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.

I've found VS Code to be approximately unusably slow in a virtual machine (Linux guest, Windows host) but VS Code runs fine on the host.

Other editors run just fine in my Linux VMs- Sublime Text has no problem at all.

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.

In my experience electron apps, including VS Code, have atrocious performance on older hardware where native apps like Visual Studio run great.

By atrocious performance, I mean even such things as the application significantly lagging behind my typing speed.

At any rate, I’ve often wondered when the endless pile of layers and abstractions has to topple.

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.