I want my software to be instant, or as close to it as feasible. Vim is fast enough, make sometimes, and gcc not. This is in syntax-only mode for the latter.
But how can you get more instant than "it's already running"? The emacs way of doing things seems to be to do _everything_ in emacs -- it's your shell, your editor, your debugger, your mail client. Vim users, on the other hand, tend to only open vim when they need it.
