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IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs

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Re: IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs

#131

Post by iLemming »

frumplestlatz wrote: post #98
pronik wrote: post #74

Whoever thinks that VSCode does not have any learning curve or is somehow magically easy, needs to take a reality check, that thing is overwhelming with all its popups, hovers, sidebars etc. beyond all reason when you first run it (and later too). I'm an Emacs user and I don't in any way support the notion it's somehow easy or intuitively workable, it's most definitely not and never has been. I just think that VSCode…

I’ve been using emacs for very many years, and have a configuration that has evolved over a decade. I was able to pick up VSCode in an hour. It’s not complicated. I’m using it with the Haskell extension and it’s great. Honestly, I’m tired of Emacs’ performance, bugs, complexity, and poor UI that requires an enormous amount of hacking to make a usable IDE. VSCode is a breath of fresh air. The only things I’m not using…

> requires an enormous amount of hacking to make a usable IDE.

When you're using it for one, specific purpose, like an IDE for specific language(s), then yes, sure, it may feel like that.

Yet Emacs is so much more. It's not an IDE (but it could be); it's not [the best] source control tool; it's not [greatest] note taking app; it's not an [amazing] mail client; it's not [most beautiful] pdf reader; nor a [feature rich] terminal app; etc. Emacs is not even an editor, to be brutally honest. It's not the greatest concrete implementation of any of these things.

What Emacs actually is - it's a concrete implementation of an abstract idea - a Lisp REPL with a baked-in text editor into it. That, for a second, is an absolutely fascinating commodity. Once you grok the essence of that idea, it's really difficult not to see the extreme value of it.

I'm sorry, I just have hard time to believe anyone who says: "used it for many years... yet abandoned it anyway".

It typically means that they've been using it from a narrow, small focused point of view, without ever exploring the possibilities that "true" Lisp REPL can grant them. I just don't see myself ever escaping Emacs, because there's simply no practical, comparable alternatives to it. Comparing VSCode to Emacs is like comparing it to Thunderbird - you didn't like how Emacs handled your emails and now using something else? Congrats, and that's just fine, only it's not fair and proper comparison by any means.

Re: IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs

#132

Post by dmead »

trenchpilgrim wrote: post #5
dmead wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which joint issues? Have you tried evil mode?

> Which joint issues? Pretty sure it's rheumatoid arthritis. > Have you tried evil mode? This was like fifteen years ago and I just went back to my working Vim setup I was already using for all my other classes.

Sorry to hear that. I have a family history of that as well. I think I'm starting to show signs of it.

Vim forever I guess. Im typing on a full split with cherry reds (very soft). What are you on?

Re: IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs

#133

Post by iLemming »

self_awareness wrote: post #54

For me, VSCode implements everything that I've always expected from Emacs/Vim. I've spent years to configure emacs/vim to be a good programming editor. Years, multiple configurations, vanilla configs, space/doom emacs configs, multiple predefined configs for vim/neovim. Something always was broken, something was missing, something was non-optimal just below the tolerance line. Missing features, discontinued packages,…

> For me, VSCode implements everything that I've always expected from Emacs/Vim.

Good. For me, VSCode unlikely will ever become anything that I expect from my text editor.

For coding, sure, Emacs may not be great for any specific language except some Lisps, but for plain text manipulation, OMG, Emacs still is the king.

I just can't see it ever replacing it for note-taking - just yesterday I was showing someone "reproducible research" workflow example in Org-mode where I had a source block that sends http requests, then passes that into a bash block where the results get converted to EDN, then connected it to a Clojure REPL, explored and visualized data in it. Name one system that allows you to seamlessly pipe results of one computational block into another, mixing different languages.

Today I made a table with some formulas to calculate some numbers. Does your note-taking app has spreadsheets-capable tables and embedded math formulas?

Two weeks ago I was dealing with a slew of logs coming from k8s pod, and I want it to explore it in my editor - I piped from terminal directly into an Emacs buffer. I can similarly pipe the content of any given buffer into a different unix command.

