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Use GNU Emacs

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Re: Use GNU Emacs

#141

Post by phonebucket »

geysersam wrote: post #85
tzhenghao wrote: post #33

I'm more of a vim guy, but "I get it". I started using these "serious" editors back in college and eventually settled with vim over emacs. I don't wanna get into the whole editor wars - it's like picking a Pokemon at the start of the game. I went through the whole phase of adding a bunch of plugins, custom macros and have a huge .vimrc file that, once in a while, would break if I was using the wrong vim variant {vi,…

I'd love to use VSCode for the completion and other polished conveniences that just work. I detest having to manually configure anything. But vim moves and keybinds are just too good. If there was a combination that actually worked well, I'd switch in a heartbeat. But so far I haven't encountered an option with all of: * vim bindings (no compromises) * great completion / IDE experience * no configuration Currently my…

You can fully embed Neovim into VSCode: https://github.com/vscode-neovim/vscode-neovim, which seems like it might work for you?

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#142

Post by weberer »

forty wrote: post #71
xlii wrote: post #37

I’ve been using Emacs for ~15 years right now, but I don’t recommend it for the last few. I love it, it’s great, and as many others, I tried to move out of it but there was something I couldn’t do I KNEW I could get in Emacs and it frustrated me so much I kept going back. But I don’t think it brings a lot of added value. There are many very very powerful IDEs and editors which offer out of the box great UX and featur…

I switched from VSCode to Doom Emacs with very little of my own customization (doing TS, Scala, Rust mostly) a few years ago. There is not one thing of VSCode that I miss, and I enjoy some of the most powerful features like wgrep & all, and a great vim emulation layer (the one I had in VSCode sucked).

But don't you miss your editor spying on you and sending your data straight to the NSA?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#143

Post by cle »

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.

Most real Emacs users I know don't spend much time configuring it. Including me.

I continue to use Emacs not because it has the best UX--it doesn't. I use it because it's a stable foundation that I'm confident will be around as other IDE/editor fads come and go (Eclipse, Atom, Sublime, IntelliJ, VS Code, etc.). Sure occasionally I tweak my config to keep up with ecosystem developments, but that's much less dramatic than changing editors every few years. There's no particular reason I use Emacs over vim other than my own momentum, I think they both have this property. I think IntelliJ comes in second place here because the incentives of JetBrains are pretty well-aligned with developers' best interests (I definitely can't say the same for VS Code...).

I'm not that old of an engineer, but the consistency of using the same tool for 8 years continues to compound. Interacting with Emacs has become second nature, I've built up a small collection of utility Elisp functions for getting stuff done quickly, etc. It definitely compounds. This is a big deal for me. I can't find a stronger, longer-lasting foundation to build a compounding developer toolset on than Emacs.

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#144

Post by chucksmash »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #95
xlii wrote: post #37

I’ve been using Emacs for ~15 years right now, but I don’t recommend it for the last few. I love it, it’s great, and as many others, I tried to move out of it but there was something I couldn’t do I KNEW I could get in Emacs and it frustrated me so much I kept going back. But I don’t think it brings a lot of added value. There are many very very powerful IDEs and editors which offer out of the box great UX and featur…

I've been using Emacs for 25 years, and I use a stock install and I never even touch the .emacs file. It's just a text editor. For many tasks it has better usability than the competition. This is why I use it. (Not for everything, though, and that's okay.) I'd guess most people are like me. Configuring text editors is not our hobby.

> I use a stock install and I never even touch the .emacs file.

Not even to centralize the `backup.foo~` and `#auto-save.foo#` files that emacs loves to litter the file system with? I can't wrap my mind around it.

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#145

Post by pama »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #135
brabel wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Simply set EDITOR to emacsclient -a “”. See https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/em...

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#146

Post by cfiggers »

AutoHotkey enables Emacs-like extensibility at the OS level rather than the application level. Some of my macros and shortcuts apply in every text field I interact with, even this comment field on Hacker News. Whether I'm editing in VS Code or vim or Microsoft freakin' Notepad, my macros travel with me. I like that a lot better than being locked into any specific editor and unable to get comfortable outside of it.

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#147

Post by medo-bear »

charcircuit wrote: post #134
medo-bear wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Losing market share means people are finding more value in other editors.

some people just dont get it. emacs is not an editor :)

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#148

Post by __david__ »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #135
brabel wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Setting up emacs server is as easy as:

    alias emacs='emacsclient -c -nw -a ""'
Seriously, that's it!

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#149

Post by spit2wind »

globular-toast wrote: post #118

Emacs is the only software I've ever loved . People use the word love a lot, but I really mean it. You know it's love when you can't stop thinking about it. You're so excited you want to tell everyone about it, but you can't really articulate what exactly it is that makes you feel that way.

Agreed. It's because Emacs truly respects the user. It is the embodiment of Free Software ideals. Those ideals center around community. Emacs helps us understand how capable we are.

Re: Use GNU Emacs

#150

Post by tmtvl »

oblio wrote: post #70
xlii wrote: post #37

I’ve been using Emacs for ~15 years right now, but I don’t recommend it for the last few. I love it, it’s great, and as many others, I tried to move out of it but there was something I couldn’t do I KNEW I could get in Emacs and it frustrated me so much I kept going back. But I don’t think it brings a lot of added value. There are many very very powerful IDEs and editors which offer out of the box great UX and featur…

Great comment, I'm glad you put into words what I've been trying to communicate as someone on the outside looking in. A minor joke here: > Hell, probably if IntelliJ toolset would allow me to customize it deeper with Lua/Lisp/JS/whatever I’d probably switch in a jiffy. It's not going to be quick and it's not going to be pretty, but I think you could technically do it with Clojure :-)))

Or ABCL or Kawa.
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