[viggity]

FWIW, VS Code is built on top of Electron (like Atom) and AFAICT, doesn't have the perf issues that Atom does. Nor does the Slack client which is similarly built on Electron. I wonder what the root cause is, but I don't think it is an issue of it not being native.

[lpsz]

I tried VS Code the other day after the big announcement but "Electron Helper" or something was routinely taking up 2-3% CPU, eating the battery. Why is there even a separate helper process? Will try again in a few months, I guess.

[comex]

There's a separate helper process because Electron is based on Chromium, which has a multiprocess architecture - AFAIK "Electron Helper" is the same thing as "Google Chrome Helper". No idea about the CPU.