211–220 of 539 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
See, this is what I hate about emacs. It feels like a spring loaded bundle of magic that will explode if I look at it wrong, and, having exploded, I will never ever ever get it put back the way it was.
Or you can learn about the magic and wield it.
All of these are missing the point imo. The biggest advantage of modern IDE is the ease in trying new plugins and functionalities. Everything is a menu away, and fuzzy searching makes it easy to find out commands and learn their shortcuts. This whole process just doesn’t exist in emacs. To get a plugin, it’s a huge step (setting up custom elisp to get melpa) and then it’s a huge learning curve just to try a plugin.
I've used Emacs for around 14 years now, I rarely touch my configuration. There's lines in my config today, that I haven't changed since I first learned to use Emacs and set it up (e.g. keybindings, tab-width, etc.). I like that kind of stability, makes it possible to move my focus away from the editor, towards the problems I'm trying to solve.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since you mention IntelliJ, is it possible that the corporations you have worked in have been heavy on Java? JDEE ( http://jdee.sourceforge.net/ ) exists, but even I give up on Emacs when I want to write a lot of Java (and I use Emacs for literally everything else, including JS).
JS development in IntelliJ/WebStorm is an amazing experience. The refactoring features alone make it easy to write code without worrying about details like "where does the file go" or "what should I name this". You can get the code working and rename / move code with a single click later on, knowing the refactor will propagate through the app. The intellisense is amazing too. Start typing a method name and you see ar…
Do the defaults in Emacs matter, at all? Doom Emacs, Spacemacs, and dozens of other default configs already exist. I've been using Emacs for years, I never learned the default keybindings. I used Evil mode right from the start. I just don't see this as a real problem. A small (incomplete) list of real problems: - No timeline on Wayland support, Wayland will likely require substantial work and refactoring. - Performan…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meanwhile, I’m always amazed how, on HN threads about Emacs, people talk about preferring the Vi family of editors. When I installed Linux on my computer two decades ago and had to learn *nix, my own (totally subjective) impression was that the Vi family was regarded as clunky and half-obsolete, about as much of a pain as editing in ed. As I began to contribute to the Free Software community, most of the other people…
I came to vim (years ago now) because I was experiencing RSI from all of the chorded keyboard shortcuts I was using in Coda. Emacs doesn't help with that, but vim does (if you `map ; :`). Any editor feels clunky for the first week of using it, Vim and Emacs most of all. Nobody wastes the headspace in staying current on multiple editors. So I don't know that you'll ever see an objective comparison of the two. But they…
Perhaps ironically, mac OS text input boxes are where I use most of the traditional emacs C-/M- keybindings these days.
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, thus driving away the newbies. Eventually the product dwindles to just supporting the few remaining geezers left. I'm not talking about stupid fads such as skinning and color palette changes. But cut-copy-paste keybindings (not to mention select-all, save, close window, un…
Is it really necessary to ascribe some negative quality of ageism to people who created and use software and then castigate them for it? Do you work for PeopleSoft? Makes your argument seem weak and flimsy, in fact arguments like yours can be dismissed out of hand.
I don’t know. I read the whole article and it seems the suggestions boil down to emacs needing to be more “modern” by defaulting to dark mode, making color theming easier, changing right click behavior, the menus, and changing the shortcuts. And the author of the article would like the development process to be more “modern.” Emacs is one of the most successful text editors of all time if not the most successful. It…
Something like spacemacs and prelude would have a much wider adoption if there was a mode that can be enabled to make the learning curve smaller, the look / themes better, ui more intuitive.
Do the defaults in Emacs matter, at all? Doom Emacs, Spacemacs, and dozens of other default configs already exist. I've been using Emacs for years, I never learned the default keybindings. I used Evil mode right from the start. I just don't see this as a real problem. A small (incomplete) list of real problems: - No timeline on Wayland support, Wayland will likely require substantial work and refactoring. - Performan…
That was touched on in the article: > Some of the ideas found in these distributions may well merit inclusion in Emacs, but that does not happen. Emacs maintainer Eli Zaretskii complained that the creators of these distributions do not contribute their work back. If the changes aren't being contributed back, any gain from them is lost for users of the default system. Creating an unnecessary fork within the user base,…
Spacemacs isn't an Emacs fork, it's a set of packages and configuration files that are provided transparently on top of an existing Emacs install.
It's not necessary (or desirable) to include Evil mode out of the box for bare-bones Emacs installs, and for the most part, new users shouldn't be using bare-bones Emacs installs. It's not important that Emacs be an amazing experience with fantastic defaults out-of-the-box.
