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I have mixed feelings about emacs starter kits. On the one hand I'm always happy that more people might discover emacs. It's quite simply the most powerful text

I have mixed feelings about emacs starter kits. On the one hand I'm always happy that more people might discover emacs. It's quite simply the most powerful text editor out there. Hands down. I could not imagine using a computer seriously without emacs. On the other hand, the power of emacs comes from the fact that it's essentially a lisp interpreter which is good at doing text editor stuff. If you abstract this away then what you get is an editor which is implemented in emacs, but is ultimately comparable to any other text editor. Emacs really shines when you make it your own. And that goes far beyond the usual "customisation" that you see. I have files full of macros that help me write lisp which eventually changes the way the editor works. And some of that functionality helps me write the macros that help me write lisp that (...and so on). For those that don't use emacs the above might sound bizarre. Maybe it's only attractive to a few programmers. Or maybe you have to try it before you really understand. I don't know. But that's why I have mixed feelings.

declanqian 9y ago
They treated the whole frontmacs as a package and put it on https://elpa.frontside.io/ https://elpa.frontside.io/ , I don't know whether it's good idea. Actually I proposaled the same concept for spacema\ cs, doesn't got approved back then. So this is not a starter kit I guess?
giancarlostoro 9y ago
I use Spacemacs but it isn't always perfect and if Spacemacs doesn't wind up working I end up just using vanilla emacs because MELPA is a dice roll whether it will work or not every single time for me, usually regardless of OS. I just know enough basics of emacs to edit code, but I wish adding packages didn't involve so many hoops such as having to add a repository that everyone already goes out of their way to add to emacs and having said repository fail on you. I'm not sure what reason the emacs team has for just not adding MELPA but it would change the game for me if it were an official addition and would require it's addition to work out of the box. Till then, emacs is a long way away from being my default editor, and VS Code and JetBrains are more of my defaults. Out of the box functionality is key for any editor in my opinion.
- cup-of-tea 9y ago
  I put melpa in my init file and never thought about it again. You don't need to keep adding it every time. For me, my emacs config is my text editor, and it works out of the box on any system I install it to. Emacs is often very easy to install, but if I'm going to spend significant time on a machine I'll build it myself, and then my config is a simple git clone away and that's it. I'm working in an exact copy of my own personal text editor that I've built up over many years. My instances of emacs also stay running for weeks at a time. I'll edit the config while it's running. If it's useful I'll commit it and pull it to other instances and run the modifications on them while they're running. It's a completely different way to work than most people are used to and it's liberating.
- willtim 9y ago
  Why not use melpa-stable?
  - giancarlostoro 9y ago
    That's what I use. The issue is in some builds of emacs on different OS' it cannot hit the HTTPS servers themselves for whatever reason.
ajarmst 9y ago
I had similar feelings, but I've actually been using (an admittedly, somwhat tweaked version of) Batsov's Prelude for a couple of years now. It pulls in a lot of exceptional packages with sensible defaults (without trying to make it stop being Emacs, a common fault of such kits) and has very good facilities for customization and managing things like package loading order.
mroll 9y ago
are your configs anywhere online? I'd love to read them.
- mroll 9y ago
  I'm at the point in my emacs journey where I'm looking for places in my day-to-day editing that can be made more efficient by writing code that writes that code. I have implemented some helpful macros, but I think I would benefit a lot from reading macros written by a more experienced emacs programmer.
saltycraig 9y ago
I feel the same way, but I feel like once you start learning Emacs, you reach a point (see 'emacs bankruptcy') where you just want to know what every single line of elisp is doing and start from vanilla. I've been down the path of package managers, starter kits, etc., which can be good learning tools, but ultimately after a few years of using Emacs, you tend to abandon them for simpler solutions. I used to have thousands on lines in multiple org-files, but now I'm down to a single init.el file and keep it fairly simple. I code in python mainly so I pull down elpy and tune it to my needs. Check it out: https://github.com/saltycraig/emacs.d https://github.com/saltycraig/emacs.d
vinceguidry 9y ago
Emacs is a programming language with it's own text editor built in. Like every other programming language on the planet, it benefits from dependency management and source code management. Getting all of our tools into similar management forms ultimately makes all of coding more accessible.
- PurpleRamen 9y ago
  elisp ist the programming language. Emacs is an environment with text-oriented interface. Pretty much like modern browsers, just more mature. One could even say, Emacs is the spiritual ancestor of the electron-framework.
  - cle 9y ago
    I disagree. I've tried to use Electron editors (VS Code, Atom) and the thing that frustrated me the most is that it is missing the "essence" of Emacs. To me, these things are: * Self-documenting * Easy to dynamically inspect and change the editor internals and all packages, from the editor itself * Emphasis on the editor as an interface into your system (the editor as a way to process and "glue" together text from subprocesses) Atom in particular seems promising, but from the time that I spent with it, I quickly concluded that it was missing the spirit of Emacs entirely, because it was not straightforward or well-documented how I would go about exploring and changing the internals of the editor and its packages. E.g. a package was throwing an exception...it was quite a process to find the source, set a breakpoint on that error, and fix/work around the bug. That's trivial stuff in Emacs, and IMO is at the spiritual core of Emacs. I would love to be wrong here, so please correct me if I'm mistaken!
    - PurpleRamen 9y ago
      I assume that is a difference in cultur not ability. But lack of introspection and prototyping is a surprise. After all at the end it's just a browser, which have good tools for such things. Maybe it's just not mature enough for this at the moment.
    - wyuenho 9y ago
wyuenho 9y ago
I've been using emacs for over a decade now and I have yet to reach this state of nirvana. I do want to understand every line of elisp and I've been doing a lot of elisp recently. But then again, I also have work to do, and I realize all I've been trying to achieve with my emacs config in the past 10 years is to make it work like a modern IDE. Which is perfect, because the reason I switched to Emacs in the first place is I just needed an IDE that I could fix. However, ever since Sublime and now VS Code came about, I've been having this internal debate of whether I should just switch to a text editor that I can fix, but come configured sensibly OOTB, and let sunk time costs be. This used to be a tall order but VS Code seems to be really close to this ideal now.
- brandonmenc 9y ago
  Been there, done that, switched to JetBrains IDEs, and haven't looked back. My gut feeling is that people who haven't looked up from emacs or vi for a decade or two have no idea what modern IDEs are capable of out of the box.
  - Bankq 9y ago
    I can relate to this. The problem is I already know how to get my work done (efficiently) in Emacs and find any change of my everyday tools to be daunting. Any advices on how to experience "what modern IDEs are capable of out of the box" without major pain?
    - sonofaplum 9y ago
      I've found one of the best ways to experiment with other text editors is to use them for one specific type of task or type of file. So when I started using vim I only used it edit config files. Makes it easier to lock into the mental mode of using a particular editor.
      - hqian 9y ago
        This is a very good piece of advice! I do have to configure my emacs every time I take on a new type of task albeit not very often. I'll give it try next time. Thanks!
ghggu6666 9y ago
I guess I see it as a Spacemacs user or Frontmacs user decided that was the way to make Emacs “their own”, less in an emotional sense and more of a utilitarian “this will do the job nicely for me”. I got into Linux with Mandrake. A year later I was running Slack. Not everyone sticks with their first tool when starting out
PurpleRamen 9y ago
I know what you mean. I started emacs spacemacs, be cause for me it was the better vim. But with time I got fed up with the bloat of spacemacs and so many details which I can't controll for my personal ways. Now I roll my own fork of spacemacs, tweak it the way I want and still have some external help with the occasional merge from spacemacs-repo. If this frontmacs grown in the proper direction to support a effortless mix of own and external settings, then it could become even more important than spacemacs for the community and growth of emacs.

