The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy • Hacker News Board

Re: The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy

#211

Post by andi999 » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 12:43 PM UTC

impendia wrote: post #195

anyfoo wrote: post #2

I'm in a similar boat as in the first quote: Have used emacs for decades, glad that I do, can't imagine switching... don't think I would recommend it to anyone new, unless they are really open about learning something entirely different. Emacs seems to be in the same position as LaTeX: Outdated paradigms that would probably need an entire redesign from the ground up to start "making sense" in the modern world. This s…

What is your criticism of LaTeX? I am a research mathematician, and I and essentially all my colleagues are LaTeX users. To me it feels like the correct tool for the job; the only widespread criticism I've heard is that it doesn't produce documents accessible to the blind. (And I've heard that work on this is in process.) I tend to be unsympathetic to criticism that a tool is "outdated"; if a tool is right for the jo…

My pick with Latex is: Error messages look to me as complicated as C++ template errors, packages sometimes don't work well together, a lot of boilerplate is usually needed, and I feel somehow the Syntax needs too many keystrokes, like why not make {} for sub and superscript optional and everything until the next space character is sub or superscripted (and not only one character). Also writing {\rm text} feels wrong. Shdnd it be \rm {text} and maybe instead one shd be able to use $ in an equation block to get to a non italic font.

While markdown is not advanced enough, I feel the making it easier for the user to use is the right modern approach, from which maybe a full system could be designed.

Also figure placement should allow more fine-tuning (not sure how, and yes this is against the original spirit)

Re: The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy

#212

Post by freemint » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 12:58 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #184

axiosgunnar wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VSCode allows you to write in Javascript what Emacs allows you to write in elisp. What's missing?

If you're not a professional web developer, spending 80 hours learning how to modify Emacs will give you much more control over Emacs than the control you get from spending 80 hours learning how to modify VSCode. Or ar least that was my experience though I was in my prime when I learned Emacs decades ago and almost 60 years old when I spent the 80 hours learning how to modify VSCode. (I feel I have barely scratched t…

While true it also means that there is a way larger group of people skilled enough to develop new plugins in js.

Re: The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy

#213

Post by mike97 » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 1:21 PM UTC

CRConrad wrote: post #206

neolog wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with what you say about IDEs, but Emacs' "advantage" over other text editors is that it is only superficially a text editor. It's really more of an operating system.

How does the old joke go -- "Now if Emacs only had a decent text editor, it would be a pretty decent OS."

Evil mode

Re: The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy

#214

Post by frosted-flakes » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

alex_smart wrote: post #205

frosted-flakes wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's when they tried it. Does it matter?

Erm, yes. Their complain was about aesthetics, and GNU Emacs has been much more aesthetic than XEmacs since forever.

True enough.

Do you mean it had much better aesthetics? Something can't be more aesthetic, that's like saying it's more temperature outside when you mean it's hotter.

Re: The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy

#215

Post by anthk » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

robotresearcher wrote: post #126

eulgro wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With respect to LaTeX, I only started to use it semi-recently in the cloud and I'd recommend it to anyone (but only in the cloud). $ latexmk -pdf main.tex How hard is that? The only thing Overleaf adds here is a button and a 10x compilation time overhead. > I don't always remember what that magic meant. Overleaf mostly won't help you here, unless I'm mistaken. I don't mean to be aggressive here, I just don't get th…

> The only thing Overleaf adds here is a button and a 10x compilation time overhead. Overleaf removes the need for local install. A full MacTex.pkg install is 4.4GB. I've lived in LaTeX for more than 30 years, and I love the ability to edit docs from any browser.

4GB today is not that much. Current OpenBSD and NetBSD install recommend 2-3GB at minimum for a base OS and 10-16GB for a confortable usage (installing a bunch of pkgs/ports, swap partitions, and so on).

Re: The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy

#216

Post by alex_smart » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 2:04 PM UTC

frosted-flakes wrote: post #214

alex_smart wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm, yes. Their complain was about aesthetics, and GNU Emacs has been much more aesthetic than XEmacs since forever.

True enough. Do you mean it had much better aesthetics? Something can't be more aesthetic, that's like saying it's more temperature outside when you mean it's hotter.

Yes, considering what XEmacs looked like, I would say that newer Emacs look considerably more aesthetically pleasing. And with certain themes, Emacs can look outright gorgeous.

