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Making Emacs Popular Again

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Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#391

Post by bachmeier »

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #366

New employee 1 workflow at company X: 1. Install VS Code 2. Click extensions and install language specific plugin 3. Work New employee 2 workflow at company X: 1. Install emacs 2. Try to install some source code indexing tool 3. Tool is missing 13 dependencies, so spend 4 hours finding, installing and configuring the dependencies. 4. Spend another couple hours reading non-existent to terrible documentation (documenta…

> In a few years, VS Code has achieved better out of the box functionality for working professionals than emacs has in 40 years.

That's not as clever as you seem to think it is. Emacs was created for a different world. Of course new tools have an easier time in the world for which they were created and with no legacy baggage.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#392

Post by Osiris »

MarcScott wrote: post #377
ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #366

New employee 1 workflow at company X: 1. Install VS Code 2. Click extensions and install language specific plugin 3. Work New employee 2 workflow at company X: 1. Install emacs 2. Try to install some source code indexing tool 3. Tool is missing 13 dependencies, so spend 4 hours finding, installing and configuring the dependencies. 4. Spend another couple hours reading non-existent to terrible documentation (documenta…

> The fact that everyone has to have a non-empty, non trivial .emacs file means it is maximally unsuitable - for everyone. The fact that I have a non trivial .emacs file ensures that when I switch machines, I only have to transfer a single file to enable an identical development environment. I can't speak for VS Code, as I've only ever played with it a couple of times, but can I do the same thing there? I don't want…

I'm not familiar with emacs. Does that mean that you don't need to install any supporting software like indexers, linters, syntax highlighters, etc? Does the emacs file contain all that or tell it how to download all the plugins?

If you could just copy one file and get all that, that's pretty cool.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#393

Post by jjoonathan »

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #366

New employee 1 workflow at company X: 1. Install VS Code 2. Click extensions and install language specific plugin 3. Work New employee 2 workflow at company X: 1. Install emacs 2. Try to install some source code indexing tool 3. Tool is missing 13 dependencies, so spend 4 hours finding, installing and configuring the dependencies. 4. Spend another couple hours reading non-existent to terrible documentation (documenta…

That, and while emacs has a reputation as being the ur-editor from which all text editing innovation stems, the reality is quite the opposite. It's stagnant and hasn't been the center of text editing innovation for at least the last decade, and probably quite a bit longer before that.

It was a particularly bad string of basic package incompatibilities that woke me from my emacs evangelist phase, but it was the realization that emacs was downstream from TextMate on several non-GUI-centric features that made me realize the entire "platform" value prop was bunk. While emacs might be excused for missing tectonic shifts (e.g. away from CLI and towards GUI), entirely text-centric features like multiple arbitrary simultaneous caret, Smith Waterman quick file/action search, powerful template substitution, parsing-based syntax highlighting, navigation, and refactor tools all developed and matured outside of emacs and then slowly and painfully found their way back in, not the other way around.

Emacs was supposed to be a fertile platform for text editing innovation, but history didn't work out that way, even if you ignore the trend towards GUI innovation, which you shouldn't.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#394

Post by _-david-_ »

coffeecat wrote: post #345
buzzkillington wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when the woke takeover of the SFS is finally complete and emacs is re-licensed under a new social justice license where you can only use it if you don't oppress minorities? I don't trust the FSF further than I can throw them and I don't trust them with my copyrights.

Wouldn't all previous releases be fork-able under the terms of the current GPL in that case?

Yes but it would potentially split the community.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#395

Post by balloneij »

bitwize wrote: post #367
balloneij wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point does this get in the way of your programming? If there's always more to learn about the tool, I think that would bother me. I would like to like emacs, but the couple times I tried it it gets in the way because I don't know it well enough. Vim seems more appealing because there is less to know up-front, but it is still extensible

At the point where you find yourself dinking with Emacs and making excuses to yak shave instead of getting your work done -- which, given that it's Emacs and makes most other tools seem positively stone-knives-and-bearskins by comparison, is in practice a quite tempting trap to fall into. The best way to approach things is incrementally. Find some pain point in your current workflow and write a little bit of Elisp to…

I can understand that. I just like to tinker too much :). Going at it with a goal in mind would be a good idea

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#396

Post by voidfunc »

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #366

New employee 1 workflow at company X: 1. Install VS Code 2. Click extensions and install language specific plugin 3. Work New employee 2 workflow at company X: 1. Install emacs 2. Try to install some source code indexing tool 3. Tool is missing 13 dependencies, so spend 4 hours finding, installing and configuring the dependencies. 4. Spend another couple hours reading non-existent to terrible documentation (documenta…

I would expect an experienced emacs user to have a config already that more or less "works". Was this a junior developer that just decided to start using emacs one day?

I'm not an emacs person myself, but every emacs person I have ever met already has it setup and customized and just brings their config. A new dev starting with emacs on a new job... just sounds like a bad recipe and misunderstood priorities.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#397

Post by ekko911 »

Osiris wrote: post #392
MarcScott wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that everyone has to have a non-empty, non trivial .emacs file means it is maximally unsuitable - for everyone. The fact that I have a non trivial .emacs file ensures that when I switch machines, I only have to transfer a single file to enable an identical development environment. I can't speak for VS Code, as I've only ever played with it a couple of times, but can I do the same thing there? I don't want…

I'm not familiar with emacs. Does that mean that you don't need to install any supporting software like indexers, linters, syntax highlighters, etc? Does the emacs file contain all that or tell it how to download all the plugins? If you could just copy one file and get all that, that's pretty cool.

The "Emacs file" can contain that yes. Since .emacs is written in Lisp (Emacs Lisp) you can basically tell it to do anything om start up.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#398

Post by reshie »

ch1lang0 wrote: post #383

Emacs is not an editor, is a personal travel to find and build your ultimate editor through the years, a solution that will work forever but only for you. Yes, is the most powerful tool that ever existed, a beautiful monstrosity, no other editor will let you cherry-picking git commits, handle your agenda, export to PDF, measure the time for a cup of tea and estimate the new project costs. In some point Emacs becomes…

i've always called it a DE for console.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#400

Post by indogooner »

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #366

New employee 1 workflow at company X: 1. Install VS Code 2. Click extensions and install language specific plugin 3. Work New employee 2 workflow at company X: 1. Install emacs 2. Try to install some source code indexing tool 3. Tool is missing 13 dependencies, so spend 4 hours finding, installing and configuring the dependencies. 4. Spend another couple hours reading non-existent to terrible documentation (documenta…

I don't contest that VSCode has achieved better out of the box functionality than emacs but it still needs a lot of configuration. My experience is only with C++ extension where intellisense update just goes on indefinitely. Navigation to a function takes ages. Then I exclude some source directories and restart VSCode. And not to talk of resource hog that it is. When it works it is pretty good and that's why I stick to it. May be other language extensions are better. I would say it is the best editor with the resource usage of a full blown IDE.
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