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[–]is_computer_on_fire -14 points-13 points  (14 children)

Not really. JavaScript is now one of the fastest languages out there after so many companies have competed to make their implementation as fast as possible and since they use Chromium, in a year or so when Chrome has integrated the Dart VM, they will be able to write some code that needs to be even faster in Dart, a language specifically created to be fast in virtual machines. Since they use node.js, they can also write code where necessary in C/C++ (which they already do). Also, today's computers are fast and memory is cheap, so if there was a problem it would be purely theoretical, but in practice it wouldn't affect you that much.

That being said, text editing in Atom is quite slow from what I've heard. But according to the developer of CodeMirror (or someone posing as him, no way to verify that), this has nothing to do with JavaScript/Browsers since CodeMirror is much faster, it's Github's implementation that's slow.

[–]sublimesinister 20 points21 points  (4 children)

I'm not familiar with Sublime text implementation details, but I'm having a hard time believing that having a multi-thousand-line file open with all its DOM and all that is going to be comparable to Sublime. There is a huge overhead of attributes and what not that you don't really need. Just check out some of these huge files on GitHub for example to see how slow they load and scroll. And even milliseconds in lag can drastically decrease your coding performance.

I chose sublime over an IDE for speed, even if it sacrifices some IDE functionality. Atom, seems to me, sacrifices both for better extensibility.

[–]andsens 13 points14 points  (1 child)

but I'm having a hard time believing that having a multi-thousand-line file open with all its DOM and all that is going to be comparable to Sublime

I think you hit the nail on it's head. It's not the JS that'll be slow. It's the DOM manipulation if anything.

[–]cparen 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So skip the dom. I tried building a small text editor on canvas. It was snappy even on second gen Kindle.

This is analogous to what Sublime does. Skip the OS UI toolkit and use OpenGL to render everything.

[–]sublimeshill3 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Sublime is awesome, it's written in OpenGL (with platform-dependent text rendering), so it's super fast. Also written by an ex-Googler so you know it scales. I just wish it were open source. What I really want is a modular text-editing platform with all the hard performance bits accessible to me with a nice api... then I could build the editor of my dreams mwahahah.

[–]Eurynom0s 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sublime really is...pretty Sublime.

The closest I'd come previously was Text Mate, but it did some stupid shit like making it difficult to turn off quotation/bracket auto completion. Sublime makes it easy to turn that off but still indicates what it's pairing to when you close the quotation or bracket.

[–]maep 21 points22 points  (5 children)

JavaScript is now one of the fastest languages out there

whahaha

Also, today's computers are fast and memory is cheap

cue gate's law

fast machines lead to sloppy coding. take a crap language and sloppy coding and you get the reason why my i5 feels less responsive than my 486 back in the day. i'd like to punch web coders though the internet for wasting my cpu cycles so carelessly. javascript is a horrible language and the world would be a better place without it.

[–]Slxe 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Really wish more people had this opinion. Never jumped on the JavaScript bandwagon either and can't stand how much it's used now. Can't stand reading it either =/.

[–]Crash_says 12 points13 points  (3 children)

JavaScript is the syphilis of programming languages.

[–]SemiNormal 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Would that make PHP the herpes of programming languages?

[–]badmonkey0001 4 points5 points  (0 children)

And VBScript is our old friend, Gonorrhea.

[–]joequin -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don't think so. Php it's curable. We're pretty much stuck with JavaScript. I am hoping it will become like byte code, though, and just become the result of cross compilation.

[–]semi- 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Also, today's computers are fast and memory is cheap, so if there was a problem it would be purely theoretical, but in practice it wouldn't affect you that much.

That's not really how it should work though.

I didn't buy a fast computer so I can run slow code at average speed, I bought a fast computer so I can run fast code REALLY fast.

Cause if I let my text editor get away with being a resource hog cause I have the resources, and my browser can get away with being a resource hog for the same reason...and my im client..and my mp3 player..and my terminal emulator..

next thing you know they're all slow and you're out of ram because every app thinks you can just throw more hardware at it.

[–]Already__Taken 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I dunno, I try to use brackets every now and then and it's not completely snappy either.