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916 Days of Emacs

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Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#161

Post by pmoriarty »

lanstin wrote: post #157
pmoriarty wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What all the hype is about depends on how you use emacs, what you add to it and how you configure it. I used vi and vim for 25 years before switching to emacs, and I spent a ton of time making it very vim like. Now my emacs can do way more than vim ever did. Things like: - browse the web through emacs - read my email through emacs - use org-mode to take notes in outline format, with hyperlinks, tables, executable sou…

What browser do you use? I used to use w3 but it is unsatisfactory now.

emacs-w3m

I've also tried eww, but don't like it as much.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#162

Post by pmoriarty »

_a_a_a_ wrote: post #138
pmoriarty wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What all the hype is about depends on how you use emacs, what you add to it and how you configure it. I used vi and vim for 25 years before switching to emacs, and I spent a ton of time making it very vim like. Now my emacs can do way more than vim ever did. Things like: - browse the web through emacs - read my email through emacs - use org-mode to take notes in outline format, with hyperlinks, tables, executable sou…

> and certain types of regex handling that vim can do better Hi, emacs user here, can you elaborate please.

See the \zs and \ze patterns in vim.

I've asked for them to be implemented in evil, but have been told it's not possible because evil just uses emacs' regex engine, which can't do this.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#163

Post by brokenkebaby »

BeetleB wrote: post #81
softirq wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the same experiment and came to the same conclusion. There’s really nothing killer in Emacs that makes it a huge sell over just using vim which is a much better editor unless you just love Emacs lisp. Emacs also has some glaring issues - tramp being a major one. It’s slow and very unreliable. Vim is much more in line with the Unix philosophy. It’s a great editor that can be extended with fzf, ripgrep, lsps, git…

The tell in your message (and those in general from vim users), is insisting on treating Emacs as an editor, and comparing it primarily on that benchmark. There are no shortage of Emacs lovers and users who will accept that vim is a better editor. You didn't need to try Emacs to gain that appreciation. The other tell (common on HN, which has a clear selection bias), is comparing Emacs to an IDE like VS Code. Many, if…

Agree. Except vim cannot be better editor as emacs can be better vim if one likes

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#164

Post by Paul-Craft »

slashdev wrote: post #158

Why do people still use emacs and vim in this age of VS code and intellij? I’ve heard plenty of arguments, but they kind of suck to be honest. They’re more like rationalizations for why they stick to what they know. I just don’t get it. Why use inferior tools? Both are lighter weight. Big deal, buy a faster computer. It’s nothing compared to your salary. Both may let you type slightly faster and move around faster. M…

You seem to be missing that they're not actually inferior tools. I can't think of a single thing that can't be done at least approximately as easily with emacs than with VSCode and the like.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#165

Post by avgcorrection »

commandlinefan wrote: post #15

I've been a hardcore vi user pretty much my entire life, but I decided to force myself to spend a year using emacs a while back just to see what all the fuss was about. When the year was over and I "allowed" myself to return to vi, it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders... to this day I still don't see what the hype was about. On the plus side, though, I memorized the emacs cursor movement commands, which…

> I've been a hardcore vi user pretty much my entire life, but I decided to force myself to spend a year using emacs a while back just to see what all the fuss was about.

This is like saying that you have been a mountain biker all your life, but then decided to play the trumpet for one year. Nonsensical conjunction.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#166

Post by pmoriarty »

slashdev wrote: post #158

Why do people still use emacs and vim in this age of VS code and intellij? I’ve heard plenty of arguments, but they kind of suck to be honest. They’re more like rationalizations for why they stick to what they know. I just don’t get it. Why use inferior tools? Both are lighter weight. Big deal, buy a faster computer. It’s nothing compared to your salary. Both may let you type slightly faster and move around faster. M…

Things you can do inside emacs (and have all this be tightly integrated so you can copy and edit data seamlessly from one "application" to another, without leaving your editor):

- browse the web

- read/send/edit email, RSS news, usenet

- chat on IRC and other chat networks/protocols

- use org-mode to edit notes in an outline format with hyperlinks, executable code blocks, a spreadsheet, etc

- use magit, one of the most powerful git interfaces

- read and edit PDFs and LaTeX with visual LaTeX symbol substitution right in the editor

- program and configure the editor in elisp, with a whole elisp ecosystem used for every plugin (this alone would make me switch away from any other editor to emacs)

- use thousands of other scripts and plugins that are the result of 50 years of development

- absolutely everything customizable to the nth degree, as emacs is more of an editor construction kit than a mere editor

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#167

Post by slashdev »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #164
slashdev wrote: post #158

Why do people still use emacs and vim in this age of VS code and intellij? I’ve heard plenty of arguments, but they kind of suck to be honest. They’re more like rationalizations for why they stick to what they know. I just don’t get it. Why use inferior tools? Both are lighter weight. Big deal, buy a faster computer. It’s nothing compared to your salary. Both may let you type slightly faster and move around faster. M…

You seem to be missing that they're not actually inferior tools. I can't think of a single thing that can't be done at least approximately as easily with emacs than with VSCode and the like.

Are they really? Do you get all the same plugins, all the lints and hover info, refactoring, jump to usages/definition, smart auto complete, etc?

They seem awfully limited to me by comparison.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#168

Post by peterashford »

sanitycheck wrote: post #25

282 hours of configuration! If we subtract the weekends from that 916 days, that's an average of about 45 mins a day fiddling with config. I don't even want to spend 45 mins a month fiddling with config. I really don't understand Emacs people.

I wrote a few functions for my emacs configuration. It's simply that I wanted the editor to work differently. And I could not do that in literally any other editor.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#169

Post by stevenhuang »

slashdev wrote: post #167
Paul-Craft wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be missing that they're not actually inferior tools. I can't think of a single thing that can't be done at least approximately as easily with emacs than with VSCode and the like.

Are they really? Do you get all the same plugins, all the lints and hover info, refactoring, jump to usages/definition, smart auto complete, etc? They seem awfully limited to me by comparison.

Yes.

https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim

Or

https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig

https://github.com/hrsh7th/nvim-cmp

No different than installing plugins in VSCode for completions, they all work via calling out to a LSP server using https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/

When you don't understand something it's only natural to be unaware of its capabilities, yes.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#170

Post by anikom15 »

slashdev wrote: post #158

Why do people still use emacs and vim in this age of VS code and intellij? I’ve heard plenty of arguments, but they kind of suck to be honest. They’re more like rationalizations for why they stick to what they know. I just don’t get it. Why use inferior tools? Both are lighter weight. Big deal, buy a faster computer. It’s nothing compared to your salary. Both may let you type slightly faster and move around faster. M…

Why waste time learning about some fad IDE that will get replaced by something ‘better’ in five years? Newer text editors don’t do anything better than Vim, and they are strictly worse when it comes to their primary function: editing text.

‘You can install a vi emulator.’ - Waste of time. I already have vim.

My vimrc file still works. New machine? Just install vim and copy my vimrc over.

Emacs is a totally different experience. Emacs is essentially the interface side of an operating system. There is really no replacement for it except a UNIX command-line with a bunch of CLI tools for things like news and email that people have forgotten about.

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