There's still some major algorithmic optimization to be done regarding the time it takes to run the find-and-replace search. The optimizations discussed in this blog post were more focused on the performance of editing the buffer in the presence of large numbers of search results.
Right. Don't get me wrong, the article was interesting and I appreciate there's a lot of hard work going on. I really hope atom is a success because an open source equivalent of Sublime Text would be very welcome.
