Making Emacs Popular Again (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#141

Post by Mikeb85 » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

2021 and Emacs still my preferred editor (and I'm young enough, in my 30's). Yes it requires a bit more setup (not much more however, VSC also misses functionality out of the box). However that setup is saved forever, across machines in the form of your .emacs file, so whatever changes you make to make it personal stay with you. And it's really not much more difficult to setup, Emacs lisp is more intuitive than JSON files and as a programming language, it's pretty easy to understand that you invoke a function and then just pass it parameters, and that's about all you need to understand about it to set up the editor anyway.

But there's literally nothing I don't have with Emacs that other editors provide. I have code completion in a bunch of languages (that pops up, with documentation pop-ups), linting, snippets, a project tree preview, project awareness, etc...

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#142

Post by NoGravitas » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

ho_schi wrote: post #9

The complain about the weird and twenty year old issue in Gtk questionable[1]. Gtk2, X11 and disconnecting a display and Emacs calls abort(). I cannot speak about EMACS because I prefer VIM and NEOVIM. My requirements are usability - where VIM excels with your knowledge (learning curve) - and LSP-Support. The later is provided since NEOVIM '0.5`[2] nearly ready to use. A modern editor should know what the user is act…

Strongly agree that there should be a GCC LSP server, and that Stallman's objections to the GCC features that would be needed to make one are Not Helpful.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#143

Post by isolli » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

ReleaseCandidat wrote: post #108

isolli wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing worse than reflexively typing ctrl+z to undo in Emacs and instead have the window disappear into the background!

Actually, there is. Typing `C-x C-s` in a 'normal' Editor. Always happens to me :(

Same here! It's just easier to undo :)

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#144

Post by kqr » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #107

kqr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't personally used VS Code much, but from what I understand, it still runs in two castes that don't, generally, mix: there's its core code, and then there's plugins, and the latter exists on a separate plane from the former. You can't write a plugin that redefines some core behaviour. The functions internal to the core are not all automatically accessible for any plugin. Plugins don't become fully integrated w…

No, I do not go "Emacs plugins can do what now". I rather go, "and that is supposed to be a good idea?". If you want to use Emacs as an OS, doesn't protected mode seem like a desirable feature?

From personal experience, I've benefited way more from that than I've been hurt by it. Whether that's true for all people I don't know.

Of course, you're not supposed to do it other than very carefully and it has caused me problems when some plugin has made a mistake in a way that worked for the original author but not for me, but because of the openness of the system, it's fairly easy to "overwrite it back" automatically when the plugin is loaded – and submit a patch back upstream.

So maybe this sort of system works only when a large portion of the users are hackers, and making Emacs more popular is not a good idea!

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#145

Post by NoGravitas » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

aj7 wrote: post #105

This was super valuable as it showed me conclusively why Emacs is dead, except for a relatively small group of persons who were exposed to it very early in their careers.

The joke "Generally Not Used Except by Middle-Aged Computer Scientists" has been around for like 20 years, though.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#146

Post by tazjin » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

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.

I think it's interesting that there are Emacs users who use it for so long and yet still regard it as a text editor.

For me it's a window manager, mail client, terminal emulator and so much more and I don't know of a rivaling ecosystem where I could get these things in a consistent way. Maybe something Apple makes, but that's a non-starter really (especially if you care about keyboard accessibility).

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#147

Post by foobarian » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

ReleaseCandidat wrote: post #108

isolli wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing worse than reflexively typing ctrl+z to undo in Emacs and instead have the window disappear into the background!

Actually, there is. Typing `C-x C-s` in a 'normal' Editor. Always happens to me :(

You guys both got nothing on pressing Cmd-W on a MacOS terminal when you intend to copy a selection. :-( I swear whoever designed that UI must have been a vi partisan.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#148

Post by bluecatswim » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

ReleaseCandidat wrote: post #108

isolli wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing worse than reflexively typing ctrl+z to undo in Emacs and instead have the window disappear into the background!

Actually, there is. Typing `C-x C-s` in a 'normal' Editor. Always happens to me :(

Yep, for me it's this. I don't know why others are complaining about the other way around, maybe it's because I thought of Emacs as being different from other editors right from the get go, but I doubt I've ever accidentally entered CUA shortcuts in Emacs. But Emacs shortcuts in normal editors while using school PCs was something I did all the time.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#149

Post by Kessler83 » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

Emacs is like Earth. You can't claim to "learn it" or "master it," but it's still the best place to live.

Some other editor is more popular now, and in five years, something else will be more popular than that. Meanwhile, Emacs will continue to grow, fascinating new users and developers.

Simply put, (eq 'new 'best) doesn't evaluate to true. Knowing your way around Emacs says something about you as a programmer or computer user. Like you are clearly curious, willing to learn, know some Lisp, read documentation and recognize possibilities and depth when you encounter them. Knowing editor XXXXXX usually says nothing.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#150

Post by GhettoComputers » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

gopiandcode wrote: post #116

I see many people on here (likely non-emacs users) claiming that Emacs is obsolete/outdated/dying by completely misunderstanding its position in the ecosystem. Maybe it's easier to understand via analogy. Let's consider cars. Of the global population of car users, relatively few of them are F1 racecar drivers. Furthermore, you can easily make the case that the particular features (aerodynamics, speed etc.) that make…

A better analogy is a non fuel injector vehicle that doesn’t need electronics to fix, is old and consistent, that works the same. It’s like x.org, you can rely on it to not change the UI constantly (like gnome breaking something in every version).