Re: interactive feel of Emacs: the need for speed, and -Q [measure.el]

[Michael Welsh Duggan]

Emanuel Berg via "Emacs development discussions." <address@hidden>
writes:

> Why would a bunch of defuns that are not called slow
> down the interactive feel w/o even being invoked?
>
> Like I said, I think I have as much zsh [1] that I have
> Elisp [2] but it sure doesn't slow down zsh in general.
> It is mostly the same stuff, just functions that do
> stuff. They aren't invoked unless they user says so.
> But I don't have to do _anything_ to instantly feel that
> -Q is much, much faster. Just typing and doing M-x!
>
> What in general slows it down? Or does a defun, that
> isn't called, slow it down by just being there, in
> Emacs? If so, why?
>
> Hooks I accept slow things down, if they are called all
> the time and you put elaborate things in them, but
> I don't think they are and I don't. advice I used
> literally once in 100+ files.
>
> [1] https://dataswamp.org/~incal/conf/.zsh/

It's hard to tell from your posted list of elisp files, as I don't
really want to download and check them all.  You'll want to check
anything that you `require` that isn't something you wrote, as loading
any elisp can add hooks, etc.

> So "non -Q" only does that and only that, brings in the
> user's init stuff? Nothing else that the user is unaware
> of and do not control with/from his/her init file(s)?

Emacs invoked without -Q also can load in a default init file and a site
file.  (See emacs info: "The Emacs Initialization File".)  You can turn
off the latter using --no-site-file (which is implied by -Q), and you
can turn off the former by adding (setq inhibit-default-init t) in your
init file.

-- 
Michael Welsh Duggan
(address@hidden)