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Toward a “modern” Emacs

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Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#201

Post by icedchai »

klodolph wrote: post #9
agumonkey wrote: post #3

I'm surprised by this .. emacs have seen so much activity on so many layers. From cute transient overlays, lsp, deeply critical modes (magit), and even deep level work. The community is sharing a lot of extensions of all kinds through melpa and similar. I don't think emacs have been as 'popular' as now since long ago. Also one consideration, emacs is still lean, all those others editors are html/js based and hyper he…

Funny that Emacs is considered “lean” today. It was definitely consider one of the heaviest, most bloated editors out there in the past. “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping”

Seriously! In my early Linux days (before 1994) I wouldn't run emacs. My first serious Linux system (486) had 8 megs of RAM and running emacs would bring things to a halt. I upgraded it to 32 megs which was amazing for the time...

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#202

Post by mplanchard »

rcconf wrote: post #56

After using Emacs for 10+ years, I've switched to VSCode for a really simple reason: fuzzy matching a file in a project. I've tried so many different plugins and hacks to get it to work, but it never did quite work. Searching for a filename either matches the wrong file, or new files that were freshly added are no longer there.

The default solution in doom emacs does this really well! I think it may be ripgrep-based, like VSCode’s, but I’m not positive.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#203

Post by xfer »

ssivark wrote: post #175
BeetleB wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But here's the question: If Emacs defaulted to CUA, how many of those people would get to see Emacs's goodness? CUA alone doesn't get you there. To do most of the things that make Emacs stand out involves a fair amount of learning (and possibly customizing). You have to put in some amount of effort before you get its benefits. While I certainly don't mind making simple things easier (e.g. CUA mode), I also see that d…

> If someone is not willing to learn how to enable CUA mode in the config file, then it is highly unlikely they will ever learn to use the features that make Emacs salient. I think that’s uncharitable. For a newbie low on confidence it’s often death by a thousand (paper) cuts: CUA mode, Surprising undo model, How to download packages, How do I enable fringes/margins, Windows-vs-frames, etc. Each small change has a co…

> I wouldn’t be surprised if the strongest indicator of whether someone sticks with Emacs is whether they have access to an Emacs expert

A lot of benefits of Emacs you get are when you realize you are operating a lisp VM. Enabling all the same things that other editors do in the same way will not suddenly make them choose Emacs. Someone needs to nudge them towards the good parts of emacs/show a powerful application that will make them use it.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#204

Post by icedchai »

SeanLuke wrote: post #36
BeetleB wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emacs is in that disastrous stage of a product's life where the geezers destroy their own community by refusing to adapt to new expected behavior It doesn't look like your an Emacs user. As another commenter pointed out (as did the article indirectly), Emacs has more users than ever. It's definitely growing - not dwindling. As an Emacs user, the last decade has shown an immense growth in capabilities via MELPA pack…

> It doesn't look like your an Emacs user. I have been an avid Emacs user since, I think, 1988. > A lot of the popular DOS applications Bzzt. 35 years ago the standard was Windows and MacOS. Soon thereafter NeXTSTEP and nearly all X11 apps adapted the same.

Windows didn't start going anywhere until Windows 3.0 in 1990. Windows 95 was really where it went mainstream.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#205

Post by ryukafalz »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #105
oblio wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably just send a newsletter to StackOverflow users :-)

Emacs users are probably more likely to unsubscribe to newsletters that they did not sign up for :) (On a side rant, I really dislike how a lot of websites have normalized “create an account on a website” to mean “Sign up for receiving a plethora of emails about everything the website and its creators are up to these days”)

>On a side rant, I really dislike how a lot of websites have normalized “create an account on a website” to mean “Sign up for receiving a plethora of emails about everything the website and its creators are up to these days”

Hear, hear. If I get an email from a company whose newsletter I didn't sign up for, I immediately unsubscribe... but I really shouldn't have to.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#206

