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Emacs Survey

emacssurvey.org

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Re: Emacs Survey

#51

Post by webkike »

cannam wrote: post #42

I filled this in for fun - it's short enough and impersonal enough that I didn't feel I cared what happens to the data. As an Emacs user for some decades who never really uses any other editor, I found a few questions I didn't understand very well or recognise the answers for. I suppose other users must be more ecosystem-minded than I am. I was intrigued by the (mandatory) question about which theme you use. Does Ema…

Yup. It used to have color-themes, which I believe was a package, but maybe five years ago they switched to supporting themes as first class citizens.

I use solarized dark

Re: Emacs Survey

#52

Post by ska »

zests wrote: post #24

Does anyone have an example of emacs achieving parity with JetBrains in code completion/code searching? I've put in a small amount of effort into this (hand-rolling a python config, using a DOOM config I found) and I get something that seems really slow if it works at all. Before I invest more time I was wondering if anyone had a screen cast or any personal experiences with this. Frankly I'd use whichever editor has…

I haven't used JetBrains for a few years but it was always pretty slow (i.e. slowed down VS notably and nearly globally) for c++ at least - so perhaps something inherent in the parsing as well though clearly that could be improved.

I've never found a fully satisfactory c++ setup, but always thought things like e.g. slime worked well.

Re: Emacs Survey

#53

Post by MikeTheGreat »

pmoriarty wrote: post #22
choeger wrote: post #9

I entered this at the end: Emacs is a good text editor and I run it for every text file I read or write. As a text editor however, emacs can never handle things like project-management, software development and testing in the same way as an IDE. Yet, it has all the features of an IDE available in some melpa repository. Unfortunately, one is always forced to configure the editor and tweak it here and there to get mayb…

"one is always forced to configure the editor and tweak it here and there to get maybe 80% of what would be possible" What specifically do you think is lacking, apart from having a ready-made IDE out-of-the-box in Emacs?

At one point I was trying to get emacs server to work, so that I wouldn't have to wait a long time for emacs to start (to be fair, part of the problem was that my config file had a pile of stuff in it that I didn't really need). After spending waaay more time on it than I really wanted to I got it working here on MS Windows.

Of course, since MS Windows doesn't have emacs daemon processes one needs to keep the emacs window open in order for it to be used to open more files in the future.

In other words, I spent a ton of time to set up emacs so that when it's already open new files will be opened in that already running instance.

On the one hand it was kinda fun to fiddle with and I was happy when it was done. On the other hand I spent a ton of time getting something to work that most other editors do automatically out of the box.

In a way that kinda sums up my experience with emacs - fun to fiddle with, but takes a lot of time to set anything up.

That said, org mode is awesome, and like single-handedly keeps me using emacs :)

Re: Emacs Survey

#54

Post by Jtsummers »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #53
pmoriarty wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"one is always forced to configure the editor and tweak it here and there to get maybe 80% of what would be possible" What specifically do you think is lacking, apart from having a ready-made IDE out-of-the-box in Emacs?

At one point I was trying to get emacs server to work, so that I wouldn't have to wait a long time for emacs to start (to be fair, part of the problem was that my config file had a pile of stuff in it that I didn't really need). After spending waaay more time on it than I really wanted to I got it working here on MS Windows. Of course, since MS Windows doesn't have emacs daemon processes one needs to keep the emacs w…

I'm curious what made it so fiddly. I set up emacs server on Windows maybe 6-8 years ago so perhaps I've forgotten a lot. But as I recall I just made a shortcut that would send the right command line arguments to emacs on launch, and a second one that I used for the client.

Re: Emacs Survey

#55

Post by zests »

Tcepsa wrote: post #37
zests wrote: post #24

Does anyone have an example of emacs achieving parity with JetBrains in code completion/code searching? I've put in a small amount of effort into this (hand-rolling a python config, using a DOOM config I found) and I get something that seems really slow if it works at all. Before I invest more time I was wondering if anyone had a screen cast or any personal experiences with this. Frankly I'd use whichever editor has…

Consider trying Emacs 27.1 with the Jansson library to help with JSON parsing if you're using an LSP-based approach in Emacs. (Apparently one of the reasons that it's sluggish is because the comms between Emacs and the corresponding language server are done in JSON, and previously Emacs' JSON parsing was a bit slow--libjansson was incorporated to speed that up). I have not used JetBrains so I don't have that comparis…

I'm running a self-compiled emacs 28.0.50 on osx. Part of me wants to try recompiling and/or using a homebrew formula for latest emacs just in case I did something wrong in the compile process.

The emacs 27 speed improvements is actually what inspired me to try and get a working editor out of emacs again. Previously I had something that was usable but not great for javascript.

Re: Emacs Survey

#56

Post by dleslie »

ska wrote: post #52
zests wrote: post #24

Does anyone have an example of emacs achieving parity with JetBrains in code completion/code searching? I've put in a small amount of effort into this (hand-rolling a python config, using a DOOM config I found) and I get something that seems really slow if it works at all. Before I invest more time I was wondering if anyone had a screen cast or any personal experiences with this. Frankly I'd use whichever editor has…

I haven't used JetBrains for a few years but it was always pretty slow (i.e. slowed down VS notably and nearly globally) for c++ at least - so perhaps something inherent in the parsing as well though clearly that could be improved. I've never found a fully satisfactory c++ setup, but always thought things like e.g. slime worked well.

