5 ms·

If it lets people write lisp with the same ease of writing Javascript or Python (i.e. without investing time learning a tool specifically for editing s-expressi

by danneu 11y ago

If it lets people write lisp with the same ease of writing Javascript or Python (i.e. without investing time learning a tool specifically for editing s-expressions), then that's an advantage over Paredit kinda like Sublime's advantage over Vim/Emacs. Trying it out in Atom, it looks really promising. You just kinda start writing, like on the blank line at the end of a function body, and Parinfer fills in the parens depending on your indentation level in an intuitive fashion, merging your form into the tree above it. In fact, it seems to strictly complement Paredit. Parinfer puts the parens where you want them, and Paredit is there for explicitly editing the tree.

davexunit 11y ago
> kinda like Sublime's advantage over Vim/Emacs. Sublime is trash compared to Emacs.
- roryokane 11y ago
  danneu wasn’t necessarily saying that Sublime is better than Emacs overall. He was referring to Sublime’s specific comparative advantage over Emacs. The relevant advantage here is that Sublime is better at being easy to learn by new users, because it follows conventions used by the OS and by other programs.
sklogic 11y ago
Did I miss something and Sublime somehow got some advantage over Emacs? When did it happen and what kind of advantage, exactly?
- roryokane 11y ago
  Sublime Text’s advantage in this context is the advantage that all GUI text editors share, including Atom and GEdit. This advantage is a combination of being more familiar and having better defaults. Some ways that Sublime is more familiar are that it uses the OS-standard editing hotkeys, such as moving by words with Ctrl-arrows or Option-arrows. It also uses OS-standard terminology, like “close window” instead of “kill buffer” and “paste” instead of “yank”. The result is that new users don’t have to learn anything to be productive – they just edit as if they are in Microsoft Word, while enjoying the programming-specific features of a text editor such as syntax highlighting and block folding. The better defaults include easily creating more than one scratch buffer (just run “New File” multiple times), automatically balancing parens when you type, support for pixel-by-pixel smooth scrolling, and scrollbars that don’t confusingly shrink when you start scrolling past the end of the buffer. I’m sure Emacs supports all these things, but you have to manually configure it to do so first. Many users are scared off from Emacs after seeing that it requires up-front investment to get features that other editors already provide with no work.
  - sklogic 11y ago
    > more familiar To whom? There is still a huge number of incompatible text editor cultures. Mac bindings, Microsoft bindings, Wordstar, etc. > better defaults. There are dozens of "better" .emacs pre-cooked packages. Choose any. No need to stick to the out of the box defaults. > OS-standard Which OS? > he result is that new users don’t have to learn anything to be productive The "new" users had to learn all those "OS default" bindings and terminology first. Not that "new" in my book then. > it requires up-front investment They simply forgot their up-front investment into learning the defaults of their chosen OS. I understand that - I still cannot use Microsoft Office, can't be bothered to learn it. So, the only advantage is familiarity to those who already invested a lot of time into learning something else. Nothing of a value for the new users.
    - roryokane 11y ago
      Yes, pre-cooked packages of defaults make things a lot easier for new users, but not quite equivalent to GUI text editors. I don’t get the impression that most people being introduced to Emacs are told to use a package of defaults. I think a lot of users will want to try out Emacs, so they download Emacs, then try to configure some things they don’t like by Googling the specific issues. After they have too big a list of things they don’t like about the defaults, they go back to their old editor, without ever learning of the existence of defaults packages. Which is a shame. Apart from defaults, I agree that GUI text editors provide no advantage to completely new users. But I’m not sure that “new users” of text editors, unfamiliar with OS conventions, is a category worth talking about – I think it’s really small. It shouldn’t take more than a year for a new computer user to absorb the OS conventions while browsing the web and writing documents. And how many people might want to try out Emacs within their first year of using a computer? I guess that about 10% of eventual programmers started trying out programming in their first year of computer use – the other programmers started later in life. The number of fledgling programmers who care about editors enough to look into Emacs has to be even less than that – it’s probably something like 1% of all programmers. The other 99% of programmers will find GUI editors more familiar than Emacs, because they have already internalized the conventions.
Grue3 11y ago
I dunno, I write Lisp, Javascript, Python with vanilla Emacs (no paredit), and out of those Python is harder to write than Lisp and Javascript because the latter are indented automatically by Emacs. Having to indent stuff manually is a drag. Especially when you nest in deep with Python and need to close several levels of indentation. It's just inherently difficult to "measure" white-space with your eyes. With 2-space indentation which is used in Lisp, and naturally deeper nesting, it's probably even harder.

