Forget atom, the electron's future itself is in a pretty much flux state right now. In the early 2000s, no one would have thought even in their wildest dreams that an interpreted toy language like JavaScript will be used to write Desktop GUI apps.
And yet, they are being written today but is their performance acceptable? Atom is a cool editor but try opening a very long file or have multiple extensions for code completion in multiple languages, and it will start crawling even with 8 GB RAM!
Whether or not electron will succeed going further will depend on two factors:
State of competing GUI components: Both Java and C# are light years ahead in performance than electron but they have two problems. Java is suffering from Oracle's neglect and apathy, whereas C# is platform dependent (WinForms/WPF don't run on Ubuntu or Fedora). However, Microsoft is working hard on bringing a WinForms/WPF equivalent in .NET Core and when that happens, electron's empire will stumble! But Microsoft may not do that after all because ironically, they are also invested in electron (VSCode and some other apps).
State of hardware costs: Moore's law seems to have come to a standstill since a decade or so. In fact, the cost of processors and RAM seems to be going up instead of coming down! If this trend continues, people will make that effort to learn Java or C# or even Python (PySide/gobject) to go cross-platform instead of relying on electron.
Full-time web dev; JS lover since 2002; CSS fanatic. #CSSIsAwesome
I try to stay up with new web platform features. Web feature you don't understand? Tell me! I'll write an article!
He/him
I mean, VS Code is also an Electron app, and for the most part it flies. I have very few performance complaints, and I've used it as my full-time editor for like a year now.
As for comparing with editors built in other languages, two thoughts:
First, the fact that Electron is built on web technology means that writing plugins and language extensions and such is super accessible to anyone who already knows web tech, without needing to learn specific GUI packages or anything. And seeing that web tech is sort of slowly taking over everything, that's a big win for Electron.
Second, don't dismiss the performance gains of Web Assembly. The more WASM stabilized and popularizes, the less need there will be to move away from Node-based tech once you hit performance limits. You can even cross-compile existing libraries for processing-heavy tasks.
So I don't think VS Code (or Electron) is going anywhere anytime soon.
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Forget atom, the electron's future itself is in a pretty much flux state right now. In the early 2000s, no one would have thought even in their wildest dreams that an interpreted toy language like
JavaScriptwill be used to write Desktop GUI apps.And yet, they are being written today but is their performance acceptable? Atom is a cool editor but try opening a very long file or have multiple extensions for code completion in multiple languages, and it will start crawling even with 8 GB RAM!
Whether or not electron will succeed going further will depend on two factors:
State of competing GUI components: Both Java and C# are light years ahead in performance than electron but they have two problems. Java is suffering from Oracle's neglect and apathy, whereas C# is platform dependent (WinForms/WPF don't run on Ubuntu or Fedora). However, Microsoft is working hard on bringing a WinForms/WPF equivalent in .NET Core and when that happens, electron's empire will stumble! But Microsoft may not do that after all because ironically, they are also invested in electron (VSCode and some other apps).
State of hardware costs: Moore's law seems to have come to a standstill since a decade or so. In fact, the cost of processors and RAM seems to be going up instead of coming down! If this trend continues, people will make that effort to learn Java or C# or even Python (PySide/gobject) to go cross-platform instead of relying on electron.
I mean, VS Code is also an Electron app, and for the most part it flies. I have very few performance complaints, and I've used it as my full-time editor for like a year now.
As for comparing with editors built in other languages, two thoughts:
First, the fact that Electron is built on web technology means that writing plugins and language extensions and such is super accessible to anyone who already knows web tech, without needing to learn specific GUI packages or anything. And seeing that web tech is sort of slowly taking over everything, that's a big win for Electron.
Second, don't dismiss the performance gains of Web Assembly. The more WASM stabilized and popularizes, the less need there will be to move away from Node-based tech once you hit performance limits. You can even cross-compile existing libraries for processing-heavy tasks.
So I don't think VS Code (or Electron) is going anywhere anytime soon.