I control video playback directly from Emacs - it's very nice when I'm taking notes. My pdf documents blend-in into my color theme, which btw. changes based on time of day automatically - Emacs has a built-in solar and lunar calendars.

I search through my browser history and through open tabs directly from Emacs - it's great for finding and grabbing specific piece of text from the browser - so I can put it into my notes.

I rarely need to open Jira in my browser, Emacs understands that "XYZ-12345" is a ticket and shows the ticket description in a tooltip, I can browse its content in-place, same is for RFCs. My Emacs understands that a url is a PR and allows me to review it in-place. It knows when it's looking at a GitHub repo url and allows me to clone it with a keypress, or explore CircleCI logs.

I never type anything longer than three words in any app. I've built a workflow that allows me to quickly move the text into my editor and back into the app. Why would I do it differently? I have all the tools I need - thesaurus, spellchecker, translation, etymology lookup, LLMs, etc.

Finally, once I got the plain text under control, I realized that code is nothing but structured text. I have things like fetching the path to exact line on GitHub, while supplementing the fully-qualified name of the function - my colleagues don't have to guess what they're staring at, they can simply see it without ever opening the link.

Re: IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs

#134

Post by allarm »

roman_soldier wrote: post #90
allarm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not counterculture. It’s understanding of what’s important. Functionality, discoverability and extendability over opinionated UI/UX that nobody asked for.

Well people will vote with their mouse clicks, and they have, < 1% of devs use Emacs vs VS Code which is probably 20-30x.

I mean, okay? That’s their choice. Not everything is a competition.

Re: IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs

#135

Post by trenchpilgrim »

dmead wrote: post #132
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which joint issues? Pretty sure it's rheumatoid arthritis. > Have you tried evil mode? This was like fifteen years ago and I just went back to my working Vim setup I was already using for all my other classes.

Sorry to hear that. I have a family history of that as well. I think I'm starting to show signs of it. Vim forever I guess. Im typing on a full split with cherry reds (very soft). What are you on?

Started using an Ergodox EZ with a custom map after I shattered one of my wrists in a vehicle crash, have stuck with it since.

Re: IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs

#136

Post by iLemming »

roman_soldier wrote: post #57
self_awareness wrote: post #54

For me, VSCode implements everything that I've always expected from Emacs/Vim. I've spent years to configure emacs/vim to be a good programming editor. Years, multiple configurations, vanilla configs, space/doom emacs configs, multiple predefined configs for vim/neovim. Something always was broken, something was missing, something was non-optimal just below the tolerance line. Missing features, discontinued packages,…

This, most people that try and use these legacy editors spend most of their time configuring it get it to be as good as vs code and usually fail. A lot of wasted time and frustration when one click gives you a perfectly modern fast editor with a smorgasbord of great extensions that just work. I do use vim for quick editing of files in the terminal but never for serious work.

> one click gives you a perfectly modern fast editor with a smorgasbord of great extensions that just work

I use over 300 hundred packages in my Emacs setup. I honestly not sure if I can install even half of that number of VSCode extensions and expect it to still run smoothly, maybe people do that, I just don't know.

They are called "packages" and not "extensions" for a reason - an extension that e.g., ships with a browser has limitations. In Emacs I can reuse functions of one package in another - in VSCode they have to be explicitly exposed via public API, must be activated in order, they need to be aware of their extension IDs, there's no discovery mechanism - in Elisp, I don't have to deal with any of that.

in Emacs I can explore, modify and bend the source code of any package - built-in or third-party. I can do it in a way that is simply impossible anywhere else. I can granularly change selected behavior of any command without having to rewrite it fully.

That "just works™" part I don't ever buy it - all software is faulty by nature. In Emacs, when something fails - I know exactly how to troubleshoot it, to the specific line in the specific package code; I can profile; debug and trace it. I can modify code in question in a scratch buffer and immediately check how it affects things. Not only I don't have to restart anything, I don't even have to save that code anywhere.

You call it "a legacy editor" without the slightest clue of what Emacs hackers are capable of doing - for what the most "modern" alternatives simply have no answers.

