It's definitely not the fastest opening editor, and it does have performance issues, but they tend to be more rare than common.
The 2 that bite me are:
* the update/install screens in the settings tend to be a bit slow
* opening "large" files that have 1000+ characters per line will either hang or crash the browser depending on the size. If it's a "normal" looking source file, it runs like a dream with files up to 5gb+ (the largest i've used it for), but if it's something like a minified javascript file, a few kb is enough to hang the editor.
Outside of those 2 issues, i don't see any lag or stuttering in my normal use, and i've got about 70 plugins on top of the defaults.
But to answer your question, it's the customizability and the massive number of plugins that draws me. Plus it's fucking beautiful, and i know this isn't the most popular opinion, but if i'm going to stare at this thing for 6+ hours a day, i want it to look good!
It's by far the slowest compared to Sublime Text 3 and Visual Studio Code. VSCode and Atom obviously suffer from being Electron based compared to ST3, so the comparison there isn't exactly fair, but VSCode is noticeably faster to load and snappier to work with even loaded up with third party plugins. I have a similar amount of plugins for each of the three (10-15) too, so no real difference there.
And honestly I don't see a marked difference in visuals between those three. After installing my zenburn colour scheme they're virtually identical with similar if not identical UI features.
I don't expect the Electron based editors to match ST3 for performance (at least not yet), but honestly it's kind of embarrassing how slow Atom is compared to VSCode, particularly when it comes to things like checking for package updates and just starting up.
This is all based on using all three editors within the last three months (I've been swapping around trying to find what I like).
It's definitely not the fastest opening editor, and it does have performance issues, but they tend to be more rare than common.
The 2 that bite me are:
* the update/install screens in the settings tend to be a bit slow
* opening "large" files that have 1000+ characters per line will either hang or crash the browser depending on the size. If it's a "normal" looking source file, it runs like a dream with files up to 5gb+ (the largest i've used it for), but if it's something like a minified javascript file, a few kb is enough to hang the editor.
Outside of those 2 issues, i don't see any lag or stuttering in my normal use, and i've got about 70 plugins on top of the defaults.
But to answer your question, it's the customizability and the massive number of plugins that draws me. Plus it's fucking beautiful, and i know this isn't the most popular opinion, but if i'm going to stare at this thing for 6+ hours a day, i want it to look good!