I think unfortunately a CPU from 2008 just isn't gonna cut it here. Single thread benchmarks core for core have risen about 4x since then, average core counts have risen 4x, and L3 caches were added. Probably SIMD instructions are a consideration here as well.

That being said I'm a huge fan of prioritizing longevity of computer parts versus constantly upgrading and generating e-waste.

I used to run vim and VS Code on a Core 2 Duo from 2005. Vim is a lot faster but VS Code is so much more powerful — it’s a full featured IDE. It’s not a quick and dirty text editor like Kate. It’s not meant to be that. I still use vim to edit config files but for everything else I use VS Code.

I’ve since upgraded to a 2014 i7 and now VS Code feels fast.

I use VSCode NeoVim and clangd. This has gotten so good, although command mode took awhile, that I rarely need to use a terminal vim.

Kate is not a "quick and dirty text editor" either? Kate has session and project support (admittedly a bit more clunky than VSCode, but it works), good LSP support, decent built-in search, GDB integration, a built-in terminal, Git integration, etc. Sure, it may be less polished than VSCode in some of these aspects, but they're there and mostly just work.

Apple M1 Max.

I understand that everyone's situation is different, but I live in a poor country, making like $2k/month and still consider investments into my computer worthwhile, so I never tried to save money on it. This is american website, so most people here surely can afford fast computer for their work.

I’ll bet a lot of this whole argument is just windows v mac. VS code is snappy on Mac, much less so on my windows machine.