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The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla

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Re: The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla

#211

Post by dleslie »

emptysongglass wrote: post #198
hibbelig wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very interesting. I used Emacs for a long time, but slowly got weaned off it. - I used it for email, then I had to collaborate with people who wrote "please see my comments in orange below". (Of course, they were Outlook users.) Emacs did not show that orange color, so I didn't know... Maybe these days it's possible to read Outlook emails nicely in Emacs. - I used it for development, then the Java software I wor…

I don't understand why people are moving Linux --> Windows. At the company I work for everything is native to Linux--I am floored by the number of interns we get who are using Windows (it's all of them). We have an intake script for getting them up on WSL2 with our stack on top but man these graduates are CompSci people and they did 4 plus years of CompSci using Windows? I can only imagine the pain. Or rather, I know…

Most of the world uses Windows.

If you're building software targeted at most of the world it makes sense to use Windows.

Re: The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla

#212

Post by donio »

b5n wrote: post #194
sitzkrieg wrote: post #184

i just wanna know how anyone still uses emacs insanely bad movement bindings

I find them incredibly ergonomic, another bonus is that it provides the same defaults found in most terminal emulators. Most people try to use pinky for Ctrl, or map to Capslock, but using the side of your palm for Ctrl is really comfortable. I generally run circles around colleagues in a terminal or working with text, especially when utilizing macros, but the learning curve is definitely steeper and took some time t…

Keyboards that put Ctrl and other important keys under your thumb are also great.

Re: The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla

#213

Post by moeris »

brixie wrote: post #166
moeris wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure I can say the same about Kakoune, for example, which is a certainly a promising project but hasn't yet convinced me to jump the fence. I've made that jump a couple of months ago, and so far I love it. There isn't as large of an ecosystem, but Kakoune just feels better integrated with the environment. Is your hesitancy based on some particular feature, or the ecosystem, or something else? Or is there so…

I haven't tried Kakoune, so I'm not really qualified to speak about its merits or demerits. From a place of limited knowledge, I see nothing wrong with it, and want to reiterate that it seems really interesting and worth keeping an eye on. To add some nuance to my earlier comment: I don't really worry about the existence of Kakoune (or $OPEN_SOURCE_SOFTWARE_PROJECT) in a trivial sense; we'll always be able to find a…

> I think one of the advantages of a large/durable ecosystem is that it lets me worry less about problems I don't yet have.

That's true. If you're finding numerous workflow problems with neovim, it'll probably be true of Kakoune, as well.

> > Kakoune just feels better integrated with the environment > > Out of curiosity, is this an argument for enjoyment or productivity?

Both, though it's a more persuasive argument for productivity. Because it's easier to integrate with the environment, those workflow problems you mention can be solved by delegating to the environment, in some cases. For example, kakoune delegates to the environment for window management -- so things like resizing windows and switching between them is handled through tmux for me. Obviously, though, that's could be a poor substitution for some dedicated solutions in the editor. But overall, I prefer it, as it allows me to get familiar with unix utilities, which are useful in a wider range of applications. It also means there isn't an arcane scripting language associated with using the editor. I have a thing against vimscript.

> differences in keybindings are also worth a mention

I suppose. Having used vim for years, I was able to pick up the keybindings relatively quickly (But, yeah, that muscle memory is a loss. I find myself trying to do multiple selections and use kakoune keybindings in bash vi-mode, often.

Re: The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla

#214

Post by spudlyo »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #184

i just wanna know how anyone still uses emacs insanely bad movement bindings

Universally.

Outside of Emacs, I have those "insanely bad" bindings in GUI text widgets, my shell prompt, when choosing/searching in in fzf, navigating scrollback in tmux, and inside REPLs of all flavors. Basically anywhere text is entered, I edit with those bindings. My Kinesis keyboard has 12 thumb buttons, and for me Control, Meta, Super and Hyper are all easily within reach.

Re: The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla

#215

Post by dleslie »

zupatol wrote: post #207
dleslie wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I switched from Linux to Windows This is where many people leave Emacs. It's not that there's better tools on Windows, it's that Emacs on windows is terrible. Magit is orders of magnitude slower, for instance, and external tool integration is grossly impeded by the poor availability and quality of package management on Windows. Maintaining Emacs on windows takes considerable effort. Personally, I make do with WSL1…

I've been using the mingw windows version every day for years. I used to spend time now and then to make new things work, recently I switched to doom emacs, and almost every new functionality or package I try works out of the box. It's true that Magit is slow, but I still prefer it to the command line.

I'm going to give Doom a shot; I ignored Spacemacs because rebinding native keys and forcing evil-mode was a nonstarter for me. If I wanted to use Vim then I would, and did for a time.

Re: The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla

#216

Post by jasim »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #202

They have wrote such a list of values down but seemingly forgot such values as aesthetics (e.g. Sublime and VSCode look great, at least after you install a theme which suits your taste) and smart context-aware code completion and refactoring facilities (e.g. try IntelliJ once and you are hardly ever going back).

doom-emacs looks wonderful from the get go. https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs

Re: The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla

#217

Post by qwerty456127 »

jasim wrote: post #216
qwerty456127 wrote: post #202

They have wrote such a list of values down but seemingly forgot such values as aesthetics (e.g. Sublime and VSCode look great, at least after you install a theme which suits your taste) and smart context-aware code completion and refactoring facilities (e.g. try IntelliJ once and you are hardly ever going back).

doom-emacs looks wonderful from the get go. https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs

Indeed! Does it have a light theme also? I have a window behind my back so I mostly prefer to use the ayu-light or alike themes wherever available.