declanqian 9y ago

They treated the whole frontmacs as a package and put it on https://elpa.frontside.io/ https://elpa.frontside.io/ , I don't know whether it's good idea. Actually I proposaled the same concept for spacema\ cs, doesn't got approved back then. So this is not a starter kit I guess?

giancarlostoro 9y ago

I use Spacemacs but it isn't always perfect and if Spacemacs doesn't wind up working I end up just using vanilla emacs because MELPA is a dice roll whether it will work or not every single time for me, usually regardless of OS. I just know enough basics of emacs to edit code, but I wish adding packages didn't involve so many hoops such as having to add a repository that everyone already goes out of their way to add to emacs and having said repository fail on you. I'm not sure what reason the emacs team has for just not adding MELPA but it would change the game for me if it were an official addition and would require it's addition to work out of the box. Till then, emacs is a long way away from being my default editor, and VS Code and JetBrains are more of my defaults. Out of the box functionality is key for any editor in my opinion.

cup-of-tea 9y ago
I put melpa in my init file and never thought about it again. You don't need to keep adding it every time. For me, my emacs config is my text editor, and it works out of the box on any system I install it to. Emacs is often very easy to install, but if I'm going to spend significant time on a machine I'll build it myself, and then my config is a simple git clone away and that's it. I'm working in an exact copy of my own personal text editor that I've built up over many years. My instances of emacs also stay running for weeks at a time. I'll edit the config while it's running. If it's useful I'll commit it and pull it to other instances and run the modifications on them while they're running. It's a completely different way to work than most people are used to and it's liberating.
willtim 9y ago
Why not use melpa-stable?
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  That's what I use. The issue is in some builds of emacs on different OS' it cannot hit the HTTPS servers themselves for whatever reason.

ajarmst 9y ago

I had similar feelings, but I've actually been using (an admittedly, somwhat tweaked version of) Batsov's Prelude for a couple of years now. It pulls in a lot of exceptional packages with sensible defaults (without trying to make it stop being Emacs, a common fault of such kits) and has very good facilities for customization and managing things like package loading order.

