Making Emacs Popular Again • Hacker News Board

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#631

Post by erikbye » Fri, May 08, 2020, 1:06 PM UTC

billfruit wrote: post #541

smt88 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You mold your Emacs to a workflow unique to you, notice things you are doing often, add elisp functions to change it to make those things easier, and carry them with you from job to job. As your job evolves and changes, you maintain and grow your Emacs files over decades, and borrow from someone else's workflows. I've been writing software for ~24 years, and I can understand the need for this in the past. Now, I ju…

Somethings I find more convenient with Emacs than modern IDEs: -Remote file editing with Tramp: This is much better even than using vi/pick over a terminal. -Very flexible kill ring copy paste mechanism: can do complicated text manipulations with easy access to copy paste history. -Easy macro recording and playback. -Very flexible windowing: can show even multiple windows with the same file, even synchronized scrolli…

> emote file editing with Tramp: This is much better even than using vi/pick over a terminal.

You're probably aware, but VSCode has great support for editing over SSH.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#632

Post by erikbye » Fri, May 08, 2020, 1:07 PM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #555

billfruit wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somethings I find more convenient with Emacs than modern IDEs: -Remote file editing with Tramp: This is much better even than using vi/pick over a terminal. -Very flexible kill ring copy paste mechanism: can do complicated text manipulations with easy access to copy paste history. -Easy macro recording and playback. -Very flexible windowing: can show even multiple windows with the same file, even synchronized scrolli…

Apart from remote file editing everything else exists in modern IDEs. When is the last time you looked at an IDE?

I'd be surprised if a modern editor didn't support remote editing (SSH).

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#633

Post by Torwald » Fri, May 08, 2020, 1:08 PM UTC

panzerklein wrote: post #584

fluffything wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a researcher, and I have a git repository for my notes, which I edit using markdown. It supports latex math, tables, cross links, labels, and html if I need to do anything fancy, like inserting images, videos, etc. (youtube embedded video? no problem). I can edit them from any device, and they get sync'ed everywhere via git. I can also read them from everywhere, and markdown renders super nicely. I take markdown…

Can you elaborate, please? How do you use latex, images and cross-links in markdown?

cross-links is supported by some editing tools. (For example I use MacDown it does that.) It is not part of the MD spec. I do not use org-mode, but I know it well enough to admit it is unbeatable.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#634

Post by greenshackle2 » Fri, May 08, 2020, 1:11 PM UTC

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…

This was kind of my experience with vim. I like vim's UI but I work on multiple languages so I need a bunch of plugins and tweaks. I finally gave up on it after a plugin update broke it one too many times and I didn't have the heart to debug the wall of errors it barfed up on startup.

I switched to Sublime Text with the Vintage plugin (vim keybindings). Package Control is just so painless to use, and in a few years of use I have to yet to have a plugin break anything.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#635

Post by enitihas » Fri, May 08, 2020, 1:12 PM UTC

Grue3 wrote: post #622

enitihas wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even better New employee workflow at company Z 1. Install the Jetbtains toolbox 2. Have IDEs for several languages with consistent features and semantics. 3. Minimal to no configuration needed 4. Profit.

Lol, tell that to my coworkers who take days trying to fix some problem with their Pycharm, while I just keep coding on my trusty Emacs.

What is the problem that take days to fix with Pycharm. Just curious. I have been using Jetbrains products for 5-6 years now, and have never faced a problem which took days to fix. Sure, there were some bugs here and there, but no showstoppers, and all were already filed in their bug tracker before I could file them.

Also, Pycharm does far more than even a heavily customized .emacs can do (I used to have one very custom emacs setup). There is simply no comparison feature wise. Not to mention, things that emacs can do, Pycharm should be doing in even a very problematic bug ridden state.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#636

Post by cdrini » Fri, May 08, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

erikbye wrote: post #623

smt88 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You mold your Emacs to a workflow unique to you, notice things you are doing often, add elisp functions to change it to make those things easier, and carry them with you from job to job. As your job evolves and changes, you maintain and grow your Emacs files over decades, and borrow from someone else's workflows. I've been writing software for ~24 years, and I can understand the need for this in the past. Now, I ju…

I think VSCode is a very mouse-centric experience. Using Emacs I don't touch my mouse. It's a far more efficient and comfortable (less straining) experience, for me anyway. I use both Emacs and VSCode but vastly prefer the Emacs experience. I also use Emacs for much more than simply writing code. Emacs is also more pleasant to use because it's simply faster. VSCode is slow compared. I'm not talking about application…

