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VaderNT
5y

Just a short "dafuq?" about VS Code.

I have a MacBook Pro from last year, so it's a capable machine. And there I was today, sitting on the train, coding some Python in VS Code.

Suddenly it got all laggy. Like, one second behind my typing, dropping keystrokes, stuttery scrolling... the whole deal. The system itself was perfectly responsive and the activity manager showed the CPU at 30%. After a minute or so, it magically recovered and worked as if nothing ever happened.

What the actual fuck was VS Code doing? I mean, it's a fucking text editor. In 2019 this should be a bloody solved problem! There's absolutely no reason to use around 30% CPU in the first place, and use that much and still *lag*. Holy crap, and people ask with a straight face "what's wrong with reinventing everything based on web technologies?" Fuck everything Electron-based. Make it ElectrOFF already.

*takes deep breath*

So, editor suggestions are welcome. I used Sublime Text 3 before VS Code, I'll likely return to that.

rant

lag

editors

performance

visual studio code
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  • 3
    5y
    It was just zipping up all your code to send to a 3rd party when you get your net back.

    I use Qt creator and have just started learning VSCode. So I don't really have a whole lot of suggestions.
  • 2
    5y
    Macvim or vim in an iterm window work great.
  • 1
    5y
    I went back very fast to my sublime text after trying vs code. Still the best
  • 8
    5y
    on one hand, i agree (except the part about mac being a capable machine).

    on the other, i feel like when people exclaim "it's a fucking text editor!", they're forgetting that the editor is basically parsing the whole code all the time and building its syntax tree so it can do code completion, syntax highlighting, etc etc.

    so that's quite a lot more than "just a text editor".

    but yeah, electron is a sucky crap, and most of our today's apps (and libraries, for that matter) are bloated, overcomplicated pieces of shit.
  • 3
    5y
    This post also assumes it was VSCode causing the slow down.
  • 2
    5y
    I would like to see a reasonable explanation of how a Mac is not a capable development laptop. It's extremely childish to just dismiss it without further comment. It makes me think the comments are borne simply of ignorance. I use a Mac for work, and while I definitely do have complaints, my three year old laptop is more than capable of the tasks to which I set it.

    Please speak intelligently.
  • 0
    5y
    @Jilano I never said "It's a Mac therefore it HAS to be good". I said "it's a MacBook Pro from last year". Even if it had the minimum available specs, you'd need a bloody good argument to say it's not a capable machine. @irene just made a snarky drive-by comment to hate on macs. I don't mind that, but it's demonstrably incorrect.
  • 3
    5y
    @bahua I use linux for development at work. It has bitdefender on it. On wednesday nights, when the av runs, my machine is a crap shoot as to whether it will lock up my machine. Like not even kernel panic. Just locked. I have also seen non-bit defender related screw ups. Apps just crashing. Most apps I use are from the OS repo. So I say the assumption is "that the OS or something else is not doing it". I run Windows at home for games and development. Most of the time it works fine. But rare occasions Windows or some other app just done fucks up. Have not seen a blue screen, but file io does cause things to lag fierce at times. So that being said. The fact that it is a Mac running MacOS says nothing about some fucked up thing not happening due to hardware or software related to Apple. It could also be a combo of VSCode exacerbating something the OS does. Maybe it doesn't follow a guideline or the Mac way of doing things. In that instance it would be VSCode. It depends.
  • 0
    5y
    @Jilano
    > Have you checked if it was updating?

    I don't know. I got no "update available" or "update installed" notification afterwards. It might have checked in the background and choked on the bad internet connection. Which would still be terrible, because I understand "in the background" as "mostly unnoticeable while using it".
  • 0
    5y
    @Demolishun

    > This post also assumes it was VSCode causing the slow down.

    True, you have a point there. It might have been something else that just affected VS Code. Like I said, the rest of the system and other programs were smooth as always. And I never experienced such a thing with Sublime Text.

    OTOH if something causes just VS Code to slow down, it would still be worthwile to check out other editors. Should the same happen, boy will I rant about it on here. 😉
  • 0
    5y
    @VaderNT You didn't see a bright light and lose time did you? Gotta check these things.
  • 0
    5y
    @Midnigh-shcode

    "on the other, i feel like when people exclaim "it's a fucking text editor!", they're forgetting that the editor is basically parsing the whole code all the time and building its syntax tree so it can do code completion, syntax highlighting, etc etc."

    Agree, editors do that. My point is editors have been doing this for decades. Code completion has become more sophisticated, among other things I'm probably forgetting. I still think this should run perfectly buttery smooth on a 2018's MBP.

    Now others have made the point it could've been something else interfering with VS Code. I can't rule that out.
  • 1
    5y
    @Demolishun or it could've been you, hacking into my Mac, setting the VS Code process priority to minimum. Just so I'll rant about it and you can comment on it. If so, I take my hat off to such an intricate plan. 😉
  • 1
    5y
    @VaderNT I am not saying its aliens, but its aliens...
  • 0
    5y
    I like vs code. It was never slow on my PC.
  • 2
    5y
    While agree with the notion that most everything is bloatware these days, part of the problem is that it's silent bloatware.

    VaderNT asked what the fuck VSCode was doing.

    I quite often ask myself that same question with a variety of applications.

    At some point, it has become acceptable for applications to run into the "this application has stopped responding" scenario. It has become acceptable for applications to do "important work" somewhere in the background, but strangely enough, even with all the fuzz about asynchronous programming and multithreading, such tasks frequently block the UI or cause the application to become unresponsive or close to unresponsive.

    Twenty years back, in friggin' middle school, I attended my first official lectures in software development. If, in a test, you wrote your application in a way that the UI would become unresponsive, you'd fail that test.

    Why can't professional developers in 2019 deliver on that simple premise?
  • 0
    5y
    @bahua take a price of any new mac computer.

    look up specs of a pc of the same price.

    compare with the specs of the mac you took the price from.

    realize that "price to computing performance" ratio of apple computers is equal to that of jewelry.

    any more questions?

    (additional clarification: your question is equivalent to "i don't understand why hello kitty plush covered sex toy handcuffs are considered to be unsuitable for use by police")
  • 0
    5y
    @Midnigh-shcode

    That comparison would be reasonable if your plan when you buy a Mac was to run the same operating system as on the comparable but cheaper commodity hardware, but that's not what people are talking about when they refer to a Mac as a development platform. They mean the operating system, MacOS, provides for that platform, and that operating system is not easily or legitimately available without Mac hardware. I agree, it's much too expensive-- enough that I would never spend my own money on it --but when it's provided by my employer, it's a joy to use, and my productivity is very high. Much higher than when I use Windows, though not quite as high as when I use Linux.
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