Everyone seems to be missing that this is Microsoft’s tacit recognition that Electron is the future of apps. Electron has abysmal performance and doesn’t work on ARM. This is them fixing fundamental chromium issues, to improve Electron performance and give themselves a further wedge beyond TypeScript
VS Code is a possible sign for why Microsoft leading Electron on all fronts (from taking over GitHub, to collaborating much more directly on Chromium) might be good for computers. If the average Electron app starts to act more like VS Code, that's good for everybody.
Not sure if this is related to Electron or not, but in VS Code I have issues with using the high key repeat that I have set on all my machines. If I try to hold down a key that navigates the cursor (arrow keys, delete, hjkl in Vim mode, etc.), the editor isn't able to move the cursor fast enough to keep up with the key input events, so it keeps moving after I've lifted the key for a bit. This is especially annoying when I'm trying to delete some text and end up deleting more than I meant to.
Obviously this is a super niche thing, and you could make the argument that there are more efficient ways to edit text than this. My main point is that I never have this issue with native apps, only Electron-based ones, so it seems likely to me that there is some performance issue with this sort of input to Electron.
That sounds likely, my VMs definitely don't have hardware acceleration.
That said, it's clearly possible to build a nice editor purely on the CPU, so it's a shame that VS Code can't run well in the same environment. Sublime Text handles dozens of tabs and windows under emulation.
It might well be true for an IDE, which has a ton of features on its own, and 200MB+ Electron adds to it barely matter. But when that happens to your IM, plain text editor, music player, it adds up.
VS Code takes ~6 seconds from clicking its icon to having its window show up. On an 8th-gen Intel i7 with an SSD. Yes Electron has abysmal performance.
Nevertheless, I hope they go all-in because a gimped JS Office would finally let other players to innovate in the word- & spreadsheet processor niche without the MS .
