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Ask HN: Could VSCode be the new Emacs?

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Re: Ask HN: Could VSCode be the new Emacs?

#51

Post by vfclists »

VSCode is bloated by a whole web engine because Microsoft developers are too lazy to develop a proper editor from scratch.

Elisp is antisocial and restricting because Stallman fought against the use of modules and they only become available in with Emacs 25. As for FFI Emacs developers are still dragging their feet inspite of other developers an Emacs developer actually having done the work. All the core developers need to do is to integrate it.

As for question itself, yes VSCode can be the new Emacs if your workstations are powerful enough, Apple M1 Pro Max or whatever.

Re: Ask HN: Could VSCode be the new Emacs?

#52

Post by Otek »

loxias wrote: post #47

(personal bias: i've been using emacs for about 20 years, though I don't know elisp and I have very mildly customized dotfiles) I want to process and respond to this question, but I can't get past: > It's slow (I have i7 with 4 cores and 32Gb of RAM)... Consider that you must be doing something deeply wrong? I have a broadwell (2015) i7, 2 cores, 16GB of ram (8 of which is reserved), and Emacs is quite fast. I tried…

personal bias: i've been using vscode for about 4 years

> I couldn't type more than a few lines before the high latency, and the fact that I could feel my CPU heating up, gave me all the info I needed.

Consider that you must be doing something deeply wrong? I have a MacBook Pro (2015) i7, 4 cores, 16GB of ram, and VS Code is quite fast.

Re: Ask HN: Could VSCode be the new Emacs?

#53

Post by approxim8ion »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #37

Long term risk management! 99% of my time in front of the computer is spent in an editor (for both work and play). Having invested and continuing to invest so much time and effort in my tools and my environment, I would hate for something so fundamental in my life to not be free as in freedom: "Microsoft's releases of Visual Studio Code are licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contain telemetry/tracking" https:/…

Which is why I use vscodium.

Re: Ask HN: Could VSCode be the new Emacs?

#54

Post by loxias »

Otek wrote: post #52
loxias wrote: post #47

(personal bias: i've been using emacs for about 20 years, though I don't know elisp and I have very mildly customized dotfiles) I want to process and respond to this question, but I can't get past: > It's slow (I have i7 with 4 cores and 32Gb of RAM)... Consider that you must be doing something deeply wrong? I have a broadwell (2015) i7, 2 cores, 16GB of ram (8 of which is reserved), and Emacs is quite fast. I tried…

personal bias: i've been using vscode for about 4 years > I couldn't type more than a few lines before the high latency, and the fact that I could feel my CPU heating up, gave me all the info I needed. Consider that you must be doing something deeply wrong? I have a MacBook Pro (2015) i7, 4 cores, 16GB of ram, and VS Code is quite fast.

I'll take that bet!

Keep in mind I said "when it came out". I don't know when that was, and maybe it's improved. A bit. That being said, the fact that VS Code isn't a native application, but something run as a local web app, is all the info you need. (no idea how it's gonna grab the keybindings it's gonna need if it's in a web browser... and the fact that it burns CPU on blinking the cursor isn't exactly a sign of Quality Engineering)

I would consider that, if it made sense to do so. But, my coding environments are pretty bare bones, there's not a lot of things to "do" wrong.

That being said, if I can do so in under a few minutes, I'll install VSCode right now and see if it runs... And if VSCode seems fast on your machine, you should check out emacs! ;)

Re: Ask HN: Could VSCode be the new Emacs?

#55

Post by jbverschoor »

vbezhenar wrote: post #46
jbverschoor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Everything is a file" Unix is an OS for I/O streams / lines. That's what it's good at. That's what the tools are designed for.

And that's how they spectacularly fail when something does not fit into that paradigm. Like file name with `\n`. Apparently now you need `\0`-separated lines and all the tools need `-0` or `-z` switches, console does not print it well and all that card house breaks apart.

