FreeAd7233 has an interesting reddit post on Emacs startup time. He’s recently moved from Doom Emacs to his own configuration and is amazed at how quickly Emacs loads. It’s less than a third of a second on his local (Apple M1) machine and less than three quarters of a second on a VPS. That’s fast enough for all but the most anal but as I’ve said before, for me, at least, it doesn’t matter.
I was a long time Vim user and followed the usual procedure of invoking the editor whenever I wanted to work on a file. When I moved to Emacs many years ago, one of the hardest things for me was adapting to a new way of working: rather than start Emacs when I needed it, I simply left it running and switched focus to it when I needed it. Later, as Emacs became more central to my workflow, this wasn’t even an option. Of course I left it running because I was almost always in it.
So the point of this post—if there is one—is why should I care how long Emacs takes to start? I do it only once when I start my system or possibly when I upgrade my packages. You can even make this part of the boot process if you like but I’ve never felt the need.
Still, not everyone has my workflow. FreeAd7233, for instance, treats the idea of leaving Emacs running as a sort of strange idea practiced only by aliens. Even those folks who want to start Emacs on demand have a way of accomplishing that. Of course they do. It’s Emacs. You can simply start Emacs in demon mode and invoke emacsclient to popup a “new” instance when needed. Of course, it’s not really “new” because it still has your previous state remembered so it’s even better than a fresh start.
The takeaway is that there’s really no reason to obsess about Emacs startup time but, of course, folks still will. It’s just that it’s not a reason to avoid Emacs.