Comment by johannes1234321
2 years ago
The difference here is that VisualStudio code fully runs the GUI on the local machine and only file IO or external programs (compiler, the actual program being devleoped, ...) run remotely. Thus the UI reacts promptly to all interactions and many of the remote interactions happen asynchronously, thus even saving a file will not block further actions.
Whereas any non trivial X application does work in the client, thus even basic interactions have a notable delay, depending on connection.
You're assuming someone would be running Emacs on the remote machine talking to a local X server in order to edit files on a remote machine, but people would generally not do that, but use something like TRAMP, where Emacs would be running on your local machine, but accessing remote files.
TRAMP only requires ssh or telnet (or scp, rsync, any number of other methods) on the remote machine.
It shows you never used slow telnet sessions over modems.
There is no difference between doing this over text or graphics, in terms of the whole setup regarding network communications for data input and output.
Again: The key difference is that in VS.Code the UI runs local, thus all UI interactions are "immediate" and there is no difference between local and remote operation. Yes, IO has latency, but where possible that is hidden by the UI (possible: saving a file happens without blocking UI; not possible: loading a file requires the file to be loaded .. but even then the UI can already prepare the window layout)
Thisnis very different form a system, where each keystroke and each menu action has to be transfered first, before the remote side can identify the needed UI update and send that back
Again: learn UNIX distributed computing architecture.
Not going to waste more my time explaining this.
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VS Code isn't doing this with text or graphics, though. In X terms, it's running both the client and server on your local machine. It simply doesn't put the network boundary in the same place as an X application.
VS Code's "backend" that runs on the remote machine is rather only in charge of more "asynchronous" operations that aren't part of the UI's critical path, like saving files or building the project. It doesn't speak anything as granular as the X protocol.
Classic UNIX program architecture in distributed systems, apparently some knowledge lacking here.
Long are the days using pizza boxes for development it seems.
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