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Ask HN: Is Visual Studio Code the Emacs of 21st century?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Visual Studio Code the Emacs of 21st century?

#11

Post by codyb »

snazz wrote: post #10
GeordiePowers wrote: post #6

VSCode isn't anywhere near "open" enough (plugin APIs may be lacking). For example: the VSCode vim plugin is one of the worst of any major editor, while the Emacs version (Evil) is arguably the best implementation of vim period. Atom is much closer to Emacs; nearly all the functionality is provided through optional packages, and it's very open to little tweaks to make it just the way you want.

Agreed. I use Evil exclusively (effectively pretending that I’m using Vim, except that I get to use the awesome features that Emacs has for programming in Lispy languages) and would love to start learning Emacs proper, except that Evil is so good that I really don’t need to. Atom feels sort of like Emacs except that you have to deal with JavaScript instead of Lisp. I prefer using Elisp over JS, and Emacs is much fast…

ViM user here who used SpaceMacs for a while for Clojure development.

I'm not sure if SpaceMacs uses evil but it's a similar concept. That being said, I tried learning regular Emacs to see what the fuss is all about and much prefer modal editing to pressing control constantly even with caps lock mapped to control.

Your mileage may vary but if you're already editing quickly modally and have all the features you like in Emacs I'm not certain there's much upside to learning how to do a lot of the same stuff the Emacs way.

Tmux plus tmuxp was a much greater improvement for me. Being able to restart iTerm2 for updates and maintain all my sessions, no rage after accidentally quitting a session, and writing short and simple tmuxp yaml files to launch a whole environment with one command is really awesome.

I enjoy the ViM mode in IntelliJ which I assume is similar to the one in Visual Studio Code, but mostly I prefer the terminal. Everyone loves VS Code that's for sure, so they must be doing something right!

I'd probably actually write plugins for ViM if it used Lisp and in a way I'm kind of glad I don't want to learn ViMScript as I've already spent so much time over the years playing with my vimrc as it is.

Re: Ask HN: Is Visual Studio Code the Emacs of 21st century?

#12

Post by d0mine »

ArtWomb wrote: post #9

I use VS Code. Mostly for frontend stuff. It can bork on large files. Especially if they contain lots of inline binary data. And Intellisense works probabilistically across javascript dependencies. But generally positive the experience has been. Tangential to IDEs are tools for data science and visualization. Having a shareable workspace, akin to Azure Notebooks, can be much more user (and scientist) friendly. Anothe…

> tools for data science and visualization Org-mode with code blocks could be used to run code and display its results e.g., ob-ipython https://github.com/gregsexton/ob-ipython

Re: Ask HN: Is Visual Studio Code the Emacs of 21st century?

#13

Post by bashmydotfiles »

Emacs is Emacs.

Does VSCode have something like Emacs' .emacs / .init file? In one file I can load all the plugins I want and write custom code for added functionality. Rather than having to rely on other people writing a function I need, I can just hack away on my .init file to modify existing functions / create my own.

Now of course in VSCode you can create your own extensions and load it into the program to add your own functionality - but the barrier to entry for any editor (besides Vim) is much higher than Emacs. Looking at the documentation here: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/extensions/example-hello-... - that's a lot of code and things to do to get a hello-world application working in VSCode. In emacs, that would just be a couple lines of elisp in .init.

Even if VSCode has something like .init (I got this from someone on Hacker News) - it's better to think of Emacs as basically a framework for text editors. You're able to change every single part of the application - VSCode and other editors don't hold a candle to the configuration of emacs.

VSCode isn't the successor to Emacs or a modern version of Emacs - it's just VS Code. Emacs is Emacs.

I've used both editors myself, really the best way to get what I'm saying is to use Emacs for a while until you get comfortable with it. My Emacs configuration is something I cherish and it's a joy to use everyday.

Besides programming, I use it for taking notes, a todo list, a journal, etc. Some people even use it for keeping track of finances, for drawing diagrams, for creating slideshows, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Is Visual Studio Code the Emacs of 21st century?

