I doubt any Electron-based editor is going to feel as snappy and light as Vi. Have you been noticing performance decreases? I haven't noticed any.
this is only true if we're strictly talking editing text wihtout any plugin functionality. As soon as you add code completion features vim shows its age, the Ale extension for async linting for example feels very sluggish on a few only slightly dated laptops I tried out and frequently grills the cpu.
However Neovim’s plug-in architecture is a big improvement. I’m running Deoplete (which provides intellisense like functionality) on the same machine, and it is basically instant. There are GIFs at the bottom of the repo:
After adding around 10+ plugins on Atom it not only became slower but it started crashing or having internal errors.
With VS code I have 17 plugins installed and it still feels light enough. Personally I disable most plugins until I need them and I think most people should do the same considering how easy it is to disable a plugin.
I have all my language specific plugins disabled until I need to use them.
Does/would a high-end (e.g., Xeon-class) processor and/or a boatload of RAM help keep Code's performance snappy?
FWIW, I run my Code install quite light since my "duties and responsibilities", ahem, only require a few languages/data types, ergo, I am not pushing it hard at all.
FTR, I have a (licensed) install of Sublime, which I confess is snappier than Code, but the difference is so small I use whichever one is better for the task at hand and any difference dissappears under the pressure of an outage enforced deadline :-D