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Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

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Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#51

Post by underatree »

deworms wrote: post #42
underatree wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emacs has [...] no autocomplete, and doesn't show available functions My impression is that you are not familiar with Emacs.

I have been using emacs for 7 years prior to switching to VS Code. Never looked back. It's better in all regards.

Sorry for misunderstanding. I see now that you meant autocompletion like LSP (rather than M-x minibuffer completion). Emacs could benefit from built-in LSP, I agree.

Emacs-devel are keen for it, and eglot.el is a good contender for inclusion.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#52

Post by deworms »

lgrapenthin wrote: post #29
rich_sasha wrote: post #6

I’m surprised at the disparity between Emacs and vim use (20% vs 3% according to some survey). I thought it’s more equal. I suppose, while the learning curve for Vim is a lot steeper, you reach the power regions very quickly too. With Emacs, while it’s less alien initially, you need to learn quite a bit more to get to “power user” levels. But then, in turn, it seems that Emacs is much easier to mold into an IDE sort…

Its quite similar percentages to about a 10-15 difference of IQ points at end of the distribution curve. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IQ_distribution.svg

You'd expect more intelligent people to prefer a tool that doesn't require days of tuning to start being remotely usable though

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#53

Post by deworms »

nverno wrote: post #50
deworms wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's some kind of protestant work ethic. It doesn't need to require days of busywork to be powerful. VS Code is more powerful, easier to configure, and more productive out of the box. The default feature VS Code offers make hundreds of lines of Emacs configs with dozens of custom plugins look laughable. Tramp mode is pure trash compared to remote editing in vs code. Stuff like syntax highlighting, intellisense, git…

Yes, it takes work, it's like learning how to dance, draw, or paint. My emacs config is literally 64183 lines of elisp + 2356 snippets (just checked), so I'm not really considering a major editor switch at this point. I've used VS code as well, it's fine for what it does and certainly much more beginner friendly.

Imagine what you could have accomplished if you didn't have to spend all that time writing an entire large codebase just to make it usable. It's a false assumption that it should require pointless busywork to be useful. You're never getting back the time you've wasted on writing a config for an obsolete editor.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#54

Post by thunderscore »

wirrbel wrote: post #48
deworms wrote: post #34

If you need to install a dozen plugins (helm, projectile, company/autocomplete, flycheck, whatever else) to match something that's installed by default in any modern text editor, Emacs will never be remotely popular. Even something as simple as theming doesn't work by default; each theme needs to be implemented separately for every mode. 99% of people will see how fruitless it is to try to configure it and move on. W…

Emacs' user base is probably larger than any time before. Granted, market share dropped because many people are never exposed to Emacs (or vim), directly start with PyCharm, VSCode, etc. The question is: Can emacs increase its market share by becoming more approachable? Probably yes, on the other hand since Emacs is so different to the User Interface expectations of 2021, it will always have a hard time. I myself hav…

> for the IntelliJ stuff I had to take notes on what I changed where so I could reproduce it.

IntelliJ (and all other variants), stores setting in code (xml) too. It's not as exposed or clean as a single .vimrc or .emacs.d/init file but it does the job. You can easily export the settings or have them auto sync via your jetbrain account.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#55

Post by nverno »

deworms wrote: post #53
nverno wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it takes work, it's like learning how to dance, draw, or paint. My emacs config is literally 64183 lines of elisp + 2356 snippets (just checked), so I'm not really considering a major editor switch at this point. I've used VS code as well, it's fine for what it does and certainly much more beginner friendly.

Imagine what you could have accomplished if you didn't have to spend all that time writing an entire large codebase just to make it usable. It's a false assumption that it should require pointless busywork to be useful. You're never getting back the time you've wasted on writing a config for an obsolete editor.

I love writing elisp, obviously! It wasn't some drudgery for me, it was the whole reason I even got into coding (from using R in emacs) in the first place.

I got into a habit (obsession?) of automating as much as possible everything I repetitively do on a computer by writing elisp. It's essentially my operating system.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#56

Post by underatree »

deworms wrote: post #47
nverno wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need dedicated tutorials, or equivalents, for all complicated tools and machinery. The power of Emacs (with respect to text editing capabilities) comes from mastering, by committing to muscle memory, a large number of key sequences. There's no easy way to do this- it takes time and effort (100% worth the payoff imo).

