7 ms·

It's fantastic that people want to tackle the complexity that is Emacs Lisp and work on a JIT for it. It might not be the most fashionable thing these days, but

by jwr 9y ago

It's fantastic that people want to tackle the complexity that is Emacs Lisp and work on a JIT for it. It might not be the most fashionable thing these days, but a faster Emacs would make life significantly better for countless developers. I am having high hopes for this project.

systems 9y ago
Completely agree Also add to this the trend or rise language servers .. emacs can continue to be used as a solid ide alternatives And .. guile emacs hopefully one day Any work to improve and re-use emacs is good for everyone
- eadmund 9y ago
  > And .. guile emacs hopefully one day I'm hoping for a Common Lisp emacs, myself. Scheme as specified just isn't a big enough language, and if you pick one of the better implementations (e.g. Racket, which is awesome), then it's not really Scheme anymore (e.g. Racket, which is really its own language by now).
  - jnordwick 9y ago
    I would still call it Scheme, just not R*RS Scheme.
didibus 9y ago
I hate to admit it, but the slowness of Emacs is why I avoid it. A good JIT which hopefully speed it up would be amazing.
- dorp 9y ago
  ELISP is a pretty fast language, faster than VimScript or JS for sure. EDIT: Also, Emacs is bloated is bloated because it's not just a editor its's an Web Browser, Email Client, News Reader, Music Player and File Manager. If people want a light emacs, they can go use uEmacs or become the last JEDi.
  - quotemstr 9y ago
    It's a good glue language, like Python. Better than Python in the sense that its internal representation is based on tagged values instead of ubiquitous pointers: for example, 43243 represents itself and isn't a pointer to a some reference-counted PyObject representing an int. And because Emacs Lisp a lisp, you get extensive syntactic malleability that you can use to build DSLs and convenience facilities. Elisp is actually a very nice little language.
    - armitron 9y ago
      Your absence from emacs-devel is felt, there was so much excitement when you were around.
  - yzmtf2008 9y ago
    “Fast” is really a meaningless and vague word. What specific part of emacs lisp is faster than javascript in what regard? For what it’s worth, V8 among with some other JITs are some of the fastest engines in the world: https://arewefastyet.com/#machine=29&view=breakdown&suite=asmjs-ubench https://arewefastyet.com/#machine=29&view=breakdown&suite=as...
    - earenndil 9y ago
      > V8 among with some other JITs are some of the fastest engines in the world I find that doubtful, when the jvm is so close to native code in terms of performance, and mozilla said that wasm (or was it asm.js? Forget which) was still 50% slower theoretically than native code.
      - chrisseaton 9y ago
        > still 50% slower theoretically than native code How can something be theoretically slower? What's the difference between theoretically slower and practically slower? Only practical implementations have a speed that you can talk about. I don't know what you mean by 'theoretically' as an adverb there.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  Which use cases are slow for you ? you used it on large code base or parsed cpp source ? A quicker emacs would be neat, but most of the time emacs gets speed from flexibility (it might be slow but I can automate something) and design decision (magit for instance blows 99% of the fastest git interfaces) ps: one part that realize is that I don't like emacs daemon, and even curated my setup on windows (probably the culprit) takes a few seconds. It's not slow but often I want a buffer right away so I use notepad u_u; stupid I know.
  - kqr 9y ago
    Also worth mentioning that whatever is slow, profile it to find out why. Sometimes only the smallest tweak is necessary to get it up to speed again. (Different tweaks for different configurations, so can't be a default.) For interactive use, profiling is as simple as M-x profiler-start, doing what causes the slowdown, and then M-x profiler-report.
    - agumonkey 9y ago
      Good point, emacs has a lot of tooling (edebug and tracing too) but it's rarely demonstrated, and since emacs is so large.. In my case there's nothing slow but IO, I should try on another windows laptop with a faster SSD (mine is low grade) to see what is what.
  - confounded 9y ago
    With an Emacs server/daemon, it loads faster than Vim for me.
    - agumonkey 9y ago
      I would happily agree but I lost the one emacs and 119422 buffers mindset. I get lost in my own shit. I should spend time improving my ibuffer grouping but even then.. I like the idea of pop, edit, kill (which causes my harm).
      - alexhutcheson 9y ago
- zeveb 9y ago
  Honestly, I don't much notice emacs being slow, esp. given how much it's doing for me under the hood. One key thing is to always always always use emacs in dæmon mode, rather than starting up a new emacs for each file (as would be done with vi). With an always-running emacs instance, start-up time is no longer a factor, and the editor itself is plenty fast enough once it's running.
  - junnan 9y ago
    I use a nox emacs with minimum .emacs for quick editing in terminal. Its startup time is comparable to vi.
- ams6110 9y ago
  I don't find emacs slow, and I spend most of my day in it. What is annoying, is that when it blocks, all frames and windows block.
  - peterbecich 9y ago
    Maybe this will improve in Emacs 26: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/7ta67n/is_emacs_multi_threaded/ https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/7ta67n/is_emacs_mult...

