The performance problems on a clean Atom install are incredibly vexing. Microsoft's Visual Studio Code is built on similar foundations and has great performance, so I don't think Atom's performance problems are fundamental.
That's sort of the foundation though right? The editor built into the electron app is completely different, suggesting that atom is theoretically able to achieve similar performance.
I haven't used visual studio code myself, but does it use a mix of JavaScript and HTML to render and process the text? If so then isn't the major differences the algorithm choices for rendering and editing text?
No this is pretty wrong. They are both built on Electron which is just the window shell hosted in Chrome. The actual text editors are completely different code bases that have nothing to do with each other.
The better analogy would be they are both built using Honda doors, but they each have completely different engines.
Since both VS Code and Atom use Electron as a base, so if the basic premise of using JavaScript + the DOM to render a code editor / IDE were flawed (i.e. it could never be performant), then both systems would be having issues.
This is what I was trying to state. If performance issues were fundamentally tied to the use of Electron, then you would see that manifest itself in both packages.
