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> While Emacs certainly still has a following, some people think that the Editor Wars are over and that Vim won.16 The 2018 Stack Overflow Developer Survey sugg
by j0e1 8y ago
> While Emacs certainly still has a following, some people think that the Editor Wars are over and that Vim won.16 The 2018 Stack Overflow Developer Survey suggests that this is true; only 4.1% of respondents used Emacs.
I'm an Emacs user for years now and love the editor. But I'm curious about this claim of its poor popularity. The article refers to a piece from
http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruce-Byfield-s-Blog/The-End-of-the-Editor-Wars http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruc... which bases its arguments on two surveys from 2013 and 2014.
Does anyone know of a credible way to measure the popularity of Emacs and what the usage trends are in 2018 other than SO?
- snambi 8y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/6ihxua/officially_settled_vim_5x_more_popular_than_emacs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/6ihxua/officially_se...
- tmalsburg2 8y agoSelection bias: the crowd on /r/linux is likely not representative.
- nextlevelwizard 8y agoWhy not? Do Emacs users usually use other OS than Linux?
- sshine 8y agoYes, Emacs!
- nextlevelwizard 8y agoPlease provide me with bootable emacs
- sshine 8y agoThis is probably the closest someone has come: https://www.informatimago.com/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linux.html https://www.informatimago.com/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linux...
- kqr 8y agoThey prefer other community technologies than reddit.
- meitham 8y agoThe fact that the subreddit is called r/linux instead of r/gnulinux is a major turnoff to emacs users.
- robdachshund 8y agoLol maybe if stallman actually made linux anyone would care. He's an insane man claiming a bunch of dev tools constitute an OS. Still hasn't made his own kernel because he can't. Linux is linux. Not gnu linux. Bite me.
- nextlevelwizard 8y agoIf your nose is so far up RMS ass then maybe that is actually representive of user bases and completely fine
- dang 8y agoPlease don't do this here.
- steve1977 8y agoI mainly use macOS for example. At least on the systems where I use Emacs. I use Linux for servers, but I rarely do much editing directly on those systems.
- tmalsburg2 8y ago/r/Linux is biased to sysadmin types but there are other communities where Emacs is more popular, for instance in some academic fields (where Mac OS tends to be more common).
- krylon 8y agoAt work, I use Windows, and I use emacs all the time; it's among the first programs I start after logging in. On top of everything else, it has a builtin "shell" that is a reasonable approximation to a Unix shell. (At home, I use GNU/Linux, though.)
- erikbye 8y agoOf course. Even a few game devs use Emacs on Windows. Jonathan Blow and Casey Muratori (he recently switched to something else I think, not sure if he's back to Emacs) being two prominent ones. I use Emacs whether I'm on Linux, FreeBSD, macOS or Windows.
- cup-of-tea 8y agoStupid poll. Due to the limited options, people who use neither editor seriously have voted vim simply because they know about it. Also it can't be denied that vim is the hipster editor, used by the same kind of people that use reddit. People that use emacs, like me, do not vote in polls on reddit.
- flukus 8y ago> Also it can't be denied that vim is the hipster editor, used by the same kind of people that use reddit /r/vim subscribers: 54,406 /r/emacs subscribers: 22,701 If anything it seems like emacs users are over represented on reddit :)
- cup-of-tea 8y agoOr maybe vim is massively over represented in those other polls. Lots of people claim to use it. Few customise and really live with it and thus are not likely to subscribe to a subreddit about it. I know "vim users" that actually use pycharm with vim keybindings if you actually watch them. If that's OK then everyone who uses default readline bindings is an emacs user.
- nightfly 8y ago> Also it can't be denied that vim is the hipster editor, used by the same kind of people that use reddit. I'll deny it. I doubt there is any kernel of truth to that sentence at all. ~ Emacs user who frequents Reddit (though not the tech subreddits because I get enough of that stuff here)
- pyrale 8y agoDude, your comments come across as categorizing and slightly judgemental. It's fine to use vim, and it's fine to use emacs. No need to get upset over a piece of technology.
- cup-of-tea 8y agoI meant to say vim is the "hip" thing, as in, it's in fashion with a certain type of programmer for some reason. Fashion definitely exists in our world, even though it's hard to admit. In my (purely anecdotal) experience, vim gets a lot more lip service than actual use.
- void_starer 8y agoWho cares even if it's 100x more popular. At the end of the day C++ is more popular than lisp/scheme.
- nextlevelwizard 8y agoCompletely anecdotally I've ever met two person who used Emacs and handful of people who use vim. At my current job I'm the only one who uses vim as my main tool, but collegue sitting next to me is the other Emacs user. Although some poeople have started to dabble in vim every now and then. I guess people just run into vim more often in the wild.
- alxlaz 8y agoIt's an anecdote that describes my experience as well. In more than ten years I've only met three other people who use Emacs (and one other person who uses WindowMaker :-) ), and I've often been the only Emacs user in an entire department.
