Making Emacs Popular Again • Hacker News Board

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#141

Post by dan-robertson » Thu, May 07, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

I feel like I’ve noticed an increase in the popularity of emacs online in the last 10 years or so. Or perhaps just a waning of vim zealotry. I’m pretty sure I used to see quite vim-related posts on hn but I don’t really see them anymore, whereas I do see emacs/elisp related posts from time to time (with particularly strong mentions for org-mode or magit), and I don’t have much memory of them.

Perhaps vim is so widely used now that no one bothers to vote up articles about it. I find the shift particularly strange because it comes with a shift of the site away from lots of articles about languages like lisp for which emacs is basically the only sane choice of editor.

Perhaps the real reason is just that I’ve noticed emacs more because I’ve used it more.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#142

Post by downerending » Thu, May 07, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

mwfunk wrote: post #51

How on earth was RMS unfamiliar with the existence of Org Mode, and how on earth was RMS unfamiliar with the concept of outliners, and why on earth, when he finally figured out what Org Mode did, was his immediate response to be super dismissive because it wasn't something that he's interested in using personally? He sounds like some random person spewing random subjective opinions about things, rather than the origi…

> How on earth was RMS unfamiliar with the existence of Org Mode [?]

It's not like he's been doing anything else for the last 30 years.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#143

Post by timmy-turner » Thu, May 07, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

jolmg wrote: post #79

snazz wrote: post #37

I think that the Emacs concept is really good, but it clearly has a lot of problems that make it altogether unattractive to new potential users. - The keybindings are not the standard CUA ones. Even with Cua Mode, every page on the internet still suggests using the regular old Emacs keybindings. There's weird conflicts between some packages, especially if you use non-default keybinds like Evil. The defaults are not e…

How do you fix your con, > - There's no namespacing between packages. They can run right over each other and cause weird bugs. This isn't theoretical; it's what happens when you have a bunch of packages installed. Sorting out performance issues caused by the interactions between packages is very challenging. without sacrificing your pro?: > - From anywhere in the editor, you can run code---you don't need to make a ne…

Agreed. I personally had never any problems with packages overwriting each other. Everybody knows that you have to namespace all the functions and it works, just like it works in C.

And the upside that everything is accessible in the scratch buffer is really worth it.

And for me, Elisp has been a kind of constant during my career. I wouldn't bet that in ten years, I'm still doing Typescript or Javascript. But if I'm still into programming computers via keyboards I will definitively use Emacs for that.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#144

Post by olivierestsage » Thu, May 07, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

Yuioup wrote: post #138

What makes Emacs attractive to me is that it's a programming environment which you can modify on the fly. At least, that's what I have read, I've never actually done it myself. Visual Studio Code, the editor that I use daily, is based on Javascript (Typescript) but I have yet to see a page by Microsoft explaining to me that I can quickly whip up a script and execute it in my editor. From what I understand you need to…

FWIW, Emacs does support navigation via arrow keys by default, unless I am misunderstanding what you mean.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#145

Post by stupidthrottle » Thu, May 07, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

sys_64738 wrote: post #86

Emacs is eternal. It was here before most other editors and will outlive the majority.

> It was here before most other editors and will outlive the majority.

While your first statement is true, taking the second one for granted is dangerous and may lead to the exact opposite.

Every long-term FOSS project needs to continuously ensure it maintains a healthy level of contributors, or it will die.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#146

Post by _emacsomancer_ » Thu, May 07, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

wayneftw wrote: post #57

agentultra wrote: post #29

Does it need to be popular or need more users to become maintainers? I use emacs because I can't imagine using anything else that has half the features and is harder to extend. I can't imagine why it needs to be popular. It's a programming environment that happens to have a text editor built in. That appeals to some folks but I can't imagine why someone interested in writing for publication would choose it over Scriv…

Perhaps adding JavaScript to the list of languages that you can extend Emacs with would be a good start - https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryExtensionLanguage

For the backend or the gui-interface?

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#147

Post by viklove » Thu, May 07, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #120

This is a super dumb example, but I hate that scrolling is tied to cursor. Like if I'm gasp using the mouse to scroll through a file in emacs, the cursor has to stay in the viewport. If I scroll past the viewport, the cursor moves to the viewport. In IntelliJ (which has such good emacs keybindings I can use it for a lot of my work), the opposite is true: when I scroll away from my cursor, it stays there and when I st…

It's because scrolling doesn't actually make sense in emacs or vim, if you've put some time into learning how to use them.

In vim, for example, you would be much better off navigating with the keyboard than the mouse. You can leave bookmarks all over the file and jump between them with 2 keystrokes. There are also a multitude of navigation controls ({, }, gg, G, etc.) that save you the time of moving your hand in between your mouse and keyboard.

If you want to use your mouse, maybe vim/emacs aren't for you -- sublime or vs code will probably serve you better.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#148

Post by plorkyeran » Thu, May 07, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

korethr wrote: post #59

A shame Stallman put the kibosh on QT quickly. Is he planning on there being a GPLv4? Not in the "leaving that option open for the future" kind of planning, but more, "A need has been identified that can't be met by v3, it's time to start working on v4." Because if they truly want a cross platform visual interface, AFAICT, QT is the closest you're going to get, and IMO, is the best means of doing so. Every QT app I'v…

Qt is licensed under GPLv2 or GPLv3, while GTK is LGPLv2.1+. If the FSF makes a GPLv4, GTK will automatically be available under that license, while Qt will not.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#149

Post by downerending » Thu, May 07, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

NelsonMinar wrote: post #9

The kindest thing we could do for future programmers is let Emacs and all tty-oriented editors die. There are much better options now. UI has improved a lot since the 1970s, let's embrace it.

> UI has improved a lot since the 1970s

That's far from obvious. I recall terminal interfaces rather fondly. Modern interfaces are often more like a flock of multi-colored rabid weasels trying to get in the way of my work.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#150

Post by wwarner » Thu, May 07, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

I use emacs and have for a really long time. Unfortunately, I don't recommend it to anyone because I think the costs of learning it outweigh the benefits.

When I read this article, I was surprised that my gripes don't overlap much with those listed in the article. I do really like the idea of "new user detection", which would take a user through a short configuration process if the .emacs file was missing.

I think my main gripe is async. I really love emacs for tramp, but there are so many operations that block working on all buffers while one buffer is waiting for i/o.