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It can take long on an old system, but that doesn't matter much [to me] when the IDE works fast throughout the day even when periodically opening and closing projects.

IntelliJ start up time is much better now. Take a look on IntelliJ CE (ported to Apple Silicon) vs VS Code (under Rosetta 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erg0Dz0MXww Of course this is unfair comparison, but you can see that the start up isn't slow.

That copy of VS Code seems to be starting very slowly, even taking the emulation into account. Lots of extensions, maybe?

For reference, it starts in around 3 seconds on my 2013ish laptop. (actually, more like 2014 - Haswell i7)

That's indeed not a fair comparison. Mozilla reported up to 2x faster performance and 2.5x faster startup time on the M1 port.

JetBrains IDEs are quite heavy in my experience. I like their capabilities (pycharms at least), but they do come at a cost.

My MacBook Pro 2019 model is about to take off if I use both DataGrip and PyCharm at the same time.

To be fair, a stern glance is usually enough to get a 2019 MacBook hot enough to cook your breakfast