Live data from Hacker News

VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering

github.com

71–80 of 801 posts

Re: VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering

#71
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it be better to make native application Better in what way? The market has voted with their downloads, they don't agree that the problems with Electron apps are as bad as you feel that they are.

Are you kidding me? Look at the raw performances and benchmarks of Vim/Sublime/Emacs, compare it to VSCode and Atom and you will see. If you don't believe the numbers then use both side by side, open 250MB file in all of them and look at the screen. And I still see native editors used more (for example latest StackOverflow survey, showed that Notepad++, Vim and Sublime combined are used much much more than VScode and…

>If you don't believe the numbers then use both side by side, open 250MB file in all of them and look at the screen.

Maybe I don't have any 250MB files to open?

If VSCode doesn't fit your use case, don't use it. There are innumerable alternatives. But what purpose does it serve to tell the rest of us (who like it) that it sucks?

Re: VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering

#72
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it be better to make native application Better in what way? The market has voted with their downloads, they don't agree that the problems with Electron apps are as bad as you feel that they are.

Are you kidding me? Look at the raw performances and benchmarks of Vim/Sublime/Emacs, compare it to VSCode and Atom and you will see. If you don't believe the numbers then use both side by side, open 250MB file in all of them and look at the screen. And I still see native editors used more (for example latest StackOverflow survey, showed that Notepad++, Vim and Sublime combined are used much much more than VScode and…

GP: The market has voted with their downloads

You: But I prefer xyz! :(

You didn't respond to the argument. What you consider valuable doesn't align with the market.

Re: VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is OK for Notes or todo app, but text editor that is used by developers who tend to customize it with plugins and whatnot I think that is not viable option. But that's just my personal preference, maybe I am wrong...

VS Code IS a viable option. I use it daily basis and works great.

Seriously, coming from Visual Studio VSCode is a breeze of fresh performant air.

Anecdotally I was able to create the cursor problem by minimizing/showing the VSCode window while viewing CPU usage DESC in task manager, but the effect was only ~2% usage for me (i7 processor).

If one invisible (from a UX perspective) bug is VSCode's big performance problem then I'll gladly let it eat away at 2% of my CPU until it's fixed.

Re: VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering

#74
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it be better to make native application Better in what way? The market has voted with their downloads, they don't agree that the problems with Electron apps are as bad as you feel that they are.

Are you kidding me? Look at the raw performances and benchmarks of Vim/Sublime/Emacs, compare it to VSCode and Atom and you will see. If you don't believe the numbers then use both side by side, open 250MB file in all of them and look at the screen. And I still see native editors used more (for example latest StackOverflow survey, showed that Notepad++, Vim and Sublime combined are used much much more than VScode and…

I usually never deal with 250MB code files. The right tool for the right task. The Electron programs deal with code in a directory (and btw. VSCode is totally different beast than Atom) and I also would not edit a 250MB file with both of them. Never had a crushing VSCode here... but I always have a better Python and HTML and JS support than e.g. in Sublime+good plugins.

Re: VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering

#75

It just doesn't go in my head that we are building text editors inside a web browser! I get it, there are many good use cases for Electron and it's easy to get started with cross platform support, but why is everybody going crazy about text editors in them? Because you can write plugins in JS? Wouldn't it be better to make native application, especially for code editors, where developers spend most of their time, whe…

Yeah! We should go back to native editors, like Eclipse or IDEA!

Re: VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering

#76
post #11

This reminds me that as part of the Windows95 development effort, Microsoft disabled per-second updates of the taskbar clock to improve performance. Raymond Chen wrote a bit on it back in 2003: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031010-00/?p=...

I've made clocks before, and tried to either have them woken up when it's (almost) time to update - or have them sleep long enough that it'll be (almost) time to update. Only seems polite.

Re: VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering

#77
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it be better to make native application Better in what way? The market has voted with their downloads, they don't agree that the problems with Electron apps are as bad as you feel that they are.

Are you kidding me? Look at the raw performances and benchmarks of Vim/Sublime/Emacs, compare it to VSCode and Atom and you will see. If you don't believe the numbers then use both side by side, open 250MB file in all of them and look at the screen. And I still see native editors used more (for example latest StackOverflow survey, showed that Notepad++, Vim and Sublime combined are used much much more than VScode and…

raw performance doesn't matter for a text editor nearly as much as it used to. unless you are using a toaster oven to code. then I guess raw performance would become important.

but hey, at least you can write code on a toaster oven, eh?

All joking aside -- I use VS Code on a 7 year old laptop, and it doesn't lag, or stutter at all. Performance is just fine. There comes a point where the hardware greatly outstrips the requirements to the point where it doesn't matter if the resources being used seem 'too much' for what it does.

Re: VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering

#78

It just doesn't go in my head that we are building text editors inside a web browser! I get it, there are many good use cases for Electron and it's easy to get started with cross platform support, but why is everybody going crazy about text editors in them? Because you can write plugins in JS? Wouldn't it be better to make native application, especially for code editors, where developers spend most of their time, whe…

well if you've ever built a cross platform native desktop application, you will appreciate Electron. Java Swing. Never again. edit: Do people downvoting even know what it's like building cross platform desktop applications using Java Swing? It's fucking awful, and that's a fact. Even the end result UI design look & feel is butt ugly. Sure you can spice things up with JavaFX but why? Do you not realize how masochistic…

Swing was at least meant to do UI. Web stack is not; webapps are essentially a pile of ugly hacks on top of a document rendering engine, and it really, really shows - especially when you have webapps pretending to be native (e.g. webview-based apps on mobile).

Also, for Java there's JavaFX (a de-facto standard UI toolkit for Java), which is very nice to work with.

Re: VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering

#79
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. We quickly forget what those CPU cycles and abundant of RAM consumes electricity => heating the planet.

The real issue is cooling the universe and accelerating us to the inevitabile heat death :(

Quick, produce more heat!

Re: VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering

#80
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it be better to make native application Better in what way? The market has voted with their downloads, they don't agree that the problems with Electron apps are as bad as you feel that they are.

Are you kidding me? Look at the raw performances and benchmarks of Vim/Sublime/Emacs, compare it to VSCode and Atom and you will see. If you don't believe the numbers then use both side by side, open 250MB file in all of them and look at the screen. And I still see native editors used more (for example latest StackOverflow survey, showed that Notepad++, Vim and Sublime combined are used much much more than VScode and…

This might mark the first time in history that Emacs was trotted out as an example of a performant editor.

I say this as an Emacs user.

Post reply on HN