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916 Days of Emacs

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Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#191

Post by pmoriarty »

commandlinefan wrote: post #181
pmoriarty wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What I've noticed about emacs lovers is that they all customize it heavily - I didn't want to do that, since to me the point of using a plain text editor is that it's always available in exactly the same form wherever I happen to be. " So you not customize vim either? If you don't, you're missing out 99.999% of the greatness of both editors and doing yourself a huge disservice. It's like being a carpenter and limiti…

> you not customize vim No, and I have a specific reason - I ssh into remote boxes a lot , and I want the editor to work more or less the same wherever and whenever I use it. I guess I could customize vi to be a multi-purpose IDE but... that's what I have IntelliJ for.

If you're using vi or vim for really simple tasks, and not using it much, you're not missing out by not customizing it.

But the more you use it, the more you're missing out by just using vanilla vi or vim... and I hesitate to mention them in the same sentence because even vanilla vim is thousands of times more powerful than vi.

Vim's true power, however, lies in its customization and plugins. You're really missing out by restricting yourself this way.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#192

Post by matheusmoreira »

lanstin wrote: post #153
retrocryptid wrote: post #78

Oh man. I'm embarrassed to say I've been using emacs for almost 40 years and it probably accounts for 80% of my screen time. I wonder how many people know emacs predates gnu-emacs? I remember being skeptical of open source until I saw what gnu emacs could do. Then I got slightly more skeptical when I looked at the code ;-)

I got less enamoured of GNU when I started reading glibc. It works and it's solving for a complex set of build constraints and so on, but wow, it is not what I'd type.

Yeah. Thank god for musl.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#193

Post by slashdev »

gshulegaard wrote: post #171
slashdev wrote: post #158

Why do people still use emacs and vim in this age of VS code and intellij? I’ve heard plenty of arguments, but they kind of suck to be honest. They’re more like rationalizations for why they stick to what they know. I just don’t get it. Why use inferior tools? Both are lighter weight. Big deal, buy a faster computer. It’s nothing compared to your salary. Both may let you type slightly faster and move around faster. M…

I think I would rephrase this question as why would I stop using emacs for VS code and intellij? Seriously, there is no feature they have that my emacs config doesn't (AFAICT after using Intellij and VS code each for 4+ years). But I have the ability to work with emacs without ever touching my mouse. You may consider that only being "slightly" faster, but every time I use VS code, _feel_ slow because I know how fast…

The no mouse thing is one of the best arguments I've heard. I'm not convinced it makes it worthwhile, but I'm willing to grant it's possible.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#194

Post by avgcorrection »

softirq wrote: post #52
mbork_pl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s really nothing killer in Emacs 1. Org mode 2. Magit 3. Wdired 4. Synergy between various components (shameless plug: https://mbork.pl/2023-01-30_The_benefits_of_everything_being... )

1. Org mode - I will admit that I'm not a fan of org mode and find it to be oversold and another time waster for people who are already wasting time configuring their editors. I personally use vimwiki, there is a vim plugin for org mode. 2. Magit - Tim Pope is the pope of Vim plugins and fugitive is easily as good or better than Magit. I have never had any issue doing any sort of complex task in git or fixing conflic…

> Again, if you believe in the Unix philosophy then you have to admit that Emacs is simply bloated and trying to do too much and therefore is not really the best at anything.

If.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#195

Post by slashdev »

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #182
slashdev wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they really? Do you get all the same plugins, all the lints and hover info, refactoring, jump to usages/definition, smart auto complete, etc? They seem awfully limited to me by comparison.

> They seem awfully limited to me by comparison. Can you list your most important feature(s) in chosen your ide or editor that you suspect emacs doesn't have or can't easily have?

How about the intellij inspections? It's a ton of lints that underline bits of your code as you type, with a wavy line, and you can hover over it to see what the problem is, and even potentially fix it automatically. Is there anything like that in the emacs world?

