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My biggest complaint about lisp (which I love dearly) is that the overwhelming majority of the lisp community (or lisp communities) have already settled on Emac
by JackCh 8y ago
My biggest complaint about lisp (which I love dearly) is that the overwhelming majority of the lisp community (or lisp communities) have already settled on Emacs as the obvious choice in editors. And for good reason, the emacs tooling is unparalleled. And because everybody is using Emacs, non-emacs tools are neglected at best. It seems quite common for stand-alone REPL's (let alone extensions for other editors) to be neglected and shoddy because everybody influential in the language's development are already using emacs and have no use for a stand alone REPL.
It's great for people who already use Emacs. But a lot of people have deep personal investment in other editors because they got started years ago programming in some non-lisp language for which Emacs was virtually a footnote. And sure, learning Emacs is possible for established programmers who are new to lisp, but learning a new editor in addition to a new language is a hurdle most languages don't have (or if they do, it's often a reasonably simplistic GUI IDE.) It's amazing how many books, manuals, etc start off on the first page saying something to the effect of "You don't have to use Emacs... but seriously go learn Emacs."
This all said, there are a few ways to get psuedo-SLIME behavior out of Vim but they all seem to suffer from lack of TLC and established lisp users usually look at you strange and question why you're not just using Emacs. (Also the s-exp structure of lisp code still makes it easier to manipulate in Vim (sans plugins) than other languages. The % movement really gets a workout when editing lisp code)
- kqr 8y agoIf all you want is Vim-but-with-SLIME, there's always evil-mode. And it's not that you have to use Emacs to become a proficient lisper... it's just that once you're used to doing things the lisp way, you'll want a hackable environment that also does things the lisp way. This includes the editor. That said, I prefer lisp for my smartphone programming. Not because I have emacs on my phone, but because lisp is such a great choice precisely when you don't have a good editor and keyboard.
- jhbadger 8y agoBut you can have Emacs, even with SLIME, on your phone! At least if it's Android. Termux is amazing!
- kqr 8y agoI have had some problems with QuickLisp in the CL REPL app (which uses ECL) so I might actually give this a shot. Do you happen to know if it supports libssl? Android apps no longer have automatic access to native shared libraries. I should say that I have no doubt my issues are of my own making. I still haven't figured out a way to run a custom non-manufacturer based AOSP ROM on my phone without weird issues.
- eadmund 8y ago… but seriously, go learn emacs! After using it long enough, you'll realise that no editing environment even comes close. emacs really is superior to everything else out there: org-mode, magit, notmuch, gnus, slack-mode, all the different programming language modes, eshell &c. combine to form the best editing & development environment out there. From that first moment you write a little bit of elisp to make your life better and for the rest of your life (or at least as long as your eyes & hands permit you to use a computer), emacs really is worth it. Not using emacs is a bit like trying to walk from Mexico to Canada, with one leg in a splint: possible, but why hobble yourself?
- JackCh 8y agoI hear you, and it's not like I haven't dipped my toes in to test the waters. But after 20+ years of vim usage it's not so easy to turn on a dime. (Particularly when Vim is more than sufficient for the work I'm actually getting paid for.)
- eadmund 8y agoFWIW spacemacs is a pretty decent vim-alike. Not perfect, but still pretty awesome. It's tougher, though, if you've been using a lot of extensions to vanilla vim.
- pjmlp 8y agoBecause Emacs kind of related to Lisp Machines editors. The best Lisp editing experience is only available on commercial Lisps like Allegro.