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Making Emacs Popular Again

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Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#331

Post by dfabulich »

tsimionescu wrote: post #266
dfabulich wrote: post #99

Emacs might never catch up to Visual Studio Code, which is actively funded by Microsoft, but intuitively, it seems like Emacs ought to be able to catch up to Vim. It's always been weird writing Emacs extensions in ELisp, but it's not like Vimscript is a top-tier language. Emacs is hard to learn, but so's Vim. I think it comes down to performance, especially startup time. Emacs developers have never cared much about i…

As a regular emacs user, I can tell you that start-up time is one of the lowest things on my priority list of things that I wish would be improved. Emacs is not vim. Emacs is not designed to be a program you open for every file. Emacs is and IDE. You open it every time your computer starts, and then you go to Emacs and find files from there. Occasionally, you'll have a file and want to look at it, and then you'll use…

We agree completely. Neither Emacs users nor developers care about start-up time or size on disk.

And that's why Vim is installed by default on Linux distros (and macOS and WSL) and Emacs isn't. And that's partly why people learn Vim before they learn Emacs.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#332

Post by dfabulich »

fhennig wrote: post #288
dfabulich wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I bet Stallman's never used ido. 2) You already use Emacs. What would it take to get a new user to use it? It would have to be installed by default, and be the quickest and easiest way to edit a file. That means startup performance.

> That means startup performance. Or the server/client setup could just be the default and the server starts at system boot.

Linux distros aren't going to install an Emacs daemon by default.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#333

Post by microcolonel »

jrimbault wrote: post #234
rglullis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, chill. There are lots of things that seem daunting at first and unforgiving to the impatient beginner: chess, surfing, martial arts, drawing... it doesn't mean that any of those are user-hostile, it just means that those that want to learn and master it will need to develop a certain discipline. If you don't want that, fine. But what is the point of going around and saying that those who do enjoy these things ar…

I did not say they are stupid. I'm saying some communities build on pseudo-elitism. It's not stupid to enjoy using a text editor. It's stupid to argue that because it's hard to use (and hard to master) "you're just not getting it". I think the expirement is over and conclusions can be drawn : emacs represent a tiny proportion of text editor's users, not because of a lack of features (is there's one thing missing it w…

> I'm saying some communities build on pseudo-elitism.

I'm not saying that Emacs users are better than you, I'm saying that you lack the experience to judge the value of Emacs; and that your lack of experience makes your assessments of Emacs basically too shallow to contribute meaningfully: in short, you don't know enough about Emacs to tell if your dismissal of it was premature, or if the things that turned you off were just the unfamiliar tail end of a coherent system.

It should be obvious that there are many many people who have spent more time actually using Emacs than you, and almost none of them by force or by fiat: literally nobody asked me to use Emacs, nobody started me using it, I received little or no assistance in learning it, I was mocked for using it as a teenager, and I spent most of my time with Emacs on teams of droves of people who do not use Emacs and evangelize other editors. At the outset, I simply wanted to try it, and I gave it a fair shake; I continued to use it because paid off for me.

The fact that people willingly start, and continue, using Emacs of their own volition with no external help or encouragement, should tell you that there are merits to the program that outweigh the things that turned you off before you gained any meaningful understanding.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#334

Post by dfabulich »

cat199 wrote: post #237
dfabulich wrote: post #99

Emacs might never catch up to Visual Studio Code, which is actively funded by Microsoft, but intuitively, it seems like Emacs ought to be able to catch up to Vim. It's always been weird writing Emacs extensions in ELisp, but it's not like Vimscript is a top-tier language. Emacs is hard to learn, but so's Vim. I think it comes down to performance, especially startup time. Emacs developers have never cared much about i…

so - your 1st point of reference is vscode which is an electron app, and then you diverge getting into emacs startup time and emacs reputation for 'bloat' this reputation by the way was 'earned' when entire computers had less memory than a typical emacs or vscode instance, and similarly, emacs likely currently uses less RAM than vscode due to afformentioned electron. Also: vi vs emacs 'bloat' wars were in reference t…

I agree that VS Code is even more "bloated" than Emacs, but it has a multi-billion dollar corporation funding it. If Emacs could get that, maybe Emacs would be as popular as VS Code!