by jwr 9y ago

systems 9y ago

Completely agree Also add to this the trend or rise language servers .. emacs can continue to be used as a solid ide alternatives And .. guile emacs hopefully one day Any work to improve and re-use emacs is good for everyone

eadmund 9y ago
> And .. guile emacs hopefully one day I'm hoping for a Common Lisp emacs, myself. Scheme as specified just isn't a big enough language, and if you pick one of the better implementations (e.g. Racket, which is awesome), then it's not really Scheme anymore (e.g. Racket, which is really its own language by now).
- jnordwick 9y ago
  I would still call it Scheme, just not R*RS Scheme.

didibus 9y ago

I hate to admit it, but the slowness of Emacs is why I avoid it. A good JIT which hopefully speed it up would be amazing.

dorp 9y ago
ELISP is a pretty fast language, faster than VimScript or JS for sure. EDIT: Also, Emacs is bloated is bloated because it's not just a editor its's an Web Browser, Email Client, News Reader, Music Player and File Manager. If people want a light emacs, they can go use uEmacs or become the last JEDi.
- quotemstr 9y ago
  It's a good glue language, like Python. Better than Python in the sense that its internal representation is based on tagged values instead of ubiquitous pointers: for example, 43243 represents itself and isn't a pointer to a some reference-counted PyObject representing an int. And because Emacs Lisp a lisp, you get extensive syntactic malleability that you can use to build DSLs and convenience facilities. Elisp is actually a very nice little language.
  - armitron 9y ago
    Your absence from emacs-devel is felt, there was so much excitement when you were around.
- yzmtf2008 9y ago
  “Fast” is really a meaningless and vague word. What specific part of emacs lisp is faster than javascript in what regard? For what it’s worth, V8 among with some other JITs are some of the fastest engines in the world: https://arewefastyet.com/#machine=29&view=breakdown&suite=asmjs-ubench https://arewefastyet.com/#machine=29&view=breakdown&suite=as...
  - earenndil 9y ago
    > V8 among with some other JITs are some of the fastest engines in the world I find that doubtful, when the jvm is so close to native code in terms of performance, and mozilla said that wasm (or was it asm.js? Forget which) was still 50% slower theoretically than native code.
    - chrisseaton 9y ago
      > still 50% slower theoretically than native code How can something be theoretically slower? What's the difference between theoretically slower and practically slower? Only practical implementations have a speed that you can talk about. I don't know what you mean by 'theoretically' as an adverb there.
agumonkey 9y ago
Which use cases are slow for you ? you used it on large code base or parsed cpp source ? A quicker emacs would be neat, but most of the time emacs gets speed from flexibility (it might be slow but I can automate something) and design decision (magit for instance blows 99% of the fastest git interfaces) ps: one part that realize is that I don't like emacs daemon, and even curated my setup on windows (probably the culprit) takes a few seconds. It's not slow but often I want a buffer right away so I use notepad u_u; stupid I know.
- kqr 9y ago
  Also worth mentioning that whatever is slow, profile it to find out why. Sometimes only the smallest tweak is necessary to get it up to speed again. (Different tweaks for different configurations, so can't be a default.) For interactive use, profiling is as simple as M-x profiler-start, doing what causes the slowdown, and then M-x profiler-report.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    Good point, emacs has a lot of tooling (edebug and tracing too) but it's rarely demonstrated, and since emacs is so large.. In my case there's nothing slow but IO, I should try on another windows laptop with a faster SSD (mine is low grade) to see what is what.
- confounded 9y ago
  With an Emacs server/daemon, it loads faster than Vim for me.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    I would happily agree but I lost the one emacs and 119422 buffers mindset. I get lost in my own shit. I should spend time improving my ibuffer grouping but even then.. I like the idea of pop, edit, kill (which causes my harm).
    - alexhutcheson 9y ago
zeveb 9y ago
Honestly, I don't much notice emacs being slow, esp. given how much it's doing for me under the hood. One key thing is to always always always use emacs in dæmon mode, rather than starting up a new emacs for each file (as would be done with vi). With an always-running emacs instance, start-up time is no longer a factor, and the editor itself is plenty fast enough once it's running.
- junnan 9y ago
  I use a nox emacs with minimum .emacs for quick editing in terminal. Its startup time is comparable to vi.
ams6110 9y ago
I don't find emacs slow, and I spend most of my day in it. What is annoying, is that when it blocks, all frames and windows block.
- peterbecich 9y ago
  Maybe this will improve in Emacs 26: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/7ta67n/is_emacs_multi_threaded/ https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/7ta67n/is_emacs_mult...