[weavie]

I run on an eight year old Thinkpad. I run my own config now, but used Spacemacs for quite some time. I've never had problems with speed. I didn't use it with Elixir though.

Perhaps try disabling your layers one at a time to see where the problem is.

[desireco42]

I don't think it is Elixir, it is Helm most likely as someone already mentioned. I am using Vim and Emacs and I do notice significant difference in response to commands.

Helm is super helpful, so most likely I will disable it and see how it goes.

[davidshepherd7]

You could try looking at using ivy instead of helm. Not tried it myself but there was a thread on the emacs reddit last week [1] where people said it's much faster.

https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/51lqn9/helm_or_ivy/