That's some kind of protestant work ethic. It doesn't need to require days of busywork to be powerful. VS Code is more powerful, easier to configure, and more productive out of the box. The default feature VS Code offers make hundreds of lines of Emacs configs with dozens of custom plugins look laughable. Tramp mode is pure trash compared to remote editing in vs code. Stuff like syntax highlighting, intellisense, git…

I'm keen to hear more about VS Code's remote editing strengths over TRAMP.

What is it in particular?

I see some UI operations block on TRAMP operations which is laggy and annoying.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#57

Post by MereInterest »

rjrodger wrote: post #49
jdblair wrote: post #20

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.

That's it. That's the reason. You can usually get Emacs key bindings (or a shallow approximation thereof) in most editors. But yeah, we're stuck, so I guess we just gotta double down. It is fun when the young 'uns do a double take after you execute a particularly fancy macro. I do love that.

I've customized my setup to the point where I don't just want emacs keybindings, I want my emacs keybindings. Because those are the ones that are in my fingertips.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#58

Post by rmadriz »

deworms wrote: post #34

If you need to install a dozen plugins (helm, projectile, company/autocomplete, flycheck, whatever else) to match something that's installed by default in any modern text editor, Emacs will never be remotely popular. Even something as simple as theming doesn't work by default; each theme needs to be implemented separately for every mode. 99% of people will see how fruitless it is to try to configure it and move on. W…

your argument that a text editor is not going to be popular because you need to install a dozen plugins to match what would be considered "modern" doesn't add up. I can see a thousand reasons why emacs is not popular but having to install plugins is not one of them. VSCode itself needs a bunch of plugins for certain languages, and even if you used it for the out the box languages (e.g. JavaScript) there's a couple of things missing that and IDE would have out the box (I agree that emacs would need much more plugins compared to VSCode).

Also, look at vim/neovim. They are still one of the most popular text editors (much more popular than emacs for example), look at the stackoverflow developer survey, in the last one neovim was ranked the most loved text editor and vim is ALWAYS ranked between on of the most used editors. You need a dozen plugins if you want anything close to a modern IDE, yet they are still very popular and used.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#59

Post by zephyr9 »

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…

No! Emacs does not require the user to learn any code in order to use it.

Unfortunately this is a persistent false narrative to which many new users fall victim (as I believe you have). I maintain several packages aimed at non-coding writers. I put a lot of effort into ensuring that writers never need to write or understand any code in order to get writing.

Emacs has a built-in user-friendly options UI system that provides documentation on every option and its available settings, and provides input error checking. All options are organised hierarchically, or you can search for any options matching a string.

But, there are a lot of programmers out with a desperate need to appear clever. Using the options UI is an affront to their cleverness, so they insist that writing code is the only way. It keeps them feeling clever and it perpetuates this idea that the only way to use Emacs is by learning how to manipulate its internal code.

So we have people sharing their overly complex configuration files. And worse, these horrible "starker kits" that obfuscate the extensive in-built help, and further abstract the program away from the user.

Ignore anyone pushing any of those "starter kits". Ignore anyone who says "just paste this code into your init". They're only trying to appear clever. Anyone trying to appear clever usually isn't.

Edit: here's a video where I set up Emacs from scratch to a full-featured screenwriting program, without a single bit of code: [URL redacted]

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#60

Post by underatree »

p2t2p wrote: post #40
deworms wrote: post #34

If you need to install a dozen plugins (helm, projectile, company/autocomplete, flycheck, whatever else) to match something that's installed by default in any modern text editor, Emacs will never be remotely popular. Even something as simple as theming doesn't work by default; each theme needs to be implemented separately for every mode. 99% of people will see how fruitless it is to try to configure it and move on. W…

Exactly that, plus it doesn't really serve well as platform. I mean VSCode renders Markdown previews correctly, not some ASCII based approximation. It renders images if I happen to click on one. Extensions can actually provide decent UI, thank's to that CSVs never looked better in my text editors.

I use Emacs's markdown mode for syntax highlighting.

I have never used live export, but looked for it in its dropdown menu, found it, and clicked it: https://i.imgur.com/0LG6nnS.png

It renders images and doesn't rely on ASCII for its rendering.

I agree Emacs could benefit from some polish, on the whole.

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