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Making Emacs Popular Again

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Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#81

Post by azinman2 »

The Emacs community has held itself back by continuing the line of thought of resisting anything that fundamentally changes what they already have spent years learning and know. It's their power tool, and using tools is important for humans to do their craft. So I understand why they don't want anything to change.

Meanwhile new generations of people have different tools and aren't held onto these past ones because they didn't start with it (and they weren't coding in the 80s). The world of computing generally has moved on with new ideas, new experiences, and new form factors. So their new tooling has won them over, and outcompeted a dying generation.

This is a good thing! It's called progress. Unless Emacs is willing to have fresh blood decide a new direction for it, it will be relegated to history. If Apple held onto its Apple II vision, we wouldn't have the iPhone today. Either you are willing to fundamentally change with the times, or you aren't. Emacs has shown they aren't, and they've had over three decades to do so. Fortunately others will in their place!

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#82

Post by giggles_giggles »

arm wrote: post #75

For me, I’ve recently started using Emacs solely due to wanting to try out rust-analyzer¹ (not touching Visual Studio Code since it uses Electron), and I’m really enjoying how insanely customizable Emacs is! The ecosystem around Emacs looks great too, with quite a few packages I´m interested in trying (like Magit²). ―――――― ¹ — https://rust-analyzer.github.io/blog/2020/04/20/first-releas... ² — https://magit.vc/

I cannot possibly encourage you more to check out magit. It is unbelievably good. I always share this demo with people to show off just a tiny portion of what it's capable of doing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzQEIRRJ2T0

My skills with git have gotten better after using magit, too, because it brings the power of git to the surface. It's a really fantastic git porcelain and the fact that it is deeply integrated into Emacs just makes it absolutely second to none.

Magit is easily one of my favorite pieces of software and I will leap at the chance to sing its praises.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#83

Post by rglullis »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #54
rglullis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs' notation for keybindings uses C for indicating the Ctrl/Cmd key and M for the Meta (alt). Things like C-c C-v are chords. and . I might be wrong, but I believe that the reason that parent commenter said that "C is not Ctrl" is due to the fact that you can map these keys to any where you want. Most emacs and lispers prefer to have C key bound to caps lock.

C-c is a chord (two keys pressed at once); C-c C-v is a chord progression (first one chord, then the other), more often referred as a sequence in this context.

Right you are. Using Emacs for 20 years and I still can't get to explain it to people properly.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#84

Post by superbaconman »

jwdunne wrote: post #47
Ataraxic wrote: post #25

Popularity is more of a marketing problem than an editor problem. At the same time, if we compare emacs to vscode, vscode simply requires less configuration to get going. Given how much tooling exists in the javascript ecosystem, I think having a few plugins "just work" goes a long way. Asking users to configure emacs from scratch to have a reasonable editing experience in their programming language of their choice i…

At work, I moved from Emacs to VS Code about a year ago. I’d used Emacs for years but I was spending a large amount of time fixing package upgrade problems. I guess I’d got into some kind of dependency hell. Maybe I wasn’t experienced enough with Emacs to use it professionally. But that’s the kicker, I haven’t had that problem switching to VS Code. Having all of Elisp and all of Emacs available, including packages, i…

What did you do about key bindings? The default vscode ones rely heavily on arrow keys, but those things are just so far away from the home key. I can't seem to find a move up/down paragraph shortcut to map either. I've tried some of the emacs plugins but they all introduce weird behavior; I keep ending up in some random menu vs just moving my cursor around.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#85

Post by sachdevap »

arm wrote: post #75

For me, I’ve recently started using Emacs solely due to wanting to try out rust-analyzer¹ (not touching Visual Studio Code since it uses Electron), and I’m really enjoying how insanely customizable Emacs is! The ecosystem around Emacs looks great too, with quite a few packages I´m interested in trying (like Magit²). ―――――― ¹ — https://rust-analyzer.github.io/blog/2020/04/20/first-releas... ² — https://magit.vc/

magit is just superb. You are bound to love it! And the developer is extremely responsive too!

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#87

Post by 7786655 »

dmortin wrote: post #28
Ataraxic wrote: post #25

Popularity is more of a marketing problem than an editor problem. At the same time, if we compare emacs to vscode, vscode simply requires less configuration to get going. Given how much tooling exists in the javascript ecosystem, I think having a few plugins "just work" goes a long way. Asking users to configure emacs from scratch to have a reasonable editing experience in their programming language of their choice i…

> if we compare emacs to vscode, vscode simply requires less configuration to get going True, but then why do more people uses Vim than Emacs? Is it becase it's installed on servers and stuff? I wonder what percent of desktop programmers use vim or emacs who don't need to do devops.

I use it because it's installed by default on Linux desktops. That's not important to me now—I'm currently using Neovim compiled from source—but it was important when I was first learning to code.

I could probably switch to Emacs using Evil, but I don't see a compelling reason to.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#88

Post by celeritascelery »

dmortin wrote: post #28
Ataraxic wrote: post #25

Popularity is more of a marketing problem than an editor problem. At the same time, if we compare emacs to vscode, vscode simply requires less configuration to get going. Given how much tooling exists in the javascript ecosystem, I think having a few plugins "just work" goes a long way. Asking users to configure emacs from scratch to have a reasonable editing experience in their programming language of their choice i…

> if we compare emacs to vscode, vscode simply requires less configuration to get going True, but then why do more people uses Vim than Emacs? Is it becase it's installed on servers and stuff? I wonder what percent of desktop programmers use vim or emacs who don't need to do devops.

Where I work nearly everyone uses Vim. We work in less popular languages that new kids on the block (VSC, Atom) don't really support. It really either Vim or Emacs. I think most people choose Vim because it is the default "Terminal based Editor" in most peoples minds.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#89

Post by acdha »

taeric wrote: post #70
acdha wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you will make Emacs appealing to users when you start asserting it is appealing to users I've worked with a lot of Emacs fans but everyone describes it as having a hefty learning curve. If you tell people it's appealing and the first experience is unpleasant, all you're going to do is convince them that you aren't a reliable source of advice. I think it would be much better to focus on easing that initial s…

Have you ever used some of the other popular choices? Pleasant is rarely an accurate term for computer use. And I'm not saying lie. Just stop scaring people away. Emacs is by far one of the most empowering programs out there. Market that. She realize that it is marketing. You want to build a market of users? You have to have some marketing.

Remember that Emacs is competing with things like Visual Studio Code, Atom, Sublime Text, etc. If you tell people that it's easy they're going to try it, bounce off, and conclude you have no idea what you're talking about. If, instead, you tell them what you like about it more than those others they might find they agree with you.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#90

Post by jimhefferon »

dhosek wrote: post #72
taeric wrote: post #2

Oddly, I think you will make Emacs appealing to users when you start asserting it is appealing to users. Few changes really needed. Just stop intimidating people before they get involved.

Getting started with Emacs and having basic skills (load, save, cut, copy, paste, search) is WAY faster than with vi. I don't use more than a tiny fraction of emacs's capabilities and likely never will, but the initial part of the learning curve is way easier than it is with something like vi.

But emacs is not against vi. When I taught a class where I started by introducing emacs, the first question I got was how to make it have this color text and that hentai page background.
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