I find it, and VSCode and Visual Studio, _astonishingly_ slow compared to Emacs + dumb-jump + rg/ag.

Re: Emacs Survey

#57

Post by barrkel »

drunkpotato wrote: post #50
cannam wrote: post #42

I filled this in for fun - it's short enough and impersonal enough that I didn't feel I cared what happens to the data. As an Emacs user for some decades who never really uses any other editor, I found a few questions I didn't understand very well or recognise the answers for. I suppose other users must be more ecosystem-minded than I am. I was intrigued by the (mandatory) question about which theme you use. Does Ema…

Yes, many! I use deeper-blue. solarized-light and -dark are also good. Themes don’t seem to work well with terminal emacs though, but I haven’t dug into the issue much since I’m mostly in the GUI.

Well, I wrote my own theme so I could have a consistent experience between GUI and terminal. It meant customizing my terminal colours so they were non-awful (the minimal 16 are super-garish, I have mine tuned for less harsh contrast but also more colour differentiation considering I'm red/green colourblind).

I then used the same customized terminal colours in my GUI theme.

It works like this:

    (if (display-graphic-p)
        (setq color-yellow "#f57900"
              color-bright-yellow "#fce94f"
              color-red "#ff6464"
              color-bright-red "#ef2929"
              color-bright-green "#73d216"
              color-green "#4e9a06"
              color-blue "#729fcf"
              color-bright-blue "#204a87"
              color-white "#babdb6"
              color-bright-white "#eeeeec"
              color-magenta "#ad7fa8"
              color-bright-magenta "#1d324b"
              color-black "#1a2022"
              color-bright-black "#2e3436"
              color-bright-cyan "#555753"
              color-cyan "#888a85")
      (setq color-black "black"
            color-white "white"
            color-red "red"
            color-green "green"
            color-blue "blue"
            color-yellow "yellow"
            color-cyan "cyan"
            color-magenta "magenta"
            color-bright-black "brightblack"
            color-bright-white "brightwhite"
            color-bright-red "brightred"
            color-bright-green "brightgreen"
            color-bright-blue "brightblue"
            color-bright-yellow "brightyellow"
            color-bright-cyan "brightcyan"
            color-bright-magenta "brightmagenta"))
Then, later on, I use these colours for setting the faces for the cursor, region, keywords, comments, tweaking various different major modes, etc.

With a true-colour capable terminal there's no technical reason to need to take these steps, but this approach works for me in rxvt-unicode and mintty, the two terminals I use on Linux and Windows respectively, and aren't mucked up by any level of tmux or screen nesting.

Re: Emacs Survey

#58

Post by jackcviers3 »

cannam wrote: post #42

I filled this in for fun - it's short enough and impersonal enough that I didn't feel I cared what happens to the data. As an Emacs user for some decades who never really uses any other editor, I found a few questions I didn't understand very well or recognise the answers for. I suppose other users must be more ecosystem-minded than I am. I was intrigued by the (mandatory) question about which theme you use. Does Ema…

I use doom-themes laserwave. It's in melpa. M-x customize-themes and look for themes on melpa, you can make it look like the new hotness. Also, install doom-modeline from melpa, and M-x all-the-icons-install-fonts for a really informative and beautiful mode line.

Re: Emacs Survey

#59

Post by barrkel »

m463 wrote: post #13
bluehazed wrote: post #10

For the people wondering "who's asking": https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/je3eht/emacs_user_su... https://blog.abrochard.com/ann-emacs-survey-2020.html

I was wondering that. This appears to be some random person doing this - doesn't appear to be sponsored or approved by rms/gnu/fsf. (especially with non-free javascript)

I'm not sure emacs will properly evolve as long as RMS is still involved.

Re: Emacs Survey

#60

Post by BeetleB »

cjauvin wrote: post #16
choeger wrote: post #9

I entered this at the end: Emacs is a good text editor and I run it for every text file I read or write. As a text editor however, emacs can never handle things like project-management, software development and testing in the same way as an IDE. Yet, it has all the features of an IDE available in some melpa repository. Unfortunately, one is always forced to configure the editor and tweak it here and there to get mayb…

I manage all my projects using a constellation of flexible (and hand-picked) tools it offers: magit for versioning, Org for documentation, note taking and time tracking, blacken, isort and prettier wrappers for my code formatting, ivy, counsel and dumb-jump for searching stuff and moving around, and I could go on and on. I understand that Emacs doesn't feel as "modern" as PyCharm or VS Code in a sense, but I don't th…

The problem is that everyone wants something different in an IDE (and the same person often wants different stuff depending on the language they are programming in). Whatever default Emacs can provide will be suboptimal for most users and cause additional dissatisfaction. People have a more open mind when when they know it doesn't include an IDE and may have to work to get one up and going than if they simply see the default one and think that's the best they'll get with Emacs.

To give you an idea, I used Emacs as a programming editor for a decade, and only about 2 weeks ago did I first set it up as some kind of IDE (or rather, I just installed elpy and it did it all for me). I was perfectly happy without using it as an IDE - knowing the constraints that come with it.

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