Post by oivey »

rpdillon wrote: post #193
oivey wrote: post #183

I’ve recently switched to VS Code, and the driving issue for me was really related to the popularity of the editor. Some combination of the LSP server and the chain of emacs packages to interface with that server were constantly broken. I can’t blame the maintainers, seeing as the LSP was being implemented by a skeleton crew and the various emacs packages were abandoned short of a couple heroes fixing some of the big…

I _highly_ recommend emacs-libvterm. Without a doubt, it's an advanced install, so I'm not arguing its better for beginners, but I adore it just the same. https://github.com/akermu/emacs-libvterm

That’s a promising project. Evil integration is a key feature for me, but once that is supported that will be a killer package.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#207

Post by nobody9999 »

math0ne wrote: post #5

I think if you could easily install and use emacs to edit a text file with no knowledge it's userbase would grow exponentially overnight.

>I think if you could easily install and use emacs to edit a text file with no knowledge it's userbase would grow exponentially overnight.

Why do you put such a value on growing the user base exponentially? Is that important? Or even desirable?

Emacs isn't a toaster or even a web browser. It has specific use cases that a very small number of people actually need. The really nice part about it is that it's extensible and endlessly modifiable.

Again, that's not something that most folks need.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#208

Post by fallingfrog »

I’ve used emaca for a pretty long time- since about 2001- but in all that time I’ve never felt the need to become a super power user- it just does the basics really well. I guess that’s all I really wanted. I use it for coding and I use org mode. I like the auto-indentation, which to this day no other editor can match, I like the syntax highlighting.

Here are my beefs though:

1- you have to jump through hoops to get melpa to work- I have to research this again every time I install it.

2- the auto indent and syntax mode for shader language has to be installed manually

3- ido-mode isn’t turned on by default

I’m one of those doofuses that uses cua mode all the time too. Sue me, I just want an editor that works and emacs is very good for code editing. I don’t care about the power editor moves which I forget 5 minutes after learning anyway.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#209

Post by usr1106 »

gnulinux wrote: post #135
Miraste wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is widely used for a staggering array of tasks. Is it? What area are you in? In my hobbyist, college, and industry experience I've never seen anyone use emacs for anything. I have seen Vim (or at least vim bindings) a few times, but I only know of emacs from older unix discussions online. Edit: Looking through stack overflow developer surveys, emacs use is in 16th place for editor popularity at ~4.5% usage, but…

Is this a USA vs the rest thing? I've worked in many startups in the US and almost everyone uses emacs. Last few years, VSCode has been getting popular though. I had a similar experience when I was a student in UC Berkeley, although it seems like there were more vim users in school than in industry. Anyway, pretty much all my current coworkers use Emacs and I work in Boston, MA. Personally: I cannot imagine programmi…

> I've worked in many startups in the US and almost everyone uses emacs.

Others claim the opposite. Maybe the contradiction is explained by the hiring culture. Startups with emacs users hire more emacs users. Not that they would make emacs usage an explicit criterion or even ask such interview question. But probably there are some properties over-represented in 4% (or whatever the figure is) of programmers that are emacs users.

Disclaimer: Part-time emacs user since 1986 or so, full-time emacs user since 1989. Should spend some time to learn the newer features / customize it in a more compatible way with the rest of my software. I am lazy to make "another" editor as Stallman puts it even if I like Lisp hacking occasionally, but I would happily switch to a modernized configuration if it were available upstream.

Re: Toward a “modern” Emacs

#210

Post by fallingfrog »

xrd wrote: post #39

I've been an emacs user for more than 20 years. Is it just me, or is this article completely missing the point? I've switched to VS Code because I can install extensions so easily. Getting a theme installed is not my concern at all. With emacs, I'm still never sure how to get elpa (or why not melpa) to work correctly. And, modern packages for react never seem to be available there anyway. I'm still astounded package…

Yeah I have no idea why they still, after all this time, can’t get melpa to run out of the box.
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