4 ms·

The headline on the Landing Page says "Elegant Free Open-Source". I for one applaud these great selling propositions. And I'm speaking after using Emacs and VI

by preek 10y ago

The headline on the Landing Page says "Elegant Free Open-Source". I for one applaud these great selling propositions. And I'm speaking after using Emacs and VIM for 15 years having not seen one other editor concept that was ultimately superior. Sublime Text was horrible in that it offered an easy refuge so many young and inexperienced people. But ultimately it was a closed source prison that they got pulled into. And yes, I'm a professional developer having founded multiple companies. I'm a capitalist, nothing wrong with selling software. However, having great tools that last a lifetime available is one of the most important point I learned and like to teach to my students (I'm a lecturer, too). Why lock yourself in? Just because it looks more shiny and is easier in the first week? That's a good reason to use many things, but not your primary driver as a professional software engineer. Hooray for these new editors that look shiny and are open source. And then, when the students ask how I did those crazy things in Emacs, they still get those huge eyes and want to gobble all the information in. This kind of curiousness happens rarely with people locked into proprietary systems.

Karunamon 10y ago
Last I checked, Sublime is easily extensible with Python. What is this "lock in" you speak of? What "prison"? This reads like FSF.org hyperbole. Here comes the snark in reply to the snark: Someone had to come along and show that text editing didn't require the inscrutable complexity of Vim or Emacs, the kind of overwrought, overcomplicated, elitist and impractical user-hostility that absolutely dominates Open Source user interface design. I'd like to think that the proliferation of Sublime is what caused people to roll up their sleeves and start putting together things like Atom and VSCode and even this project. But I still use Sublime. Why? Because it's still faster than every competitor, it's still extensible enough to do what I need it to do, and unlike Emacs, doesn't require a PhD to comprehend, and unlike Vim, isn't an evolutionary dead end that pretends the mouse was never invented. Snark off: Many users don't consider Open Source to be a selling point. I am one of them. I choose my tools based on their usefulness, not the political status of their code, not intangible theoretical posturing about good and evil in the context of a fucking text editor. And you'll forgive me for taking issue with weak attempts to shame people for choosing tools that work for them. Perhaps this post reads a bit angry, and this is why.
- preek 10y ago
  Good luck my good friend with having tied your professional fortune to a small company that you are not affiliated with. This is not politics, this is simply dangerous and I do feel that way every time I see someone with a copy of Sublime. Since I'm a lecturer, I see this issue of lock-in and easy vs. simple/powerful a lot. I'm not taking this lightly, I want the best for my fellow professionals that are just too young to know better. You personally, might be older and more experienced, and I do not have a grudge with your opinion. I was simply stating mine for the reasons given without trying to step on your foot. As for simplicity, there is nothing that I have seen in any editor that is simpler than VIM modal editing or a LISP-machine to do everything. Having a shiny GUI is inherently not simple, but complex. If you are not familiar with yhe original meanings of these terms, there's a qualified speaker: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy That a tool is not easy in the beginning is ultimately irrelevant if it is simple. That is, if you've got enough time to master and profit from it. Which is what every professional software engineer has.
  - CJefferson 10y ago
    VIM's modal editing isn't remotely simple. There is a huge language to learn, and most keys do not form useful patterns which are easy to remember. The problem with "you need to invest the time, trust me", I'd the same argument can be used for vim, Emacs, sublime, atom, vscode, eclipse, intellij, and any other editor. I can't invest the time in all of them to become expert. The difference with Emacs and vim is that they require a sizable time investment just to become competent, as they refuse to fit into the OSes they are running in (in the case of windows and Mac).
