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Comment by SavantIdiot | Hacker News Reader

I feel bad using VSCode after years of supporting Sublime (by purchasing a license). However the one case where I do use sublime repeatedly? When I need to open an editor QUICKLY. It boots faster than VSCode, and frankly, it finally broke me of my constant habit of VIMming now that I have it on my mac, win and linux boxes. I am eager to try V4, but I'm so deep in VSCode now, I don't know if I can find my way out! I can even cross compile C and debug in VSCode!

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To me, VSCode competes with IDEs, Sublime competes with text editors. Startup speed accounts for a solid 95% of that distinction. If I need to make a quick edit to a file or write down a temporary (but reasonably persistent) note, the only tools I've tried that let me do that in less than 3 seconds are Sublime, Notepad, and Notepad++. Among those choices, Sublime is the clear winner in overall usefulness and functionality.

Not just startup speed, but speed/efficiency, period. I use Sublime a lot to manipulate decently large csv, json, etc. files. Multi-cursor text wrangling still works well even with 10s of thousands of cursors, VSCode chokes hard way before that.

VSCode is much much faster than the popular IDEs (namely, IntelliJ) in my experience.

I'd say it occupies a middle point between full IDE and text editor.

Very true, the more features a product has the slower it opens. That middle ground is why I don't use VSCode

If I want the best IDE, its something from JetBrains. It's definitely the slowest to open up, about 9 seconds on my machine, and I wouldn't think of opening a multi GB json file in it, but past that initial open its just as fast as sublime (again on my machine).

If I want the fastest text wrangler or dealing with a massive file, its Sublime. Having used all 3, VSCode just leaves me wishing I opened one of the others.

The best thing about VScode is that it is a really good (just not the best) IDE that is also free

Is VSCode still fast after you add enough plugins to make it reach feature parity with IntelliJ?

I've tried VSCode a few times through the years, but it always seemed like I needed at least a dozen plugins to get all the features I have out-of-the-box with PhpStorm. I guess it's a philosophical difference between modular components and a big ol' monolith (though, beneath the hood, IntelliJ IS modular... most of their software is just a branded collection of plugins, though all the major ones are first-party instead of community-driven like in VSCode).

I haven't had issues with plugin bloat, personally.

A nice feature is you can disable/enable plugins per workspace so you can only load your Java plugins for your java projects, etc.

you're comparing a text/code editor with a full fledge IDE. VSCode is _not_ an IDE, it is a glorified text editor with an amazing plugin system. if you need an IDE for what you do, use PHPStorm. I myself still use Visual Studio for a lot of the stuff that I do in .Net as I find I need the features it has.

I mean, let's be honest, the difference is getting blurrier and blurrier as "text editors" gain more features over time. And workflows, too, aren't that clear-cut... is it wrong for a "text editor" to include built-in autocomplete or git support? What about project-wide regexp search, or is that a better tool for grep? Etc.

At the end of the day, I don't care what a program is classified as, only if it can do what I need it to do. Like many here, I've used Sublime for its speed on simple edits and other editors/IDEs for more complex dev work. That's fine. But VSCode occupies that in-between space, offering a mix of performance and features.

The holy grail for me would be something like PHPStorm but with better performance. I wonder if Java has something to do with it, vs it being built as a native OS app? I don't remember Visual Studio (the full IDE, not VSCode) being this slow, ever, even on old Windows 95 machines. And even back then it was pretty feature-complete too, especially compared to VSCode if not IntelliJ.

I guess my underlying question is whether it's really impossible for an IDE to be both fast and featureful.

Intellij mitigate this with https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/lightedit-mode.html

Settled into neovim for startup speed. My VSCode editor has vim keys too, so ... ohm! :)

edit: My only gripe with VSCode currently is that it seems too eager to correct my typing.

You can actually use this:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetlia...

Actually uses a real backend neovim instance. Can’t get better vim support than that! I find it a god-send when working in VSCode as the Vim key map alternative was slow, buggy, didn’t have full support.

