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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?

#81

Post by turboponyy »

mih wrote: post #18

Does VSCode offer a terminal user interface? With Emacs/Vim I can SSH to a remote machine and immediately start editing with muscle memory using the same keystrokes as in the GUI. Sure VSCode has its strengths and as an IDE easier to get started and work with, especially for newcomers. That said, the fact that it requires a desktop environment to operate in means there are niches that Emacs fills which VSCode current…

With regard to vim, unless you've really hacked away at your .vimrc / init.vim, you can usually just apply the vim plugin to your editor and have an identical file editing experience. Interfacing with the file system / Git / operating system might of course differ - I personally use the editor's integrated terminal or a tiled terminal emulator for all that, so it makes no difference to me. This way I can use vim for ssh or editing config files, an IDE for programming if one is available for the given language, or VSCode for a preconfigured vim++.

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

#82

Post by approxim8ion »

vivab0rg wrote: post #64
approxim8ion wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why I use vscodium.

Noting that the point it not just avoiding telemetry, but actually having a tool as indispensable as your text editor not at the mercy of Microsoft whims.

Centralized control under any corporation, especially MS, is a different concern from the project "not being open source" which is what the comment I replied to was talking about.

But yes, it is a valid concern for sure.

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

#83

Post by approxim8ion »

archeroe wrote: post #65
approxim8ion wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why I use vscodium.

It's better than using the MS builds but the SSH remote extension, python's new LSP ( Pylance ) and certainly few other plugins beside being close source don't even work with the open source builds of Vscode. ( + You don't have access to bunch of plugins if you don't manually edit your config to use Microsoft's store, which maybe against its licensing ). If tomorrow Microsoft decided that some new versions of essenti…

Good points. I wasn't aware of these since my base VSCodium environment is quite minimal, but this definitely makes sense.

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

#84

Post by stnmtn »

kamaal wrote: post #75
loxias wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Amen to that. That's why I use emacs. ;) Just timed it myself, started and ready to go in 120ms. Pretty sure we can shave more time off that.

>>Just timed it myself, started and ready to go in 120ms. Let me get this straight. You plan to code for hours, and your biggest concern at this point in time is your editor takes 1 - 2 seconds more to start? A second is 1.666666666667% of a minute. And 0.02777777777% of an hour. Just how much more productive are you getting by saving this time? On the other hand emacs is notorious for making users spend days to get…

Programmer brains are weird, and are stimulated thoroughly by any and all optimization, especially ones that are impossible to not see

On the scale of reality, it's obviously less time to just pick up VScode in a few hours of learning (if that), and then deal with it taking 2-3 seconds to launch

But on the scale of programmer brain, it's clearly wayyyy better to invest days into learning emacs, writing custom configs for it, learning plugin ecosystems, and the like so that you can see and FEEL that 150ms startup every time.

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

#85

Post by taylodl »

Emacs is my go-to when working on "lispy" projects such as Common Lisp, Scheme or Clojure. It's also my go-to for C/C++ projects.

VSCode has become my go-to for everything else.

As with most things it's not a question of emacs or VSCode, it's both - and the knowledge of when to use each.

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

#86

Post by loxias »

kamaal wrote: post #75
loxias wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Amen to that. That's why I use emacs. ;) Just timed it myself, started and ready to go in 120ms. Pretty sure we can shave more time off that.

>>Just timed it myself, started and ready to go in 120ms. Let me get this straight. You plan to code for hours, and your biggest concern at this point in time is your editor takes 1 - 2 seconds more to start? A second is 1.666666666667% of a minute. And 0.02777777777% of an hour. Just how much more productive are you getting by saving this time? On the other hand emacs is notorious for making users spend days to get…

> Let me get this straight. You plan to code for hours, and your biggest concern at this point in time is your editor takes 1 - 2 seconds more to start?

NO. Mine isn't. I happily used emacs when it took a solid half a minute to fully load. Hell, I once was stuck on an AIX machine that needed lots of maintenance and figured it would "save time in the long run" if I built emacs from source so I could debug things there instead of copying files back and forth. Eight megs and constantly swapping and I feel fine. :) I was just pointing out the startup time as an easy way to pop the nonsensical argument that on today's hardware emacs is anything but lightning fast.

> On the other hand emacs is notorious for making users spend days to get a decent working set up.

Days? Powerful tools can take years to master! The best are those which let you be productive immediately, while providing a natural and built-in path for you to grow as you need to. Make easy things easy, hard things possible, &c.

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

#87

Post by spacemanmatt »

kamaal wrote: post #75
loxias wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Amen to that. That's why I use emacs. ;) Just timed it myself, started and ready to go in 120ms. Pretty sure we can shave more time off that.

>>Just timed it myself, started and ready to go in 120ms. Let me get this straight. You plan to code for hours, and your biggest concern at this point in time is your editor takes 1 - 2 seconds more to start? A second is 1.666666666667% of a minute. And 0.02777777777% of an hour. Just how much more productive are you getting by saving this time? On the other hand emacs is notorious for making users spend days to get…

> Just how much more productive

It's naive to measure productivity in editor startup times when developer satisfaction is way more important.

Clearly this developer values shaving time off editor start time. Seems like it's a mistake to conclude they are concerned about recouping the milliseconds.

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

#89

Post by _huayra_ »

Ultimately this comes down to the communities.

The Emacs community, although perhaps lacking the sheer number of vscode users, is incredible. There are folks like Henrik Lissner who are almost pathologically addicted to making Emacs awesome, not to mention the myriad other folks who escape my mind at the moment.

The vscode community is mostly full of valiant, short-lived one-person projects and things maintained by large companies. I must admit that for working with Azure, I do switch to vscode because the integration (e.g. for the ARM templates) is awesome.

Emacs has the better community for the long run (and has the track record to prove it), but I do wonder about the technical limitations of Emacs, mostly revolving around the quirkiness of elisp that Emacs is mostly married to at the moment. You can listen to Henrik discuss this here [0]. I experience some hickups when using Doom emacs, mostly when projects get big and the tooltip stuff has to render many options. Still, this is well worth it for the amazing benefits of Org mode, Org Roam, Org-ref, etc.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKegZI9vWUU

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

#90

Post by kamaal »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #87
kamaal wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Just timed it myself, started and ready to go in 120ms. Let me get this straight. You plan to code for hours, and your biggest concern at this point in time is your editor takes 1 - 2 seconds more to start? A second is 1.666666666667% of a minute. And 0.02777777777% of an hour. Just how much more productive are you getting by saving this time? On the other hand emacs is notorious for making users spend days to get…

> Just how much more productive It's naive to measure productivity in editor startup times when developer satisfaction is way more important. Clearly this developer values shaving time off editor start time. Seems like it's a mistake to conclude they are concerned about recouping the milliseconds.

>>It's naive to measure productivity in editor startup times when developer satisfaction is way more important.

To be honest, I don't even notice what happens in 1 - 2 seconds.

Its like less than the time I take to sip my green tea.

And yeah more importantly. I don't kill vscode and restart it every day that's more like once in a few weeks.

I think Im ok sacrificing 1 - 2 seconds a month for the value vscode has to offer.

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