5 ms·

Seeing generators and threads being mentioned in the release announcement of a text editor feels a bit... strange. Then again, Emacs is closer to a LISP toolki

by pilif 8y ago

Seeing generators and threads being mentioned in the release announcement of a text editor feels a bit... strange. Then again, Emacs is closer to a LISP toolkit for building text editors than it is a text editor, so I guess it's not so strange after all.

pjmlp 8y ago
Emacs is an OS written in Lisp, with a text editor as sample application. :)
- signal11 8y ago
  Also if you require good keybindings in the sample application, there's always viper :)
  - zaphar 8y ago
    Evil mode is far far better than viper. Do yourself a favor and switch today.
    - FPGAhacker 8y ago
      To that end I like spacemacs. But it did incur enough of a startup penalty that have have shifted back to vim. I oscillate between them and vscode. I don’t use vim bindings in vscode though.
      - xfer 8y ago
        Run it in daemon mode. startup time is not a thing for emacs.
        FPGAhacker 8y ago
        It's not stable enough for me. Well, my plugins aren't. I need to be able to reset state periodically. Plus, I like to have separate instances of emacs with different groups of files from separate but related projects. I end up with a zoo of buffers commingled in daemon mode. It just doesn't fit how I work. I wish it had an image based startup scheme... freeze an image of emacs after init is done.
        harrygeez 8y ago
        What if I tell you that you can? :) You can unexec Emacs at its current working state and it will output a new executable. Startup is close to instant!
        FPGAhacker 8y ago
        Can't seem to figure out how to do it. I can only find passing references to it.
- hprotagonist 8y ago
  and tetris. and a psychoanalyst. and ...
- kqr 8y ago
  Not only that, but also a kickass calculator! And a file manager.
gkya 8y ago
Emacs is an application platform, just like how the browsers are today. It has a nice way for making UIs: it's all text, parts interactive, and you can bind keys, make hooks and thus create decent, customisable applications in it. Add to that the possibility to update code on the go and advices, and you have a very nice place to make yours completely. I wish we had a popular OS where the main UI toolkit was similar, i.e. it provided many hooks, a universal REPL and a nice interactive debugger.
- Torwald 8y ago
  The thing is such an OS would never be popular, because the vast majority of users never will be programers (again).
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  There is a window manager called stumpwm like that.
  - gkya 8y ago
    Well that's just a fraction of what I was talking about. StumpWM is nice, but it's the window manager. But imagine an environment where, say in the web browser you could hit C-h k, find what function is bound to the key that bookmarks the current tab, and advice that function to make a backup of the bookmarks database. And that such mechanism being built in to the OS' application programming libraries, so that writing a GUI app becomes essentially reminiscent of writing an Emacs major mode. Imagine all apps on your desktop had hooks where you could attach code to be run on certain events.

by pilif 8y ago

pjmlp 8y ago

Emacs is an OS written in Lisp, with a text editor as sample application. :)

signal11 8y ago
Also if you require good keybindings in the sample application, there's always viper :)
- zaphar 8y ago
  Evil mode is far far better than viper. Do yourself a favor and switch today.
  - FPGAhacker 8y ago
    To that end I like spacemacs. But it did incur enough of a startup penalty that have have shifted back to vim. I oscillate between them and vscode. I don’t use vim bindings in vscode though.
    - xfer 8y ago
      Run it in daemon mode. startup time is not a thing for emacs.
      - FPGAhacker 8y ago
        It's not stable enough for me. Well, my plugins aren't. I need to be able to reset state periodically. Plus, I like to have separate instances of emacs with different groups of files from separate but related projects. I end up with a zoo of buffers commingled in daemon mode. It just doesn't fit how I work. I wish it had an image based startup scheme... freeze an image of emacs after init is done.
        harrygeez 8y ago
        What if I tell you that you can? :) You can unexec Emacs at its current working state and it will output a new executable. Startup is close to instant!
        FPGAhacker 8y ago
        Can't seem to figure out how to do it. I can only find passing references to it.
hprotagonist 8y ago
and tetris. and a psychoanalyst. and ...
kqr 8y ago
Not only that, but also a kickass calculator! And a file manager.

gkya 8y ago

Emacs is an application platform, just like how the browsers are today. It has a nice way for making UIs: it's all text, parts interactive, and you can bind keys, make hooks and thus create decent, customisable applications in it. Add to that the possibility to update code on the go and advices, and you have a very nice place to make yours completely. I wish we had a popular OS where the main UI toolkit was similar, i.e. it provided many hooks, a universal REPL and a nice interactive debugger.

Torwald 8y ago
The thing is such an OS would never be popular, because the vast majority of users never will be programers (again).
cup-of-tea 8y ago
There is a window manager called stumpwm like that.
- gkya 8y ago
  Well that's just a fraction of what I was talking about. StumpWM is nice, but it's the window manager. But imagine an environment where, say in the web browser you could hit C-h k, find what function is bound to the key that bookmarks the current tab, and advice that function to make a backup of the bookmarks database. And that such mechanism being built in to the OS' application programming libraries, so that writing a GUI app becomes essentially reminiscent of writing an Emacs major mode. Imagine all apps on your desktop had hooks where you could attach code to be run on certain events.