#14

Post by bashmydotfiles »

diimdeep wrote: post #2

vim/emacs + ssh - editing directly over remote file system. I think this use case is why people keep using vim/emacs.

There's also tramp mode for emacs - where you can set up a buffer in emacs to access code over ssh/whatever connection you want.

Re: Ask HN: Is Visual Studio Code the Emacs of 21st century?

#16

Post by neurotrace »

As others have said, it definitely is not. VS Code is somewhere between Emacs and Visual Studio. Not quite as configurable as Emacs, not as tied down as Visual Studio. VS Code is my editor of choice today and part of that is that they actively try to keep extension authors from destroying the editor, like what happened to Atom. Emacs does not do any sort of hand-holding and so it provides a more customizable experience at the expense of, in my opinion, ease of use. I only used Emacs for about a month before switching over to VS Code so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Re: Ask HN: Is Visual Studio Code the Emacs of 21st century?

#18

Post by sirn »

codyb wrote: post #11
snazz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I use Evil exclusively (effectively pretending that I’m using Vim, except that I get to use the awesome features that Emacs has for programming in Lispy languages) and would love to start learning Emacs proper, except that Evil is so good that I really don’t need to. Atom feels sort of like Emacs except that you have to deal with JavaScript instead of Lisp. I prefer using Elisp over JS, and Emacs is much fast…

ViM user here who used SpaceMacs for a while for Clojure development. I'm not sure if SpaceMacs uses evil but it's a similar concept. That being said, I tried learning regular Emacs to see what the fuss is all about and much prefer modal editing to pressing control constantly even with caps lock mapped to control. Your mileage may vary but if you're already editing quickly modally and have all the features you like i…

Spacemacs does indeed use evil.

I found Spacemacs to be great starting point for someone new to Emacs, but after a while I highly recommend extracting your workflow from Spacemacs to vanilla Emacs.

Thanks to use-package[1] (that Spacemacs also uses), most of the extracting would be just copy and pasting things from Spacemacs repo. The hardest part would be figuring out which package is responsible for which functionality. A starting point would be just put this in ~/.emacs.d/init.el:

    (require 'package)
    (setq package-enable-at-startup nil)
    (add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/"))

    (package-initialize)
    (unless (package-installed-p 'use-package)
      (package-refresh-contents)
      (package-install 'use-package))

    (eval-when-compile
      (require 'use-package))

    (use-package evil
      :ensure t
      :config
      (evil-mode t)
And now you got a working vanilla Emacs with evil auto-installed, ready to be put in VCS. After extracting work is done, it will open up a new world of customization (even a low-level things such as replacing package.el with straight.el[2] to enjoy configuration reproducibility) as you now know exactly how every piece fits together. :-)

[1]: https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package

[2]: https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el

Re: Ask HN: Is Visual Studio Code the Emacs of 21st century?

#19

Post by tehaugmenter »

All this spotlight on VS Code and no mention of Sublime Text? I view Sublime Text (even though there is a license fee) as more emacs like than VS Code. I side with others to say its no where near Emacs because Emacs is Emacs. My most cherished Sublime Text plugins began as an Emacs extension (xiki). So I would say Emacs is important to the ecosystem but there's no way Product X will be an Emacs of the 21st century.

Re: Ask HN: Is Visual Studio Code the Emacs of 21st century?

#20

Post by sgillen »

bashmydotfiles wrote: post #14
diimdeep wrote: post #2

vim/emacs + ssh - editing directly over remote file system. I think this use case is why people keep using vim/emacs.

There's also tramp mode for emacs - where you can set up a buffer in emacs to access code over ssh/whatever connection you want.

Yup, but I’ve had some issues pop up using that before.

I’m a longtime emacs user and this seems to be a common theme for me. I try some feature in emacs, it works great but breaks on some edge case or something, and then I have to find a workaround.

The advanatage of emacs of course is that you can basically always find and implement said workaround if you try at it.

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