Visual Studio Code February 2018 Update

Of course, there is real and perceived performance. I noticed that VSC shows a screen first, then starts filling it in with content, then syntax highlighting and other features. I captured it in a GIF and reduced the speed to make it really visible:

https://imgur.com/V9MZRM1

I don't recall if it always did that. If not, then it probably appears to be faster because spends less time being "frozen".

If the absolute start-up time really improved by more than 5%, then perhaps the particular slowdowns fixed here were also bottlenecks for starting up installed extensions? If the VSC team benchmarked the performance on a clean installation (which would make sense, since they're not responsible for other people's extensions), then they would have missed the knock-on effects of code (not) waiting for other code.

I also wonder if the reduced file count makes an impact. What system are you on? I'm stuck with Windows 10 for the moment, and I have a vague recollection that Windows is less happy with tons of small files than Linux. If the devs who implemented this were on Linux machines and benchmarked on that, they might not have noticed this boost.

Anyway, I'm sure there are tons of other possible reasons. In the end what matters is that it's better, no? :)