Great to see this quantified! My pet peeve is laggy interfaces. I'm not surprised to see Atom on there, because browsers do seem to have a big problem with this. Ubuntu seems to have a big problem with this too, e.g. in the native "gedit".<p>Back in the Ubuntu 4.0 days (2006 or so), the default terminal was really slow. I didn't really know how to use Linux then, so I would SSH into with Putty on Windows, and use the terminal/Vim that way. This was actually more responsive than a local terminal!<p>Does anyne else feel a sense of raw power when they switch to a native terminal (Ctrl-Alt-F1) ... ?
This is a terrific writeup about the latencies of text editors. Now the next step is to research the effects of latency on cognitive strain, typing accuracy, and typing speed.<p>Without that, the latency numbers themselves don't mean much. Some 100 ms latencies are readily noticeable (video game input), others are not (pushbutton responses).<p>This paper (<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140137608931531" rel="nofollow">http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140137608931531</a>) seems to suggest that typing speed does decrease at higher delays, but recovers after a short time. I can't access this journal though, so I don't know what kinds of delays were tried, and I don't know how long the recovery time actually is.
And here I am, working over SSH -- every stroke requires a round-trip. Over a high-latency link, that's sometimes a few seconds between a batch of characters appear :-)
Terrific data (okay, so it confirms a preexisting bias on my part). I would like to see the numbers for Visual Studio -- I've completely sworn it off at my day job in favor of Sublime Text + command-line MSBuild, for typing latency alone. I'm curious if my perception aligns with reality.
The improvement with intellij with zero latency on is insane on Linux, I never noticed how slow it was until that point as I generally don't pay much attention to that stuff unless it's horribly slow.
This is related to a problem we have to deal with all the time in LaTeX - the delay between typing the source and seeing the typeset output, especially when running as a SaaS at <a href="https://www.overleaf.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.overleaf.com</a><p>I think the quality of the output you're aiming for matters - we as authors (and I speak based on my experiences both running Overleaf and in writing research papers) seem to put up with more latency / compile delays if we feel it's 'worth it' (however badly defined) for what we're looking to produce.<p>I personally find I do my most creative writing late at night, but my most polished / error free during the day. Whilst I wish I could say I split my work up accordingly, I've never found a way to do this effectively. Anyone else have this / found a solution?
<i>I used Classic theme in Windows because, as I pointed out earlier, Aero’s compositing increases drawing latency and enforces V-Sync.</i><p>This is an interesting datapoint in the argument between those who prefer the classic theme and those who use Aero, with proponents on both sides saying "it's faster". Perhaps compositing has higher throughput, but non-composited has lower latency. I personally use classic because it does feel more responsive. That extra ~15ms is definitely perceptible.<p>Another thing I've noticed is that when input latency is high, such as using SSH, I tend to keep typing ahead instead of waiting.
This is a really cool writeup. It's probably worth noting that humans don't notice latency under about 100ms and the table at the end shows all the editors surveyed coming in under that number. That said, I've noticed severe latency problems while trying out Atom, and almost never have problems with Vim (unless I try to edit a massive file in it). But for me the latency problems I notice usually aren't typing ones, but rather other interactions with the editor such as opening new files or trying to move around text.
Something very strange I've noticed: a bluetooth keyboard connected to my Mac doesn't have any perceptible latency... but the same keyboard connected to my iPad has extremely obvious latency (500ms or more.) Anyone know what the deal with that is? Do iOS devices sacrifice Bluetooth latency for battery life somehow?
What surprised me on the human side was how easy it was to learn another layout. So it seems that re-association is not the same thing as actually learning the keyboard the first time around. Watching the brain learn was a fun process. Would recommend it!
Anyone have thoughts on keyboard switch type?<p><a href="http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_switch_mechanisms.html" rel="nofollow">http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_switch_mechanisms.html</a><p>Most keyboards (rubber dome, scissor) require the user to press a key to the bottom (i.e. A hard stop). Mechanical keyboards (e.g. spring, MX Cherry) register a keypress part way down. Cherry Blues, for example, have a pronounced sound and tactile feedback. Do these features make people better typist?