But, short of that, Emacs can't beat VS Code. Emacs could beat Vim, but only by being so fast and small that it gets installed by default on Linux distros (and macOS and WSL).

But that'll never happen, because Emacs folks prioritize features over performance. (If they cared that much about performance, they wouldn't be Emacs users!)

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#335

Post by 01100011 »

wwarner wrote: post #150

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…

Choosing an editor like emacs or vi is a major decision which will have long-lasting effects. I love vi, and the homerow movement keys are now hard-wired into my brain, so much so that using 'normal' applications is noticeably frustrating. Sure, I can try to add plugins to everything, but that only goes so far and requires a lot of setup work on every new computer or VM. That said, the old school editors bring plenty to the table for programmers if you take the time to learn them well.

Honestly emacs sounds wonderful on many levels, but I learned vi first and I think that will keep me from ever switching. There's probably a vi-mode for emacs I guess... anyone have any comments on that?

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#336

Post by ddavis »

gfxgirl wrote: post #326

I've used emacs for maybe 18 months solid. I never found it had a single feature that my other editors didn't have (not saying it doesn't, just staying I didn't run into them). My other editors can be extended via scripts. My other editors (mostly) have keyboard macros, repeat, etc.. My other editors can be used efficiently keyboard only. My other editors debug various languages. My other editors open shells in the e…

I think it really comes down to having the patience to learn how to extend your personal Emacs setup with the built in programming language: Emacs Lisp. From personal experience I can say that learning the basics of Emacs Lisp turned my relationship with Emacs from "preferred" to "nothing else measures up"

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#337

Post by mjcohen »

bitwize wrote: post #327
state_less wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, emacs in the browser. Popular editors like VS Code use monaco and now github has codespaces [1] which is running in the browser. People live as much or more in the browser as the terminal these days, so bring the emacs sauce to where the people live. Maybe you could get some of the c compiled to web assembly, and the lisp would follow? It'd be neat to open a buffer to the page emacs lives in and start editing, ca…

Emacs in the browser, you say? smug Willy Wonka face http://www.ymacs.org/

Last updated 2012.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#338

Post by state_less »

bitwize wrote: post #327
state_less wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, emacs in the browser. Popular editors like VS Code use monaco and now github has codespaces [1] which is running in the browser. People live as much or more in the browser as the terminal these days, so bring the emacs sauce to where the people live. Maybe you could get some of the c compiled to web assembly, and the lisp would follow? It'd be neat to open a buffer to the page emacs lives in and start editing, ca…

Emacs in the browser, you say? smug Willy Wonka face http://www.ymacs.org/

That’s a cool project and a nice effort. It renders pretty well on my iPhone too. Not able to edit on the phone, but still.

I see some other good ideas here too that could maybe give emacs a fresh breath in the new world of IDEs in the browser/cloud.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#339

Post by microcolonel »

schwartzworld wrote: post #311
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.

That's to avoid overstretching your pinky

On an ordinary PC keyboard with sufficient travel, you can use your palm instead of your pinky, and I highly recommend it.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#340

Post by spindle »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #160
JoshTriplett wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely true. However, if you can make a tool more learnable for new users without sacrificing its optimization for power users, you should. One way to do that is to not gratuitously invent new terms, and to use terms people are familiar with. Using conventions like "M-x" throughout the documentation, even with a note at the front of the manual that "We refer to Alt as Meta for historical reasons.", is nee…

There's some bad stuff in emacs but to concern yourself with Meta as opposed to M- is plain silly. > if you can make a tool more learnable for new users without sacrificing its optimization for power users, you should Yes, but it's incredibly difficult and frankly the emacs devs have enough to do (and they do it well), and UI design is a very different skillset from programming. Frankly the learning curve for emacs i…

> it's incredibly difficult

Right. I see this point ignored very frequently (sometimes because it's obvious and sometimes because people are being dumb).

A lot of the things that would make emacs more like other editors are extremely difficult to retrofit. I expect there is still SOME low-hanging fruit, but a lot of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked, and a lot of the remaining changes that people would like are a lot of work.

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