Although the mouse centric experience thing makes sense when _writing_ code, I don't think it makes as much sense for reading/refactoring code. I'm not an Emacs user, but watching some of my colleagues navigating a codebase with Emacs looks not only slow, but also very mentally taxing. They often switch to grep searching, then select the results in order to iterate over them in Emacs. Or they have to remember full paths to files (with autocompletion, but still). Ctrl-shift-f in Vs code looks significantly faster since it displays the results in real time and let's you see the snippet and simply click on the one you want. Also ctrl-p for finding a file quickly by searching for any part of the path. Ctrl-clicking on a method name to jump to its definition. Right click > rename to rename a symbol across files. Or a feature I love in Pycharm, alt-enter to auto import a function--without having to try to remember where it's coming from (it gives a drop-down for multiple definitions). These things speed up flows enough that I think it outweighs the cost of having to remove your hands from the keyboard. And I think reading/refactoring code is as important as writing code in development.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#637

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, May 08, 2020, 1:17 PM UTC

asdf123wtf wrote: post #355

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…

I dunno... I think newer editors are often easier to extend than emacs. Think atom or vscode or even sublime. They're all extensible enough such that emacs has no real major advantage IMHO. They can be extended with mainstream languages that many programmers already know, instead of an idiosyncratic lisp with no practical application outside of emacs itself. Emacs still has some great modes (like tramp) - but overall…

> I dunno... I think newer editors are often easier to extend than emacs. Think atom or vscode or even sublime.

Can't see how. It's hard to be easier to extend than being able to just wrtie a line of code in an init file, do M-x eval-region on it, and be done. You can extend Emacs 100% through ad-hoc manner, and none of that requires any extra infrastructure. I don't think VSCode or Atom are approaching anywhere close this level of flexibility.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#638

Post by vvillena » Fri, May 08, 2020, 1:17 PM UTC

didibus wrote: post #507

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think you're right on the whole here about "Emacs people," but you did an interesting thing in the first sentence: you contrasted experienced Emacs user with junior developer. And I think that actually points to a problem: people who are experienced developers but not experienced Emacs users are going to be in much the same position as the OP's description. While I know the basics of Emacs, every time I try t…

> As for me, well, when Spacemacs moves the LSP layer to its non-development branch, I'll probably give it a try again You're doing yourself a discervice for not just using Spacemacs develop branch. It's actually more stable than the master branch.

I use and love Spacemacs, but their branch handling is a major PR fuckup. The last stable version should be phased out now. The develop branch works way better. They should rethink their release model.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#639

Post by random_cynic » Fri, May 08, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

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…

> Does it need to be popular or need more users to become maintainers?

Yes.

> I use emacs because I can't imagine using anything else that has half the features and is harder to extend.

Maybe imagine harder or (just an idea) stop imagining and see the real world?

> It's a programming environment that happens to have a text editor built in.

Read the history of emacs again. It originated as a set of macros over TECO to make editing easier (hence the name emacs). Editing is always the primary function, the lisp interpreter was an afterthought.

> That appeals to some folks but I can't imagine why someone interested in writing for publication would choose it over Scrivener or a word processor and why it's desirable to attract such users.

Read the linked thread again. One "such user" is RMS. That pretty much has been his goal since the 90s to make Emacs a better word processor.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#640

Post by williamdclt » Fri, May 08, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

erikbye wrote: post #623

smt88 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You mold your Emacs to a workflow unique to you, notice things you are doing often, add elisp functions to change it to make those things easier, and carry them with you from job to job. As your job evolves and changes, you maintain and grow your Emacs files over decades, and borrow from someone else's workflows. I've been writing software for ~24 years, and I can understand the need for this in the past. Now, I ju…

I think VSCode is a very mouse-centric experience. Using Emacs I don't touch my mouse. It's a far more efficient and comfortable (less straining) experience, for me anyway. I use both Emacs and VSCode but vastly prefer the Emacs experience. I also use Emacs for much more than simply writing code. Emacs is also more pleasant to use because it's simply faster. VSCode is slow compared. I'm not talking about application…

Never used emacs, so can't compare. But:

> I think VSCode is a very mouse-centric experience

I never touch my mouse in VSCode. There's many many shortcuts that are configurable, and keyboard navigation isn't not a "second-class citizen"

> VSCode is slow compared

Yeah, probably true. Never felt like it slowed me down though

> And symbol fuzzy search is just for symbols, not all text

cmd-t on vscode. Probably not strictly equivalent to helm-swoop, but you could make your own extension in JS (which is a strong point for many people, I don't particularly want to learn a language that's specific to my editor).