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In all honesty, the main selling point of Emacs for me isn't just how configurable it is but also how performant it is in different environments. Since VSCode u

In all honesty, the main selling point of Emacs for me isn't just how configurable it is but also how performant it is in different environments. Since VSCode uses Electron editing feels sluggish, high ram and cpu usage is expected, and there's a noticable latency between keypresses. While these may seem like trivial issues, they actually negatively impact my typing experience to a high degree. I'm currently using the Doom-Emacs distribution for Emacs and everything is working very well. I can use vim keybindings in addition to many other customizations and improvements with very little time invested in actually writing elisp. This is mostly because the developer of the distribution is passionate and optimizes his configuration for modern languages so there is very little needed to change. If VSCode or any other text editor managed to provide a fast yet highly configurable editing experience without draining my laptop battery instantly, I would immediately switch. So far, none have been able to meet this specification even though I have tried almost all of the common text editors. I'm hoping a project like the Xi text editor might one day actualize my desire.

Pimpus 8y ago
> While these may seem like trivial issues, they actually negatively impact my typing experience to a high degree. I don't think these are trivial issues at all. I do the majority of my computing work in a text editor so it's important to me that it's as performant as possible. Imagine if, in real life, there was a slight lag every time you sent a "command" (e.g. pick up coffee). It would drive you crazy. And yet a lot of developers think that lag is acceptable in software. (I say "developers" because a lot of non-developers I meet complain about software being frustrating to use, even if they may not consciously notice it is laggy.) People think I'm joking when I say this, but I'm so attuned to Emacs, especially when I'm in a flow state, that I can actually feel when the garbage collector kicks in. It totally throws me off. I have a bunch of optimizations set up, like running GC whenever I tab out of Emacs or am idle for 5 seconds, but sometimes I can still feel it. I hope Emacs makes some progress in this area -- I hear there's a Rust rewrite in the works :) > If VSCode or any other text editor managed to provide a fast yet highly configurable editing experience without draining my laptop battery instantly This is huge for me. I basically work by grabbing my laptop and sitting, standing, or laying wherever I feel like. I can't stand the idea of having an "office". So I'm acutely aware of when an application is running down my battery. Emacs is awesome in this regard because it has no noticeable energy usage, which boggles the mind when I think about how powerful it is as software. I honestly see no reason whatsoever to use anything else.
- jackewiehose 8y ago
  >> While these may seem like trivial issues, they actually negatively impact my typing experience to a high degree. > I don't think these are trivial issues at all I'm stunned that anyone would actually be OK with "a noticable latency between keypresses" in text-editors. This might be still a thing if the whole desktop is streamed on a slow network but it shuld be completely unacceptable for normal text-editing. (Unfortunatly I do have that problem sometimes with emacs (on cygwin) with c++-files that are too large. But I won't dismiss cygwin.)

Pimpus 8y ago

> While these may seem like trivial issues, they actually negatively impact my typing experience to a high degree. I don't think these are trivial issues at all. I do the majority of my computing work in a text editor so it's important to me that it's as performant as possible. Imagine if, in real life, there was a slight lag every time you sent a "command" (e.g. pick up coffee). It would drive you crazy. And yet a lot of developers think that lag is acceptable in software. (I say "developers" because a lot of non-developers I meet complain about software being frustrating to use, even if they may not consciously notice it is laggy.) People think I'm joking when I say this, but I'm so attuned to Emacs, especially when I'm in a flow state, that I can actually feel when the garbage collector kicks in. It totally throws me off. I have a bunch of optimizations set up, like running GC whenever I tab out of Emacs or am idle for 5 seconds, but sometimes I can still feel it. I hope Emacs makes some progress in this area -- I hear there's a Rust rewrite in the works :) > If VSCode or any other text editor managed to provide a fast yet highly configurable editing experience without draining my laptop battery instantly This is huge for me. I basically work by grabbing my laptop and sitting, standing, or laying wherever I feel like. I can't stand the idea of having an "office". So I'm acutely aware of when an application is running down my battery. Emacs is awesome in this regard because it has no noticeable energy usage, which boggles the mind when I think about how powerful it is as software. I honestly see no reason whatsoever to use anything else.

jackewiehose 8y ago
>> While these may seem like trivial issues, they actually negatively impact my typing experience to a high degree. > I don't think these are trivial issues at all I'm stunned that anyone would actually be OK with "a noticable latency between keypresses" in text-editors. This might be still a thing if the whole desktop is streamed on a slow network but it shuld be completely unacceptable for normal text-editing. (Unfortunatly I do have that problem sometimes with emacs (on cygwin) with c++-files that are too large. But I won't dismiss cygwin.)