A text editor like Visual Studio Code is a complex and performance-critical application. In this case, is better to start from scratch and use pure JavaScript instead of a framework. A clear example of this is that in 2014 the Atom text editor was rewritten in React and in 2015 it was rewritten again into pure JavaScript because of performance concerns.
I found this question poorly answered on this Quora thread and it is my motivation for writing this short article.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask me in the comments.
References:
- Moving Atom To React: https://blog.atom.io/2014/07/02/moving-atom-to-react.html
- Implement text editor DOM updates manually instead of via React: https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/5624
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Top comments (1)
Regarding this topic, I'm wondering if #svelte could be used to build a code editor π€ because this way you don't have the overhead. What do you think @richharris ?