Re: The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy

#217

Post by GiovanniP » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

impendia wrote: post #195

anyfoo wrote: post #2

I'm in a similar boat as in the first quote: Have used emacs for decades, glad that I do, can't imagine switching... don't think I would recommend it to anyone new, unless they are really open about learning something entirely different. Emacs seems to be in the same position as LaTeX: Outdated paradigms that would probably need an entire redesign from the ground up to start "making sense" in the modern world. This s…

What is your criticism of LaTeX? I am a research mathematician, and I and essentially all my colleagues are LaTeX users. To me it feels like the correct tool for the job; the only widespread criticism I've heard is that it doesn't produce documents accessible to the blind. (And I've heard that work on this is in process.) I tend to be unsympathetic to criticism that a tool is "outdated"; if a tool is right for the jo…

> what would you like to see in LaTeX's place?

a document preparation system in which

- it is easy to read what you wrote (without having to switch between the editor and the typeset text)

- customization is done with a sensible programming language

Re: The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy

#218

Post by GiovanniP » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #103

eulgro wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With respect to LaTeX, I only started to use it semi-recently in the cloud and I'd recommend it to anyone (but only in the cloud). $ latexmk -pdf main.tex How hard is that? The only thing Overleaf adds here is a button and a 10x compilation time overhead. > I don't always remember what that magic meant. Overleaf mostly won't help you here, unless I'm mistaken. I don't mean to be aggressive here, I just don't get th…

Lol, that's not the command for making a LaTeX document. The command for making a LaTeX document fills a sheet for all the shit you have to install--half of which isn't correct on whatever documentation you're reading--and THEN you can `latexmk`. And I do mean you . I gave up after a solid week. I'll just make whatever I want in PowerPoint, save it to a PDF, and be done in 15 minutes. Yes, I said PowerPoint. Set you'…

> I'll just make whatever I want in PowerPoint

If you use PowerPoint, you might try TeXmacs (WYSIWYG, structured and programmable).

> they are absolutely delighted by the bump in design quality

I expect them to be even more delighted :-)

Re: The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy

#219

Post by forgetfulness » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

jmchuster wrote: post #199

ellyagg wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a long term emacs user and I know that my emacs use is not down simply to lock-in. I know this because a year ago I spent a month using Panic Nova to see what I might be missing with emacs. Nova looked super pretty and it's easy to figure out how to do a lot of things out-of-the-box that's harder to figure out on emacs at first. But there are a couple of core things about emacs that I just don't see replicated in…

> buffers and windows How is this different from tabs? You have global search to open files in new tabs, you can opt to leave a trail of new tabs as you follow links through your code, you create arbitrary new tabs and plop snippets in, and have an option to persist to a file whenever you wish. You can reorganize your tabs layout, create an arbitrary number of rows and columns, move tabs back and forth between differ…

I haven't found any editor that makes handling of split panes as streamlined as Emacs, and that's because while having the tabs tied to a single document is a sensible metaphor, it's just way faster to have two or three panes whose contents you can switch from an autocompleted list of buffers. No clicking around, no squinting your eyes at the little tab titles, no dragging and dropping the tabs to switch them from pane with awkward snapping in and out.

(buffers can be files, configurations panels, terminals, applications, whatever really)

But editor ergonomics are always trumped by tool support, and Emacs' can be good, but it's never reliable in supporting environments that aren't Lisp and academic stuff like R and LaTeX.

Re: The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy

#220

Post by lycopodiopsida » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

bborud wrote: post #108

I've used Emacs for 32-33 years and I can't even imagine how many lines of code I've written in it. Every 2-3 years since the early 2000s I would try an IDE for 1-2 months, but then go back to Emacs again because I was simply faster in Emacs and because the IDEs were supremely ugly, resource intensive and slow. A few years ago things started to change. IDEs started to become less clumsy. Less horrible to de-fang to t…

To summarize your post: it is OK to use another editor, if it has better support for the language you you want to write your code in.

I see no drama here: I haven an emacs instance always running as my to-go editor but would start IntelliJ IDEA if I have to write even a single line of code in Java. Because it is so much better. Even if I would always reach for emacs if I have to write in Clojure or Racket. Would I still have to write code in JS/TS, I would also use VSCode - do not see it that much justified for other languages, since the support there is spotty at best and nowhere on an "IDE" level.

But the problem is: emacs nowhere claimed to be an IDE in Go and C/C++ so that it makes no sense to condemn it because it did not become one.