Is the IDE sluggish?

General
1

Most of my systems here are slightly aged, my MBP is a 2013 model early retina, but it serves me well. My windows box is even older (it’s own real use is as a POS system and so Xojo was only installed on it for not much more than shits-and-giggles, and to test software before buying my license).

But my main Linux box isn’t a dog at all. Ok, it IS about 2-3 years old, but it’s solid and generally I don’t have any issues running any software on it.

Specs: CPU: i7-7700 SSD: WD Black 512GB SSD M.2 PCIe NVMe RAM: 64GB (4x16GB) 3200MHz DDR4 RAM

When I first used Xojo it was on the MBP and I put the sluggishness of the IDE down to it, (the MBP), I normally have browsers with 100s of tabs open and possibly a VM running something or a video playing, or something. It’s a busy little workhorse. It IS overdue a reinstall (I like to do this every year or two, ie not just upgrade, but blow out the cobwebs and reinstall from scratch), but it does perform a little substandard at times. The CPU is almost always busy and the fans almost always on.

The POS system is just old and crappy, it runs the POS software and that’s it. And now Xojo.

When I finally got to install it on my main computer I was surprised the IDE didn’t seem to perform any better. Autocomplete seems a little slow to complete. I feel like I’m always waiting for it, and even just moving around with the arrow keys feels sluggish.

I notice that in just about every online video of Xojo I’ve seen, I almost never see anyone type directly into the IDE, it’s almost always cut and paste.

I DO accept the IDE is doing a lot, there is tons for it to do, cross reference etc, but I just thought I would put it out there:

is it my system or is it the IDE?

BTW, I have a VERY clean Linux Mint install, it is only running Xojo, no Chrome (yet), Virtual Box for Windows 10 Dev, a screen recording application (not generally running, even the VM is not running atm), and that’s it.

I do not mean this as a slight or slur on Xojo at all, please don’t misinterpret or read into the question. If it is the IDE, I have no gripes about it, I’m just a little surprised, is all

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no issue at windows 10 but if my keyboard get sluggish then because its wireless and need fresh rechargeable batteries.
you could compare the textinput response in other editors.

then it would be fast at new projects and slow at big projects.

can your system playback full hd video without stutters?

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Do you use the IDE while on DarkMode ? if so try light mode, and restart the ide…

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[quote=498073:@Dave Matthews]Most of my systems here are slightly aged[/quote], etc.

Taxi cars (nor Limos) do not transport tons of sand while working with clients…

While developing with Xojo ?

Start with a brand new 16" (as an example), running Xojo only (no fancy drivers / TV, Games), plenty of free HD (SSD) available space to work with, and we will be able to start to talk about Xojo IDE speed.

Lewis Hamilton, when at work on a F1 circuit, do just one thing: work (drive the car); he do not watch TV / Play games, etc.

Now, if you are not a Pro developer, (the OP is a Tester, so he do not do the above), you are free to do what you want with Xojo, on 2020 or 2000 hardware (if possible): as a hobbist, he have plenty time and will not complain about Xojo speed.

Now, if your mode of life is to complain about everything, continue, sorry to bother you brother.

1 Like
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it was about the system graphics useing hardware acceleration or software rendering, because its Linux.
at my laptop with windows 10 after a update this year i lost hardware acceleration and the ide run awful in software render mode.
its not uncommon that any software setup can affect the system, everything is installed with root privileges at linux or not?
and that xojo have difficulties with linux enviroment is also known.

6

I have to say - on my Touch Bar 15’’ MBP 2016 - i have always found the XOJO IDE to be a bit sluggish. That is to say that selecting and dragging controls about always lags by 1-2 seconds and have even at some point previously submitted a bug report for this, but i’ve not seen any major speed improvements. All other aspects (code writing, compilation, built targets etc) all work fine - it’s just working in the IDE layout that is persistently laggy.

I should clarify that the same laptop can run 3D games (eg elder scrolls online) at “ultra” graphics settings at 30 fps - much higher frame rates at lower settings - so the the machine is not the problem.

I’ve learned to live with it and work with it, but that’s not to say it doesn’t still bug me…

7

Its not you.

The Xojo IDE has never been fast and its been getting slower every year to the point where the code editor is now unusably slow for us.

1 Like
8

Oh yes this!!!

On this new system, with all the right drivers and next to nothing installed, it’s not too bad. The coding is a lot smoother and the autocomplete is more speedy.

But dragging the controls. Yeah, that just made me laugh. That is where it does suffer. Selecting and dragging on my ancient windows box is painful.

But my machine is a demon! It runs 4K smoother than and flawlessly (and that’s network streaming and internet). It’s about to get a second 4K monitor to go beside it.

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I see that it’s been a feature request for some time about reducing the scope of the IDE and allowing more of a text edit feel to it. (My poor paraphrasing there).

