One of the most important metrics for a language is the number of people using it. For new programmers learning elisp adds possibility to create best possible

One of the most important metrics for a language is the number of people using it. For new programmers learning elisp adds possibility to create best possible editor on base of emacs (a problem they still don't want to solve), learning javascript allows to find a job (a problem many want to solve). When they learn javascript for their day job, they like the language that gives them power to create things, and they don't see emacs as great, because what they can do for js based editor in hours, will take them months in emacs. But all that aside, the most important advantage building editor in the browser instead of in emacs, is the huge amount of work that large groups of very good engineers put into making browsers fast, stable and well documented. Small emacs team never can make the part of emacs written in c on par with browser, even for handling the small number of features needed for the ide. This is what Steve Yegge predicted in 2008 http://steve-yegge.blogspot.am/2008/04/xemacs-is-dead-long-live-xemacs.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.am/2008/04/xemacs-is-dead-long-l... http://steve-yegge.blogspot.am/2008/11/ejacs-javascript-interpreter-for-emacs.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.am/2008/11/ejacs-javascript-inte... So on one hand we had to redo some of the things lisp had acomplished earlier, on the other hand there is a high chance we won't have to redo in the future what web is doing now.