4 ms·

Emacs is free software developed by a worldwide community. It's a culture, an ecosystem, a way of life. The same with Vim, but I'm into Emacs. I love Lisp deepl

by mbrock 11y ago

Emacs is free software developed by a worldwide community. It's a culture, an ecosystem, a way of life. The same with Vim, but I'm into Emacs. I love Lisp deeply, and I think Emacs is a truly amazing piece of technology. I had to use Xcode for a project and it gave me real anxiety. Weird things would go wrong and I had no idea how to fix them. The only sources of information were these horrible unanswered support threads on Apple's website. Since Emacs is free, portable, and extensible, I can use it for lots of different things. And I know I have the freedom to change it any way I want. Of your examples, only Qt Creator has an open license. Emacs is also a flagship of GNU. Xcode and Visual Studio are made for developing software in closed systems...

hellofunk 11y ago
>Xcode and Visual Studio are made for developing software in closed systems... Xcode allows you to write and debug code for a specific compiler (like Clang or GCC). If you choose to use Emacs instead, you would typically use the same compiler as you'd use with Xcode, just a different way of editing and debugging your code. But whether or not you write software that is "closed" or "open" or "portable" or "platform specific" is a choice for the project, not the editor. Xcode is not for writing software in a closed system, it is for writing software, period. If you want to write software that is unique to OSX or iOS (using Apple APIs) you can do so more easily with Xcode, but a lot of my projects are command line tools that are used in any unix/linux variant, including OSX, and I choose to use Xcode.
- mbrock 11y ago
  Sure, but my point is that Xcode is aimed at the development of programs for Apple's proprietary systems, while Emacs is made for the purpose of empowering free software developers, and that all of this is one reason why I personally love Emacs and strongly prefer it over proprietary IDEs.
pyre 11y ago
> Weird things would go wrong and I had no idea how to fix them. My experience with Emacs/Spacemacs without having significant knowledge of lisp/elisp/Emacs debugging. I want to like Emacs, but my Vim environment feels so much more "solid".
- dkns 11y ago
  Same here. I have emacs init.el file that I'd like to tinker with from time to time but every time I try to make switch I feel like I'm using a system consisting of thousands of moving parts which constantly break. It's completely awesome that you can change anything in emacs however you want but time and time again I realize that I'd rather have a rock solid editor with small api that let's you customize few things.
  - pklausler 11y ago
    Write one, then. I did. It's not hard. Mine's about 7K lines of code and it's the perfect text editor for me.
    - pyre 11y ago
      Do you have fun integrating every new mode that you might like to use when you decide to open a source file for a new programming language?
      - pklausler 11y ago
        I think that what you're trying to express is that I might be wasting some time implementing support for some syntax highlighting and code formatting features that are already present in other editors. Thank you for your concern. It hasn't been much of a problem since (1) I don't really used much syntax highlighting other than for reserved words, string literals and comments, and paired bracketing characters, (2) I rarely need to view or edit files besides C/C++/Haskell/bash/LaTeX, which I have support for, and (3) the editor works just fine on other files without fancy-pants modes anyway.
      - mbrock 11y ago
        It's funny this idea that you can't edit source code without a special "mode". It's just plain text, come on!
- mbrock 11y ago
  Sure, stuff can go wrong with Emacs! I don't know anything about Spacemacs... but what I mean is that Emacs invites people to learn about the system, study its source code, change it, and fix stuff—whereas Xcode is completely proprietary, so that when things don't work there is literally no way to do anything about it except ask Apple to please fix it.

by mbrock 11y ago

hellofunk 11y ago

>Xcode and Visual Studio are made for developing software in closed systems... Xcode allows you to write and debug code for a specific compiler (like Clang or GCC). If you choose to use Emacs instead, you would typically use the same compiler as you'd use with Xcode, just a different way of editing and debugging your code. But whether or not you write software that is "closed" or "open" or "portable" or "platform specific" is a choice for the project, not the editor. Xcode is not for writing software in a closed system, it is for writing software, period. If you want to write software that is unique to OSX or iOS (using Apple APIs) you can do so more easily with Xcode, but a lot of my projects are command line tools that are used in any unix/linux variant, including OSX, and I choose to use Xcode.

mbrock 11y ago
Sure, but my point is that Xcode is aimed at the development of programs for Apple's proprietary systems, while Emacs is made for the purpose of empowering free software developers, and that all of this is one reason why I personally love Emacs and strongly prefer it over proprietary IDEs.

pyre 11y ago

> Weird things would go wrong and I had no idea how to fix them. My experience with Emacs/Spacemacs without having significant knowledge of lisp/elisp/Emacs debugging. I want to like Emacs, but my Vim environment feels so much more "solid".

dkns 11y ago
Same here. I have emacs init.el file that I'd like to tinker with from time to time but every time I try to make switch I feel like I'm using a system consisting of thousands of moving parts which constantly break. It's completely awesome that you can change anything in emacs however you want but time and time again I realize that I'd rather have a rock solid editor with small api that let's you customize few things.
- pklausler 11y ago
  Write one, then. I did. It's not hard. Mine's about 7K lines of code and it's the perfect text editor for me.
  - pyre 11y ago
    Do you have fun integrating every new mode that you might like to use when you decide to open a source file for a new programming language?
    - pklausler 11y ago
      I think that what you're trying to express is that I might be wasting some time implementing support for some syntax highlighting and code formatting features that are already present in other editors. Thank you for your concern. It hasn't been much of a problem since (1) I don't really used much syntax highlighting other than for reserved words, string literals and comments, and paired bracketing characters, (2) I rarely need to view or edit files besides C/C++/Haskell/bash/LaTeX, which I have support for, and (3) the editor works just fine on other files without fancy-pants modes anyway.
    - mbrock 11y ago
      It's funny this idea that you can't edit source code without a special "mode". It's just plain text, come on!
mbrock 11y ago
Sure, stuff can go wrong with Emacs! I don't know anything about Spacemacs... but what I mean is that Emacs invites people to learn about the system, study its source code, change it, and fix stuff—whereas Xcode is completely proprietary, so that when things don't work there is literally no way to do anything about it except ask Apple to please fix it.