I would be favourable of that. I know we aren’t in a visual studio, C++ or whatever works here, but at times I feel there are just too many nooks and crannies for values, checkboxes, types, properties, parameters, etc to hide in.

An “Expand all” would go part of that way.

Sometimes I feel the IDE holds your hand too much and to have the ability to see things more clearly would be appealing to me.

I LOVE GUI and editing tools especially for the design side of things, but for coding, I’d prefer to have things more out in the open.

That’s just my 2c worth. I know no one asked. I certainly don’t hate the IDE for it, for me it’s just a visual thing. And with so many hidey holes, I feel like I have less clarity over the project. :slight_smile:

10

I have a 2017 MacBook Pro and an iMac Pro. I find the IDE fine when writing code but dragging controls around the layout editor in dark mode can be laggy at times.

The Linux IDE has always been pretty rough for me (which is a shame).

I have never used the Windows IDE.

11

The Xojo IDE has been completely unusable for me on Linux (Mint 18 and 19 here) for the entire 2 years I’ve been using it. I’m running a 3.5 GHz i7 with 32 MB of RAM on a 1TB SSD. I’ve found writing anything more than a trival program and the IDE starts taking many seconds to respond.

I’ve searched for solutions and found complaints about this going back years, but no solutions.

Mac doesn’t seem to have this problem, so I gave up and do my Xojo development on a Macbook now. I was very disappointed in this as Linux is my primary platform.

2 Likes
12

Ok. That’s interesting. Because especially now after the reinstall, I’d easily say my mint distro is quicker the my MBP.

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Your machine specs are great but… 100’s of tabs open?! How on earth do you keep track of all those?!

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14

I used to have this problem at work. Someone would come to me and ask why their Eudora took minutes to open. Inspection showed they had hundreds of tabs, each tab button being only a few px wide. Once they closed most of them, it started working better.

Others would ask me why, when they printed their Word doc, there was often a blank page at the end. I pointed out that their computer was not a typewriter, and that pressing return 20 times after their last line of text was not strictly necessary.

Users, eh? :wink:

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I just have too much going on in general…

I have couple finder windows open, email with 17k in the inbox, chrome with so many tabs open I can’t see the icons anymore, music or video in the background, a bunch of xojo projects spread across 2 or 3 IDEs, feedback, some text documents used as if they were sticky notes, 3 terminal windows, transmit (remote file manager) skype/discord/messages, activity monitor, pcb designer, fusion 360, github desktop, couple windows of numbers/pages, teamviewer and vscode. Using 19GB of my 16GB installed ram (swap) on my 2015 MBP. This thing is so hot it displaced 9000 polar bears last year.

This machine seems to have no limits except when it comes to xojo, even when I run just the IDE the editor is a few keystrokes behind me and the scrolling is just not fluid. I find myself clicking the wrong things because the ide moves after I click when it catches up.

For the most part I have gotten used to it but I always get reminded of what it could feel like when I go to something like vscode. (always on autocomplete, instant error checking, references, smooth scrolling)

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16

Please stop, my tears are already rolling :frowning:

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17

Yeah, I hear you. I use VSCode for Dart/Flutter and it’s awesome.

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18

I mainly use vscode for embedded development because of the integration with platformio, I also use it for web development. I really wish xojo could at least match the speed if not the feature set. Don’t get me started on git integration, it can really be a lifesaver when debugging.

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You’re the first user I meet who does like me (always around 18 apps open at once, lot of windows in the background and each night putting the Mac to sleep instead of shutting it down to keep all tasks open). When I read your reply, I felt less alone :wink:

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20

Amateurs.

On my 2010 Mac Pro I have 11 desktops (Communication, House Hunting, xDev article 1, xDev article 2, big Xojo Project 1, big Xojo project 2, other Xojo projects, Swift, other computing stuff, Win & Linux VMs, everything else) with oodles of Safari Windows (total about 100) each with between 5-20 tabs, Parallels with Win7 & Win10 & Ubuntu & Mint, LibreOffice, Numbers, Pages, iTunes, iPhoto, IINA, GraphicConverter, Handbrake, OmniGraffle, GitHub Desktop, Mail, Skype, Messages, WhatsApp, etc etc and lots of utilities and extensions (SnapN‘Drag, DriveDX, CCC, Synology Desktop, iStat, Alfred, etc) all running smoothly …

… but then I have 2 CPUs with 6 cores each and 96 GB of RAM, and it is rare that I go over 5% CPU utilization unless I encode DVDs or BluRays with Handbrake for my media server …

Love my Mac :heart:

My only real complaint is that I can‘t name my desktops.

My 6 core i7 32 GB PC that was supposed to give my Mac a run for its money on the other hand is a disappointment. Will try my hand at hackintoshing it when I have time …

1 Like