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

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

#71

Post by cmrdporcupine »

BeetleB wrote: post #45
digging wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I only use VSCode (or Codium...), what sorts of things would be in the latter list?

Can I use VSCode to: - Read and reply to my emails? - Manage TODOs across domains (so e.g. I can make a TODO that has a link to a specific email)? - Use it as a Mastodon client (read and write toots, boost them, favorite them, etc) - Scrape a web site (several pages), getting only the relevant content[1] - Bulk rename/copy lots of files with a custom naming algorithm - Chat on IRC - Use it as a spreadsheet - Do numer…

TIL about mastodon.el and now I'm off to MELPA that hot stuff.

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

#72

Post by idispatch »

BeetleB wrote: post #55
dleslie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VSCode is why Sublime Text, Atom, and others are not as relevant as they once were.

And in 10 years, there will be a comment saying "XYZ is why VSCode is not as relevant as it once was." And Emacs will still be around.

And VSCode will still be around.

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

#73

Post by samatman »

GrumpySloth wrote: post #69
globular-toast wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly not licensed under the GPL.

I can understand wanting to restrict use of something a person created using a restrictive licence. I can’t understand being sad about someone else not restricting what they created. To me it looks like someone being sad after seeing someone else giving out free ice cream, even though the person being sad didn’t contribute to making the ice cream.

I call these personality types free software socialists, and free software communists. The free software socialists are my friends. The free software communists are not.

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

#74

Post by cmrdporcupine »

BeetleB wrote: post #32
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…

> It's fairly clear that Vim and Emacs _both_ lost the editor wars, and VSCode has come out on top. Many (most?) Emacs enthusiasts don't use it primarily for SW development. VSCode simply isn't an alternative for their needs. Make two lists: - List of things you can do in VSCode that you can't in Emacs - List of things you can do in Emacs that you can't in VSCode The latter list will be 10-100x longer.

"The latter list will be 10-100x longer."

And on top of all that the actual core editor is, once you get your fingers wrapped around it, just... the best. It can do so many things that other editors just don't do, it's responsive and fast, the buffer metaphor it works with is great (so easy to have the same file open in multiple windows at different regions, it's beautiful) and I love the tiling system for its frames, etc. etc.

In 30 years, we'll still be using Emacs, but VSCode will have moved on.

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

#75

Post by cmrdporcupine »

kazinator wrote: post #50
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 need an editor that starts up, cache cold, in a few hundred milliseconds at most. Thanks for playing.

To be fair, that's not emacs. I'm a huge emacs fan, but its startup is awful compared to vim & friends.

Yes, you can use emacsclient, but that's a bit of a different thing and has its own disadvantages.

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

#76

Post by samatman »

BeetleB wrote: post #45
digging wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I only use VSCode (or Codium...), what sorts of things would be in the latter list?

Can I use VSCode to: - Read and reply to my emails? - Manage TODOs across domains (so e.g. I can make a TODO that has a link to a specific email)? - Use it as a Mastodon client (read and write toots, boost them, favorite them, etc) - Scrape a web site (several pages), getting only the relevant content[1] - Bulk rename/copy lots of files with a custom naming algorithm - Chat on IRC - Use it as a spreadsheet - Do numer…

I think it's fair to say that most people don't need, or even want, their IDE/text editor to do a bunch of stuff that can be done with other programs. I know Emacs people like it (I was, at one time, an Emacs person), and that's great, but "can your text editor/IDE do a bunch of not-text-editor-slash-IDE stuff?" is a weird gotcha. Sometimes you want to buy your dessert topping and floor wax in separate cans, y'know?

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

#77

Post by lupusreal »

kyykky wrote: post #52
globular-toast wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly not licensed under the GPL.

Is there a benefit in using GPL for text editors?

It prevents the editor from (legally) becoming proprietary software which deprives users of their software freedoms.

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

#78

Post by yashasolutions »

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…

emacs and vim were niche way before VScode was around. The goal was never market dominance. It's not a market. It's a tool. With users. And these users are also active contributors to their own ecosystem.

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

#79

Post by nanna »

account-5 wrote: post #4

Completely off topic but this website is how it should be done. No JavaScript enabled and I can play the videos and see the text and images. Well done.

Sacha Chua does God's work for the Emacs community with building the Emacsconf infrastructure and her Emacs newsletter. See her blog on how she set up auto captioning:

https://sachachua.com/blog/2024/01/2024-01-28-yay-emacs-clos...

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

#80

Post by Jtsummers »

lupusreal wrote: post #77
kyykky wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a benefit in using GPL for text editors?

It prevents the editor from (legally) becoming proprietary software which deprives users of their software freedoms.

I suspect that if someone is in a position where they are compelled to purchase and use the proprietary version and not the free (and available) version, they already lack most software freedoms. Probably several other, more important, freedoms as well.
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