    - preek 10y ago
      Well, to make a long story and potential flame war short: My original post was not about VIM or Emacs. It was stating happiness about an editor (Lime) that tries to be easy to get started, yet is open source.
    - krylon 10y ago
CJefferson 10y ago
The problem with Emacs and vim, to me, is that they don't fit in. I'm currently trying to take up Emacs (I pick up one of vim and Emacs every few years. Not sure why. Feels like a thing I should do). Here is some of my list of Emacs problems. * The big one. Every other app on my Mac uses the same shortcut keys for cut, copy, paste, save, open, search, search + replace, spell check. That's probably 95-99% of the keys I press, and Emacs has to be special and support none of the standards. I know there are good historical reasons for this, but that's no use to a new user. * Server mode doesn't seem to "understand" Macs -- when I shut down my Mac it just hangs and I have to force kill it. Without server mode I end up with loads of Emacs which seem to load slower than atom can open a window. * I like editting text ,(as opposed to code) in a variable width font. Doesn't seem well supported. * The default settings seem very limited, so then I wonder if I should use something like spaceman's, but that is massive and brings it's own bugs. I can be comfortable, and fairly productive, instantly in sublime, atom, lime and vscode. Why can't Emacs, by default, have a "be like a Mac app" mode?
- preek 10y ago
  My post wasn't to be about Emacs, but let's give it a try. I'm happy to help. Actually some of the things you mentioned are super awesome strengths to me. 1. key bindings. I understand your point and you are right. But hear me out^^ I'm using Emacs on the Mac and Linux daily. Sometimes I fire up Windows for some cross platform app. Those three OSs have usually different key bindings and would have so in a regular GUI tool. Not in Emacs, though. They are all the same. Muscle memory win^^ Plus, I changed _many_ key bindings in Emacs to that they work better for me - across all OSs. 2. Server mode. Hm, I'm not having an issue here, but I cannot say that with confidence, because I rarely shut down, I always suspend (closing the lid on the MBP). 3. Variable Width Font. Have no expertise here. I tried that once, but it messed with how the code looks aligned which seems important to me. Again, sorry, would love to help, but just don't have expertise in this. 4. Default settings. You're right spot on! This is not an accident, but on purpose. The reason is that they are General Text Editors opposed to most others. That means that could do anything if you teach them. The others can do specific things faster. This approach has served me well and I have huge configurations in VIM and Emacs. Now I'm actually doing everything in Emacs, Mail, writing Books, PDFs, Todos and so on. Of course you don't need that to get going. It's just awesome that you can continue to improve your main tool for ever and ever^^ I learned how to do these things by reading other people's config. If you'd like to look at my Emacs config, it has lots of prose documentation for other people to read: https://github.com/munen/emacs.d/blob/master/configuration.org https://github.com/munen/emacs.d/blob/master/configuration.o... I hope some of that was helpful. One more thing, it's OK if you only seem to vaguely get that VIM and Emacs are worth it. Took me a couple tries, too. Same with most things that are worth it. Like getting to know the right Woman^^
Shorel 10y ago
Why lock yourself into learning Spanish if you already can do everything with English? /s My crazy previous sentence intends to show the false dichotomy in your arguments. People can use SublimeText everyday while also using Vim in remote SSH sessions, and I have seen many do precisely that. Others endure Notepad++ and seem happy doing it. It is an AND world, not and OR world. Learning to use a tool doesn't make me forget the other tools.
- preek 10y ago
  Well, I'd learn Spanish precisely, because you cannot do everything in English. Also, both these languages are perfectly fine. They are not closed down, belong to no single entity and can never be made obsolete by not providing more patches.

