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Emacs might be insanely flexible, sure, but at what cost? Bloat? Infinite complexity? Heck, I get frustrated with my VIM configuration sometimes because I forge

by jnoller 16y ago

Emacs might be insanely flexible, sure, but at what cost? Bloat? Infinite complexity? Heck, I get frustrated with my VIM configuration sometimes because I forget the less used keybindings when I really need them, and need to go spelunking. So sure; if you're willing to trade the up-front investment of time (not insubstantial) Emacs will go far - and the wall is way off on the horizon and someone scribbled "complexity" on it. Up-front investment can't be underestimated; there's a reason why things like Textmate (which starts simple, and grows out well) are so popular. Low initial investment, and plenty of ramp, and it works out well until it simply doesn't. That low initial barrier is easier to climb, and while emacs (or even VIM) might have a wall that, when compared to Textmate's, is infinitely far away, textmate will still have fantastic adoption. The wall textmate has is further off then most people are willing to worry about. For most people, a framework, like, say, Django or even Rails offers a wall far enough out that most people don't need to worry about it, but when they hit that wall, they're going to hit it hard, and kinda be mad.

berntb 16y ago
>>That low initial barrier is easier to climb You're mostly rewriting my points. Let's leave this for half a year and discuss it again. It seems we both need to let it fes.. think about it. :-) Or at least I know I do. What I'm trying to say, I think, is that there is a tension between flexible/pluggable frameworks and integrated ones, like with e.g. Emacs and simple IDEs. (Yeah, there are IDEs on top of Emacs; those doesn't remove complexity.) (The main complexity problem with Emacs isn't the code which is neat with the lisp layer (imho, I'm very far from being a real Emacs hacker). The complexity is use complexity -- lots of modes, etc. More broad than deep.) But unless some totally new idea comes along, people will use Emacs when we both have forgotten the present frameworks... >>I get frustrated with my VIM configuration sometimes because I forget the less used keybindings I haven't used vi for quite a few years. There is still no good search/browsing/M-x? Never mind, some really good people use vim, so I assume there is something there.

by jnoller 16y ago

berntb 16y ago

>>That low initial barrier is easier to climb You're mostly rewriting my points. Let's leave this for half a year and discuss it again. It seems we both need to let it fes.. think about it. :-) Or at least I know I do. What I'm trying to say, I think, is that there is a tension between flexible/pluggable frameworks and integrated ones, like with e.g. Emacs and simple IDEs. (Yeah, there are IDEs on top of Emacs; those doesn't remove complexity.) (The main complexity problem with Emacs isn't the code which is neat with the lisp layer (imho, I'm very far from being a real Emacs hacker). The complexity is use complexity -- lots of modes, etc. More broad than deep.) But unless some totally new idea comes along, people will use Emacs when we both have forgotten the present frameworks... >>I get frustrated with my VIM configuration sometimes because I forget the less used keybindings I haven't used vi for quite a few years. There is still no good search/browsing/M-x? Never mind, some really good people use vim, so I assume there is something there.