Now I don’t have to compromise.

I actually battle vscode every freakin day over autocomplete. It's really bad if you're writing php and happen to have a // phpcs somewhere, it'll convert <?php to <?phpcs which makes no damn sense.

By itself VSCode won't autocorrect you. You should take a look at your extensions settings.

For my use case, autocomplete of any kind is useless, so I turn it all off. When "in the zone" anything that distracts from getting ideas out of my head as quickly as possible is annoying. Also, zen-mode, FTW.

    "editor.acceptSuggestionOnEnter": "off",
    "editor.quickSuggestions": {
        "comments": false,
        "other": false,
        "strings": false
    },
    "editor.wordBasedSuggestions": false,
    "extensions.ignoreRecommendations": true,

Sometimes after I type a variable name (the whole word, not partial) it autocorrects it into something else. I am in the habit of hitting Esc after each word now.

I don't understand the startup time issue. Tools I use regularly like VS Code, IntelliJ, etc. are constantly running on my machine. I pay their startup cost once per reboot. Once they're running, they open files* as fast as Sublime for me. There maybe other use cases, but startup time feels pointless to me.

*files of sizes I work work. I don't care about gigabyte-sized files; if I do, vim or my existing ST3 license are good enough.

Maybe I'm weird, but I don't usually close VS Code, so this isn't an issue for me.

I don't think I've ever manually closed my text editor outside of reboots.

There's very rarely a good reason to do so. The vast majority of times when I find people saying that they use a tool for its startup time, it's not because they actually have a good reason for not keeping their editor running (e.g. memory usage), but instead because they just don't want to.

Agreed, it's nice and fast. Sublime is my go to for notes, storing quick tidbits, quick macros (this has saved me lots of time), data editing, little bits of quick code, and SQL scratch pad. There is probably a ton more I could be using it for.

For me, I use Goland and Pycharm as IDE, and VS Code as editor. I also used Sublime, but found that VS Code somehow surpassed it, and startup speed is also very fine (if you have strong computer :-)).

`emacsclient` gives you the best of both worlds. Instant startup, with as much added sugar as you can stomach.

Same. I don’t tend to need an IDE all that often. More often I want to read code and I need something that opens up FAST with good support for a WIDE variety of languages out of the box. ST ticks that box for me.

That's an excellent point. There really is a continuum that I overlooked.

My favourite aspect of sublime is that the "sessions" are so reliable.

I often just open it to jot something down, and before I know it I have 15-20 notes on separate pages, I'll consolidate and save them to a file somewhere or delete them if necessary.

It's just a super reliable scratchpad and a versatile modern textfile editor.

Pages as in tabs that are not saved to files?

This is exactly how I use Sublime Text. It's probably a workable development environment, but there are too many solid alternatives for that purpose for me. But as far as a quick text or code editor, there is nothing else I'd rather use.

I can relate. Huge fan of ST. I switched to VSC because of some integrations that were not available on ST. I hated it, it was only out of necessity. Everything on VSC just felt... sluggish, compared to ST. There's this barely noticeable input lag. Autocomplete seems to lag ever so slightly. The startup is just a smidge too slow. And so on in all dimensions.

Alas, now I'm used to it, and I can't go back because of the same integrations that made me switch in the first place, and new ones I've found since. All the crispness and snappiness is gone in favor of deep features. I accidentally became an IDE-guy.

> Alas, now I'm used to it

I tolerate it, but I hate it every day. So much bloat, so many useless notifications and fragmented interface.

Yeah, it's rough. A good thing about VSC is that it's atleast as configurable as ST is, though. You can disable a lot of functionality if you just take the time to read up on the config. You'll never make it as smooth as ST, but it's worth it to reduce the friction. If you're forced to use it, might as well make it as decent as possible.

I don't want to take any thunder away from Sublime but VSCode basically opens instantly on M1.

