[loup-vaillant]

Yet I’m seriously considering moving away from Emacs solely because it does not boot instantly. Sure I could set up an Emacs server and all that, but come on: it’s a text editor. It should not take more than 200 milliseconds to boot on a modern machine.

If I care about that, I’ll probably care about Electron using hundreds of megabytes of RAM I shouldn’t even have to buy in the first place. It’s thinking like this that make people say sad things like "16GB of RAM is a bit tight nowadays, maybe you should go up to 32".

(Edit: to people who think buying a bit more RAM is no big deal: remember that our resources are finite, that computers are one of the most polluting industries out there, and the climate clock is ticking.)

[mpeg]

I understand your point, but I can’t say I relate at all.

I start my code editor maybe once or twice a day, so the launch speed does not even register

RAM and computers in general are so cheap that I just max out every laptop configuration I buy. If you’re a programmer and will use a machine for work spending $3-4k every couple years should not be a problem, we’re paid very well and should therefore use the best tools we can find.

[loup-vaillant]

> I start my code editor maybe once or twice a day

I start my main editor (with the shortcuts I like and all) every time I write (or edit) a commit message. And back when I used Mutt, every time I wrote an email as well. (Now I’m using Thunderbird, but I did like the ability to use my preferred text editor everywhere.)

RAM is cheap at the individual level. But if the entire world needs to go from 16GB to 32GB or whatever, the sheer volume of the resulting electronic waste does not exactly increase my faith in humanity.

[JackMorgan]

Have you tried Magit in Emacs? It's an embedded git client with a very smooth workflow. No need to open and close Emacs just to edit the commit message. Once I got really used to Magit, it's definitely my favorite way to interact with git.

Some valuable advice I got about Emacs after switching from Vim is that it's not really a text editor, it's more like an operating system. You shouldn't need to reboot the OS between saving a file and commiting it. I typically only start Emacs once, then do everything from inside it. That being said, it's a very different workflow from Vim or VSCode, and not everyone's favorite way to work.

I even got it setup so I open multiple projects in the same single instance, and slightly change the background color based on what root directory a file is in. This way I don't get turned around when working in both a client and server, or producer and consumer.

[boppo1]

Please describe how you achieved the color config.

[JackMorgan]

Here's a write-up!

http://deliberate-software.com/emacs-project-tip/

[boppo1]

Awesome, thanks!

[hopperific]

Great to about the bg colors

[rolisz]

In JetBrains (and VSCode) you can write the commit messages in them directly, so no need to open another instance of the editor.

[Zild]

Just for reference, start emacs once, run M-x server-start and set your global git editor to emacsclient -t and you end up with an instant in terminal emacs editor for git, that will also leverage magit when necessary.

[d0mine]

you could start the server automatically using `-a ""`.

I've configured $EDITOR to start `emacsclient "$@" -a ""` with necessary arguments (I get emacs frame instantly when necessary).

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4458800/how-to-use-one-i...

[pizza234]

I've done some tests some time ago, and Sublime Text, which is a native app, also takes a lot of memory. Plugins also do take lots of memory.

JetBrain's IDEs are extremely slow and memory intensive - well beyond VSC and ST - and yet, complaints are always directed at VSC.

I like to be able to edit new text files instantly, and the simple, pragmatic solution, is to keep an editor always open in the background.