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Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

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Re: Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

#21

While I still use emacs, I find that that despite the "batteries included" narrative about emacs, the things which are not included are causes of major frustration. Such essential functionality like grep-find and LSP servers which is required for out of the box auto complete are not bundled with emacs. Most modern IDEs/editors have these functionality baked in. If you install emacs for windows you find that grep-find…

>If you install emacs for windows...

...you are a second class citizen in the emacs republic.

I mean, I don't endorse this position, but it's the way things are.

Re: Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

#22
post #11

While I still use emacs, I find that that despite the "batteries included" narrative about emacs, the things which are not included are causes of major frustration. Such essential functionality like grep-find and LSP servers which is required for out of the box auto complete are not bundled with emacs. Most modern IDEs/editors have these functionality baked in. If you install emacs for windows you find that grep-find…

What? Emacs has eglot built in. It has had native grep and find stuff for decades . https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Gr... You can change the exec-path to point to your cross compiled grep tool --- or you can change the command string to your tool of choice.

parent is talking about the external dependencies, grep.exe and java and jdtls etc., and in particular how they need to be installed separately from Emacs

Re: Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

#23

While I still use emacs, I find that that despite the "batteries included" narrative about emacs, the things which are not included are causes of major frustration. Such essential functionality like grep-find and LSP servers which is required for out of the box auto complete are not bundled with emacs. Most modern IDEs/editors have these functionality baked in. If you install emacs for windows you find that grep-find…

>If you install emacs for windows... ...you are a second class citizen in the emacs republic. I mean, I don't endorse this position, but it's the way things are.

>If you install emacs for mac...

...you are a third class citizen in the emacs republic.

In spite of the fact that you can't spell emacs without mac.

Also:

>If you install emacs for linux...

...you get flamed for not calling it gnu/linux.

Re: Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

#24

While I still use emacs, I find that that despite the "batteries included" narrative about emacs, the things which are not included are causes of major frustration. Such essential functionality like grep-find and LSP servers which is required for out of the box auto complete are not bundled with emacs. Most modern IDEs/editors have these functionality baked in. If you install emacs for windows you find that grep-find…

I don't think I've ever heard emacs described as "batteries included" -- maybe more like "batteries available." If anything it has the opposite reputation, that doing anything requires extensive and continual config adjustments, which isn't accurate either.

There are plenty of emacs "starter kits" that do aim to provide more of a batteries included experience. My favorite is doom, it's worth checking out and does setup all the features you mention.

Pointing new users at those more advanced default configs as an option would be pretty helpful, I think.

Re: Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

#25

While I still use emacs, I find that that despite the "batteries included" narrative about emacs, the things which are not included are causes of major frustration. Such essential functionality like grep-find and LSP servers which is required for out of the box auto complete are not bundled with emacs. Most modern IDEs/editors have these functionality baked in. If you install emacs for windows you find that grep-find…

For most modern programming languages, LSP servers are trivial to install. You can usually get them through your language or distro's package manager in one command line invocation. Considering that there are sometimes multiple servers with their own pros and cons for a language, this can be kinda nice.

The only one I've ran into that is different is Java, but considering how underdeveloped Java LSP servers are, you probably don't want to be using emacs for Java development.

Re: Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you install emacs for windows... ...you are a second class citizen in the emacs republic. I mean, I don't endorse this position, but it's the way things are.

>If you install emacs for mac... ...you are a third class citizen in the emacs republic. In spite of the fact that you can't spell emacs without mac. Also: >If you install emacs for linux... ...you get flamed for not calling it gnu/linux.

Emacs for Mac is fine though?: https://github.com/jimeh/emacs-builds

That build has native compilation, and if you go for a Doom install you may need to build ripgrep yourself, but... that's also not difficult.

Re: Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

#27
I didn't want the post to end I didn't want to return to an existence where people don't share these transgressive impulses with me.

This is a robust and comprehensive antidote to nihilism and anyone who has ever missed the internet of the nineties or early 00s as I have would be doing themselves an enormous favour by reading it, and then rereading it as I intend to.

It lost me for a moment at Implicity and I was worried the spell had be broken but the profound blows didn't stop.

Re: Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you install emacs for mac... ...you are a third class citizen in the emacs republic. In spite of the fact that you can't spell emacs without mac. Also: >If you install emacs for linux... ...you get flamed for not calling it gnu/linux.

Emacs for Mac is fine though?: https://github.com/jimeh/emacs-builds That build has native compilation, and if you go for a Doom install you may need to build ripgrep yourself, but... that's also not difficult.

they mean you live within the walled garden, that you are playing make-believe.

Re: Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

#29
post #19

This essay is amazing and delightful, but it is rather densely allusive, like classical Chinese literature; ultimately it is more allusion than plain language. I suspect that most people will find it somewhat impenetrable. But if you want to see Emacs explained by references to Dune, Harry Potter, Gormenghast, Star Wars, A Rape in Cyberspace , Neuromancer , The Matrix, Crowleyian magick, and so on, this essay is for…

I was shocked by the reference to Navidson's house from the House of Leaves. The ending to your first paragraph is also interesting in that HoL starts with "This is not for you."
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