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Use GNU Emacs

www2.lib.uchicago.edu

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Re: Use GNU Emacs

#131

Post by jmclnx »

I find Emacs is great for development and documentation. I tend to use vim only when I need to do a lot of column editing. I was almost 100% vim with a smattering of Emacs. But as time went on I now use Emacs (GUI) much more than vim. I really cannot explain why :)

But I can say git, RCS, etc integration in Emacs is easy and a pleasure to use.

I tried some IDEs a while ago, and they are way to busy for me and required heavy use of the mouse. All I really need for development is tag files, and I was able to find some lisp code that makes Emacs tag handling quite similar to vi/vim.

The only real complaint I have on Emacs is handling of tabs when editing flat text data files. But I get around that by having this:

(fset 'my-expand [?\C-u ?\M-| ?e ?x ?p ?a ?n ?d return])

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#132

Post by richardjdare »

worldsayshi wrote: post #13

I used Emacs for a while and now I use Intellij. Now I don't understand the appeal of customizing the editor to such degree. I'm not that unique. I just want stuff that works. Give me the same setup as everyone else so that when issues arise everyone will push for them to get fixed and everyone can help each other.

For me, the appeal is not so much that Emacs is customizable, but that it's basically a live coding environment for working with text, seamlessly integrated with all the usual functionality of a text editor.

I often write short programs interactively to manipulate the text I am working on, and have a whole bunch of Elisp code for common things that come up at work. For example, transforming a pasted ad-hoc spreadsheet column into sql insert statements (because nobody wants to pay to add that functionality to the software, and they email me instead). I used to have a bunch of code for generating Java boilerplate, and even entire classes but the situation has improved in recent years...

Sure I could write scripts or conventional programs to do these jobs, I just prefer the interactivity and fluidity of Lisp environments. Also, being an Emacs user means I can write Lisp at work and get away with it.

Having said all that, I tend to primarily use a dedicated IDE, with a general purpose text editor in the background. I will use Emacs alone when I am writing plain text, Common Lisp, or simple stuff that doesn't require a load of configuration or a complex toolchain. I want the IDE to take care of that for me.

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#133

Post by oblio »

quanticle wrote: post #103
oblio wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your time is so limited, eliminating toil seems essential. The counter point to this is usually: What exactly is your toil as a professional software developer (or associated profession) that is eliminated with a "better"[1] editor in 2023? Refactoring is more powerful with an IDE, for mainstream languages. For non-mainstream languages 95% of what Emacs enables can be done using multi-cursors and a macro languag…

For non-mainstream languages 95% of what Emacs enables can be done using multi-cursors and a macro language built in to the editor, and we're in 2023. Those kinds of editors are a dime a dozen :-) Are they? Multi-cursors, sure, but what other editors have a macro language that combines the power and accessbility of emacs lisp? The only other one that comes close is vim, and, as many critiques as I have of emacs lisp,…

There are many text editors extensible in Lua or in Python. They generally don't allow messing with the innards as much (Firefox proved that's a double edge sword with its extension, it's not an unalloyed good).

https://micro-editor.github.io/index.html

https://lite-xl.com

https://neovim.io

https://code.visualstudio.com

http://www.sublimetext.com

And Emacs Lisp doesn't feel super accessible to most software developers under 40. Almost all its conventions come from a small little island, it's like marsupials in Australia, their own little parallel evolution.

> But other than emacs and vim, which other editors allow me to interactively automate portions of my editing workflow? All the other IDEs and editors that you've cited, like IntelliJ or VSCode require you to either find or write a package. That's a much bigger step than just interactively evaluating some lisp to do a one-off thing.

Devs generally write one-off or maybe reusable shell/Python/... scripts for that. But some of the examples I listed allow you to do a lot of that using Lua.

There are a ton of workflows out there, other devs don't just bang 2 rocks together because they can't automate everything > the editor itself :-)

Also, xkcd is always very poignant:

https://xkcd.com/1205/

Software devs routinely fall into this trap:

https://xkcd.com/1319/

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#134

Post by charcircuit »

medo-bear wrote: post #56
charcircuit wrote: post #30

Emacs is software from the 80s that failed to adapt to the current times. It failed to innovate and address UX issues so its market share devoured.

market share seems like a wrong term for a product that doesnt seem to give an f about it. nor does it seem to care about some mean reversing ui. what it does seem to care about is the users that keep using and loving it ;)

>product that doesnt seem to give an f about it.