- pletnes 8y agoRelatedly, the emacs users I’ve met were 10+ years older than me (so far). Also, a huge number of other editors have vim keybindings as an option or plugin: intellij, eclipse, visual studio - the list goes on forever...
- pimeys 8y agoThe funny thing is, emacs has the most compatible vi mode and they call it the evil-mode. Happy user for many years.
- cup-of-tea 8y agoVery difficult to do with free software and completely irrelevant really. At some point in your life it's OK to accept that you're the weird one. We're the weird ones. Donald Knuth, Richard Stallman, Guido van Rossum, Rich Hickey et al are the weird ones. I don't know why emacs is such a barrier to everyone else or why vim is so attractive. But I don't understand most other humans about most things.
- copperx 8y agoVim is attractive to many because it launches in a fraction of a second. This is especially important to sysadmins, who don't "live in a text editor." It's also quite popular to use vim without customization. I understand that some people have simple needs. I don't. The editor wars are over for me and Emacs has won.
- azernik 8y agoThe performance issue isn't about sysadmins wanting fraction-of-a-second launches; it's about Serious Programmers back in the 90s wanting precious memory. "Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping" was the derogatory nickname, back when eight megs was a lot. (And, secondarily, launch times then were longer; 0.2 seconds vim vs. 2 seconds emacs is a very different comparison than between 2-second vim and 20-second emacs.)
- namibj 8y agoI want my software to be instant, or as close to it as feasible. Vim is fast enough, make sometimes, and gcc not. This is in syntax-only mode for the latter.
- curlypaul924 8y agoBut how can you get more instant than "it's already running"? The emacs way of doing things seems to be to do _everything_ in emacs -- it's your shell, your editor, your debugger, your mail client. Vim users, on the other hand, tend to only open vim when they need it.
- ahoka 8y agoThe majority of "vim users" are painful to watch using it solely in visual mode with arrow keys and pressing backspace like crazy when they want to delete something.
- sgillen 8y agoProbably not the majority but yes quite a few developers out there that are “vim users”. I had one friend who would rave about vim and then I learned he didn’t know how to copy paste...
- Lio 8y agoThat's always funny. I have the same reaction with IDE users who vocally disdain my use of Vim. Usually, I find they're copying and pasting with a mouse in a solitary window in the centre of the screen whilst boasting about syntax highlighting. :D Of course it's great to see someone who actually really does know any piece of software give a demo of how they use it. For Vim newbies I'd point people first to the Vimtutor and then to http://vimcasts.org/ http://vimcasts.org/ as a starting point.
- yoz-y 8y agoWhy not both though? Both Qt Creator and Visual Studio code have quite good Vim Integration and their IDE features dwarf Vim with tons of plugins. I use all three for various purposes, but an IDE is a very useful things when working with languages that can take advantage of it.
- Lio 8y agoDefinitely. I can't see a reason not to if it works for you. The few times I've tried IDE plugins they get the Vi/Vim basics right but usually fall down later. The terminal means that I can almost always have consistent keyboard based workflow across platforms. I like being close to the OS and use external tools for things like git, debugging, profiling, etc. I'll supplement that with GUI tools when it suits me. E.g. for web work I'd use Chrome for it's debugger and profiler. I really like that things like Language Server Protocol are offering IDE like features without being tied down to a particular GUI IDE. There' more than one way to do it though so if GUI IDEs are what you prefer more power to you. GUI IDEs haven't been new technology since the 80/90s. They're just different.
- federicoponzi 8y agoWhat about starting a new poll? :) https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfgn71T6I3olMRNCTDQWTs5mBAVY4MVewdZLRggwu166o_UiQ/viewform?hl=en_GB https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfgn71T6I3olMRNCTDQ... Feel free to suggest options adds or edits
- federicoponzi 8y agoThere are already 195 answers :) you can see the results file here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1feDCU-yvdbhRCgMqren2lJhTrmLKWXp-ThUeVu2xE_Q/edit?usp%3Dsharing&sa=D&ust=1533643035369000&usg=AFQjCNF-DKZthnt_X8J6mbAUACwn2s6rhQ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1feDCU-yvdbhRCgMqren2...
- j0e1 8y agoThat's a great idea! As of now there are already 460 responses :)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- corpMaverick 8y agoMy personal journey. My first editor was vi. Then I learned about emacs and used it for a few years. But I still had to use vi when I logged in remote machines that didn't have emacs. When vim came a long, it was almost as good as emacs and I could use it everywhere. Conclusion: vi/vim was everywhere already. Now days I use sublime. I still use vi/vim when using *nix servers.
- technofiend 8y agoSame. What forced me back to using ed, ex and vi was the then-design of unix: if you were in the middle of recovering a truly borked server then only the static binaries were available.
- kuwze 8y ago/r/emacs is at 20k subscribers and /r/vim is at 50k