windows defender issues? & other AV issues?

[Richard Gaskin]

Curry Kenworthy wrote:

> Since Windows Defender is fairly unlikely to be the oh-so-sneaky 
> culprit when similar issues show up running the LC 9 Script Editor on
> the Mac platform...

And now the issue has become doubly conflated.

To review, there are two issues in this thread:

a) Windows Defenders "Real Time Protection" is widely documented
    across the Internet to have caused unusual slowdowns in a great
    many applications. LiveCode is one of those applications.

    My interest here is in seeking details on the cause of that
    Microsoft issue so we may determine if there's an opportunity
    to modify something in LC to move it from the category of
    known affected apps to those that are unaffected.


b) Some third-party AV packages will from time to time flag LC apps
    with false positives, easily remedied by working with those vendors.


With your addition, we now have a third concern introduced unrelated to 
AV handling:

c) The performance optimization efforts demonstrably under way with
    LC's v9 series are not yet complete.


If the performance issues you're seeing on your Mac are equal or greater
than those seen by bug reporters on the issue which is the topic of this
thread, that is notable of course but the subject of a separate
discussion.  Any Mac-specific issues merit their own bug report as well, 
just like the one we're discussing here which you had flagged as a 
Windows issue (#21604), and which led to the discovery of the 
contributory effect of Windows Defender.

While it is apparently of great interest to discuss more general
performance issues in any thread where the topic may be plausibly
inserted, there is a key factor with the subject at hand which you may 
not have noticed in the comments in your bug report:

Those who have disabled Windows Defender's Real Time Protection find the
issue immediately resolved.

Yes, as discussed at length in so many other threads, other
opportunities exist to further optimize LiveCode beyond the significant
gains made in the v8 and v9 series thus far.  So we would expect
evidence of remaining issues to show themselves on other platforms than
the one we're discussing here.  You may consider starting new threads on 
new subjects of interest to you.

Back on topic in this thread, I agree with your assessment here, that if 
there is an opportunity to alter LC so that it no longer triggers this 
well known Microsoft bug, it probably isn't in the script editor:

> As I've also predicted previously in that bug report, it's a 
> better-than-average bet that the LC 9 Script Editor is not using the 
> best practices in some areas, because merely typing usually does not 
> cause problems in most other apps on a fully Windows-Defended
> system, not to mention Macs. Per common sense and best coding
> practices, the actions taken by the IDE while we are merely typing
> and selecting text ideally should not open the doors to get AntiVirus
> products involved continually. Actions that may get vetted by AV, or
> that may use greater system resources, need to be considered
> carefully in terms of approach, timing, and responsiveness.

I would not be so quick to cast such sweeping judgment on the quality of 
the work the LiveCode team produces, but the suggestion that the Script 
Editor is not the cause of Microsoft's issue with Defender does indeed 
seem reasonable.

I mentioned the Script Editor as a recipe because its requirements tend 
to expose issues affecting performance, whether we're discussing those 
specific to Windows Defender as in this thread, or other specific 
opportunities for improvement cataloged elsewhere.

Hopefully this thread may leverage the collective experience of the 
community to find insight into the underlying triggers for the Defender 
issue we're discussing here.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com