Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

emacsconf.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 162 posts

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#21

Post by heinrichhartman »

dleslie wrote: post #19

It's weird to be building an Emacs clone nowadays. It's fairly clear that Vim and Emacs _both_ lost the editor wars, and VSCode has come out on top. That's not to say either Vim or Emacs are dead or will disappear, but building a clone of a niche editor is risking dooming the project to being a niche within a niche. If it's just because hacking is fun, then by all means have a blast. But if the goal is to compete wit…

> lost the editor wars

What does that even mean? Both editors have large&strong communities. I don't see them going anywhere.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#22

Post by iainctduncan »

dleslie wrote: post #19

It's weird to be building an Emacs clone nowadays. It's fairly clear that Vim and Emacs _both_ lost the editor wars, and VSCode has come out on top. That's not to say either Vim or Emacs are dead or will disappear, but building a clone of a niche editor is risking dooming the project to being a niche within a niche. If it's just because hacking is fun, then by all means have a blast. But if the goal is to compete wit…

If someone is interested in lisp, you can assume they aren't driven by mass market popularity. Why on earth would want to go up against MS on their turf???

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#23

Post by [deleted] »

dleslie wrote: post #19

It's weird to be building an Emacs clone nowadays. It's fairly clear that Vim and Emacs _both_ lost the editor wars, and VSCode has come out on top. That's not to say either Vim or Emacs are dead or will disappear, but building a clone of a niche editor is risking dooming the project to being a niche within a niche. If it's just because hacking is fun, then by all means have a blast. But if the goal is to compete wit…

[deleted]

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#24

Post by tom_ »

LukeShu wrote: post #20
dleslie wrote: post #19

It's weird to be building an Emacs clone nowadays. It's fairly clear that Vim and Emacs _both_ lost the editor wars, and VSCode has come out on top. That's not to say either Vim or Emacs are dead or will disappear, but building a clone of a niche editor is risking dooming the project to being a niche within a niche. If it's just because hacking is fun, then by all means have a blast. But if the goal is to compete wit…

I'm pretty sure I read this exact comment 10 years ago, but "Sublime Text" instead of "VSCode".

And Atom, as well.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#25

Post by tom_ »

tom_ wrote: post #24
LukeShu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure I read this exact comment 10 years ago, but "Sublime Text" instead of "VSCode".

And Atom, as well.

I suppose TextMate was a bit more niche, being OS X only, but at one point it seemed to be everywhere.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#26

Post by thomastjeffery »

dleslie wrote: post #19

It's weird to be building an Emacs clone nowadays. It's fairly clear that Vim and Emacs _both_ lost the editor wars, and VSCode has come out on top. That's not to say either Vim or Emacs are dead or will disappear, but building a clone of a niche editor is risking dooming the project to being a niche within a niche. If it's just because hacking is fun, then by all means have a blast. But if the goal is to compete wit…

Diversity of interest does not equate to intensity of interest.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#28

Post by tom_ »

tom_ wrote: post #25
tom_ wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Atom, as well.

I suppose TextMate was a bit more niche, being OS X only, but at one point it seemed to be everywhere .

Hmm, while we're counting, what about BRIEF? At one point, widely enough used that Visual Studio even had BRIEF emulation!

(When I was starting out in software development, almost all of my colleagues used this. Now just a footnote.)

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#29

Post by uludag »

dleslie wrote: post #19

It's weird to be building an Emacs clone nowadays. It's fairly clear that Vim and Emacs _both_ lost the editor wars, and VSCode has come out on top. That's not to say either Vim or Emacs are dead or will disappear, but building a clone of a niche editor is risking dooming the project to being a niche within a niche. If it's just because hacking is fun, then by all means have a blast. But if the goal is to compete wit…

Software definitely doesn't have to be popular to be useful. Not being extremely popular comes with advantages as well. Nevertheless, Emacs is probably more popular than a lot software shared on Hacker News.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#30

Post by Pr0ject217 »

dleslie wrote: post #19

It's weird to be building an Emacs clone nowadays. It's fairly clear that Vim and Emacs _both_ lost the editor wars, and VSCode has come out on top. That's not to say either Vim or Emacs are dead or will disappear, but building a clone of a niche editor is risking dooming the project to being a niche within a niche. If it's just because hacking is fun, then by all means have a blast. But if the goal is to compete wit…

Speaking from personal experience, I moved from VSCode to Doom Emacs a year ago, and the on-ramp wasn't nearly long or as tough as I thought. The defaults are good, and anything else that I customized I actually just used ChatGPT/GPT-4 to generate it. It took about a month to get used to the new setup. With LSP/Magit, it feels like I'm not missing out on much from what VSCode offered, and then whenever I want to personalize it, I can. For a creative person (which I'd argue most developers are, kind of by definition), it's fun.
Post reply on HN