You know where else you could do the exact same thing AND have a 10x faster and 10x more memory/battery efficient editor?
If a native editor just gave you a webview that can run JS extensions...
Except for the startup time --- with which I can live with --- I never felt a difference in speed between native text editors ans VSCode. There is one, but I don't notice it. Human are much more slower than computers, so as long as it is not taking more time that I need to notice it, I don't care.
Nowadays my computer has enough memory so I can afford to not care about the 116M that VSCode is currently using, especially in regard to what my browser consumes, and in regards of the wide range of features it offers.
Battery could be problematic indeed, but before looking at my text editor, I would probably first switch from KDE to i3, and then use a lightweight web browser. This would impact it much more than my text editor.
> If a native editor just gave you a webview that can run JS extensions...
But then you start loosing all the benefits of faster/memory/battery points you mentioned.
Anyway, I'll happily try something like this if you develop it ;-)
This item is about VS Code consuming 13 % CPU when idle, which is bigger than the difference in idle CPU between KDE and i3 (if you don't have fancy widgets, it's about ~nil).
Try editing anything larger than a simple program file (from a large JSON to a CSV as devs often do) and you'll do. Try hex editing a large binary. And many other tasks.
I would suggest you to try VSCode for curiosity, if you have not done it yet. You could be surprised. Maybe it is not the right tool for you, but it is quite well made, and compared to atom, bracket or other web-based text editor, it feels like a supersonic jet.