Slow startup time with no user feedback

[catr1xLiu]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
There seems to be a significant increase in loading time for the beta version. It takes about 15 seconds to load on my computer and around 30 seconds on the school's older machines. During this time, nothing visibly happens, which often leaves me unsure whether the program is still loading or if I didn't click the icon properly.

Describe the solution you'd like
A splash screen would be helpful in this case. It would inform users that the software is loading and prompt them to wait. This could help reduce confusion during the initial loading period.

[jwbonner]

After some investigation, my best guess is that the long startup time is related to Windows Defender. See this issue for details. My understanding is that in this case AdvantageScope can't create any windows (even a splash screen) faster than Windows Defender will allow. If v3.2.1 launches quickly, my best guess is that it has been downloaded enough to cause Windows Defender to scan it less aggressively. The beta releases may not have reached this threshold, and thus will launch more slowly on Windows. Hopefully, future stable releases will be downloaded enough to also be considered safe by Microsoft. We can also try to submit releases to Microsoft manually (via this form), but there are no guarantees about what Windows Defender will do.

If you're using macOS or Linux I'll need to dig further, since I can't recreate a startup time slower than a second or two on those platforms. AdvantageScope is signed on macOS but not Windows, because Microsoft (unlike Apple) doesn't provide any affordable way for us to sign apps for their platform.