Because I know you guys never stop jonesing for another episode of the endless debate on Emacs startup time, here’s yet another post to feed your addiction. Over at the Emacs subreddit, prothtuahel complains that Emacs is taking 3 seconds to load 412 packages1 when all he wanted to do was add a TODO to a file.
There’s so much to say. First, why are you restarting Emacs for each file you want to edit? I know it can be disorienting for new users but when you’re using Emacs, you should leave it running all the time and not restart it every time you want to edit a file.
Second, if you must restart it for each file, start Emacs in server mode and use emacsclient to invoke it for each editing session. Emacsclient will start instantly because Emacs is already waiting in the background. But really, see the first point.
Third, you’re complaining about taking 3 seconds to load 412 packages? That’s actually pretty fast, but see the first and second points.
The comments mostly concentrate on the three points above but, of course, someone points out that you can speed things up with lazy loading. To me, the most cogent argument is that who cares?. If, as you should, you only load Emacs a few times a month or year, who cares how long it takes to load? I always get pushback when I write that but unless you’re one of the few people with special needs that require starting Emacs often, it remains true.
Footnotes:
Sadly, once again reddit has chosen to delete the post because reasons but the headline and comments are still there. Someone really needs to sit the reddit mods down and have a polite but firm discussion.