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Emacs Survey

emacssurvey.org

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Re: Emacs Survey

#111

Post by morelisp »

jll29 wrote: post #28

They didn't ask the heretic question of "other editors used" (in parallel, not "before"), but I'm going to tell you the answer anyhow: I use XEmacs 21.4 and Sublime 3.2.2 (and sometimes editors that come with various IDEs). I also regularly use vi when logged in as 'root', as it's an established sysadmin best practice not to run third-party software as super user. Sublime is more beautiful but I trust Emacs more (Sub…

I gave the parallel answers anyway, but weird none of my parallel editors were on there (let alone previous, which even I had to look up the name of to remember). No Xcode, no Visual Studio - both extremely common.

Definitely a "web kids" survey.

Re: Emacs Survey

#112

Post by cannam »

morelisp wrote: post #110
Isamu wrote: post #105

So I guess I have been using Emacs for at least 36 years. Did they mean to say GNU Emacs?

I chuckled at "be specific" when it asked for issues you ran into when first starting to use Emacs. Whatever it was that led me to use XEmacs for a couple years at first is both completely out of my head and certainly irrelevant to people today. (I think it was something to do with OOTB integration with whatever print spooler I had configured!)

My biggest problem at first was that the Unix server (a Gould NP-1) didn't have enough memory to run an Emacs instance for every terminal in the class, so it was painfully, agonisingly slow. The joke about "Eight Megs And Continually Swapping" would have been very real, if only I had heard it then.

I really hated Emacs at the time. I only stuck with it because the alternative was vi.

Re: Emacs Survey

#113

Post by dunham »

cannam wrote: post #42

I filled this in for fun - it's short enough and impersonal enough that I didn't feel I cared what happens to the data. As an Emacs user for some decades who never really uses any other editor, I found a few questions I didn't understand very well or recognise the answers for. I suppose other users must be more ecosystem-minded than I am. I was intrigued by the (mandatory) question about which theme you use. Does Ema…

I wanted a "none" or "default" option there. Also the one about communities (reddit etc) was mandatory and no option applied.

Re: Emacs Survey

#114

Post by BeetleB »

m463 wrote: post #13
bluehazed wrote: post #10

For the people wondering "who's asking": https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/je3eht/emacs_user_su... https://blog.abrochard.com/ann-emacs-survey-2020.html

I was wondering that. This appears to be some random person doing this - doesn't appear to be sponsored or approved by rms/gnu/fsf. (especially with non-free javascript)

I think this is more useful than anything sponsored by rms/gnu. On the mailing list they are upset that MELPA was included as an option, for example (they consider it evil).

The purpose of this survey is to get an idea of the preferences of Emacs users. Not to get an idea of the ideal Emacs users that rms cares for. Given how many MELPA packages many (most?) power users use, excluding their opinions makes for a pointless survey.

Kind of like asking people their views on healthcare, and not listing any option other than the universal healthcare options.

Re: Emacs Survey

#115

Post by ngai_aku »

zests wrote: post #24

Does anyone have an example of emacs achieving parity with JetBrains in code completion/code searching? I've put in a small amount of effort into this (hand-rolling a python config, using a DOOM config I found) and I get something that seems really slow if it works at all. Before I invest more time I was wondering if anyone had a screen cast or any personal experiences with this. Frankly I'd use whichever editor has…

Just yesterday I think I achieved such parity. Everything is working wonderfully (though, again, it's only been one day, so I can't speak to longevity).

I'm using the native-compiled branch of emacs28 on macOS (see https://github.com/jimeh/build-emacs-for-macos). I'm using spacemacs, so I don't know how helpful my config will be, but for python I'm using lsp-mode with pyright on the backend.

I've been using emacs for ~2yrs, and there were a lot of things I loved about it, but code completion has always been mediocre until now.

Re: Emacs Survey

#116

Post by nextos »

frank2 wrote: post #86
barrkel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure emacs will properly evolve as long as RMS is still involved.

Meh. I liked Emacs better when RMS still led the project than afterwards. Fewer changes that annoyed me. RMS was definitely opinionated, but he was consistent about it, so that once you are familiar with some of his decisions, you could guess how he would decide other things.

What are some examples of recent annoyances you found?

Re: Emacs Survey

#117

Post by dan-robertson »

guenthert wrote: post #94
dan-robertson wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s because the took the list from the stack overflow developer survey. Probably they’re hoping to pick up more general emacs users and not emacs package developers

Elisp can be used by package developers, but it is really meant to be used by Emacs users. In that, Emacs is fundamentally different than other editors. Users are not only enabled, but encouraged to extend their editor.

Yes, but if you are using emacs for other work, you are hopefully spending most of your time doing that and not writing emacs lisp.

Re: Emacs Survey

#118

Post by taeric »

guenthert wrote: post #97
rgoulter wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm convinced most of the "Emacs is hard" crowd is just send fulfilling propaganda. So many think it is harder than alternatives because that is just what you say. It's not too hard for people to learn, sure. But it's also a much steeper learning curve to get value from compared to IDEs or to VSCode. The latter are really quite nice out of the box. And it's surely way easier for a novice to dig themselves into a ho…

I'm not convinced. I recently installed VSCode after all that hype and I'm somewhat disappointed. Without referring to external media, it's not all that easy to get anything done. It isn't exactly intuitive. It takes effort like anything else. (full disclosure: these days I'm almost exclusively an Emacs user, but for Java I might use IntelliJ instead and long time ago, when VisualAge for Java was still around, I eval…

Exactly the point I'm pushing. I hasten to add that I'm not claiming the alternatives are bad. Just not as rosy as often pushed.

Re: Emacs Survey

#119

Post by nullc »

okprod wrote: post #43
nullc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and the poster up-thread that complained that it even mentioned that it used non-free javascript must now fight to the death!

While we do that you should read about the GPL and the reason it was created, instead of trolling while enabling nonfree software.

You are preaching to the wrong person here my friend. It doesn't exactly promote free software...

Re: Emacs Survey

#120

Post by m463 »

hyperman1 wrote: post #69
shadowgovt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs evolution is really always just a fork away, if someone can build something better than what's there for enough users to care.

XEmacs? I liked it bether than the real thing, it still died

I will say by the time I made the transition, most of the advantages of xemacs had been addressed.

I think I had a better global search and replace method though.

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