- Author
- Mijndert Stuij
- Published
- 6 June 2026
- Kind
- Personal blog post with config snippets
- Original
- mijndertstuij.nl/posts/life-is-too-short-for-a-slow-terminal/
- Subject
- Software tools and craft
What it is
Mijndert Stuij describes the setup behind a zsh shell that starts in about 30 milliseconds. The post also explains how readers can measure their own shell.
What it says
- The author's shell starts in about 30 milliseconds with completions, highlighting, autosuggestions, fzf and direnv.
- The author uses no framework and sources exactly three plugins directly from .zshrc.
- Completions are cached, so the full compinit run happens only after 24 hours.
- Slow tools such as nvm are wrapped in functions that load them on first use.
- The prompt is pure, which is async, so git status does not delay each Enter.
- The author rates startup under 100ms as fine and under 50ms as great.
What evidence it gives
The post shows a timing loop of five runs on the author's own machine. It gives code for each technique and points to a dotfiles repository. It compares no other setups.
Interests and limits
The numbers come from one machine and one user's habits. An update at the top says a reader challenged the measuring and some advice. That follow-up post was not read.