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Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

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Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#91

Post by allarm »

kramerger wrote: post #67

I have two comments, that I think also apply to any other HN post on emacs: 1. We are on version 30. By this time emacs should have come with some better defaults. It's 2023, not 1960 people. 2. Why are 90% of emacs frameworks trying to make it into vi?? I choose emacs, if I wanted vi-ish I would have used vi from the beginning

> 2. Why are 90% of emacs frameworks trying to make it into vi??

Idk, I can navigate in Emacs using native bindings, though I like vi modal editing more, it just feels more natural when working with text. Also I can't say about 90%, but in Doom Emacs you can easily switch between native and vi bindings (even on the fly, via the keyboard chord), it's not forced in any way.

(I just checked - you can disable evil mode in spacemacs too).

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#92

Post by allarm »

lambda_dn wrote: post #47

Emacs is a relic, it can take weeks of configuring to get it anywhere near as productive as something like VS Code or Jetbrains IDEs. If you want to procrastinate for a few months it's the perfect tool.

It's not exactly correct to compare Emacs to an IDE. I'm not a coder (even though I write some scripts from time to time), but still Emacs is my working instrument. The main use cases are org-mode and knowledge base with org-roam. You can't get it with VS Code.

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#93

Post by G3rn0ti »

billfruit wrote: post #88
ljm wrote: post #3

If you’re running emacs 29+ I posit you get less value out of a starter kit or framework than beforehand. Treesitter is baked in for syntax, eglot is baked in for language servers (intellisense), project and tab-bar give you scoped workspaces. use-package is baked in for downloading and configuring dependencies. Modus-themes are also built in now, so you can use modus-operandi and modus-vivendi out of the box. Two in…

Is there code-completion/intellisense baked-in as of Emacs 29? I think not. Why can't something that is built into IDEs like Intellij be built into Emacs even after 30+ years of development?

You don’t understand how Emacs works. It is not supposed to be an IDE from the get-go. But there are extensions that together can turn it into one. For whatever language you program with.

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#94

Post by Name_Chawps »

geokon wrote: post #22

It seems like a list of nice, but most are kinda opinionated non-essential tweaks (cua-mode) Well this will have the greybeards frothing at the mouth :) that said, `cua-mode` is kinda terrible/half-assed b/c it implements a tiny fraction of what I think most people would consider "CUA". If you want a real CUA-mode use `ergoemacs`. Then Emacs will start to behave like every other GUI since the last mass extinction. It…

When creating a starter kit, one must choose defaults. Choosing the default emacs defaults is still a choice.

What is the simpler choice? Choosing the defaults that are built-in already, or the defaults new users will expect?

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#95

Post by not_kurt_godel »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #75
not_kurt_godel wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Processing text is like 10% of time and 5% of effort of software development. emacs fails at basic core IDE features like semantic location of variable declaration and usage out of the box

> semantic location of variable declaration This can only work if the editor internalizes the corresponding language. That does not scale for all languages available. That’s exactly what the language server protocol is all about (and certainly what parsers like tree sitter are there for). Emacs can connect to those and acquire semantic analysis capabilities. The degree to which such a semantic language features will…

Unfortunately for the estimated 0.18%-language-share's worth of Raku devs it does not appear that finding references is supported: https://langserver.org/#implementations-server. So not even a great solution for the ~5% of languages that don't have dedicated commercial editors that actually just work instead of requiring devs to do extensive proprietary meta-programming to achieve a half-functioning IDE facsimile

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#96

Post by not_kurt_godel »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #72
not_kurt_godel wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds great, I love time-consumingly setting up a bunch of fragile config for a less-than-fully-functional result instead of a 1-click installation of any number of IDEs that require none of that and work better and more completely in every way

Well, Emacs is all about choice and flexibility -- not 1-click convenience. If you do not want to spend some time learning your tool, it's definitely not for you. I respect that. See, if you hate "lsp-mode" and "lsp-ui" you can go for the more minimal "eglot.el". Similarly, you can exchange "company.el" with "corfu.el" if you prefer the latter. It's all about freedom of choice. Emacs means to many people different th…

Lol at the arrogance of thinking I do not take the time to learn or customize my tools while you advocate usage of a development environment that objectively lacks essential features for efficient professional programming such as functional semantic code search and navigation

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#97

Post by crabbone »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #77
crabbone wrote: post #61

Well, I haven't updated my configuration in many years... I've never heard of any of the extra packages this kit installs outside of Avy (but I use ace-jump). Some do look nice though. One thing I feel is a strange one to optimize for: startup times. Typical Emacs use is to start it once when the graphical interface of the system starts, and never turn it off. What's even the point of this optimization?

Because people outside the Emacs world generally launch an editor from scratch almost every time they want to edit a particular file. Even such monstrosities like VisuatStudio, MS Office and LibreOffice take just some seconds to start on my very old PC. If Emacs takes longer that's a serious turn-off for anybody who doesn't live in Emacs already.

Well... I don't think closing all Emacs windows terminates Emacs server... or does it? If not, then only the first start takes time, subsequent starts don't even execute the init file, or do they?

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#98

Post by ljm »

evjan wrote: post #74
evjan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow thanks for this. Just deleted a bunch of config and packages.

tab-bar is what I've wanted for so long without knowing it!

tab-bar and project.el are fantastic. Projectile of course gives you a load more functionality, but I prefer to use out of the box options when I can. The risk is always pulling in too much and then nuking performance with bloat, or not applying fancy packages consistently (hydra for some things, not for others, for example).

My config is pretty threadbare these days, which is a relief when I plan to rewrite it in literate format.

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#99

Post by ashton314 »

geokon wrote: post #27
ashton314 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most are kinda opinionated non-essential tweaks "That's just like uh… your opinion man." —"The Big Lebowski", I think ;-) I'm mostly of the opinion that vanilla Emacs has some bad opinions with regards to discoverability and ease-of-use-for-newbies, which is what this starter kit is targeting. CUA-mode is on because without it you're gonna have newbies footgunning themselves super hard right out the gate, and that'…

yeah Xah Lee's ergoemacs. You should give it a try. I don't think we disagree. cua-mode is better than nothing.. but just enabling CUA feels kinda lazy bc it's easily improved from Xah Lee himself： http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/modernization_cua-mode.html

Ah, ok. Thanks for the link—I'll take a look at this and see if I can make it better. Thank you again!

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#100

Post by globular-toast »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #89
globular-toast wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus those keys work in bash shells (anything that uses readline) and a lot of other places too. Not only that but, the basic forward/back char, up/down line are caveman style navigation. Obviously they come in useful, but emacs has a much richer set of navigation options: M-f, M-b move forward/back by words, M-}, M-{ by paragraphs etc.

Amazingly... arrow keys also work in bash/zsh etc. shells, back to the late 80s. :-) Actually back then I used tcsh first because it was the one that commonly had niceties like.. arrow keys. In shell, I use the emacs bindings for kill-buffer, incremental search, and end of line jump, etc. but arrow keys for cursor movement. I suspect most people who aren't using vi bindings are much the same. To me the ctrl-n/ctrl-p…

I find them incredibly ergonomic, at least compared to the arrow keys, but that's just me. My newest keyboard doesn't even have arrows keys due to how little I would use them.
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