7 ms·

Lisp Enlightenment and Emacs Frustration

32 points by gnosis 16y ago

Xurinos 16y ago
Oh nooo... It's a 2007 article, but I wish I had been able to go back to that time and shout, "You can use vim! It's okay!" slimv... screen, vim, sbcl in an alternate window with linedit... I think the only real things emacs ever gave me was some intellisense and a slightly enhanced debugger over sbcl's stock debugger. I do not really feel slowed down, though; maybe the problem is that I am not regularly experiencing the speed-ups. :) But whatever the case, emacs should not be a barrier to Lisp. I might even recommend for new Lisp users: avoid emacs. First learn Lisp. Play around a bit. Most of your environment should be the REPL, and you can copy-paste from your favorite editor. You can use "(ed)" in the REPL. Go from there. Then, later on, try to get emacs to work with your Lisp. Mainly, you will want to experience the interaction, the environment with Lisp. Finally, switch back to vim when you are ready to get your real work done quickly. I couldn't help the last line... :) Use both editors, depending on your immediate need. But learning Lisp is separate from learning emacs.
- GrooveStomp 16y ago
  I completely agree. I've tried doing the Lisp + Emacs combo, and it's just too daunting for someone starting out. I'm happy as can be using Vim for now. I fully intend to give Emacs a thorough chance once more, but not until I'm more thoroughly entrenched in Lisp.
  - sigzero 16y ago
    My fingers are broken. I dust of emacs every now and then but I end up typing vim commands on the screen when I want to do things. :-)
- Davertron 16y ago
  I use VIM as well to edit lisp and it works wonderfully. I, too, wanted to scream back in time at this guy :) I do think that I'm probably missing some nice things that SLIME has that I don't currently take advantage of, because I usually just treat my lisp programs much like other programming languages: I write all my code in an editor (VIM), and then I hop over to a terminal and just run "sbcl --load file.lisp". The interactive piece is probably nice, and may be a little faster, but for what I'm doing, this is is all I need. Besides, this is pretty much how I program in every other programming language anyway.
swannodette 16y ago
If all you want to do is learn the beauty of Lisp don't waste time mucking around with arcane (and great) editors like Vim or Emacs. I'm using LispWorks 6.0 Personal Edition to work through Norvig's PAIP - no headaches.
- rman666 16y ago
  Or consider using newLisp (newLisp.org) -- easy to use and it has a very nice IDE. It's FREE too.
  - apl 16y ago
    > Or consider using newLisp (newLisp.org) -- > easy to use and it has a very nice IDE. It's FREE too. You may add sucking as a Lisp to that list of virtues.
- blacksmythe 16y ago
  DrRacket (packaged with the Racket variant of Scheme) provides some indenting and paren matching that is helpful, at least compared to a basic text editor.
  - swannodette 16y ago
    DrRacket isn't just helpful, it's a downright fantastic IDE if you're digging into Scheme :)
    - gnosis 16y ago
      Does it have vim keybindings?
      - swannodette 16y ago
        No, for that perhaps Geiser+Viper-mode in Emacs would be suitable.
      - gus_massa 16y ago
xyzzyz 16y ago
Hey, Emacs keybindings suck. Why don't we fix them, instead of complaining? Surely, it will not be easy -- there are some problems visible even from distance. One of them are people like me who grew accustomed to Emacs' idiosyncrasies -- they're small problem. The big one are people who firmly believe that C-f,b,n,p, C-y/M-y, mainly useless functions having single-key bindings and really useful ones concealed under complicated binding, like C-x b or C-x o, or without any binding at all, like replace-string or query-replace, etc, is the way to go.
- rednum 16y ago
  As a Vim user who switched to emacs I find emacs bindings inconvenient as hell [1] however I don't think it is possible to fix them now. Most 'prominent' emacs users are simply used to them and won't change their habits, it's really unlikely that new bindings - no matter how cool they would be - would acquire much attention. [1] Well, I may be biased, however I already use emacs commands automatically e.g. acquired some muscle memory and some things actually are better in vim - after long coding I can actually feel some strain from pressing C-M, and navigation still is much slower, and I doubt it will get faster with time.
  - gnosis 16y ago
    You might want to check out viper and vimpulse: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ViperMode http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ViperMode http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-es/Vimpulse http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-es/Vimpulse
    - lelele 16y ago
      or Vim mode: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/VimMode http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/VimMode
  - sjs 16y ago
    It'd be a small annoyance but literally every Emacs user customizes Emacs and has a config file. The veterans would grumble and drag their feet to upgrade to the "broken" version, and then we'd simply bind C-[npfbae] and forget about the switch. Changes can be made there just needs to be a lone decision maker who can say "this is the way it's going to be, like it or lump it".
spacemanaki 16y ago
Poor guy, I hope he stuck with it. After all, doesn't pg use vi? Eta Someone indeed pointed this out as the first comment in 2007.
technomancy 16y ago
