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 itβs mostly blink (chromium) and v8 under the hood.