You almost definitely speak the truth, but that kind of attitude towards performance is why so many apps are so awful to use now. Especially if you can’t afford the newest Mac.

The one I’m using is $1000. That’s a bit pricey, but strikes me as reasonable value for money. Especially since this is the best performing laptop I’ve ever used.

I get what you’re saying though. Many folks might only have budgets in the range of $500-800. With any luck, other manufacturers get their shit together.

Some people have budgets of $0; they have to use the device they're using currently. I'm already feeling empathy for them in a year or two once all their apps are written by software engineers on Apple silicon Macs who don't test performance on older hardware…

If their budget is $0 then Sublime Text isn't an option, so I'm not sure what you're arguing here.

Sublime Text costs $100.

Sublime Text can (and is) used by many people who pay nothing for it. And, to be clear, I was talking about apps in general, not just Sublime Text–which is one of the few apps I trust to not fall victim to the issues I described.

All of the worst performing apps on OSX are cross-platform.

So not sure why you're feeling sympathy when you will have exactly the same performance issues only without the power and efficiency of the M1 SOC.

That is true, but it's possible to avoid using those. What you can't avoid using the actual OS itself. Try booting into Yosemite sometime and comparing your computer's idle resource usage to the latest Big Sur and you'll see what I mean: try as I might, I cannot get the computer to use less than 5% CPU usage, while this used to be trivial.

I think GP was actually saying that with any luck the editor devs get their shit together and make their apps load fast even on older hardware.

Buying recent computer hardware for software performance reasons is hardly new, and hardly seems like something to be avoided.

M1 macs are the first Apple devices where I feel you're getting excellent value for money and they are super affordable for what they are.

These are professional tools, you're going to need to invest into hardware to get a good experience - if you value your time at all you'll be spending a good ammount of money on a laptop, high quality chair, good desk, monitor and peripheral.

If you're an amateur or a student then you can afford to wait.

It's like me complaining that my amateur drill overheats on hard surfaces and I can't drill through stuff realiably without cracks - if I need to do a few holes here and there the cheap stuff will do, if I do this for a living I'm expected to have gear that will save me time and improve my results.

Performance is a feature, and it doesn't rank very high past some critical threshold (which is why people switched to VSCode - other features matter more)

You sound like a really amateurish marketing firm.

What am I selling exactly ? The idea that it's ridiculous to expect people to optimise professional tools for your 5+ years old hardware ?

Vscode existed long before m1 macs. I think designing software that only has acceptable performance on hardware that doesn't even exist yet is where the contention lies. That's hyperbole but I think what is being discussed is more the tendency of developers to be lazy when it comes to performance because the latest and greatest hardware makes their software snappy.

Sure. If it works on 5 year old hardware, it almost certainly works even better on new hardware. I don't find this an unreasonable expectation.

Works on != runs fast, I think vscode runs on raspberry pi or something along those lines.

Sublime opens just as fast

On my, 2015 Macbook pro (16 GB RAM)

and my 2012 Macbook pro (2 GB RAM).

Instantly.

Nothing else on my 2012 Mac opens that fast. Not MacVim. Not emacs. Not TextEdit. Not even the terminal.

Emacsclient is instant on any hardware I ever tried since the early 90s. I don’t understand why people differentiate below the 100ms level.

Everything opens instantly on M1. Enjoy it while software hasn't slowed down accordingly.

For people not fortunate enough to own an M1, it’s a slow to start typical Electron app. Don’t get me wrong, I love and use VS Code. But performance isn’t in the same league.

Sublime Text basically does what you describe above on ANY hardware.

Anecdotal, but on my Intel/Windows laptop, VSCode opens instantly and has my sizable project loaded in <1s.

I have one Electon app that I wrote myself and it's pretty fast as well even though it deals with a boatload of things, and I didn't really put any special effort in to achieve that.

Both on my current laptop (which is admittedly a 10th gen i7) and my older one (8th gen i5).

Not to say that Sublime doesn't load faster. I'd almost be surprised if it doesn't. But the whole "Electron apps are slow" trope really needs to go.