One time I tried using Eclipse for a screencast, and it felt like coding with oven mitts on. However, I didn't blog about the experience, because it contributed nothing useful. I wonder if the same thought occurred to the author.
Stormbringer 16y ago
It baffles me whenever someone announces their discovery that Java didn't invent objects and garbage collection as though that invalidates the whole language. I wonder what rock they have been hiding under. How could any true language enthusiast not have an understanding of their language's history? ==== Java has very few original features. However, it did serve as a sort of 'feature aggregator', where it pulled in a very large pile of features from other languages and housed them all under one roof. What I (vaguely) remember about Java from the early days as being it's (other) main advantages were: (1) incredibly easy networking (compare sockets with C for example) (2) applets (yes they suck(ed), but no other language had that browser adoption) (3) it wasn't Microsoft (not such a big deal now, but back in the day Microsoft were a lot more aggressive) (4) it was open(ish) (you could look at the library code to figure out how it was doing stuff) (compare with Visual Basic where everything either magically works or magically doesn't) (5) Threads (compare again to semaphores) (6) Free (as in beer) In some cases, such as early Java, I think a feature most people don't really take into account is not what was put into the language, but what was left out. By hiding pointers behind the curtain, it made the language a lot easier. Easier to write, and easier to read. Even then it had its wrinkles, the people I know who were uber-productive in Java tended to use a small subset of the languages features. Over the years of course feature creep has slipped in, so it now has bits of perl (regex) and bits of C++ (templates/generics). A lot more of the base code is a lot uglier than it used to be.... ==== As for Lisp, I don't really buy the argument that lack of a good IDE held it back. I think the following reasons are more to the point: A) butt ugly syntax (I'm talking about the random lengths of indents, not the ()s - to understand why this is bad, go learn you some usability) B) greedy corporate interests (if the developer kit for Java had cost $10,000 no one would ever use it either) (early on) C) language fracturing and speciation (there are too many 'little lisps' for any one of them to gain momentum) (later on) D) lack of well written textbooks (compare to the veritable explosion of books for Java in its early days. Back when I was actually interested in Lisp I used to pick up books on it, and they'd invariably spend the first 2 pages showing some vague equivalency to lambda calculus and then it seemed as though they felt their teaching duty was done) speaking of the lambdas... E) programmers got better at naming variables and functions (having anonymous functions may be a neat party trick, but nowdays when we put on our big boy pants we like to name stuff) F) missed the OO boat because they were too caught up in their own cleverness (early OO implementations in Lisp were butt ugly and broken (didn't do encapsulation and/or inheritance well)). You may argue (as the author of the original article does) that currently Lisp does wonderful OO, but you have the same problem as say Java does, overcoming the slowness myth(s). I wonder if it is possible to predict the critical junctures where the myths about a language solidify. In any case, it doesn't help to make a new lisp with more/better/faster features (in an attempt to create new myths), because that just feeds the confusion (see point C above) edit for irony: missed a )
Luyt 16y ago
Ha! Editing Clojure source with UltraEdit over a WinSCP SSH connection to my server! There is no need to force yourself to using either emacs or vi (both of which I use sometimes).
dto 16y ago
Emphasis seems odd here. Keybindings are just about the most trivially (and commonly) customized part of Emacs, and things like CUA-mode and customized Mac builds of Emacs are common ways of dealing with the issue. Whereas the major benefit of Emacs for Lisp development---having your development environment written in Lisp, by Lispers, who have collectively spent 30 years or so improving its Lisp editing/development capabilities both in included and in third-party elisp libraries---is not mentioned. I think the poster implicitly points out something interesting---that Java and Common Lisp are both large languages that require sophisticated tools to use effectively. I'm not talking about Emacs versus Eclipse here, I mean the toolset in your brain. Money quote: "IntelliJ makes Java programming as easy as it can possibly be. It more or less compiles your code as you type it, points out most bugs as they occur, intelligently suggests code completion to finish your words for you. I generates all the annoying repetitive code, like getters and setters and equals() methods for you. Without it, Java would be much more laborious to program in..." So to Java users, writing annoying repetitive code is a life-saving feature of the IDE, whereas for Common Lisp it would simply be bad style.
Ingaz 16y ago
Hm. I'm using emacs just several days. I've used: vim, visual studio, Delphi/CBuilder IDEs, PyScripter, notepad++, PL/SQL Developer, TOAD, others. What I found pleasant in emacs: It does not have learning curve at all. All I need to figure is just Alt-x (M-x). Than it became fun. I've read documentation only for cua-mode. Everything else was found through guessing and experimentation. Of course, maybe I'm just novice and I do not know some hidden emacs dangers, one day they will pop up and bite my ass. Dunno.

