I'd say it occupies a middle point between full IDE and text editor.

If I want the best IDE, its something from JetBrains. It's definitely the slowest to open up, about 9 seconds on my machine, and I wouldn't think of opening a multi GB json file in it, but past that initial open its just as fast as sublime (again on my machine).

If I want the fastest text wrangler or dealing with a massive file, its Sublime. Having used all 3, VSCode just leaves me wishing I opened one of the others.

The best thing about VScode is that it is a really good (just not the best) IDE that is also free

I've tried VSCode a few times through the years, but it always seemed like I needed at least a dozen plugins to get all the features I have out-of-the-box with PhpStorm. I guess it's a philosophical difference between modular components and a big ol' monolith (though, beneath the hood, IntelliJ IS modular... most of their software is just a branded collection of plugins, though all the major ones are first-party instead of community-driven like in VSCode).

A nice feature is you can disable/enable plugins per workspace so you can only load your Java plugins for your java projects, etc.

At the end of the day, I don't care what a program is classified as, only if it can do what I need it to do. Like many here, I've used Sublime for its speed on simple edits and other editors/IDEs for more complex dev work. That's fine. But VSCode occupies that in-between space, offering a mix of performance and features.

The holy grail for me would be something like PHPStorm but with better performance. I wonder if Java has something to do with it, vs it being built as a native OS app? I don't remember Visual Studio (the full IDE, not VSCode) being this slow, ever, even on old Windows 95 machines. And even back then it was pretty feature-complete too, especially compared to VSCode if not IntelliJ.

I guess my underlying question is whether it's really impossible for an IDE to be both fast and featureful.

edit: My only gripe with VSCode currently is that it seems too eager to correct my typing.

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetlia...

Actually uses a real backend neovim instance. Can’t get better vim support than that! I find it a god-send when working in VSCode as the Vim key map alternative was slow, buggy, didn’t have full support.

Now I don’t have to compromise.

    "editor.acceptSuggestionOnEnter": "off",
    "editor.quickSuggestions": {
        "comments": false,
        "other": false,
        "strings": false
    },
    "editor.wordBasedSuggestions": false,
    "extensions.ignoreRecommendations": true,

*files of sizes I work work. I don't care about gigabyte-sized files; if I do, vim or my existing ST3 license are good enough.

I often just open it to jot something down, and before I know it I have 15-20 notes on separate pages, I'll consolidate and save them to a file somewhere or delete them if necessary.

It's just a super reliable scratchpad and a versatile modern textfile editor.

Alas, now I'm used to it, and I can't go back because of the same integrations that made me switch in the first place, and new ones I've found since. All the crispness and snappiness is gone in favor of deep features. I accidentally became an IDE-guy.

I tolerate it, but I hate it every day. So much bloat, so many useless notifications and fragmented interface.

I get what you’re saying though. Many folks might only have budgets in the range of $500-800. With any luck, other manufacturers get their shit together.

Sublime Text costs $100.

So not sure why you're feeling sympathy when you will have exactly the same performance issues only without the power and efficiency of the M1 SOC.

These are professional tools, you're going to need to invest into hardware to get a good experience - if you value your time at all you'll be spending a good ammount of money on a laptop, high quality chair, good desk, monitor and peripheral.

If you're an amateur or a student then you can afford to wait.

It's like me complaining that my amateur drill overheats on hard surfaces and I can't drill through stuff realiably without cracks - if I need to do a few holes here and there the cheap stuff will do, if I do this for a living I'm expected to have gear that will save me time and improve my results.

Performance is a feature, and it doesn't rank very high past some critical threshold (which is why people switched to VSCode - other features matter more)

On my, 2015 Macbook pro (16 GB RAM)

and my 2012 Macbook pro (2 GB RAM).

Instantly.

Nothing else on my 2012 Mac opens that fast. Not MacVim. Not emacs. Not TextEdit. Not even the terminal.

Sublime Text basically does what you describe above on ANY hardware.

I have one Electon app that I wrote myself and it's pretty fast as well even though it deals with a boatload of things, and I didn't really put any special effort in to achieve that.

Both on my current laptop (which is admittedly a 10th gen i7) and my older one (8th gen i5).

Not to say that Sublime doesn't load faster. I'd almost be surprised if it doesn't. But the whole "Electron apps are slow" trope really needs to go.

Same with Spacemacs. because of the way processes are more expensive on Windows, Emacs/Spacemacs is many order of magnitude slower than it is on *nix (the other places I use it). I tolerate it as I can't live without magit and Org and other staples.

I find the crappy Slack app (another Electron app) is also slow to open, load and update. So much so, I prefer to use their web client in a browser.

Anecdotal, also, but that's two Electron apps which are sluggish on fairly recent (3 years) hardware.

Look into emacsclient.

It sorta is in just the text editing realm similar to vim and emacs. Sure it can do more but I feel like it's not fair to compare it. That said sublime text is probably the only text editor I ever used that comes even close to competing with vim and emacs for text editing.

Do you actually ever need to open a new editor? Why not just start whatever editor you want when you boot up, and then open files in it?

You probably don't shut down and start up your web browser every time you want to open a new site, so why would you do the analogue with your text editor?

Speaking only for myself and not the GP: due to a lifelong habit of putting things away when I'm finished with them, I always close windows and quit applications when I'm done using them for my current task.

> You probably don't shut down and start up your web browser every time you want to open a new site

Not literally every time I visit a new site, but yes, I quit my browser every time I'm finished with my current browsing session, even if I might end up launching it again in 10 minutes for a different reason.

...but that's not a need - that's a preference, a habit, with no root in any utility or tradeoff.

> but yes, I quit my browser every time I'm finished with my current browsing session

That puts you in the minority of tech users, at least, if not computer users in general.

Is that an anecdote or is that assertion derived from some study?

I, too, close all windows/processes when I'm through with use. The overwhelming majority of people I've worked with have all done the same; of course that is anecdotal.

I solved this need long ago with BBEdit (hi Rich!): I leave it running all the time. It is the only application that starts with my user login, and it is always available.

I tested "Visual Studio". It takes ~10-12 seconds. For some reason VSC code fits within my threshold of "fast enough I don't feel like I had to wait at all" where as visual studio feels like I'm waiting. I guess your threshold is lower than mine though.