4 ms·

I don't think one can compare the difficulty of learning IntelliJ IDEA with the difficulty of learning Emacs. All of the editors you mentioned use a paradigm of

I don't think one can compare the difficulty of learning IntelliJ IDEA with the difficulty of learning Emacs. All of the editors you mentioned use a paradigm of text editing familiar to everyone who has used Notepad. When starting out with Emacs, you even need to learn how to quit it.

informatimago 11y ago
You mean like, clicking on the File menu, and clicking on the Quit menu item? How alien!
- pvdebbe 11y ago
  Closing windows using mouse? Sounds alien enough to me :)
aidenn0 11y ago
By this argument, if I shipped a customized emacs with e.g. C-c for copy C-v for paste and C-q for quit, and slime and sbcl bundled inside, that would make slime as accessible as eclipse/intellij/visual studio? I'm willing to try it (really not that hard to do), but I bet good money that many people would still balk because it's spelled E-M-A-C-S.
- klibertp 11y ago
  Pretty sure that's done already. I never needed this but one or more of these: http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html should be pretty much exactly this: Emacs with C-c, C-v and other "modern" features. And you're right, these releases don't change much. Programmer's tools tend to be chosen based on fashion and fads, not on their merit.
  - berntb 11y ago
    How is Aquamacs with Slime integration? (I used it a little bit, but couldn't get used to the Mac command chars in Emacs. Too gray, I guess... :-) )
Mikeb85 11y ago
Anyhow, just for fun, decided to install Emacs, SBCL and Slime. Each is available in the standard Ubuntu repository. Open Emacs, M-x slime, and I'm programming in Common Lisp. Different for sure, but that's the point of Common Lisp. No one uses it because it's similar to Java or C, but because it promises things like interactive development, flexibility and customization.
- vladharbuz 11y ago
  I definitely agree that that's a great environment! Compared to the alternatives at any rate.
klibertp 11y ago
> I don't think one can compare the difficulty of learning IntelliJ IDEA with the difficulty of learning Emacs. Of course you can. Granted, I don't use IntelliJ, but I used PyCharm, Komodo and Visual Studio, among others. Emacs is easier to learn: despite decades of cruft it's more consistent and follows the rule of least astonishment closer than PyCharm. The problem is that PyCharm and other IDEs build on conventions already familiar to most users (locking themselves to these conventions, which limits their usability for powerusers, but that's another matter), while Emacs doesn't. That's because Emacs predates these conventions. Still, there are many efforts which make Emacs much more familiar to "normal people". As LightTable failed (and I'm not sure what's happening with Atom) Emacs is once again the most modern text and code editor. > When starting out with Emacs, you even need to learn how to quit it. I think you're thinking about VIM, and even there (with gVIM) it's not true. Do you seriously believe what you wrote or is it just flamebait?
- vladharbuz 11y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I love Emacs and I love Vim and I strongly recommend learning them — the effort is worth it. However, I don't think it's the case that you can compare their difficulty curves with those of a "normal" editor. You do, however, make a good point that Emacs is more consistent.

informatimago 11y ago

You mean like, clicking on the File menu, and clicking on the Quit menu item? How alien!

pvdebbe 11y ago
Closing windows using mouse? Sounds alien enough to me :)

aidenn0 11y ago

By this argument, if I shipped a customized emacs with e.g. C-c for copy C-v for paste and C-q for quit, and slime and sbcl bundled inside, that would make slime as accessible as eclipse/intellij/visual studio? I'm willing to try it (really not that hard to do), but I bet good money that many people would still balk because it's spelled E-M-A-C-S.

klibertp 11y ago
Pretty sure that's done already. I never needed this but one or more of these: http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html should be pretty much exactly this: Emacs with C-c, C-v and other "modern" features. And you're right, these releases don't change much. Programmer's tools tend to be chosen based on fashion and fads, not on their merit.
- berntb 11y ago
  How is Aquamacs with Slime integration? (I used it a little bit, but couldn't get used to the Mac command chars in Emacs. Too gray, I guess... :-) )

Mikeb85 11y ago

Anyhow, just for fun, decided to install Emacs, SBCL and Slime. Each is available in the standard Ubuntu repository. Open Emacs, M-x slime, and I'm programming in Common Lisp. Different for sure, but that's the point of Common Lisp. No one uses it because it's similar to Java or C, but because it promises things like interactive development, flexibility and customization.

vladharbuz 11y ago
I definitely agree that that's a great environment! Compared to the alternatives at any rate.

klibertp 11y ago

> I don't think one can compare the difficulty of learning IntelliJ IDEA with the difficulty of learning Emacs. Of course you can. Granted, I don't use IntelliJ, but I used PyCharm, Komodo and Visual Studio, among others. Emacs is easier to learn: despite decades of cruft it's more consistent and follows the rule of least astonishment closer than PyCharm. The problem is that PyCharm and other IDEs build on conventions already familiar to most users (locking themselves to these conventions, which limits their usability for powerusers, but that's another matter), while Emacs doesn't. That's because Emacs predates these conventions. Still, there are many efforts which make Emacs much more familiar to "normal people". As LightTable failed (and I'm not sure what's happening with Atom) Emacs is once again the most modern text and code editor. > When starting out with Emacs, you even need to learn how to quit it. I think you're thinking about VIM, and even there (with gVIM) it's not true. Do you seriously believe what you wrote or is it just flamebait?

vladharbuz 11y ago
Don't get me wrong, I love Emacs and I love Vim and I strongly recommend learning them — the effort is worth it. However, I don't think it's the case that you can compare their difficulty curves with those of a "normal" editor. You do, however, make a good point that Emacs is more consistent.