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Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

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Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#11

I recently tried to switch from vim to Emacs with spacemacs. I enjoyed it until I discovered Emacs has no support for tabs (ui tabs, not the character ;). I went back to vim mainly due to that, but still miss magit....

Aquamacs (http://aquamacs.org) get's it tabs from somewhere...

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#12
post #6
post #3

The way I see it, there are two major approaches to IDEs - Extendable text editors (of which Emacs is the best example) and Visual Studio knock offs. There is no right or wrong answer, but I like the Emacs way.

I'd put it slightly differently, but I guess it is the same idea. There are two major approaches to software development: 1) powerful text editors (vi, Emacs) or 2) IDE. Powerful text editors are universal, but up to now their language support was often subpar compared to IDEs. They tend to do well for niche languages with no dedicated IDE, as then they're the reference editors. But for mainstream languages on can us…

> That's the situation so far, but I see this changing thanks to the language server protocol

It’s really interesting how LSP shifts what I’ll call “Visual Studio only features” into all editors, while at the same time you had Microsoft being the ones who initially pushed for LSP-adoption.

I wonder how many internal discussions they had on this subject before saying “Go”.

It’s a fantastic initiative and I’m glad it’s there for me, in my Emacs today.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#13
Being a vim guy myself, I only use Emacs (Spacemacs, to be precise, so as to get rid of all those a-x a-y a-z a-m-s-x type shortcuts and replace them with something ergonomic) as a git client - because Magit is the best git client out there.

I’ve tried using Spacemacs as a main editor for a while, but it’s too much of a mess, and if anything goes wrong (and it often does) you’re stuck with obscure lisp tracebacks, thanks but no thanks, I’ll use vim or kak as the actual text editor. I also noticed I spent an enormous amount of time constantly tweaking my spacemacs config as opposed to doing actual work.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#14

I recently tried to switch from vim to Emacs with spacemacs. I enjoyed it until I discovered Emacs has no support for tabs (ui tabs, not the character ;). I went back to vim mainly due to that, but still miss magit....

You can have many things going at the same time, and select between them using the buffer menu. I find the devotion of yet another chunk of screen real estate to the tab list rather a waste, but shrug aesthetics.

C-x C-b

shows you the list of tabs ("buffers") and lets you select from them easily. As a bonus, the title portion isn't compressed to incomprehensibility when they get numerous.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#15
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put it slightly differently, but I guess it is the same idea. There are two major approaches to software development: 1) powerful text editors (vi, Emacs) or 2) IDE. Powerful text editors are universal, but up to now their language support was often subpar compared to IDEs. They tend to do well for niche languages with no dedicated IDE, as then they're the reference editors. But for mainstream languages on can us…

> That's the situation so far, but I see this changing thanks to the language server protocol It’s really interesting how LSP shifts what I’ll call “Visual Studio only features” into all editors, while at the same time you had Microsoft being the ones who initially pushed for LSP-adoption. I wonder how many internal discussions they had on this subject before saying “Go”. It’s a fantastic initiative and I’m glad it’s…

Visual Studio-like IDEs are a dead end. There is little revenue opportunity in them and a huge downside in losing relevance in the overall developer mindshare.

How many of us would be using a Microsoft IDE/text editor if it were not for VS Code?

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#16
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the situation so far, but I see this changing thanks to the language server protocol It’s really interesting how LSP shifts what I’ll call “Visual Studio only features” into all editors, while at the same time you had Microsoft being the ones who initially pushed for LSP-adoption. I wonder how many internal discussions they had on this subject before saying “Go”. It’s a fantastic initiative and I’m glad it’s…

Visual Studio-like IDEs are a dead end. There is little revenue opportunity in them and a huge downside in losing relevance in the overall developer mindshare. How many of us would be using a Microsoft IDE/text editor if it were not for VS Code?

The millions that use and will continue to use Visual Studio?

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#17
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put it slightly differently, but I guess it is the same idea. There are two major approaches to software development: 1) powerful text editors (vi, Emacs) or 2) IDE. Powerful text editors are universal, but up to now their language support was often subpar compared to IDEs. They tend to do well for niche languages with no dedicated IDE, as then they're the reference editors. But for mainstream languages on can us…

> That's the situation so far, but I see this changing thanks to the language server protocol It’s really interesting how LSP shifts what I’ll call “Visual Studio only features” into all editors, while at the same time you had Microsoft being the ones who initially pushed for LSP-adoption. I wonder how many internal discussions they had on this subject before saying “Go”. It’s a fantastic initiative and I’m glad it’s…

LSP is fine and all, but as a one-size-fits-all protocol I'm guessing it will never reach the level of flexibility and extensibility required to implement something like IDEA/Rider level refactorings, hints, and the general level of "code understanding" by the editor. It's a bit hard to explain, but JetBrains' IDEs really feel like they understand your code. It feels more like editing an engineering diagram, or tinkering with a mechanical contraption, and less like editing free-form text (which code is definitely not). That's how it should be, I believe.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#18
I love Emacs. For all of its warts, "historical reasons", and vestigal features, it is the editor that really opened my eyes to alternative ways to do introspection and programming, in general.

I want to believe the friction comes if you try to "fix" Emacs too early.

You kinda have to conform to the Emacs way when learning it and leave all of your assumptions at the door. I see a lot of people who come to Emacs from Vim expecting Evil Mode to be the panacea for Emacs. It's not. At the end of the day, it's still Emacs and people run into friction because they expect it to be Vim-ish all over or they want to force Emacs to be Vim.

Personally, I came from Vim to Emacs via Spacemacs. I was a bit of a zealot about Vim until I tried Emacs. I left all of my expectations behind and I was pleasantly surprised by many things inside. Were there things I disliked? Of course. But, I wasn't looking for an excuse to hate it.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#19

No thanks. I've had several bouts of trying to learn emacs throughout my life. It isn't necessary to list all the benefits, sure, there's a lot. Yes, I get it's "extensible" and you can write little elisp programs to do just what you want. Here's the obstacle: Motor skills. It just takes way to long to first memorize reams of commands and then to train your fingers to issue those commands effortlessly. In the meantim…

I had a similar experience to yours until I realized that the extensible part also means you don't need to use the builtin commands and shortcuts. I have been using emacs for 10 years (used vim for about 12 before that, using emacs with evil-mode now) and, to this day, I have to google 'how to quit emacs' when I am faced with a vanilla emacs :)

I just feel it's "my" editor more than any other editor I've ever used.

edit: typos

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#20
I'm using Emacs for my daily tasks, both writing and programming. One question I have to more experienced Emacs users: Can you recommend an email client? It needs to be able to display html mails. Currently, I use claws-mail and am fairly happy with it, except for the search. I've got about 30,000 mails in the inbox and full-text searching them takes too long.

Is there a way to transition my claws-mail folders to Emacs, or ideally use both programs at the same time for a while?

The article recommends notmuch-emacs. But I'm afraid of 2 things, (i) loosing existing mails in the transition (due to e.g. faulty conversion tools), and (ii) that after a complicated transition I'm not happy with the new setup. Any recommendations? Is it possible to use the claws-mail email inboxes directly in Emacs?

Another thing is org-mode. I never really managed to get deep enough into it to really see the benefits. I've even bought the printed org-mode manual, but the setup seems so complicated. Can someone recommend a good "light" tutorial for it? What are you using it for?

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