Why VSCode doesn't use any front end framework | Hacker News Reader

Why VSCode doesn't use any front end framework

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Erich Gamma, Technical Fellow, Microsoft:

> what many people don't know is that we decided to not use any UI frameworks from the beginning, and that's still true today because performance is very important to us, and we want to be fully in control of our own destiny. So we don't want to chase a framework or track down performance from in the framework, we want to be directly as close to the DOM as possible.

Got it...They want to control their destiny on UI ...But have no issues on everything else ...So they are ok with using Electron :-))

Wow

A bit click bait, the answer is the obvious one: performance and independence.

Things that could have been a tweet (or tweet-sized blog post). But no, it’s a TikTok video on YouTube.

Well, at least it's under a minute. Could have been 25.

Building your own proprietary frontend framework still counts as a framework in my mind. Like how a custom tailored suit is still a suit, just one that is, well, tailored to spec. The whole "no framework" narrative is silly.

Well of course you need to make an standard way to achieve your goals in the frontend or else it's just asking for madness.

"Your own framework" may be a valid statement but at the same time the creation of the framework its just a side effect of applying sane software design.

Is that the point here?

I think the key point about using someone else's framework is that it's someone else's framework, not that it's someone else's framework.

That makes sense for this type of application. But people are going to start complaining about React and other FE frameworks in 3, 2, 1...

So, use dynamic library hooks/tricks to provide api hooks to/for <insert relevant react/fe framework/etc.>

I use vscode and had no idea it was electron. Electron apps had a very poor reputation 10 years ago.

Yet it feels very snappy to me.

If only Zed got more traction & in-turn extensions, that's more performance than what most need

Last I checked it's still missing language server and integrated debugger support.

That and being macOS only, seem like major roadblockers to major adoption.

>That and being macOS only, seem like major roadblockers to major adoption.

And that's exactly why many companies choose Electron - despite a deficit in performance. Just having an Electron app is better than not having an app at all.

I don’t think that’s the right lesson here.

And yet, they all then seem to do a whole bunch of work that is specific to each platform anyway.

Further, if Zed was an electron app nobody would be talking about it.

Electron’s great if you want to be the first on the market, and for many of them competition never arrives.

Zed fills the niche that Sublime left behind. Electron is what you need to make the mass market product in Thu’s class.

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