Saying it's a trope is wild. In almost any comparative metric you could think of, they are slow.

It doesn't open instantly on my work (Windows) desktop. But then I don't care as I generally open it and leave it open all day.

Same with Spacemacs. because of the way processes are more expensive on Windows, Emacs/Spacemacs is many order of magnitude slower than it is on *nix (the other places I use it). I tolerate it as I can't live without magit and Org and other staples.

I find the crappy Slack app (another Electron app) is also slow to open, load and update. So much so, I prefer to use their web client in a browser.

Anecdotal, also, but that's two Electron apps which are sluggish on fairly recent (3 years) hardware.

> Emacs/Spacemacs is many order of magnitude slower

Look into emacsclient.

A good tip, and I indeed already use it.

I mean... I would hope pretty much anything opens ~instantly on the most absolute cutting edge custom-designed SoC from one of the richest companies in the world. hahah ;)

Spotify must have missed the memo because it's by far the slowest app on my computer.

you would hope, yes you would hope.

For now... Wait a few months/a year and they will find a reason to "take advantage" of that increase in performance and slow it back down again.

On M1, Sublime is still faster than VSCode to open. The bouncing icon is not even done bouncing back down that the whole project is open in Sublime. Yes still very fast in Vs Studio, but there's always something nice about Sublime being able to get to a file so quickly.

VSCode opens <1 second on my Dell XPS as well.

takes my M1 mac about 3s to open

macOS does a notarization check with Apple servers the first time, can take a while. On subsequent runs the certificate is cached, so should be much quicker.

I have VS Code running 99.99% of the time. If it's open then it pretty much loads any file < 50mb instantly for me.

I don't think sublime really compares to IDE's like vscode and jetbrains products.

It sorta is in just the text editing realm similar to vim and emacs. Sure it can do more but I feel like it's not fair to compare it. That said sublime text is probably the only text editor I ever used that comes even close to competing with vim and emacs for text editing.

> When I need to open an editor QUICKLY

Do you actually ever need to open a new editor? Why not just start whatever editor you want when you boot up, and then open files in it?

You probably don't shut down and start up your web browser every time you want to open a new site, so why would you do the analogue with your text editor?

> Do you actually ever need to open a new editor? Why not just start whatever editor you want when you boot up, and then open files in it?

Speaking only for myself and not the GP: due to a lifelong habit of putting things away when I'm finished with them, I always close windows and quit applications when I'm done using them for my current task.

> You probably don't shut down and start up your web browser every time you want to open a new site

Not literally every time I visit a new site, but yes, I quit my browser every time I'm finished with my current browsing session, even if I might end up launching it again in 10 minutes for a different reason.

> due to a lifelong habit of putting things away when I'm finished with them, I always close windows and quit applications when I'm done using them for my current task

...but that's not a need - that's a preference, a habit, with no root in any utility or tradeoff.

> but yes, I quit my browser every time I'm finished with my current browsing session

That puts you in the minority of tech users, at least, if not computer users in general.

> That puts you in the minority of tech users, at least, if not computer users in general.

Is that an anecdote or is that assertion derived from some study?

I, too, close all windows/processes when I'm through with use. The overwhelming majority of people I've worked with have all done the same; of course that is anecdotal.

> When I need to open an editor QUICKLY.

I solved this need long ago with BBEdit (hi Rich!): I leave it running all the time. It is the only application that starts with my user login, and it is always available.

I don't get really get this "quickly" thing. I just checked, on my 2014 MBP my VSCode takes < 3 seconds to open a project from shutdown, including opening 14 files. Checking Sublime Text 3 it's faster (1.5 seconds?) but 3 seconds it's not enough for me to care.

I tested "Visual Studio". It takes ~10-12 seconds. For some reason VSC code fits within my threshold of "fast enough I don't feel like I had to wait at all" where as visual studio feels like I'm waiting. I guess your threshold is lower than mine though.

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