mroll 9y ago

are your configs anywhere online? I'd love to read them.

mroll 9y ago
I'm at the point in my emacs journey where I'm looking for places in my day-to-day editing that can be made more efficient by writing code that writes that code. I have implemented some helpful macros, but I think I would benefit a lot from reading macros written by a more experienced emacs programmer.

saltycraig 9y ago

I feel the same way, but I feel like once you start learning Emacs, you reach a point (see 'emacs bankruptcy') where you just want to know what every single line of elisp is doing and start from vanilla. I've been down the path of package managers, starter kits, etc., which can be good learning tools, but ultimately after a few years of using Emacs, you tend to abandon them for simpler solutions. I used to have thousands on lines in multiple org-files, but now I'm down to a single init.el file and keep it fairly simple. I code in python mainly so I pull down elpy and tune it to my needs. Check it out: https://github.com/saltycraig/emacs.d https://github.com/saltycraig/emacs.d

vinceguidry 9y ago

Emacs is a programming language with it's own text editor built in. Like every other programming language on the planet, it benefits from dependency management and source code management. Getting all of our tools into similar management forms ultimately makes all of coding more accessible.

PurpleRamen 9y ago
elisp ist the programming language. Emacs is an environment with text-oriented interface. Pretty much like modern browsers, just more mature. One could even say, Emacs is the spiritual ancestor of the electron-framework.
- cle 9y ago
  I disagree. I've tried to use Electron editors (VS Code, Atom) and the thing that frustrated me the most is that it is missing the "essence" of Emacs. To me, these things are: * Self-documenting * Easy to dynamically inspect and change the editor internals and all packages, from the editor itself * Emphasis on the editor as an interface into your system (the editor as a way to process and "glue" together text from subprocesses) Atom in particular seems promising, but from the time that I spent with it, I quickly concluded that it was missing the spirit of Emacs entirely, because it was not straightforward or well-documented how I would go about exploring and changing the internals of the editor and its packages. E.g. a package was throwing an exception...it was quite a process to find the source, set a breakpoint on that error, and fix/work around the bug. That's trivial stuff in Emacs, and IMO is at the spiritual core of Emacs. I would love to be wrong here, so please correct me if I'm mistaken!
  - PurpleRamen 9y ago
    I assume that is a difference in cultur not ability. But lack of introspection and prototyping is a surprise. After all at the end it's just a browser, which have good tools for such things. Maybe it's just not mature enough for this at the moment.
  - wyuenho 9y ago

wyuenho 9y ago

I've been using emacs for over a decade now and I have yet to reach this state of nirvana. I do want to understand every line of elisp and I've been doing a lot of elisp recently. But then again, I also have work to do, and I realize all I've been trying to achieve with my emacs config in the past 10 years is to make it work like a modern IDE. Which is perfect, because the reason I switched to Emacs in the first place is I just needed an IDE that I could fix. However, ever since Sublime and now VS Code came about, I've been having this internal debate of whether I should just switch to a text editor that I can fix, but come configured sensibly OOTB, and let sunk time costs be. This used to be a tall order but VS Code seems to be really close to this ideal now.

brandonmenc 9y ago
Been there, done that, switched to JetBrains IDEs, and haven't looked back. My gut feeling is that people who haven't looked up from emacs or vi for a decade or two have no idea what modern IDEs are capable of out of the box.
- Bankq 9y ago
  I can relate to this. The problem is I already know how to get my work done (efficiently) in Emacs and find any change of my everyday tools to be daunting. Any advices on how to experience "what modern IDEs are capable of out of the box" without major pain?
  - sonofaplum 9y ago
    I've found one of the best ways to experiment with other text editors is to use them for one specific type of task or type of file. So when I started using vim I only used it edit config files. Makes it easier to lock into the mental mode of using a particular editor.
    - hqian 9y ago
      This is a very good piece of advice! I do have to configure my emacs every time I take on a new type of task albeit not very often. I'll give it try next time. Thanks!

ghggu6666 9y ago

I guess I see it as a Spacemacs user or Frontmacs user decided that was the way to make Emacs “their own”, less in an emotional sense and more of a utilitarian “this will do the job nicely for me”. I got into Linux with Mandrake. A year later I was running Slack. Not everyone sticks with their first tool when starting out

PurpleRamen 9y ago

I know what you mean. I started emacs spacemacs, be cause for me it was the better vim. But with time I got fed up with the bloat of spacemacs and so many details which I can't controll for my personal ways. Now I roll my own fork of spacemacs, tweak it the way I want and still have some external help with the occasional merge from spacemacs-repo. If this frontmacs grown in the proper direction to support a effortless mix of own and external settings, then it could become even more important than spacemacs for the community and growth of emacs.