Comment by lycopodiopsida
3 days ago
I have just opened a 7k loc JS file in idea and I can observe for at least 2 seconds how syntax fontification and all the hints are applied and rendered. All of it on a macbook M4. It is not acceptable and also the slowest of any editor I've used.
It uses that time to parse the source into an AST and build a search index to provide type-aware symbol search, information for autocomplete and refactoring if you request it, etc. Sure it will be slower than simply highlighting the code and then doing nothing with it...
If you use IDEA as a glorified text editor, you're using less than 1% of what it's capable of. It's a complete waste of computing resources then.
I think the contention is that emacs stalls and stutters running a macro on a medium sized file while IDEA sings. I find IDEA to be slower than emacs as a whole but overall more full-featured and much better out of the box. I'm an emacs fan myself, but think IDEA is a great IDE.