I think you underestimate how intense drawing text is, with all the aliasing and whatnot that goes on, spanning the full width of a 4k monitor, and don't realize all the IDEs you mention are GPU accelerated. You can get a feel for its worth by using a terminal that isn't GPU accelerated, or turn off GPU acceleration in VSCode, Microsoft office, etc. Add in images and video, and you get people complaining about poor battery life.

It's either you peg a CPU while simply scrolling, or your GPU does a small amount of power efficient, buttery smooth, work.

This is a very good reply! I stand corrected, and thank you to do so in a very polite and succinct manner. A better way to think about GPUs in 2026: They are used as a co-processor and are very efficient to paint pixels.

You can cache the glyphs in an atlas and avoid re-rendering each glyph every time. But this comes with its own complications and tradeoffs.