They should care about it. Losing market share means people are finding more value in other editors. Do the developers not want Emacs to give the most value as possible to users?

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#135

Post by loup-vaillant »

brabel wrote: post #111
quanticle wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

requires barely any ram It's incredible to me that our tools have bloated to the point where we look at Emacs and think, "Ah yes, what a svelte program!"

But Emacs is incredibly light for the current generation hardware... and it's been incredibly light for probably 15 years or more. On my "small" laptop, I only use Emacs... Trying to run IntelliJ or VSCode makes the laptop burning hot and forces the fan to keep running. With Emacs, no matter what I do, it's always quiet and cool.

One gripe I have with Emacs is that it doesn't boot instantly enough. Annoys me every time I edit a Git commit message.

Though it's not horrible enough that I found the courage to set up an Emacs server, as easy as it is… Anyway, it would be nice if it could just boot instantly by default.

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#136

Post by [deleted] »

blackpill0w wrote: post #110
submeta wrote: post #107

I have been a faithful Emacs user for more than fifteen years now, even using a version of Emacs on my Amiga back in the 80s when I was just a kid. Over time, I have ported almost every aspect of my computational life to Emacs, including my editor, IDE, git-client, writing, documenting, and workflow automation. While I love the tool and enjoy tinkering with it, I have come to realize that there are dedicated tools ou…

I can think of only two types of people who use emacs (same thing for vim) . 1. Old folks who are used to working with them and don't bother switching. 2. Young fellas who spend a significant amount of time tinkering and playing with config files. VScode (VScodium really :) offers everything that emacs or vim has to offer (as far as editing file is concerned) with much less time spent in the config files. With that i…

[deleted]

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#137

Post by rbc »

I think this might be one of my favorite quotes from the article:

"I’m using Linux. A library that Emacs uses to communicate with Intel hardware. — Erwin, #emacs, Freenode"

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#138

Post by kqr »

gpderetta wrote: post #86
xlii wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend calc, I fell in love with RPN and can’t use normal calculators anymore. Never heard about sunrise commander though.

I occasionally need a calculator, but I just evaluate elisp expressions in *scratch*. What am I missing by not using calc?

Fewer keypresses. RPN input is very efficient that way. Something like (sqrt (log (* 3 (+ 9 7))) in calc is "9 RET 7 + 3 * L Q".

(Sorry about the bad example, I'm short on time.)

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#139

Post by pritambaral »

lmedinas wrote: post #28
wardedVibe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, but with doom instead. It has a sensible set of defaults and easy ways of installing packages. I haven't declared config bankruptcy since moving to doom.

I tried Doom but I didn’t liked the fact Vi keybindings where enabled by default and the workflow tries to mimic modern Neovim setups. As an old an old Emacs user it felt atrocious to me.

1. The initial setup lets you choose if you want vim keybindings or emacs.

2. The workflow does not mimic "modern neovim setups". It defaults to hlissner's preferred style, which predates neovim, but is extremely customisable. I mean, it's emacs, after all.

3. Hating on "neovim style" as an emacs user is something you and I better than. We are both old emacs users; we can customise emacs however we like.

4. I was an emacs user before Doom Emacs. I still found it a great as a starting point and ported over my customisations on to it. You don't have to use Doom, but you can, if you want to, and still have your emacs how you like it.

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#140

Post by omnicognate »

oblio wrote: post #127
omnicognate wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "toil" is anything involved in software development that's boring and repetitive. There's a computer right there that's for that stuf. My biggest frustrations come when I'm prevented from bringing the power of that computer to bear on a problem that isn't one of the ones envisioned or prioritised by the makers of my tools, and they didn't think to make it easy for me to extend them myself. Emacs isn't an editor,…

> Case in point: at work we use a job scheduler with a horrid web UI. I knocked something together in a couple of hours in emacs that eliminated that pain from my life and allowed me to explore our environments much more freely. If more of my colleagues used emacs they could share in the joy. I don't have anywhere near the time I would need to make something they could use without it. Other devs would (and regularly…

A needlessly crabby response. I don't think anybody claimed emacs was the only way to code happily.

I was just explaining what the "toil" is in my life and how emacs materially alleviates it. The examples you give don't, in my experience, allow a useful interactive UI to be knocked together anywhere near as quickly as it can be done by an experienced user in emacs. YMMV - use whatever tools you like and manage your career how you please.

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