This is like arguing that Linux is outdated because Gnome isn't built into the kernel. New users download a distro based on Linux, like Ubuntu. That's fine, it's not a problem that needs to be solved.
In the same way, new Emacs users download "distros" that include secondary packages like Evil mode. That is also fine, it's not a problem that needs to be solved.
> Emacs maintainer Eli Zaretskii complained that the creators of these distributions do not contribute their work back.
Even assuming that we would want to merge Spacemacs changes into the core Emacs codebase (which we don't), I still have zero sympathy on this point.
All of these downstream projects are Open Source -- they are contributing their work back. If the FSF refuses to merge compatible, Open Source code back into the Emacs codebase without developers signing away their ownership, that's the FSF's problem, not the downstream developer's.
I thought the whole point of Open Source licensing was that people didn't need to own the code to use it. Being a good Open Source community member is not conditional on anybody giving ownership of their code to the FSF, it is conditional on releasing that code under Open, compatible licenses.
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 tend to get surprised by this complaint - especially in the article where undo-tree was recommended as an alternative.
Both the Emacs undo and undo-tree are "surprising" models in that very few standard editors support anything beyond the most basics. Personally, I've not had trouble with Emacs's undo (beyond it not visualizing it). Switching to undo-tree may be OK, but it's still surprising. Switching to the standard one in most editors is a pretty serious regression.
> How to download packages
Once I properly learned Emacs, I did not have a need to do this for the first few years. I'm not referring to decades ago, but the 2010's. While I agree that a convenient way to download things from MELPA would be nice, I hardly see not having it as a barrier. Most people new to, say, Visual Studio don't start with "How do I download plugins". And once you know some of Emacs basics, package downloading is but 2-3 lines in the config file and a keybinding that presents you a menu.
> How do I enable fringes/margins
Again, I don't see this as a beginner feature. I don't know how to do this, and I've never wondered about it - both as a beginner and as an advanced user. I've use Visual Studio quite a bit and never tried to enable/disable them there either. I don't think this is something a typical beginner would deal with.
> Windows-vs-frames
What is the issue beyond terminology? It wouldn't bother me if we rename these. I don't see a great enhancement, though.
> Each small change has a cognitive tax, and allowing users to feel psychologically comfortable and add tweaks slowly will make the learning curve much gentler.
Although I personally don't recommend it, but have you heard of Customize in Emacs? It used to be (and may still be) the recommended way to change config options. It has help on various options, and is an interface - not "edit config file with Elisp commands". Many users say it really helped them and certainly flattened the learning curve.
> I wouldn’t be surprised if the strongest indicator of whether someone sticks with Emacs is whether they have access to an Emacs expert with whom, or a community where, they feel comfortable being a newbie.
I did not have access to an expert. I simply read a book on it[1], and the rest was from occasional Google searches. In those days there really wasn't that much friendly info online, but it was enough to maintain the momentum. There is a ton more stuff these days to help beginners. Not to mention Youtube videos.
(BTW, as a reference point, I was a power Emacs user for almost a decade before I learned enough Emacs Lisp to write a simple loop - too many people have the misconception that one needs to know elisp to use Emacs well).
As someone commented on HN in an earlier submission: Who becomes a power user of anything without reading manuals? That it's not straightforward to do simple text editing in Emacs is a fair criticism[2], but also a bit of a shallow one. There are plenty of friendly text editors for simple text editing. Let people use them! The value proposition of Emacs is in its powerful capabilities, not basic text editing. It's a bit like complaining that Ferraris are a pain to learn to use when all you will do with it is grocery shopping. Just use a regular car!
[1] This was the norm in the pre-Internet days (80's and 90's), BTW. Even in the 00's when interfaces were nicer, the people I knew who were power Visual Studio users became so by reading books or online manuals - not by random discovery or random Internet pages.
[2] It's ironic that I write this, given that the only reason I began using Emacs is that the other option people led me to (vi) was even harder to do basic text editing. At least with Emacs, I could type and it behaved like most editors I'd been accustomed to in DOS. With vi I was immediately confronted with command/insert dichotomy, not being able to edit prior to the insertion point, etc.
It's also amusing that people complain about Emacs not being like "normal" editors, and folks invoke Stack Overflow polls to indicate its lack of popularity, and yet vim is used by a quarter of SO users and is ranked 5th. vim is also beginner hostile, so the beginner hostility really isn't the reason for Emacs's low usage.