4 ms·

The whole point of emacs is that it is extensible, and easily so. That is the core thing that makes emacs great. And it means that, far from having extensions t

The whole point of emacs is that it is extensible, and easily so. That is the core thing that makes emacs great. And it means that, far from having extensions that are inferior to those on IDEs, it has many extensions that are far, far superior to the IDE equivalents. For example, magit I find a far superior git extension than the IDE equivalents. Something like org-mode simply has no rival in the world of IDEs, it is an incredibly powerful and flexible tool which contains all my notes and integrates well with "languages" even. Or look at macro support. IDEs still have either non-existent, or comparatively poor macro support, which I consider vital. The amount of times as a developer I have to do some repetitive task, or worse, some semi-repetitive but needs a bit of intelligence here and there task, which can be accomplished using a macro with a bit of logic, is insane. Emacs really is like a superset of IDEs. It does a whole lot of things that IDEs just don't do as well, and then it also does a bunch of things that IDEs do as well. That is not to say I don't use IDEs. If I have to do java, I'll do it in intellij. If I have to do nearly anything else, I'll do it in emacs. And luckily, most IDEs seem to come with a set of emacs keybindings and plugins so jumping back and forth isn't even that painful.

oblio 9y ago
For some (a lot of?) things that's true. But at that point you're basically writing your own stuff, just using a framework. You get the flexibility, but you're also "responsible" for making its level match up with that of something someone was probably paid to do (and that someone else is not always incompetent :) ). Regarding macros, I agree. However in the languages supported by the IDE, I rarely find that I need macros. I use refactorings, which are like macros on steroids, since they understand the actual language. I really wish there was some modern Open Source editing environment which was extendable easily and also had commercial backing for the key parts. Visual Studio Code is remarkable close to what I want, it seems to have a solid architecture. The fact that it runs on Elecron is a kind of a drawback, but Microsoft really wants to make it competitive and I expect once WebAssembly hits the shelves things could take a very interesting turn.
- kingofhdds 9y ago
  This => "But at that point you're basically writing your own stuff, just using a framework." is what makes Emacs so comfortable for me. In fact, that was a moment of revelation when I found that Emacs is not an editor as they said, but a platform to build your editor/IDE/environment. Probably, it is because my brain is trained to think in a programming way, it feels much more natural to tune everything by coding, then by knobs, and buttons. And, yes, it provides more extensibility. I mean, for real. That's why I, as many before me, started to do a lot of things unrelated to programming in Emacs - because I can make it to assist me better, in ways unachievable with other software, in spite of the fact that the latter could be specially developed for a purpose. I don't proclaim Emacs is the panacea for everything, it has it's ugly sides too. I just want to say if you like to rule you working environment, not just learn how to live with it - Emacs can offer you something.

oblio 9y ago

For some (a lot of?) things that's true. But at that point you're basically writing your own stuff, just using a framework. You get the flexibility, but you're also "responsible" for making its level match up with that of something someone was probably paid to do (and that someone else is not always incompetent :) ). Regarding macros, I agree. However in the languages supported by the IDE, I rarely find that I need macros. I use refactorings, which are like macros on steroids, since they understand the actual language. I really wish there was some modern Open Source editing environment which was extendable easily and also had commercial backing for the key parts. Visual Studio Code is remarkable close to what I want, it seems to have a solid architecture. The fact that it runs on Elecron is a kind of a drawback, but Microsoft really wants to make it competitive and I expect once WebAssembly hits the shelves things could take a very interesting turn.

kingofhdds 9y ago
This => "But at that point you're basically writing your own stuff, just using a framework." is what makes Emacs so comfortable for me. In fact, that was a moment of revelation when I found that Emacs is not an editor as they said, but a platform to build your editor/IDE/environment. Probably, it is because my brain is trained to think in a programming way, it feels much more natural to tune everything by coding, then by knobs, and buttons. And, yes, it provides more extensibility. I mean, for real. That's why I, as many before me, started to do a lot of things unrelated to programming in Emacs - because I can make it to assist me better, in ways unachievable with other software, in spite of the fact that the latter could be specially developed for a purpose. I don't proclaim Emacs is the panacea for everything, it has it's ugly sides too. I just want to say if you like to rule you working environment, not just learn how to live with it - Emacs can offer you something.