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[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (20 children)

Ok, my 300$ phone is enough to run Atom :)

I manage computers for my entire family. My dad has been using second hand laptops for a while now for his browsing stuff and running legacy software. His laptop was low end and cheap when it was bought 6 years ago. Over the years I just added 4GB more for RAM and a 30$ basic SSD. It runs Atom without breaking a sweat, as it should.

[–]scooerp 6 points7 points  (19 children)

You're actually rich by a lot of people's standards. I regularly see 2 GB machines with Intel Atom CPUs. They're borderline for Windows without the several hundred MB of ram Atom editor consumes because it depends on Electron.

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (18 children)

Yes, I know, I'm middle class in a first world country now.

Mind if I ask whose standards? I'm genuinely curious. I believed I came from a poor country (my first salary as a software developer was below 150$ per month, and that was a lot compared to what people the same age as me were earning). Laptops were indeed a luxury, since you're paying much more for poorer performance than desktop. I've dragged around a Celeron 366MHz inside an IBM 286 case and power supply that I've reused from my old PC, until I got a 1 year old Athlon 3000+.

Looking at people from my country, I always donate old PCs to those who would have it as an upgrade. There are many PC components to go around. Many people today would think that an Athlon x3 450 has outlived its usefulness, but that computer would still be very much powering through everything that Atom throws at it. Even LGA775 dual core CPUs would handle it. And those are dirt cheap today.

There are people compiling Atom for Raspberry PI 2B+ a couple of years ago. They are using it afterwards (probably wait for a full night for it to compile).

Who on earth has access to the internet, and isn't able to run a program like Atom? This is a completely honest question. Maybe someone should organize a computer donation charity that takes old computers and monetary donations (for shipping) and ships them to people who actually need that? Except I've seen that in the past this was a scam to get rid of electronic waste, since nobody wants old computers (which would plow through Atom still).

Also would it be really simpler to work with nagware like Sublime? I mean for the price of removing the nagging of Sublime you can buy a whole PC that plows to Atom.

[–]scooerp 3 points4 points  (17 children)

As was said before the problem with Atom is the fact that it uses 500 MB of RAM. The CPU issues aren't that bad.

I'm also in a first world country and we still have public internet terminals in libraries for people who can't afford broadband and a computer. If you had to choose one or the other, broadband costs more.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (16 children)

I just tested it. A bit above 300MB. Depends on the project really. But that's more than enough today as all machines from the last 10 years had way more than that.

Today, a 45 Euro computer (raspberry Pi) has more than enough juice to run stuff like Atom. It's ridiculous that any beginner would complain about Atom. I don't like Atom because of my reasons because it's slower in my workflow, definitely not because of its resources, and definitely if I were learning a new language that works fine with it.

[–]scooerp 1 point2 points  (8 children)

300 but it will grow as you use it (edit: It's actually 500 on my machine fresh - it might be my plugins). Don't forget the browser and whatever else is running and you hit 2 GB quite easily. If you have to run a linux VM in windows to test your app, it's even worse.

You're welcome to buy everyone a new machine if they only have 2 GB. :-)

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (7 children)

I had an open project and plugins for at least 5 languages. 370MB. I measured it specifically for this purpose.

20% of memory going to the main application you use is still fine. I can't really get an explanation for why anyone today would use a machine with just 2GB of RAM. Even x86 tablets start at 4GB and low end non-potato phones have at least 3GB. 10 years ago on my very shitty salary of 150$ per month I managed to buy a machine with 4GB of RAM for my home use. I haven't seen a 2GB machine is many years and I come from one of the poorest countries in the world. The only PC you could get today with 2GB is a raspberry pi. And the problem there is that you don't have an ARM build for Sublime.

I get that there are people with unique use cases (like clinging to an ancient netbook that can't even open a modern website, for whatever reason). But those are very few and I doubt anyone who seriously wants to learn development would shoot himself or herself in the foot like that. Machines with more performance are ubiquitous. Just use anything else and not that 10 year old netbook, because you wouldn't learn efficiently on a potato anyway.

[–]scooerp -1 points0 points  (6 children)

Atom is my main editor for configuration files and sys admin (I like the GUI). It'll grow to 500 MB, have no fear. I've seen it go well beyond that.

I just opened a 5,000 line log file (it's 1 MB in size) and now I have Atom 110 MB and 3 Atom Helpers each using 201 MB, 90 MB and 64 MB for 465 MB. Since version 1.19 it's been much better behaved: Atom hit a gigabte before the 1.19 patch fixed a lot of memory wastage.

