The concern about startup time seems a bit odd to me too. I use Emacs in the way it was originally designed to be used: I start an Emacs process and keep it running for weeks. I don't even use the client; when I want to edit a new file, I select the Emacs window and pull up the file from within that. The idea that I would type a shell command every time I want to edit a new file is foreign to me -- I mean, I know that's how dinky little single-buffer editors like nano and pico work, but I would never use a sophisticated multi-buffer editor like Emacs (or IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse or Visual Studio or ...) in that mode.