Yup. It's a nice abstraction, but for many things an object-graph / object-stream makes more sense. The output / rendering can be a tree or a table.

Re: Ask HN: Could VSCode be the new Emacs?

#56

Post by loxias »

havkd wrote: post #20

I’ve wanted to switch to emacs for a long time, but it feels like a second or third class citizen on Windows. There are many guides online on how to prepare it to be used as an IDE for different programming languages but it all breaks down when you try to follow the guides on Windows. On the other hand vscode is first class, or almost.

What's wrong with using the official/native emacs binaries on Windows? My knowledge is at least a decade out of date, but the official build: http://mirror.rit.edu/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-27/emacs-27.2-...

Seemed to work well.

The key is to get a shortcut to emacs in your SendTo menu :)

Re: Ask HN: Could VSCode be the new Emacs?

#57

Post by spacemanmatt »

kangaroopouch wrote: post #9

> But are there any other reasons, technical or otherwise, why people don't seem to use VSCode for things beyond editing code? The best answer I've seen to this question is https://www.murilopereira.com/the-values-of-emacs-the-neovim... Amongst other things, it lists different values that each tool prioritizes, and how "Core values are self-reinforcing. They attract like-minded people, who will then defend them." Ema…

I started out with VSCode hoping it would be an easier, more modern Emacs. Calva was the closest thing to a good experience I could get. Now I am switching to Emacs for CIDER and generally the Emacs ecosystem.

I doubt I'll ever not use vim when I'm working/thinking in systems mode, though. The thought of waiting for a "real" editor to launch when I just want to edit a tiny unstructured file is a sad one to me.

Re: Ask HN: Could VSCode be the new Emacs?

#58

Post by spacemanmatt »

dvh wrote: post #26

Google is evil, everybody knows that (now) but young players don't know that Microsoft is also evil. Always was, always will be. Don't touch anything that Microsoft touched, you'll only get burned.

This warning goes double for all of Nadella's apologists who thought MS had somehow changed its stripes on open source.

Re: Ask HN: Could VSCode be the new Emacs?

#59

Post by kangaroopouch »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #57
kangaroopouch wrote: post #9

> But are there any other reasons, technical or otherwise, why people don't seem to use VSCode for things beyond editing code? The best answer I've seen to this question is https://www.murilopereira.com/the-values-of-emacs-the-neovim... Amongst other things, it lists different values that each tool prioritizes, and how "Core values are self-reinforcing. They attract like-minded people, who will then defend them." Ema…

I started out with VSCode hoping it would be an easier, more modern Emacs. Calva was the closest thing to a good experience I could get. Now I am switching to Emacs for CIDER and generally the Emacs ecosystem. I doubt I'll ever not use vim when I'm working/thinking in systems mode, though. The thought of waiting for a "real" editor to launch when I just want to edit a tiny unstructured file is a sad one to me.

If you're interested in a reliably-quick-to-start editor, and prefer the Emacs ecosystem, consider https://www.gnu.org/software/zile/ . It's built for that purpose.

Re: Ask HN: Could VSCode be the new Emacs?

#60

Post by kangaroopouch »

deepstack wrote: post #49
kangaroopouch wrote: post #9

> But are there any other reasons, technical or otherwise, why people don't seem to use VSCode for things beyond editing code? The best answer I've seen to this question is https://www.murilopereira.com/the-values-of-emacs-the-neovim... Amongst other things, it lists different values that each tool prioritizes, and how "Core values are self-reinforcing. They attract like-minded people, who will then defend them." Ema…

> Velocity Hmm not so sure about that. The main reason that I have not complete switched over to VS Code, is that it feel klunky and I'm using a 16GB macbook pro, not top of the line, but something where I should expect a code editor would feel not so klunky.

In the context of the linked article "velocity" is defined to be "Short and focused release cycles, aligned personpower, leveraging the community effectively". I think VS Code exhibits this value.
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