Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I Still Use Vim

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 112 posts

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#51

Post by pluma »

lvoudour wrote: post #39
pluma wrote: post #14

This article implies the differences matter. Nope, sorry, the conveniences of VSCode are worth the "cost" for me. I have 32 gigs of RAM and the time I spend opening files doesn't register compared to the time I spend writing or reading code. I do wonder whether the measurements take the base overhead of each editor into account. Do the numbers represent the use per file or the total for the file plus the entire app?

>This article implies the differences matter[...]I have 32 gigs I'm glad it works for you but not everyone is willing or has the budget to max out their system's memory in order to run text editors and chat applications. You can run multiple CADs and simulators side by side with half the amount of ram. The difference matters if ram is a precious commodity and for many people, especially on laptops, it is. I understan…

I'm on a laptop. I'm half joking about the 32 gigs thing -- I do have 32 gigs but even with all the messengers (including multiple copies of Slack), a development server with a 4 gig database, a browser and two instances of VSCode open I barely scratch 11 gigs in use.

I'm a web developer. 90% of my work happens either in an editor, a browser or the shell. So yeah, VSCode's memory use doesn't really matter.

If you think Sublime comes anywhere close to VSCode in terms of features you haven't really given it a try. The code intelligence alone was worth the switch and perf-wise I see no practical difference in day to day use.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#52

Post by pluma »

proaralyst wrote: post #37
pluma wrote: post #14

This article implies the differences matter. Nope, sorry, the conveniences of VSCode are worth the "cost" for me. I have 32 gigs of RAM and the time I spend opening files doesn't register compared to the time I spend writing or reading code. I do wonder whether the measurements take the base overhead of each editor into account. Do the numbers represent the use per file or the total for the file plus the entire app?

Which features of VSCode in particular do you like?

I was a die-hard ST3 user. I looked at Atom and it was slow and sluggish at the time. I gave VSCode a try after it added support for restoring unsaved changes (i.e. being able to edit a file, close and reopen VSCode and not losing your unsaved changes).

The biggest advantage of VSCode over ST3 is its code intelligence. It's the kind of quality you'd expect from an IDE like WebStorm/IntelliJ but without the entire weight these IDEs usually bring to the table. VSCode still feels genuinely "fast enough". And if you work with JavaScript, the code intelligence even becomes better if you have dependencies that have community-provided TypeScript typings -- you don't even need to use TS to benefit from the built-in TS support.

Other than that, the extension ecosystem is very strong. I missed a few ST features initially (mostly specific keyboard shortcuts) but there are extensions that provide all of that (including an ST keymap) and more. It's also fairly easy to write an extension yourself if you know a little JS.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#53

Post by oliwarner »

apatters wrote: post #22

People can mount whatever defense they like of Electron, but the bottom line is, I think twice before I adopt any new Electron app. My daily drivers are a desktop replacement with 8gb of ram and an ultra-portable machine with 4gb. On 4gb it only takes a couple of Electron apps to eat half of my ram or more. Factor in the OS and a browser or two and it's already swapping. These are often just chat apps or something, t…

I think the most frustrating thing here is it doesn't need to be this bad.

Rendering HTML and running a JS VM might seem like a long way around to get a desktop interface, but you're reading this in just that context, alongside a couple of dozen tabs, many running webapps with complexities to rival Microsoft Word '97. You're not using 4GB per tab; you probably aren't even getting up to 4GB with all your tabs.

Electron can do better.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#54

Post by gcthomas »

tangus wrote: post #43

Did he just basically copy Joe Allen's Text Editor Performance Comparison[1] (which is already somewhat obsolete) without attribution? Wow. 1: https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/tree/master/editor-p... ---- EDIT: I'm sorry, there's a mention at the end of the article. Either I didn't noticed it before or he added it after this comment.

It looks that way. Not good.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#56

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

tangus wrote: post #43

Did he just basically copy Joe Allen's Text Editor Performance Comparison[1] (which is already somewhat obsolete) without attribution? Wow. 1: https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/tree/master/editor-p... ---- EDIT: I'm sorry, there's a mention at the end of the article. Either I didn't noticed it before or he added it after this comment.

Can't see how the numbers are the same, curious, what numbers did you see copied?

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#57

Post by GordonS »

pluma wrote: post #14

This article implies the differences matter. Nope, sorry, the conveniences of VSCode are worth the "cost" for me. I have 32 gigs of RAM and the time I spend opening files doesn't register compared to the time I spend writing or reading code. I do wonder whether the measurements take the base overhead of each editor into account. Do the numbers represent the use per file or the total for the file plus the entire app?

For me, VS Code doesn't hog memory anywhere near like Atom does in the linked article.

Electron apps are often slow, memory hogs, but VS Code is neither of those things - it's an example of a great Electron app that absolutely flies, despite being stuffed with features.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#58

Post by stuaxo »

owaislone wrote: post #25
apatters wrote: post #22

People can mount whatever defense they like of Electron, but the bottom line is, I think twice before I adopt any new Electron app. My daily drivers are a desktop replacement with 8gb of ram and an ultra-portable machine with 4gb. On 4gb it only takes a couple of Electron apps to eat half of my ram or more. Factor in the OS and a browser or two and it's already swapping. These are often just chat apps or something, t…

I think Electron devs really need to step and try to address the performance problems but even if they do, I don't think it'll help much since they have to allow full web platform to run. Electron has brought so many apps to Linux that devs otherwise wouldn't even consider so I'm happy about that. On the other hand these apps have major performance problems. Especially the ones that I've to leave running in the backg…

It seems unlikely - electron developers are going to understand how to use browsers, but fixing the browser itself is the way to make it use less RAM.

Maybe if they switch to Servo it might use a little less RAM, but inherently it's always going to be pretty heavy.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#59

Post by kurtisc »

drinchev wrote: post #11

As far as I can see from this article, Sublime text is faster than vim. That's astonishing considering that Sublime uses GUI and vim is a console editor. I also like vim, but Sublime + vintage ( vim-mode ) works good and you have the benefits of both worlds.

Vim used to be the sluggish editor of its time. Even now, repeating long macros takes a long time.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#60

Post by dblohm7 »

raverbashing wrote: post #33
apatters wrote: post #22

People can mount whatever defense they like of Electron, but the bottom line is, I think twice before I adopt any new Electron app. My daily drivers are a desktop replacement with 8gb of ram and an ultra-portable machine with 4gb. On 4gb it only takes a couple of Electron apps to eat half of my ram or more. Factor in the OS and a browser or two and it's already swapping. These are often just chat apps or something, t…

I wonder if we'll see a Mozilla engine based Electron (or simply not the latest Chromium engine, which gets bigger and slower with every passing day)

We had a project going called Positron but I think it was mothballed.
Post reply on HN