The State of Atom's Performance

#1

Post by ropiku » Wed, Jan 10, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

The State of Atom's Performance
blog.atom.io

Re: The State of Atom's Performance

#2

Post by gaius » Wed, Jan 10, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

Atom takes longer to start up than text editors like Vim and Sublime Text because of the dynamic architecture of the app

And yet Emacs is fast, hmmm.

Re: The State of Atom's Performance

#3

Post by ParkerK » Wed, Jan 10, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

>Atom takes longer to start up than text editors like Vim and Sublime Text because of the dynamic architecture of the app. The majority of our code is written in JavaScript as opposed to C or C++, which is important for Atom’s extensibility, but makes it more challenging to ensure that the app starts quickly.

Yet Microsoft's VSCode, which is also Electron based, is much faster than Atom. Electron obviously slows it down, but Atom's refusal to admit their performance issues for so long are also to blame

Re: The State of Atom's Performance

#4

Post by rayiner » Wed, Jan 10, 2018, 7:15 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #2

Atom takes longer to start up than text editors like Vim and Sublime Text because of the dynamic architecture of the app And yet Emacs is fast, hmmm.

Emacs' display engine, input handling, etc., are written in C.

Re: The State of Atom's Performance

#5

Post by gaius » Wed, Jan 10, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #4

gaius wrote: post #2

Atom takes longer to start up than text editors like Vim and Sublime Text because of the dynamic architecture of the app And yet Emacs is fast, hmmm.

Emacs' display engine, input handling, etc., are written in C.

So what? There’s no reason the Atom team couldn’t optimise their critical paths while retaining extensibility and cross-platform-ness, and the proof is that Emacs has already done it.

Their problem is not technical, it’s ideological

Re: The State of Atom's Performance

#6

Post by qaq » Wed, Jan 10, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

One more big project in the Rust portfolio :)

Re: The State of Atom's Performance

#7

Post by qaq » Wed, Jan 10, 2018, 7:21 PM UTC

I think unless there is some drastic change VSCode is going to dominate in this space.

Re: The State of Atom's Performance

#8

Post by urda » Wed, Jan 10, 2018, 7:21 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #4

gaius wrote: post #2

Atom takes longer to start up than text editors like Vim and Sublime Text because of the dynamic architecture of the app And yet Emacs is fast, hmmm.

Emacs' display engine, input handling, etc., are written in C.

Your point?

Write slow javascript, get slow programs. It's not a crazy concept.

Edit: typo

Re: The State of Atom's Performance

#9

Post by disease » Wed, Jan 10, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

ParkerK wrote: post #3

>Atom takes longer to start up than text editors like Vim and Sublime Text because of the dynamic architecture of the app. The majority of our code is written in JavaScript as opposed to C or C++, which is important for Atom’s extensibility, but makes it more challenging to ensure that the app starts quickly. Yet Microsoft's VSCode, which is also Electron based, is much faster than Atom. Electron obviously slows it d…

I found it strange that they mention Vim and Sublime Text without mentioning VS Code anywhere.

Re: The State of Atom's Performance

#10

Post by blueline » Wed, Jan 10, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

ParkerK wrote: post #3

>Atom takes longer to start up than text editors like Vim and Sublime Text because of the dynamic architecture of the app. The majority of our code is written in JavaScript as opposed to C or C++, which is important for Atom’s extensibility, but makes it more challenging to ensure that the app starts quickly. Yet Microsoft's VSCode, which is also Electron based, is much faster than Atom. Electron obviously slows it d…

I know that vscode has a lot of non-electron native code baked in as well, which I'm assuming atom has far less of.