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Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface

hongchao.me

11–20 of 180 posts

Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface

#11
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, emacs is really an idea. Vim is a text editor that grew into an ecosystem of people bolting on additional functionality. While extensibility is possible, it's nowhere near as transparent and consistent as the emacs environment. In fact no system I know of comes even close. Emacs paved the way for the features we take for granted in graphical applications like undo, copy+paste, search, find+replace,…

If emacs adopted vim-like keybindings early on the war would have ended. It's the only reason I stick with vim, and I suspect I'm not alone. Yes, yes, evil mode and whatever, but it's not seamless - you still have to get familiar with emacs keybindings.

I'm not sure I agree keybindings were/are the significant factor. The editors have a completely different history and their authors come from very different backgrounds.

Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface

#12
It is still a mono system.

An OS is really not care you run c, lisp, VM and another os fundamentally. In this sense emacs is not an OS. And is mono. Just like Common Lisp.

An internal “closed” system can have diversity. But not put external as first object, just as OS would not normally running OS task as the most important thing but running user land task.

A “closed system” like emacs and Common Lisp is unlike say OS and vs code, they are not the kind that you as the user program of the emacs or Common Lisp can be of a totally different idea of how in addition to what and still co-exist nicely. Can you write a program of c and run under and with emacs and Common Lisp ...

Even Api and extension need to be purposed for external interaction as it needs to assume difference that with a totally different approach.

Totalitarian can say harmony with difference but in real it is just totalitarian. Democracy can be suppressed but ultimately is a diverse system.

Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface

#13
post #12

It is still a mono system. An OS is really not care you run c, lisp, VM and another os fundamentally. In this sense emacs is not an OS. And is mono. Just like Common Lisp. An internal “closed” system can have diversity. But not put external as first object, just as OS would not normally running OS task as the most important thing but running user land task. A “closed system” like emacs and Common Lisp is unlike say O…

> Can you write a program of c and run under and with emacs and Common Lisp

Yes to both.

Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface

#14
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, emacs is really an idea. Vim is a text editor that grew into an ecosystem of people bolting on additional functionality. While extensibility is possible, it's nowhere near as transparent and consistent as the emacs environment. In fact no system I know of comes even close. Emacs paved the way for the features we take for granted in graphical applications like undo, copy+paste, search, find+replace,…

If emacs adopted vim-like keybindings early on the war would have ended. It's the only reason I stick with vim, and I suspect I'm not alone. Yes, yes, evil mode and whatever, but it's not seamless - you still have to get familiar with emacs keybindings.

Vi/m won the distribution war. It’s everywhere. It’s on every Unix-like system I’ve ever used.

Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If emacs adopted vim-like keybindings early on the war would have ended. It's the only reason I stick with vim, and I suspect I'm not alone. Yes, yes, evil mode and whatever, but it's not seamless - you still have to get familiar with emacs keybindings.

Vi/m won the distribution war. It’s everywhere. It’s on every Unix-like system I’ve ever used.

On the other hand, Emacs keybindings are the default at every terminal.

Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface

#16
post #6

I love Emacs, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s a lot harder to use than Visual Studio Code, which is vastly more popular. I think what made VSCode popular was the availability of many high-quality extensions for major languages. Unfortunately, my experience with Elisp packages is that they tend to be much less stable. This is changing some with LSP mode, of course, but I think the Emacs community would do well…

> I love Emacs, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s a lot harder to use than Visual Studio Code

I actually find the opposite. As much as I dislike the clumsy GUI, I just keep coming back to Emacs for some things, for the sole reason that it's easier in Emacs. I find Emacs to be the easiest way to customize my text editor, and that's what makes it easy to get my work done. I've tried VS Code many times and I just don't see what's special about it.

Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface

#17
post #6

I love Emacs, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s a lot harder to use than Visual Studio Code, which is vastly more popular. I think what made VSCode popular was the availability of many high-quality extensions for major languages. Unfortunately, my experience with Elisp packages is that they tend to be much less stable. This is changing some with LSP mode, of course, but I think the Emacs community would do well…

> I love Emacs, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s a lot harder to use than Visual Studio Code I actually find the opposite. As much as I dislike the clumsy GUI, I just keep coming back to Emacs for some things, for the sole reason that it's easier in Emacs. I find Emacs to be the easiest way to customize my text editor, and that's what makes it easy to get my work done. I've tried VS Code many times and I just d…

I first used emacs 25ish years before VSCode existed and VSCode was pretty much immediately easier to use and customize; to be fair, it's not like I was using Emacs heavily in the intervening quarter century, but I was using it fairly regularly.

OTOH, I have no problem believing someone using Emacs as a daily driver for years would find it easier (but I think most developers, and particularly newer developers—where the JS to Lisp familiarity ratio is much higher than for, say, those who got into coding in the 1980s or earlier—are going to more productive more quickly with VS Code.)

Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface

#18
post #6

I love Emacs, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s a lot harder to use than Visual Studio Code, which is vastly more popular. I think what made VSCode popular was the availability of many high-quality extensions for major languages. Unfortunately, my experience with Elisp packages is that they tend to be much less stable. This is changing some with LSP mode, of course, but I think the Emacs community would do well…

At least in my discipline (statistics) the Emacs extensions for R and latex seem to be better than Vim, VSCode, etc.

Sample size = 1.

Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface

#19

This is pretty tangential, but I don't understand why there isn't a roguelike framework available for Emacs. It seems like the perfect roguelike platform for playtesting and hacking on and would on-board a lot of new people into the Emacsen ecology without any real difficulty. The standard roguelike library libtocd has bindings for every other language--why not elisp?

Hm, there's nethack-mode, but that's not what you mean, is it? You want a framework for building roguelikes, not for playing a particular one?

Re: Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface

#20

So is vim? Not to rehash the same battle that’s likely older than most of us are, but both emacs and vim are text editors taken to their logical conclusion. Both can do pretty much the exact same thing as each other, if only because some neckbeard in the 80s wrote that feature to score points in the great vim/emacs saga.

Emacs is an elisp execution environment that by default executes some elisp that is useful for editing text.

Vim is... a text editor.

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