by danneu 11y ago

davexunit 11y ago

> kinda like Sublime's advantage over Vim/Emacs. Sublime is trash compared to Emacs.

roryokane 11y ago
danneu wasn’t necessarily saying that Sublime is better than Emacs overall. He was referring to Sublime’s specific comparative advantage over Emacs. The relevant advantage here is that Sublime is better at being easy to learn by new users, because it follows conventions used by the OS and by other programs.

sklogic 11y ago

Did I miss something and Sublime somehow got some advantage over Emacs? When did it happen and what kind of advantage, exactly?

roryokane 11y ago
Sublime Text’s advantage in this context is the advantage that all GUI text editors share, including Atom and GEdit. This advantage is a combination of being more familiar and having better defaults. Some ways that Sublime is more familiar are that it uses the OS-standard editing hotkeys, such as moving by words with Ctrl-arrows or Option-arrows. It also uses OS-standard terminology, like “close window” instead of “kill buffer” and “paste” instead of “yank”. The result is that new users don’t have to learn anything to be productive – they just edit as if they are in Microsoft Word, while enjoying the programming-specific features of a text editor such as syntax highlighting and block folding. The better defaults include easily creating more than one scratch buffer (just run “New File” multiple times), automatically balancing parens when you type, support for pixel-by-pixel smooth scrolling, and scrollbars that don’t confusingly shrink when you start scrolling past the end of the buffer. I’m sure Emacs supports all these things, but you have to manually configure it to do so first. Many users are scared off from Emacs after seeing that it requires up-front investment to get features that other editors already provide with no work.
- sklogic 11y ago
  > more familiar To whom? There is still a huge number of incompatible text editor cultures. Mac bindings, Microsoft bindings, Wordstar, etc. > better defaults. There are dozens of "better" .emacs pre-cooked packages. Choose any. No need to stick to the out of the box defaults. > OS-standard Which OS? > he result is that new users don’t have to learn anything to be productive The "new" users had to learn all those "OS default" bindings and terminology first. Not that "new" in my book then. > it requires up-front investment They simply forgot their up-front investment into learning the defaults of their chosen OS. I understand that - I still cannot use Microsoft Office, can't be bothered to learn it. So, the only advantage is familiarity to those who already invested a lot of time into learning something else. Nothing of a value for the new users.
  - roryokane 11y ago
    Yes, pre-cooked packages of defaults make things a lot easier for new users, but not quite equivalent to GUI text editors. I don’t get the impression that most people being introduced to Emacs are told to use a package of defaults. I think a lot of users will want to try out Emacs, so they download Emacs, then try to configure some things they don’t like by Googling the specific issues. After they have too big a list of things they don’t like about the defaults, they go back to their old editor, without ever learning of the existence of defaults packages. Which is a shame. Apart from defaults, I agree that GUI text editors provide no advantage to completely new users. But I’m not sure that “new users” of text editors, unfamiliar with OS conventions, is a category worth talking about – I think it’s really small. It shouldn’t take more than a year for a new computer user to absorb the OS conventions while browsing the web and writing documents. And how many people might want to try out Emacs within their first year of using a computer? I guess that about 10% of eventual programmers started trying out programming in their first year of computer use – the other programmers started later in life. The number of fledgling programmers who care about editors enough to look into Emacs has to be even less than that – it’s probably something like 1% of all programmers. The other 99% of programmers will find GUI editors more familiar than Emacs, because they have already internalized the conventions.

Grue3 11y ago

I dunno, I write Lisp, Javascript, Python with vanilla Emacs (no paredit), and out of those Python is harder to write than Lisp and Javascript because the latter are indented automatically by Emacs. Having to indent stuff manually is a drag. Especially when you nest in deep with Python and need to close several levels of indentation. It's just inherently difficult to "measure" white-space with your eyes. With 2-space indentation which is used in Lisp, and naturally deeper nesting, it's probably even harder.