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Emacs Is Not Enough

project-mage.org

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Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#11

Post by taeric »

I can't but reflect back on another post I made today, which is that everything fails at scale. Literally everything. They just fail in different ways and made different tradeoffs along the way.

For example, this is why I find myself using "print" debugging on a process of 10^4 values. It is fun to think that, "maybe I can step debug this" on that many values, but... that is well beyond my capability to keep it in my head, such that any help the debugger gives is added to zero. Which... is not good.

That is, complaints that ridiculously large forms cause issues in a debugger seem... pointless? Lets say you managed to keep that from crashing, do you actually have a way to make it workable?

Don't get me wrong, if folks are constantly opening JSON files that are gigabytes in size, it makes sense to focus on that and make sure it doesn't crash. I just, can't imagine what benefit you get from opening an X gigabyte file. I can't even see what the advantages of opening an X megabyte file are. That is literally beyond my brain power.

So, looking to rewrite an emacs is always one that strikes me as a huge risk of throwing the baby out with the water. There is more than a fair chance that what you like about the current setup is a necessary implication of choices that you think you don't like.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#12

Post by msla »

vfclists wrote: post #4
ryukafalz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I see something like this, I'm also reminded of this demo of the Xerox Alto from a few years back. I'll link to the start of the most relevant piece: https://youtu.be/AnrlSqtpOkw?t=549 I'm always struck by the useful directions that desktop computers were going in the 70s, and how computing could be so much better than it is right now. But we've veered so off-course from all of this, away from composabilit…

What Emacs users want is a version of Smalltalk with a superior keyboard driven experience, featuring which-key et al. > I'm always struck by the useful directions that desktop computers were going in the 70s, and how computing could be so much better than it is right now. But we've veered so off-course from all of this, away from composability and towards independent boxes ("applications") that can't talk to each ot…

> What Emacs users want is a version of Smalltalk with a superior keyboard driven experience, featuring which-key et al.

No, more like Interlisp, which is kinda like Smalltalk in terms of being an active environment, only without having to deal with... you know... Smalltalk in order to use it. Plus, there's something to be said for a plan that's probably now mostly forgotten, to re-write Emacs to use Guile as its language and compile other languages to Guile so programmers could extend it in any of multiple languages and they'd all interoperate. The target language doesn't have to be Guile, of course; the modern conception would likely involve WASM and/or LLVM bitcode.

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#13

Post by throwawayoaky »

personomas wrote: post #10

TLDR?

Treating a document like a 2d text buffer is the root of all evil. Treating a document like a string is even worse. Emacs does both, so does everybody else. The big idea is mapping the doc to a tree of nested structures whose schemas define constraints, which constraints define the editing and viewing semantics of the parts of the tree you're looking at. Also lisp should have won the 70s and we're not done relitigating that. Also he has a 5 year plan to prove this all.

Still deciding if I buy it. only wants 1000 bucks a month to work on it full time, I think exploring the area is worth that at least.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#14

Post by roenxi »

When reading this article, I think there is an interesting parallel to be made with Firefox.

Emacs has questionable technical underpinnings. It is an old project; they've all learned a lot since the 1970s. ELisp wouldn't be built that way today, it wouldn't be written in C, it'd be designed with keybindings for a modern keyboard - probably cloning vim. Break from Emacs tradition and build something that is good at editing text maybe.

Firefox faced a similar challenge from modernity with changing security and performance demands. But they chose to remove XUL killed off their own extension ecosystem and put them in a permanent "Chrome but worse" category that they have been unable to escape from.

In some ways it is impressive that Emacs has managed to avoid being killed off in a massive rewrite attempting to chase other text editors. The temptation much be there, it has a lot of deficiencies. But it is a unique and rewarding piece of software for anyone who wants what it does.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#15

Post by guestbest »

ggm wrote: post #6

The entire article comes down to this quote: WHY IS EVERYTHING SO JANKY AF?

That’s the good part. The bad part is the lengthy complaining about needing something better than emacs before concluding that emacs is the best.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#16

Post by jb1991 »

taeric wrote: post #11

I can't but reflect back on another post I made today, which is that everything fails at scale. Literally everything. They just fail in different ways and made different tradeoffs along the way. For example, this is why I find myself using "print" debugging on a process of 10^4 values. It is fun to think that, "maybe I can step debug this" on that many values, but... that is well beyond my capability to keep it in my…

Print debugging is a technique that will never go out of style. It works on any system, is used by programmers of any level of experience, is very quick to use and requires no tooling to understand. And sometimes, even if you do have other great tools at your disposal, it’s still the easiest way to track down a problem.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#18

Post by taeric »

jb1991 wrote: post #16
taeric wrote: post #11

I can't but reflect back on another post I made today, which is that everything fails at scale. Literally everything. They just fail in different ways and made different tradeoffs along the way. For example, this is why I find myself using "print" debugging on a process of 10^4 values. It is fun to think that, "maybe I can step debug this" on that many values, but... that is well beyond my capability to keep it in my…

Print debugging is a technique that will never go out of style. It works on any system, is used by programmers of any level of experience, is very quick to use and requires no tooling to understand. And sometimes, even if you do have other great tools at your disposal, it’s still the easiest way to track down a problem.

I view it as "tracer bullets." I know it will make noise, but I'm planning to look at the pattern of the noise to see what I can reason out of it.

Is it a complete answer? Of course not. Neither is trying to spin a wheel that you are truing. Produces a ton of output that is roughly in an expected pattern, and can be acted on.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#19

Post by ggm »

guestbest wrote: post #15
ggm wrote: post #6

The entire article comes down to this quote: WHY IS EVERYTHING SO JANKY AF?

That’s the good part. The bad part is the lengthy complaining about needing something better than emacs before concluding that emacs is the best.

I had to laugh when I read the complaint about evil mode interactions. Running an emulator for another UI paradigm, unhappy about how it works.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#20

Post by pmontra »

ggm wrote: post #6

The entire article comes down to this quote: WHY IS EVERYTHING SO JANKY AF?

And my reaction was, is it really so yanky? Maybe it's not yanky enough for me to notice. Except for the handling of long lines, that's really slow. I wish it is just yanky.

However I don't understand one thing. Did the author switch to something else or he's still using emacs after this long and convoluted rant?

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