electron-based apps much less frustrating.

Yeah. I thought building a text editor in a web shell was incredibly stupid until I tried VSC. It's still more memory hungry than I'd like, but it's really fast—as fast as Vim for me (but noticeably slower than NeoVim).

Did MS actually modify Electron, did they just write better JS, or some of both?

Re: Atom 1.6 Released with Pending Pane Items, Async Git and Top and Bottom Bar API

#107

Post by PeCaN »

hacker_9 wrote: post #72
mrcwinn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, completely wrong. I have a 32GB i7-4790K at around 4Ghz or so, and Atom is a complete dog. The painful truth is that a webview is never going to beat a native app at this kind of task. It's not a vocal minority. Atom is painful to use compared to, say, Sublime.

You expect me to believe that with those specs Atom really runs like a 'complete dog'? The fact you also mention Sublime too really just tells me that your opinion was biased from the start. Finally, JIT compiled languages can be just as fast as native, simply because they can optimise to your hardware specs. You are getting mixed up as to why things are the way they are; JavaScript is a dynamically typed language, s…

For the record, I have the same CPU as him but with 16GB of RAM and Atom is obnoxiously slow for me.

Never used Sublime, but I am biased towards Vim ;-)

Re: Atom 1.6 Released with Pending Pane Items, Async Git and Top and Bottom Bar API

#108

Post by jasonbarone »

Has anyone given Atom a lengthy comparison in performance on a Macbook Retina versus non-retina machines?

I've owned 3 Macbook Retinas to date and every single one has had sluggish behavior in many apps. Google Chrome and Electron apps seem to fall into that mix for me. I've yet to give Atom a lengthy test on a non-retina machine, but I can say that I definitely get the performance issues with Atom in regards to app and document behavior and type latency. Plugins just make it even worse. In fact, some plugins like linters and live markdown preview bring Atom to a point where it's literally unusable.

What the Atom contributors have done is quite amazing and the app has come a long way. I'd go as far as saying it has everything I want in an editor for a front end developer. I would use it as my primary editor if the type latency could disappear.

As of right now I basically just keep Atom up to date with my SublimeText preferences and give it a try on each release.

Re: Atom 1.6 Released with Pending Pane Items, Async Git and Top and Bottom Bar API

#109

Post by pedalpete »

Seems like the biggest complaints are around performance. I'm assuming Atom (and VS Code, etc) are using asm.js or some other library to get them close to native performance. Anybody have thoughts on that? or am I completely wrong?

Re: Atom 1.6 Released with Pending Pane Items, Async Git and Top and Bottom Bar API

#110

Post by voltagex_ »

PeCaN wrote: post #106
voltagex_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to work out what makes VSC so much faster than Atom. Whatever magic Microsoft did really needs to make it back upstream because it'll make using Electron-based apps much less frustrating.

Yeah. I thought building a text editor in a web shell was incredibly stupid until I tried VSC. It's still more memory hungry than I'd like, but it's really fast—as fast as Vim for me (but noticeably slower than NeoVim). Did MS actually modify Electron, did they just write better JS, or some of both?

The reply above yours seems to think it's "just" Electron with better JS, but I'm pretty sure Atom doesn't have DirectX acceleration ;)
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