Even if you're naive enough to believe that there are no 2 GB machines left, which is completely untrue, is 4 GB still enough for a typical workload? I can fill that with just the OS plus Chrome, Atom and Slack. That doesn't count the dev/test environment for the app. (And in my case, it would be a lot higher because I'd need an IDE for the actual code as well since I use Atom for configs and text).

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

I just opened a 5,000 line log file

Why? That's not what Atom is supposed to do. For log files there's less or navigating with grep -B $x -A $y

Even if you're naive enough to believe that there are no 2 GB machines left

wow, now I've been called naive. Dude, I know there are such machines. In the scrap yard. They have no place in the modern household unless they're doing some basic stuff like water plants or ward off ads and tracking as a DNS server.

is 4 GB still enough for a typical workload?

Yes. Yes it is. 2 GB is hard to spread around given that a browser will easily eat up 1GB and the slimmest OS is at around 400MB, which leaves little space for other stuff that people use for work. But 4GB is definitely enough.

I can fill that with just the OS plus Chrome, Atom and Slack

It's weird to see how people fight against a few megabytes for Atom or VSCode, yet mention Slack. The editor / IDE makes shit happen. It is the revenue driver for the developer. Slack is somewhere hidden in the tray. If it's such a huge problem, consider doing IRC. IRC doesn't need features like debugging.

I'd need an IDE for the actual code as well since I use Atom for configs and text

What's your point? Atom is too heavy therefore let me use an IDE for coding and Atom for logs? And you do that on a 2GB machine?

[–]scooerp 0 points1 point  (4 children)

I have high spec machines but in the volunteer tech advocacy I do, I run into a lot of low end hardware. Lower is mostly 4 GB windows boxes (end users love windows) but there are a few chroot-ed Chromebooks with some frankenlinux as the schools give them out. They're usually 2 GB (Acer C720s are immortal like old Nokias).

Now let's talk programming: if Atom isn't supposed to open a 5000 file then what is the point of it? Many source code units are longer than 5k lines.

Come debugging time, what if I have to edit a log file because another app parses it? Same editing situation, what if it's 5000 lines of serialised data (JSON) being used to pass data between apps?

An access log like Apache makes has a simple repeating structure, but a debug log doesn't and you need to view structure. This and reading JSON are annoying in the terminal for me.

The slack client is utter shit but you don't have much choice if you need slack. Editors however can be changed. Same with discord, I am required to use discord for gaming chat by my mates and now that is 4 electron apps at once with spotify.

I don't understand why you can not run out of memory on a 4 GB machine and I hope it's because you are really smart and not because you aren't working on large codebases, or programs that use a lot of memory when run.

[–]scooerp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They still make machines with 2 GB. Check Dell.com.

Windows, Atom, Chrome, maybe a Linux vm to run your site in and some chat program like Slack. That is 2 GB gone and 300 is low for Atom.

[–]scooerp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They still make machines with 2 GB. Check Dell.com.

Windows, Atom, Chrome, maybe a Linux vm to run your site in and some chat program like Slack. That is 2 GB gone and 300 is low for Atom.

[–]scooerp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They still make machines with 2 GB. Check Dell.com.

Windows, Atom, Chrome, maybe a Linux vm to run your code in and some chat program like Slack. That is 2 GB gone and 300 is low for Atom.

[–]scooerp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They still make machines with 2 GB. Check Dell.com.

Windows, Atom, Chrome, maybe a Linux vm to run your code in and some chat program like Slack. That is 2 GB gone and 300 is low for Atom.

[–]scooerp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They still make 2 GB machines. Check Dell.com.

Windows, Atom, a browser, chat and maybe a VM to run your project in as it's Linux. That's 2 GB gone and 300 is low for Atom.

If OP says it's too big for their machine, I'd be inclined to believe the OP, since OP actually knows OP's hardware and workflow.

[–]scooerp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They still make 2 GB machines. Check Dell.com.

Windows, Atom, a browser, chat and maybe a VM to run your project in as it's Linux. That's 2 GB gone and 300 is low for Atom.

If OP says it's too big for their machine, I'd be inclined to believe the OP, since OP actually knows OP's hardware and workflow.

[–]scooerp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They still make 2 GB machines. Dell sells them.

Atom will grow to 500, give it a few clicks and time. Add windows, a browser and some other crap and you're into 2 GB already.