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Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

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Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#31

Post by deworms »

underatree wrote: post #25
deworms wrote: post #18

Emacs should have been what VSCode is now - a powerhouse of customizability that offers unmatched functionality by default. Instead it's a toy for some old people who are still holding onto the remnants of an age that passed a long time ago. Emacs is basically useless compared to VS Code, and its authors are what's holding it back. I don't see it bouncing back to popularity any time soon. Anything you can do in Emacs…

> Emacs should have been what VSCode is now - a powerhouse of customizability that offers unmatched functionality by default. +1. Emacs is a powerhouse of customizability, and it needs to work on functionality by default. > Instead it's a toy for some old people who are still holding onto the remnants of an age that passed a long time ago. Emacs is basically useless compared to VS Code, and its authors are what's hol…

If you need to use a specific dialect of lisp most people won't be familiar with, it does a poor job at it. Lisp is not a language many people use today. NeoVim lets you use any language you want for writing extensions. VS Code uses javascript which is easy to learn and most developers already know it.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#32

Post by underatree »

deworms wrote: post #21
underatree wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a daily Emacs user, and happily use a 100 line init.el, mostly composed of "enable this mode". Emacs supports customization needs to the nth degree, but I've found that this is a false economyy. I agree Emacs needs to be easier to get started with.

You would probably be more productive in VS Code with an empty config.

I think I would be more productive with VS Code too.

But productivity isn't my only goal.

I want to give back to the community: Emacs is introspectable enough that it allows me to easily contribute.

I want to explore a different UI paradigm, which blurs the line between user and developer.

I want to support a grassroots developed editor.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#33

Post by thom »

thrower123 wrote: post #11
thom wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would worry if people started moving away from Emacs as text-centric. My biggest complaint with VSCode (which I do fully expect to take over and to which I will one day presumably have to migrate) is that there's so much damn UI for things. The terminal window isn't just a buffer of text like everything else, it's its own ungodly window that pops up differently. Most extensions are primarily UI instead of keyboard…

The problem with VS Code is there is *not enough* UI. I desperately would like to have some toolbars and menu options, because the kotkeys and key-chords VS Code uses, where they aren't following conventions, are not easily discoverable. They're in a bind because they are trying to straddle a market where you've got emacs an vim users to one side and Visual Studio users to the other. Some ability to customize the UI,…

Are they not discoverable via the command palette? I find Emacs very helpful here, commands are always prefixed sensibly and you can do fuzzy search on them anyway. You can run 'apropos' if you're really stuck and help is built in to every function. It'll show you bindings if you don't know them and invoke a command directly etc etc. I feel like VSCode has most of this. Besides, they're your key bindings anyway, I think it's worth investing in whatever's ergonomic for you given you'll likely spend a decade or more with an editor. One annoyance I had was that extensions were regularly changing commands and throwing away my bindings though.

I should be clear though, I am not suggesting they strip it to the bone at the expense of other users' tastes. I just hate that I can't do that _myself_ because it's not quite as low level as Emacs.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#34

Post by deworms »

If you need to install a dozen plugins (helm, projectile, company/autocomplete, flycheck, whatever else) to match something that's installed by default in any modern text editor, Emacs will never be remotely popular. Even something as simple as theming doesn't work by default; each theme needs to be implemented separately for every mode. 99% of people will see how fruitless it is to try to configure it and move on. Why waste time on fiddling with configs?

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#36

Post by okasaki »

ho_schi wrote: post #9

The complain about the weird and twenty year old issue in Gtk questionable[1]. Gtk2, X11 and disconnecting a display and Emacs calls abort(). I cannot speak about EMACS because I prefer VIM and NEOVIM. My requirements are usability - where VIM excels with your knowledge (learning curve) - and LSP-Support. The later is provided since NEOVIM '0.5`[2] nearly ready to use. A modern editor should know what the user is act…

Emacs does support LSP: https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-mode

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#37

Post by underatree »

deworms wrote: post #31
underatree wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emacs should have been what VSCode is now - a powerhouse of customizability that offers unmatched functionality by default. +1. Emacs is a powerhouse of customizability, and it needs to work on functionality by default. > Instead it's a toy for some old people who are still holding onto the remnants of an age that passed a long time ago. Emacs is basically useless compared to VS Code, and its authors are what's hol…

If you need to use a specific dialect of lisp most people won't be familiar with, it does a poor job at it. Lisp is not a language many people use today. NeoVim lets you use any language you want for writing extensions. VS Code uses javascript which is easy to learn and most developers already know it.

It's a great strength that NeoVim supports many languages, and VS Code uses Javascript.

Lisp is not widely used, and this is an impediment to Emacs' popularity.

However, when people speak about Emacs customizability, they are referring to a deeper level of customizability than most programs (even NeoVim/VS Code), in which its innards and UI are all subject to modification, at runtime, within the beast itself. This isn't necessarily a good thing, but it happens to be my preference at least.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#38

Post by jsilence »

deworms wrote: post #23
cpach wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I set out to learn Emacs in the year ~2001 or so, I just did C-h t in order to launch the builtin tutorial. IMHO that can still be a viable way to get started. Spacemacs might be nice but it’s in no way required in order to be productive with Emacs. My personal .emacs file is only 32 lines long (28 lines of comments are not counted).

If you need a dedicated tutorial for a text editor it's a great sign that something is very wrong with its design, particularly concerning discoverability. Emacs has no user-friendly command names (you need to memorize function names which are often meaningless abbreviations), no autocomplete, and doesn't show available functions.

Maybe helm (https://emacs-helm.github.io/helm/) should be installed and preconfigured by default.

This solves a lot of the shortcomings of vanilla emacs.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#39

Post by underatree »

deworms wrote: post #23
cpach wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I set out to learn Emacs in the year ~2001 or so, I just did C-h t in order to launch the builtin tutorial. IMHO that can still be a viable way to get started. Spacemacs might be nice but it’s in no way required in order to be productive with Emacs. My personal .emacs file is only 32 lines long (28 lines of comments are not counted).

If you need a dedicated tutorial for a text editor it's a great sign that something is very wrong with its design, particularly concerning discoverability. Emacs has no user-friendly command names (you need to memorize function names which are often meaningless abbreviations), no autocomplete, and doesn't show available functions.

> Emacs has [...] no autocomplete, and doesn't show available functions

My impression is that you are not familiar with Emacs.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again (2020)

#40

Post by p2t2p »

deworms wrote: post #34

If you need to install a dozen plugins (helm, projectile, company/autocomplete, flycheck, whatever else) to match something that's installed by default in any modern text editor, Emacs will never be remotely popular. Even something as simple as theming doesn't work by default; each theme needs to be implemented separately for every mode. 99% of people will see how fruitless it is to try to configure it and move on. W…

Exactly that, plus it doesn't really serve well as platform. I mean VSCode renders Markdown previews correctly, not some ASCII based approximation. It renders images if I happen to click on one. Extensions can actually provide decent UI, thank's to that CSVs never looked better in my text editors.
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