I agree, Emacs is not for the faint-hearted - many people (maybe most) lack the patience required to grok it. Yet make no mistake, those who have tamed this beast are not staying in it simply because "they don't know any better". They know - something better is yet to be made, if ever. VSCode is great, yet still not better.

Learning Emacs has liberated me from experiencing tool-FOMO ever again - I can switch to VSCode without abandoning Emacs, and I can even probably figure a way to control one from another if I get annoyed enough; I just never found a pragmatic reason to use VSCode more. So really, I have zero envy or crave to even become a full-time VSCode user; if anything, I might be forced into it by circumstances, but that's a different story.

Re: IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs

#137

Post by compiler-devel »

raincole wrote: post #11
charcircuit wrote: post #9

I would really like to see this kind of work be done upstream. Emacs still looks the same as it did decades ago despite other editors advancing and becoming more user friendly.

I'm afraid that many people consider "looking the same as decades ago" a feature...

It is, the default UI is stable and can be changed somewhat easily.

Re: IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs

#138

Post by iLemming »

roman_soldier wrote: post #89
omnicognate wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where you get "most" from. Personally I've found the exact opposite: Despite having been forced by work constraints to use most major IDE platforms at one point or another, sometimes for years at a time, I always come back to emacs with great relief and find it better in pretty much every way. I know better than to assume my experience is that of "most" people, though.

The data shows VS Code is used by double digit % of developers, whereas Emacs is less than 1%, I think that qualifies for most.

That's not the point - McDonald's has 40000 joints - the most popular restaurant in the world. Still doesn't make it the best food option.

Yes, Emacs is not popular, but if you look deeper, you may find unsurprisingly that most Emacs coders are strong developers. That correlation isn't coincidental - you don't stick with Emacs unless you're willing to learn; it effectively teaches you about Lisp, extensibility, and programming in general.

Yet, they are not talking about general popularity of editors among devs, but about people who ever tried Emacs - the argument is that the majority of them try, fail and abandon it. For which obviously there's no polemical (or otherwise) data points.

Re: IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs

#139

Post by iLemming »

skydhash wrote: post #78
pronik wrote: post #74

Whoever thinks that VSCode does not have any learning curve or is somehow magically easy, needs to take a reality check, that thing is overwhelming with all its popups, hovers, sidebars etc. beyond all reason when you first run it (and later too). I'm an Emacs user and I don't in any way support the notion it's somehow easy or intuitively workable, it's most definitely not and never has been. I just think that VSCode…

VSCode is familiar in its UX. Here is the file tree, here is the editor. oh that's the terminal, or I can complete with tab, and these are extensions that I can install? And that's pretty much the extent of the interaction most people have with it. If it does not come out of the box or prepackaged into an easily extensible extension, they are not using it.

> VSCode is familiar in its UX

That's by design. It must have appealing looks and employ every trick from psychology books to get you to try it and keep using it.

You don't have to be a genius to realize that a for-profit corporation with a $3 trillion market cap, spending millions on building a code editor with no direct licensing model; that they are distributing for "free" is not some kind of unseen goodwill; That shit eventually will generate billions in downstream Azure/services revenue. What is it if not a trivial ROI? It is a "loss leader" in traditional business terms, but a strategic necessity for cloud/services dominance.

VSCode is essentially a Trojan horse for the Microsoft developer services ecosystem - a mental prison that is designed to be easy to get in but hard to escape.

In comparison - vim/emacs have not a single profit motive; their network effect works differently; Yes, there's no entity with trillion dollar market cap to keep the pace with vscode, but no deprecation risks, no corporate pivot that ever is a treat to lock-in your data or your workflow or compatibility with older hardware. Vim & Emacs win by not being a loss leader for anything.

Who can ever predict what happens 5–10–20 years from now? Who can guarantee that some evil CEO wouldn't replace Nadella and secretly start implementing changes in the strategy that would change the essence and the meaning of being a programmer? It is already assumed that every dev has to use GitHub and to know VSCode at least on some basic level today. What if tomorrow your employers would be able to analyze your telemetry data to "measure" your performance? What if the use of anything but VSCode as the code editor would simply be banned?

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