Honestly, it's been a while since I tried. Perhaps I'll take another stab at it and see how VS Code has improved. Out of curiosity, how wide is the file? Some of the files I open are 250+ field invoices, so each line is easily 1k characters each.
1.1GB, 10M lines.
Code: ~10s, smooth scrolling, instant jumping.
Sublime: ~50s, smooth scrolling, instant jumping.
Atom: ~10s, smooth scrolling, very choppy jumping: ~5s loads per jump (also got some error messages about text too large for buffer)
1.0GB, 40k lines.
Code: ~15s, scrolling somewhat choppy, quick jumping
Sublime: Application not responding after ~60s, waitied another 60s, no change. Same behavior each of the two times I attempted.
Atom: ~8s, smooth scroll, ~30s per jump, occasional "Editor is taking too long to load" messages.
Note: Atom enforces a maximum line length of ~500 chars before it wraps regardless of word wrap setting. This means the 8s load was only showing a couple lines worth of content. I find this restriction not acceptible for the long-line test case, but including anyways for completeness)
Full "report": https://pastebin.com/wUv8PSgp
Their text buffers and internal datastructures are optimized for perf and save space on RAM.
It amazes me sometimes that all this is built on standard web technology and it’s mostly blink (chromium) and v8 under the hood.
But it does include other non-bloated apps that come close in speed, but don't have the feature set the way I want like TextWrangler, CotEditor, Geany, TextMate.
I think TL;DR - I am very picky about text editors, probably too picky.
But, startup time is a tiny tiny fraction of "normal use" time for anything besides jotting quick notes, and I'm weird and take notes with an actual notebook on my desk, so I don't have much use for Sublime.
You can also open FTP/sFTP files right from within it. No need for external app.
I’m a Vim user myself but I have a soft spot for BBEdit. Dark mode should come with Mojave's release.
I've tried so many and like very few of them. MS seems to have done some good work on performance. It's still faster than this new version of Atom for startup, especially cold starts (with it not open at all, going into FTP client > open file).
Though, I revisited Sublime Text today, and I have to say, I know it's just a few seconds saved here and there, but the difference between Sublime and ANY other editor as far as launch/file ready time is a huge gap. While the measured time doesn't seem significant- the "feel" of using it does. It's hard to put into words how much better it feels to use, like the difference between using applications on a HDD vs an SSD.
I'm still debating (as a hobbyist that doesn't make much money on what I use text editors for) whether the license is worth it for Sublime or if I should just stick to VS Code. $80 is reasonable for most use cases (developers, etc) but it's a bit steep for mine. It really feels like it might be worth it, even just for the speed difference.