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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4357 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 21, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Partly a response, partly hijacking this to ask a question of my own to everyone else: what are you using as a editor/compiler?

I programmed exclusively in Java for years, but my new boss wanted programs in Python so I've been doing that this past year. Using Eclipse, which is wonderful as an editor, since it lets me organize everything and highlights typos that I make and stuff.

Aside a whole lot of friction involving different conventions and abilities, I was annoyed that all of the Python editors people recommended seemed way less functional until I discovered that I can program Python in Eclipse if I do the right stuff. So I've been doing that.

I'm not sure what the general consensus is, because I'm mostly self-taught and program on my own, making mathematical models for research purposes that nobody else has to use or collaborate with, so I've probably got all sorts of weird habits that would make more sophisticated programmers cringe. So I can't tell how much of this is objective and how much is just me being used to Eclipse for so many years and having little experience with anything else. But I tentatively recommend looking into PyDev for Eclipse, because in my opinion it's nice.

Yeah, seconding both prongs, here: a) IDEs are important and b) Python IDEs near-universally suck. If you're in the Java sphere before, PyCharm is kinda the Intellij-for-Python, for better and worse, and there's a large faction that loves VSCode for eating all of their RAM handling multi-language projects reasonably, but for the love of god don't try to build class-ful python in IDLE.

((I'll generally advocate PyCharm for new programmers, as annoying some of the Intellijisms can be, but if you're more acclimatized to and have already set up Eclipse it's definitely not worth swapping.))

VSCode for eating all of their RAM

I don't know where this myth came from - usually bad extensions are the memory hogs.

this is my VSCode at the moment - 3gb ram - way less than my browsers. And 32 GB ram was baseline dev computer 8 years ago.

Image Commit (KB) Working Set (KB)
Code.exe 229,192 203,380
Code.exe 196,436 181,052
Code.exe 181,540 158,272
Code.exe 146,848 143,044
Code.exe 170,172 146,452
Code.exe 158,840 142,484
Code.exe 116,608 114,484
Code.exe 149,196 117,328
Code.exe 112,392 98,688
Code.exe 90,580 92,056
Code.exe 86,820 97,276
Code.exe 1,423,064 86,692
Code.exe 73,020 76,104
Code.exe 73,356 75,808
Code.exe 56,140 61,656
Code.exe 56,864 59,304
Code.exe 50,748 41,668
Code.exe 39,788 44,236
Code.exe 37,548 43,608
Code.exe 23,656 22,300
Code.exe 22,832 21,832
Code.exe 21,308 20,340
Code.exe 21,208 20,296
Code.exe 20,956 20,192
Code.exe 20,924 22,388
Code.exe 21,160 23,428
Code.exe 17,980 16,276
Code.exe 17,992 16,244
Code.exe 18,004 15,824
Code.exe 15,096 21,176
Code.exe 11,004 9,376

Dude, 3 GB of RAM usage is in no way acceptable. You're saying "I don't know where this myth came from" while providing evidence that it's not a myth at all. VSCode is a memory hog, like all Electron apps.

Since when is 3GB memory hogging?

Since always. Even in the modern day when a system will easily have 16-32 GB of memory, that's 10% (or 20%) of the entire system! It's not remotely acceptable for a single app to take up that much memory.

By comparison, Sublime Text (which is very much in the same ballpark in terms of features) takes up 998 MB including memory shared with other processes. It uses just 210 MB discounting the shared memory!! That's the sort of performance you can get when software is written by people who give a shit, not lazy devs who go "eh Electron is fine, people have lots of RAM these days".

Since always. Even in the modern day when a system will easily have 16-32 GB of memory, that's 10% (or 20%) of the entire system! It's not remotely acceptable for a single app to take up that much memory.

Disagree. RAM exists to be used. There are lots of performance reasons for trading off memory utilization with CPU processing and storage IO, and a complex program which is a primary use case for a PC should make those tradeoffs in favor of more RAM utilization unless operating in a memory-constrained environment.

RAM exists to be used, and the app developer should humbly realize that the user (this is about the user, right?) may have a use for that RAM and therefore optimize the software.

That is pretty much how I feel as well. There's a trend I really dislike in the software industry to prioritize developers' ease of development over the quality of the users' experience. But ultimately, software should be written to deliver the best product to the user, not to be the easiest for the developers to make.

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