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Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

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Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#11

Post by thrower123 »

thom wrote: post #5
aww_dang wrote: post #2

Who is actually using the GUI elements mentioned in the article? Emacs is a comfort zone where I don't need the mouse. >...buttons could be improved with rounded corners...

I would worry if people started moving away from Emacs as text-centric. My biggest complaint with VSCode (which I do fully expect to take over and to which I will one day presumably have to migrate) is that there's so much damn UI for things. The terminal window isn't just a buffer of text like everything else, it's its own ungodly window that pops up differently. Most extensions are primarily UI instead of keyboard…

The problem with VS Code is there is *not enough* UI. I desperately would like to have some toolbars and menu options, because the kotkeys and key-chords VS Code uses, where they aren't following conventions, are not easily discoverable.

They're in a bind because they are trying to straddle a market where you've got emacs an vim users to one side and Visual Studio users to the other. Some ability to customize the UI, even if it were provided by a plugin, would be helpful.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#12

Post by rvieira »

aww_dang wrote: post #2

Who is actually using the GUI elements mentioned in the article? Emacs is a comfort zone where I don't need the mouse. >...buttons could be improved with rounded corners...

I'm using the GUI simply because I like `org-mode` inline images. It's just a cosmetic reason, really. It would be 99.99% functional from a terminal.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#13

Post by jstx1 »

To be more popular Emacs needs to be easier to get started with and easier to extend. If I have to read a whole book or learn an entire new programming language, I'm not going to put the time in. If any time I search for "how to do x", I get a disjointed mess of "but spacemacs...", "in prelude...", "this custom elisp snippet..." where every piece of advice can be potentially incompatible with any past or future modification that I've done - then the effort and frustration doesn't seem worth for a text editor / org tool.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#14

Post by aww_dang »

yakubin wrote: post #10
aww_dang wrote: post #2

Who is actually using the GUI elements mentioned in the article? Emacs is a comfort zone where I don't need the mouse. >...buttons could be improved with rounded corners...

I'm using GUI Emacs. There is one thing I use the mouse for: resizing windows. Apart from that, GUI is more visually pleasing, it doesn't try to emulate graphics by fitting characters into the grid. When it wants to paint a line, it paints a line, not a column of "|" characters; same with arrows and whatever. Another advantage is that it gets the key presses directly instead of through the terminal. In the terminal i…

To clarify, I use the GUI version of Emacs as well, but I never interact with the buttons or UI quirks mentioned in the article.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#15

Post by cpach »

jstx1 wrote: post #13

To be more popular Emacs needs to be easier to get started with and easier to extend. If I have to read a whole book or learn an entire new programming language, I'm not going to put the time in. If any time I search for "how to do x", I get a disjointed mess of "but spacemacs...", "in prelude...", "this custom elisp snippet..." where every piece of advice can be potentially incompatible with any past or future modif…

When I set out to learn Emacs in the year ~2001 or so, I just did C-h t in order to launch the builtin tutorial. IMHO that can still be a viable way to get started.

Spacemacs might be nice but it’s in no way required in order to be productive with Emacs. My personal .emacs file is only 32 lines long (28 lines of comments are not counted).

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#16

Post by rvieira »

jstx1 wrote: post #13

To be more popular Emacs needs to be easier to get started with and easier to extend. If I have to read a whole book or learn an entire new programming language, I'm not going to put the time in. If any time I search for "how to do x", I get a disjointed mess of "but spacemacs...", "in prelude...", "this custom elisp snippet..." where every piece of advice can be potentially incompatible with any past or future modif…

I think Spacemacs helps with getting started.

For a newcomer there is a "curse of Emacs", helm? ivy? ido? Wnat to do Python? elpy, lsp, etc

It's easy to get confused and just give up. Having a curated config like Spacemacs helps to get it working out of the box IMO.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#17

Post by underatree »

jstx1 wrote: post #13

To be more popular Emacs needs to be easier to get started with and easier to extend. If I have to read a whole book or learn an entire new programming language, I'm not going to put the time in. If any time I search for "how to do x", I get a disjointed mess of "but spacemacs...", "in prelude...", "this custom elisp snippet..." where every piece of advice can be potentially incompatible with any past or future modif…

I'm a daily Emacs user, and happily use a 100 line init.el, mostly composed of "enable this mode".

Emacs supports customization needs to the nth degree, but I've found that this is a false economyy.

I agree Emacs needs to be easier to get started with.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#18

Post by deworms »

Emacs should have been what VSCode is now - a powerhouse of customizability that offers unmatched functionality by default. Instead it's a toy for some old people who are still holding onto the remnants of an age that passed a long time ago. Emacs is basically useless compared to VS Code, and its authors are what's holding it back. I don't see it bouncing back to popularity any time soon.

Anything you can do in Emacs, you can do in VS Code faster, better, and easier.

Emacs is being steered by a committee of living fossils that look condescendingly on people who expect a text editor to be discoverable, easy to learn, and productive out of the box. They make passive aggressive comments ridiculing anyone who wants Emacs to behave remotely like any other program. With this kind of leadership, it will be dead in a few years.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#20

Post by jdblair »

I've been using emacs for approximately 30 years. Every once in a while, someone ask me what editor or IDE I suggest they learn, and I never suggest emacs. It's incredibly powerful, but it's a fossil.

I keep using emacs mostly because of muscle memory.

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