Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

Post by bitwize » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #18

billfruit wrote: post #2

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…

Define modern. IDEs with such capabilities were already available in the 1990's. I became an XEmacs user in the 1990's, because there was hardly anything better in UNIX systems. Remember, Emacs still lacked many niceties only available on XEmacs, and vim was yet to be invented. This is how old such IDE features have been available.

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 3:08 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #20

billfruit wrote: post #2

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've never used grep-find or LSP, despite using Emacs for 32 years. Maybe I should; is grep-find better than M-x grep? Apparently I've sometimes improvised an equivalent: "Run grep via find, with user-specified args COMMAND-ARGS. ... This command uses a special history list for its arguments, so you can easily repeat a find command." My out-of-the-box autocomplete is M-/, which works in environments where LSP doesn't…

Post by binary132 » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 3:11 PM UTC

billfruit wrote: post #2

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…

Post by binary132 » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 3:13 PM UTC

pton_xd wrote: post #24

billfruit wrote: post #2

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 set…

Post by binary132 » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 3:16 PM UTC

lll-o-lll wrote: post #3

Umm. Is this some sort of troll article? It sucks you in with nerd nostalgia and slowly becomes more and more esoteric and insane. Here’s the final two lines: > We should know better than to prematurely optimize for order when all of all time arrowpoints in and down to the absolute return 0. Words of wisdom, let it be: your world is a fine stream of consciousness, lacking only a decent editor. If that feels like your…