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#196

Post by goldfeld »

mbork_pl wrote: post #40
softirq wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the same experiment and came to the same conclusion. There’s really nothing killer in Emacs that makes it a huge sell over just using vim which is a much better editor unless you just love Emacs lisp. Emacs also has some glaring issues - tramp being a major one. It’s slow and very unreliable. Vim is much more in line with the Unix philosophy. It’s a great editor that can be extended with fzf, ripgrep, lsps, git…

> There’s really nothing killer in Emacs 1. Org mode 2. Magit 3. Wdired 4. Synergy between various components (shameless plug: https://mbork.pl/2023-01-30_The_benefits_of_everything_being... )

Also related plug, a newsletter with emacs plugins to help out with, mostly org mode and AI and emacs integration open source tepos.

https://generativereview.substack.com/p/tasks-open-source-em...

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#197

Post by UI_at_80x24 »

For the EMACS guru's in this thread I have a question.

How practical is EMACS for a non-programmer? My preferred environment is FreeBSD + i3WM. I'm a sysadmin, I have no programming skills so anything beyond tweaking the odd configuration file is of no interest to me.

I know that being able to write elisp is a major component of using emacs, but how usable is it without being able to write your own programs?

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#198

Post by Blackthorn »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #192
lanstin wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got less enamoured of GNU when I started reading glibc. It works and it's solving for a complex set of build constraints and so on, but wow, it is not what I'd type.

Yeah. Thank god for musl.

Software people are hilarious. Wow, I sure hate using this amazingly working and workable product because I don't like what the source code looks like! I'm so glad there's an alternative that looks prettier!

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#199

Post by pmoriarty »

ragnese wrote: post #105
commandlinefan wrote: post #15

I've been a hardcore vi user pretty much my entire life, but I decided to force myself to spend a year using emacs a while back just to see what all the fuss was about. When the year was over and I "allowed" myself to return to vi, it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders... to this day I still don't see what the hype was about. On the plus side, though, I memorized the emacs cursor movement commands, which…

> to this day I still don't see what the hype was about. As an Emacs user[1], I agree. The flexibility is really cool, and there are a handful of Emacs applications (notice I didn't call them "packages") that are "killer apps", like Magit, Org-Mode, Calc, etc. But, even though I do use and like Emacs, I can't honestly recommend it to anyone and I wouldn't even consider it to be a very good programming environment unl…

I love emacs, but agree with many of your criticisms.

Emacs can be slow. I don't use LSP, so can't comment on that, but it's definitely slow on long lines with syntax highlighting.

I don't use TRAMP for exactly one of the reasons you mentioned: it can hang Emacs. I want to avoid that at all costs, because I pretty much live in Emacs.

Emacs' default handling of windows (in emacs terminology it's "windows", not "buffers" that you're talking about) is painful, but you can improve that through various packages, like popper[1]

Depending on what problems you run in to and your skill level, it could be tricky to debug elisp programs. However, compare that to when you run in to some bug in VSCode... how are you going to debug that? You'll probably have to submit a bug report and wait for the developers to get to it (if they ever do)... how is that better than emacs?

Also, remember that you don't have to go it alone in troubleshooting the issues you run in to with emacs. There's a whole community ready and willing to help.

Despite the downsides of emacs, I still use and love it. Every editor has downsides, and emacs is no exception. Its positives far, far outweigh the negatives for me. There's just so much more that it can do than other editors, and it's far more customizable. I very much doubt I'll ever seriously consider switching to another.

[1] - https://github.com/karthink/popper

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#200

Post by throwawaysalome »

slashdev wrote: post #158

Why do people still use emacs and vim in this age of VS code and intellij? I’ve heard plenty of arguments, but they kind of suck to be honest. They’re more like rationalizations for why they stick to what they know. I just don’t get it. Why use inferior tools? Both are lighter weight. Big deal, buy a faster computer. It’s nothing compared to your salary. Both may let you type slightly faster and move around faster. M…

The argument for vi is easily made. UNIX devs are constantly diving in and out of directories, grepping, awking, and otherwise spot checking code at the shell prompt. A terminal-based editor emulsifies coding and such command line activities. The argument for emacs is less easily made, and its dwindling market share evidences that. If you're a black belt in elisp like I am, all other editors seem unusable. But you're right. If I hadn't already spent years mastering emacs, I'd likely not give emacs so much as a look.
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