by preek 10y ago

Karunamon 10y ago

Last I checked, Sublime is easily extensible with Python. What is this "lock in" you speak of? What "prison"? This reads like FSF.org hyperbole. Here comes the snark in reply to the snark: Someone had to come along and show that text editing didn't require the inscrutable complexity of Vim or Emacs, the kind of overwrought, overcomplicated, elitist and impractical user-hostility that absolutely dominates Open Source user interface design. I'd like to think that the proliferation of Sublime is what caused people to roll up their sleeves and start putting together things like Atom and VSCode and even this project. But I still use Sublime. Why? Because it's still faster than every competitor, it's still extensible enough to do what I need it to do, and unlike Emacs, doesn't require a PhD to comprehend, and unlike Vim, isn't an evolutionary dead end that pretends the mouse was never invented. Snark off: Many users don't consider Open Source to be a selling point. I am one of them. I choose my tools based on their usefulness, not the political status of their code, not intangible theoretical posturing about good and evil in the context of a fucking text editor. And you'll forgive me for taking issue with weak attempts to shame people for choosing tools that work for them. Perhaps this post reads a bit angry, and this is why.

preek 10y ago
Good luck my good friend with having tied your professional fortune to a small company that you are not affiliated with. This is not politics, this is simply dangerous and I do feel that way every time I see someone with a copy of Sublime. Since I'm a lecturer, I see this issue of lock-in and easy vs. simple/powerful a lot. I'm not taking this lightly, I want the best for my fellow professionals that are just too young to know better. You personally, might be older and more experienced, and I do not have a grudge with your opinion. I was simply stating mine for the reasons given without trying to step on your foot. As for simplicity, there is nothing that I have seen in any editor that is simpler than VIM modal editing or a LISP-machine to do everything. Having a shiny GUI is inherently not simple, but complex. If you are not familiar with yhe original meanings of these terms, there's a qualified speaker: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy That a tool is not easy in the beginning is ultimately irrelevant if it is simple. That is, if you've got enough time to master and profit from it. Which is what every professional software engineer has.
- CJefferson 10y ago
  VIM's modal editing isn't remotely simple. There is a huge language to learn, and most keys do not form useful patterns which are easy to remember. The problem with "you need to invest the time, trust me", I'd the same argument can be used for vim, Emacs, sublime, atom, vscode, eclipse, intellij, and any other editor. I can't invest the time in all of them to become expert. The difference with Emacs and vim is that they require a sizable time investment just to become competent, as they refuse to fit into the OSes they are running in (in the case of windows and Mac).
  - preek 10y ago
    Well, to make a long story and potential flame war short: My original post was not about VIM or Emacs. It was stating happiness about an editor (Lime) that tries to be easy to get started, yet is open source.
  - krylon 10y ago

CJefferson 10y ago

The problem with Emacs and vim, to me, is that they don't fit in. I'm currently trying to take up Emacs (I pick up one of vim and Emacs every few years. Not sure why. Feels like a thing I should do). Here is some of my list of Emacs problems. * The big one. Every other app on my Mac uses the same shortcut keys for cut, copy, paste, save, open, search, search + replace, spell check. That's probably 95-99% of the keys I press, and Emacs has to be special and support none of the standards. I know there are good historical reasons for this, but that's no use to a new user. * Server mode doesn't seem to "understand" Macs -- when I shut down my Mac it just hangs and I have to force kill it. Without server mode I end up with loads of Emacs which seem to load slower than atom can open a window. * I like editting text ,(as opposed to code) in a variable width font. Doesn't seem well supported. * The default settings seem very limited, so then I wonder if I should use something like spaceman's, but that is massive and brings it's own bugs. I can be comfortable, and fairly productive, instantly in sublime, atom, lime and vscode. Why can't Emacs, by default, have a "be like a Mac app" mode?

preek 10y ago
My post wasn't to be about Emacs, but let's give it a try. I'm happy to help. Actually some of the things you mentioned are super awesome strengths to me. 1. key bindings. I understand your point and you are right. But hear me out^^ I'm using Emacs on the Mac and Linux daily. Sometimes I fire up Windows for some cross platform app. Those three OSs have usually different key bindings and would have so in a regular GUI tool. Not in Emacs, though. They are all the same. Muscle memory win^^ Plus, I changed _many_ key bindings in Emacs to that they work better for me - across all OSs. 2. Server mode. Hm, I'm not having an issue here, but I cannot say that with confidence, because I rarely shut down, I always suspend (closing the lid on the MBP). 3. Variable Width Font. Have no expertise here. I tried that once, but it messed with how the code looks aligned which seems important to me. Again, sorry, would love to help, but just don't have expertise in this. 4. Default settings. You're right spot on! This is not an accident, but on purpose. The reason is that they are General Text Editors opposed to most others. That means that could do anything if you teach them. The others can do specific things faster. This approach has served me well and I have huge configurations in VIM and Emacs. Now I'm actually doing everything in Emacs, Mail, writing Books, PDFs, Todos and so on. Of course you don't need that to get going. It's just awesome that you can continue to improve your main tool for ever and ever^^ I learned how to do these things by reading other people's config. If you'd like to look at my Emacs config, it has lots of prose documentation for other people to read: https://github.com/munen/emacs.d/blob/master/configuration.org https://github.com/munen/emacs.d/blob/master/configuration.o... I hope some of that was helpful. One more thing, it's OK if you only seem to vaguely get that VIM and Emacs are worth it. Took me a couple tries, too. Same with most things that are worth it. Like getting to know the right Woman^^

Shorel 10y ago

Why lock yourself into learning Spanish if you already can do everything with English? /s My crazy previous sentence intends to show the false dichotomy in your arguments. People can use SublimeText everyday while also using Vim in remote SSH sessions, and I have seen many do precisely that. Others endure Notepad++ and seem happy doing it. It is an AND world, not and OR world. Learning to use a tool doesn't make me forget the other tools.

preek 10y ago
Well, I'd learn Spanish precisely, because you cannot do everything in English. Also, both these languages are perfectly fine. They are not closed down, belong to no single entity and can never be made obsolete by not providing more patches.