[kushalpandya]

My only problem with it is performance when you load large repos and occasionally large files because it is an Electron app eventually. I know the extension ecosystem has thrived just because it is Electron but I wish MS worked on a native editor to achieve it.

[enlyth]

People like to bash VS code performance, but try opening a 60MB JSON file in different editors on Windows for example.

Notepad doesn't even load and crashes, Sublime will takes minutes to even load the file, Notepad++ will be unusable as scrolling will take a few seconds, and in VS Code it opens immediately and you can seamlessly scroll to any one of the 600k lines without any delay.

[cercatrova]

Load it in Vim and it works as smoothly as with a single line file.

[gfody]

there's a great but not well known editor for windows called EmEditor that has a strong emphasis on performance and large file support. afaik the author has a background in low level performance optimization from Intel. if you work with large csv and/or json files you want this editor - it's amazing!

[fomine3]

Suzukawa Editor (Japanese shareware) is interesting project. It claims it's the best editor for huge gigantic file. It compares with EmEditor in official page and it performs unmatched performance.

I haven't used this because I have no chance to edit such gigantic files.

https://szkwjp.sakura.ne.jp/

This is a world ranking with other editors by the author, maybe others are suitable for non Japanese users.

https://szkwjp.sakura.ne.jp/bigtexteditors.html

[altdatathrow]

fwiw, I have the opposite experience with JSON files and sublime vs. vscode. Sublime opens fast and seamless, VSCode basically ceases to operate while it struggles to figure out syntax highlighting of such a "massive" file. I have near barebones installs of both, I do not believe it's plugins nor settings related.

Ultimately VSCode is my daily driver but I use sublime3 when I need to do fluid text editing, anything column/multi-select based, regex replaces, or manipulating large files. VScode has those features but they feel slow and buggy in comparison.

[untog]

That’s surprising, in that situation my VS Code tells me that it’s turned off syntax highlighting because the file is too large.

[beart]

I can't agree on Notepad++. It is my go-to for opening very large log files and I've never noticed scrolling issues. I love VS Code but I've found notepad++ to be the better solution for 'read-only' situations (opening very large files, searching files / directories).

[Aperocky]

That's why... (insert brain's attempt to argue for vim)... you don't open files on Windows.

[AlfeG]

With some reasonable delay VSCode will even manage format and highlight this 60mb json. Search will work instantly.

[mattlondon]

For what it is worth, I have never experienced this issue on modern hardware, and I regularly work with a very large monorepo.

Perhaps it is my habit of opening a subset of the repo into the workspace rather than the whole thing (e.g. only the bottom 4 or 5 directory levels so there is at most only a few hundred files in the workspace - builds etc just run from the usual command line so not having the entire repo in the workspace is not an issue for my workflow) but I have been nothing apart from really happy with the performance and have never been found wanting more, apart from loading time but that only happens once or twice a week so I can live with that.

[lioeters]

I use VS Code daily, and most of the time I have a single workspace open with everything in it, probably more than a thousand repos.

Checking now, the workspace contains ~3.7 million files. I have had no perceivable performance issues with the editor, it works like a champ. Granted I have a beefy machine, but VS Code has been a pleasure from my first impression. For my needs, it's a great development environment.

Recently I onboarded someone to set up remote SSH editing. It did require a few technical steps, but after that they were joyous to see how well it works - a "game changer" in their words, saving them a lot of time and effort.

[mattlondon]

Absolutely agree with the remote SSH being a game changer - it is seamless and works amazingly well.

Since the start of lockdown I've been using it to remote edit from my laptop into my dekstop still at the office and it has been a flawless experience.

Compared to laggy and visually-aliased remote desktop experience (I did this for a while a few years ago and I ended up feeling see-sick after a while), or the faff of remotely mounting disks, it has been utterly seamless.

[bad_user]

It has the rendering engine of a browser and that also has some advantages in rendering capabilities. Browsers are really good at rendering rich text, it's what they were designed for, and a native editor can't beat that.

There's the occasional big text file that I have to open, in which case Vim would do a better job. But usually VS Code has no performance issues for me.

[jhoechtl]

Me as a Vim fan I thibk its save to say that even vim doesn't handle large files well and is especially bad with files containing long lines.

[xfer]

Same with Emacs, long lines for even a small file is problematic.

[stu2b50]

See, I don't think that's possible. VSCode only has 10 or so employees full time. I don't think they could make a good text editor with this kind of dev speed on 3 different platforms natively.

Sublime is great but it updates once every other blue moon for a reason.

[laqq3]

> Sublime is great but it updates once every other blue moon for a reason.

I like both editors (VSCode and Sublime) and just want to point out that Sublime Text 4 is in semi-public alpha. It is "semi-public" in the sense that the download link is given in the Discord channel, but anybody could join it.

For nine months or so, there has been a new release of ST4 every 2-3 weeks. Development is definitely ongoing (though I'm quite happy with ST3 as it is).

[jopsen]

I was a huge sublime fan, but it seems like the plugin eco-system moved on.

At the end of the day, I go where the plugins are.

[square_usual]

(Not a sublime fanboy or anything, just curious) What kind of plugins do you use that aren't on sublime? I was reluctant earlier for the same reason, but after I installed sublime-lsp I didn't think I needed much more.

[jopsen]

Dart, remote development.

I guess LSP could do Dart which is the most critical aspect.

Though I still need remote development which is non-trivial...

[spurgu]

What are the main selling points of v4 vs v3?

[rektide]

> My only problem with it is performance when you load large repos and occasionally large files because it is an Electron app eventually.

Discovering & pre-loading hundreds of thousands of files is slow on native too. I'm not particularly pleased with how easily folks write off web platform tech as somehow being the source of problems or slowness.

The one complaint that does seem fair is that the memory usage can be high, because there's so much runtime to load. Also, I just keep thinking about your ask here. You want a native editor. But it wouldn't be a native editor. It'd be a native Windows editor, a native Mac editor, a native Android editor, a native iOS editor, a native web editor, a native Gnome, a native KDE editor, &c &c; your preference seems to be that Microsoft have made at least 5 editors. I'm not sure how the plugin system could exist amid such a diverse amount of native runtimes.

[gameswithgo]

the electron overhead is fixed. if it has problems with large repos it wouldn't be due to electron. it would be due to vscode itself or some extension you are suing.