[scaladev]

vim does this too. If it hangs on you when opening a very large file, don't hesitate to press Ctrl+C. It does not terminate the whole process, but aborts the syntax highlighting, and the editor becomes very snappy.

[suprfsat]

To proactively turn off syntax highlighting, bracket matching, and so forth, I use

alias vi='vim -u NONE'

which makes it skip vimrc.