Re: The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla

#218

Post by Filligree »

emptysongglass wrote: post #198
hibbelig wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very interesting. I used Emacs for a long time, but slowly got weaned off it. - I used it for email, then I had to collaborate with people who wrote "please see my comments in orange below". (Of course, they were Outlook users.) Emacs did not show that orange color, so I didn't know... Maybe these days it's possible to read Outlook emails nicely in Emacs. - I used it for development, then the Java software I wor…

I don't understand why people are moving Linux --> Windows. At the company I work for everything is native to Linux--I am floored by the number of interns we get who are using Windows (it's all of them). We have an intake script for getting them up on WSL2 with our stack on top but man these graduates are CompSci people and they did 4 plus years of CompSci using Windows? I can only imagine the pain. Or rather, I know…

Speaking as someone who regularly attempts to switch back to Linux, I did that because the Windows desktop is a genuinely nicer experience. In no particular order...

- The traditional start menu / taskbar is genuinely nicer than what Gnome attempts to force on me. OS X is also genuinely nicer than what Gnome attempts to force on me. I'd take either over Gnome.

- The Linux desktop environment is laggy. This is difficult to measure objectively, but nothing moves smoothly and responsiveness is through the floor. I'm using a 144Hz screen; why can I see windows jerk from position to position when I drag them?

The Zen kernel helps with some of that, bringing it about to the same responsiveness as Windows -- which is still well below OSX. No desktop environment provides it by default, and in most it's difficult to install. On NixOS it's just "boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_zen;", but it's still not the default.

- nVidia's drivers are poor, and there are a lot of sharp edges. I'm using one of their GPUs. No, I can't switch to AMD; I need it for CUDA, and anyway GPUs aren't exactly cheap.

- AMD's drivers are of inconsistent quality, and I couldn't buy a 6800XT even if I'm willing to sell my first-born. Ok, that's also true for nVidia's newest GPUs, and Zen 3, and... different rant entirely.

- HDR basically doesn't work.

- Mixed-DPI screens basically don't work.

- HiDPI in general is glitchy.

- kanjiTomo doesn't work on Wayland, because there's no solid story for the screen capture protocol.

- Bluetooth audio basically doesn't work.

...

Windows isn't perfect, but for me the Linux desktop died to a thousand paper cuts. Every two or three months I make another attempt at getting it up to the same standard I get from Windows, and every two or three months I fail.

Does the above sound kind of entitled? It's not. I'm not demanding that anyone should make this work for free; I've never paid for the Linux desktop. The fact is, however, that it isn't good enough to use without unpleasant consequences, and I've spent far too much of my life fiddling with it already. At this stage I just want something that doesn't eat my evenings.

Re: The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla

#219

Post by dmitriid »

BeetleB wrote: post #193
ashtonian2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally anything you can do in emcas there is an extension for or at least one in dev. Vscode will outgrow emcas given its critics mass and momentum.

I'm not a heavy VSCode user, so I don't know much about its plugin ecosystem. I'm asking the question below sincerely, not to start an argument. Is there a plugin in VSCode to: 1. Read, write and send emails? 2. Have an org mode like system where I can do TODOs, as well as link to things in other aspects of VSCode (e.g. link to an email - something I do routinely)? 2b In general, how easy is it to interconnect the di…

You've selected some use cases designed to show that VSCode is inferior to emacs. What you failed to realize is that your use cases are invalid for probably a vast majority of people:

> Read, write and send emails

I prefer to do that in a dedicated app that actually knows how to deal with emails, and not from inside my text editor/IDE

> can I quickly write something that will read an email, and then go and add a TODO in the appropriate section of some document based on the contents of that email

I tend to prefer not to spend my time programming things, but, you know, enjoy life.

If I need a todo from an email, I'll copy paste it to an app that, for example, syncs to my phone

> Use it as a window manager

Why?

> Use it as a file manager

Why?

Re: The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla

#220

Post by Ericson2314 »

emptysongglass wrote: post #198
hibbelig wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very interesting. I used Emacs for a long time, but slowly got weaned off it. - I used it for email, then I had to collaborate with people who wrote "please see my comments in orange below". (Of course, they were Outlook users.) Emacs did not show that orange color, so I didn't know... Maybe these days it's possible to read Outlook emails nicely in Emacs. - I used it for development, then the Java software I wor…

I don't understand why people are moving Linux --> Windows. At the company I work for everything is native to Linux--I am floored by the number of interns we get who are using Windows (it's all of them). We have an intake script for getting them up on WSL2 with our stack on top but man these graduates are CompSci people and they did 4 plus years of CompSci using Windows? I can only imagine the pain. Or rather, I know…

That's why I work at a place where devs are basically required to use Linux. It's a great filter and training mechanism.
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