Why JVM-based applications are slow -- IntelliJ vs. VisualStudio?
The good reading for start:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2163411/why-did-java-have-the-reputation-of-being-slow

However I am not interested what people THINK, or what was state of the art 10 years ago. I am interested about facts -- what I see now.

### Piece of background

Currently my primary language is C#, VisualStudio is my IDE, but since the limitations of C# are more and more painful, and since I prefer Linux to Windows, I am not even the user of my own programs, I tried/try to learn Scala. The IDE in this case is IntelliJ IDEA (but I tried Eclipse too).

### Visual comparison

What is striking me, that for example:

* on the same machine (Windows 7, Core 2 Duo, 2.66 GHz, 3GB RAM, 32-bit) Visual Studio is slow, IntelliJ is dead, dead slow, I type faster than it shows the letter, it is visually obvious that every tooltip is shown with some struggle

* at home, with VS running on Windows 7 (8GB RAM, 2 cores, 64-Bit, Quad CPU, 2.96 GHz something like this) is on par with IntelliJ (16GB RAM, 4 cores, 64-bit, same clock, running openSUSE 11.4) -- both are slow; however the trick is, VS is running within VirtualBox installed on top of this Linux box

Now I scratch my head and I start wonder, if switching from C# to Scala is really a good idea, because even on mechanical side, I can write (hit the keys) program faster in C# than in Scala (to be exact: using VS vs. IntelliJ). Another point -- every program using technology X stands for that technology (it is kind of advertisement). So in this respect, IntelliJ does a very poor work.

*Of course, it is not only problem with IntelliJ, I didn't see **any** GUI JVM-based program that feels snappy.*

### Question

If you could make an educated guess, what are the reasons Visual Studio is a magnitude faster than IntelliJ, what would it be:

* it is fault of JetBrains,
* it is fault of Swing,
* Visual Studio uses undocumented C "for" loops (little conspiracy is not bad -- just kidding),
* JVM is not that mature after all,
* GC is a useful thing, but cannot match with manual allocating/freeing memory,
* ?

**There has to a be a reason for such difference in application speeds, so what it is?** Please let's focus on Visual Studio vs. IntelliJ IDEA.
Why JVM-based applications are slow -- IntelliJ vs. VisualStudio?
===

The good reading for start:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2163411/why-did-java-have-the-reputation-of-being-slow

However I am not interested what people THINK, or what was state of the art 10 years ago. I am interested about facts -- what I see now.

### Piece of background

Currently my primary language is C#, VisualStudio is my IDE, but since the limitations of C# are more and more painful, and since I prefer Linux to Windows, I am not even the user of my own programs, I tried/try to learn Scala. The IDE in this case is IntelliJ IDEA (but I tried Eclipse too).

### Visual comparison

What is striking me, that for example:

* on the same machine (Windows 7, Core 2 Duo, 2.66 GHz, 3GB RAM, 32-bit) Visual Studio is slow, IntelliJ is dead, dead slow, I type faster than it shows the letter, it is visually obvious that every tooltip is shown with some struggle

* at home, with VS running on Windows 7 (8GB RAM, 2 cores, 64-Bit, Quad CPU, 2.96 GHz something like this) is on par with IntelliJ (16GB RAM, 4 cores, 64-bit, same clock, running openSUSE 11.4) -- both are slow; however the trick is, VS is running within VirtualBox installed on top of this Linux box

Now I scratch my head and I start wonder, if switching from C# to Scala is really a good idea, because even on mechanical side, I can write (hit the keys) program faster in C# than in Scala (to be exact: using VS vs. IntelliJ). Another point -- every program using technology X stands for that technology (it is kind of advertisement). So in this respect, IntelliJ does a very poor work.

*Of course, it is not only problem with IntelliJ, I didn't see **any** GUI JVM-based program that feels snappy.*

### Question

If you could make an educated guess, what are the reasons Visual Studio is a magnitude faster than IntelliJ, what would it be:

* it is fault of JetBrains,
* it is fault of Swing,
* Visual Studio uses undocumented C "for" loops (little conspiracy is not bad -- just kidding),
* JVM is not that mature after all,
* GC is a useful thing, but cannot match with manual allocating/freeing memory,
* ?

**There has to a be a reason for such difference in application speeds, so what it is?** Please let's focus on Visual Studio vs. IntelliJ IDEA.