I choose to believe that this is part of the Notepad++ conversation, and that it’s really gotten bloated since last I used it.
VSCode doesn’t have great split windows, it’s either horizontal or vertical, not both at the same time. That’s one of my only complaints, the rest is just Atom done better. That seems to be the next big fix though, they already have a demonstration gif of it being implemented and it looks great.
Still no emacs but it’s replaced Notepad++ for me for semi lightweight editors on random windows servers and workstations.
On the other hand, with the latest update, this is the first time that the little sound-device-chooser-that-expands-from-the-volume-button-when-clicked thing works for me to switch between my two audio devices reliably since the first month or so I had Win10 (I switch between built in sound and my soundcard to quickly switch between headphones and speakers, which I do a few times a day). Previously, while I could always switch from soundcard (speakers plugged into that) to built-in sound (headphones on that), once I moved to the internal soundcard, the Creative card would disappear from that dropdown list, and I’d need to open the full audio device chooser applet, instead.
Now they all always show up in the quick-picker, saving me upwards of 10-15 seconds a day!
I’m still on Windows 8.1 and use NirCMD batch files to select outputs for my audio, even added two small icons near the clock, speakers/headphones and TV.
And of course also using 7+ Taskbar Tweaker for scroll up/down volume control when mousing over the taskbar area.
Wait. What quick picker? I switch between headset and speakers often too.
It’s really night and day. Notepad++ offers way fewer features but still does code highlighting, themes, and other things (though not nearly as well) and uses ~9MB of memory. 11 tabs.
VS Code with 4 tabs open and a single directory open in the tree on the left was using 400-600 MB depending on the actual action I was using in the interface.
I haven’t had to worry about memory usage in any environment for, what, 10 years now? If that’s still a concern then Notepad++ is going to smack the crap out of VSCode. Statically linked C++ code vs dynamically compiled javascript bytecode? That won’t ever be close.
I mostly care about startup speed, and Notepad++ probably still wins that but not by any margin I care about (at least on a modern machine with ssd).
I’m just bringing it up because this went like
notepad++ is cool
you should try Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code isn’t very performant
it’s plenty performant
And I just wanted to back myself up. I got curious when you guys were saying they were optimizing the thing so I pulled up Task Manager and checked. I also rarely care about RAM since I have 32 GB in this thing (purchased before prices spiked)
It doesn’t happen often. Just keep your files backed up and hope you did not lose a day’s work.
Since we’re talking text editors, I highly recommend Sublime Text 3 to anyone looking for a new text editor. Has all the features/advantages mentioned above, and then some.
Is it worth the $80 they want for a single user (compared to something like VS Code?)
Since it’s one of my main tools, both at work and for personal projects, I’d pay $80 for sure. I actually paid $60 for it a while back.
VS Code came out some time after I fell in love with Sublime, so I’m not sure how they compare. From what I’ve read, they are about equal, although Sublime is faster and VS Code is cheaper and a little easier to customize. It probably boils down to personal preference, job requirements and cost. I’d recommend trying both if you use text editors as much as I do.
Sublime is python rather than electron, so it will be much faster for most things (especially startup speeds). Atom/VSCode I considered copycats of what sublime did. But free is hard to beat, and the plugin ecosystem for VSCode is huge. It is also the only go-forward solution for powershell with the ending if ISE due to Powershell Core.
The news about them adding simultaneous horiz/vert splits is great. I thought they came down hard on not adding that, so cool to hear they’ve had a change of heart!
All that said, I do still use N++ or EditPlus for minor stuff though just due to startup times.
I mean, goddamn. If I’m that worried about performance – idk, I’m time-traveling to 1987 or something or I’m in some tiny VM through three SSH layers – vim has me covered.
On any modern machine, yeah, I’ll use Code or even a real modern IDE.
I guess there’s probably some middle ground where I’m on a potato and I need something north of vanilla vim. But certainly not anywhere in my daily.
There’s something to be said for an editor that can be opened instantly. I use regular old Notepad frequently for exactly that reason, so that I can jot or paste something right at that moment. I don’t necessarily value this as much in a full-blown editor, since I almost always have it open anyway, but it is convenient and some people feel it’s particularly important.
I’ve been able to do this for years.
Yes, it’s an old feature. It only just now started to work in “both directions” for me for reasons unknown.
Oh, yeah. Just noticed the date on the article.
I am unable to shutdown from the login screen if a user is still logged in. It shows a shutdown message for a few seconds, but it goes away and just goes back to the logins screen.
Then, after not shutting down, I am no longer able to log in as that user. Just an endless spinning meter.
I have to cut power completely to get it to shut down.
:(