32 points by gnosis 16y ago

Oh nooo... It's a 2007 article, but I wish I had been able to go back to that time and shout, "You can use vim! It's okay!" slimv... screen, vim, sbcl in an alternate window with linedit... I think the only real things emacs ever gave me was some intellisense and a slightly enhanced debugger over sbcl's stock debugger. I do not really feel slowed down, though; maybe the problem is that I am not regularly experiencing the speed-ups. :) But whatever the case, emacs should not be a barrier to Lisp. I might even recommend for new Lisp users: avoid emacs. First learn Lisp. Play around a bit. Most of your environment should be the REPL, and you can copy-paste from your favorite editor. You can use "(ed)" in the REPL. Go from there. Then, later on, try to get emacs to work with your Lisp. Mainly, you will want to experience the interaction, the environment with Lisp. Finally, switch back to vim when you are ready to get your real work done quickly. I couldn't help the last line... :) Use both editors, depending on your immediate need. But learning Lisp is separate from learning emacs.

GrooveStomp 16y ago
I completely agree. I've tried doing the Lisp + Emacs combo, and it's just too daunting for someone starting out. I'm happy as can be using Vim for now. I fully intend to give Emacs a thorough chance once more, but not until I'm more thoroughly entrenched in Lisp.
- sigzero 16y ago
  My fingers are broken. I dust of emacs every now and then but I end up typing vim commands on the screen when I want to do things. :-)
Davertron 16y ago
I use VIM as well to edit lisp and it works wonderfully. I, too, wanted to scream back in time at this guy :) I do think that I'm probably missing some nice things that SLIME has that I don't currently take advantage of, because I usually just treat my lisp programs much like other programming languages: I write all my code in an editor (VIM), and then I hop over to a terminal and just run "sbcl --load file.lisp". The interactive piece is probably nice, and may be a little faster, but for what I'm doing, this is is all I need. Besides, this is pretty much how I program in every other programming language anyway.

swannodette 16y ago

If all you want to do is learn the beauty of Lisp don't waste time mucking around with arcane (and great) editors like Vim or Emacs. I'm using LispWorks 6.0 Personal Edition to work through Norvig's PAIP - no headaches.

rman666 16y ago
Or consider using newLisp (newLisp.org) -- easy to use and it has a very nice IDE. It's FREE too.
- apl 16y ago
  > Or consider using newLisp (newLisp.org) -- > easy to use and it has a very nice IDE. It's FREE too. You may add sucking as a Lisp to that list of virtues.
blacksmythe 16y ago
DrRacket (packaged with the Racket variant of Scheme) provides some indenting and paren matching that is helpful, at least compared to a basic text editor.
- swannodette 16y ago
  DrRacket isn't just helpful, it's a downright fantastic IDE if you're digging into Scheme :)
  - gnosis 16y ago
    Does it have vim keybindings?
    - swannodette 16y ago
      No, for that perhaps Geiser+Viper-mode in Emacs would be suitable.
    - gus_massa 16y ago

xyzzyz 16y ago

Hey, Emacs keybindings suck. Why don't we fix them, instead of complaining? Surely, it will not be easy -- there are some problems visible even from distance. One of them are people like me who grew accustomed to Emacs' idiosyncrasies -- they're small problem. The big one are people who firmly believe that C-f,b,n,p, C-y/M-y, mainly useless functions having single-key bindings and really useful ones concealed under complicated binding, like C-x b or C-x o, or without any binding at all, like replace-string or query-replace, etc, is the way to go.

rednum 16y ago
As a Vim user who switched to emacs I find emacs bindings inconvenient as hell [1] however I don't think it is possible to fix them now. Most 'prominent' emacs users are simply used to them and won't change their habits, it's really unlikely that new bindings - no matter how cool they would be - would acquire much attention. [1] Well, I may be biased, however I already use emacs commands automatically e.g. acquired some muscle memory and some things actually are better in vim - after long coding I can actually feel some strain from pressing C-M, and navigation still is much slower, and I doubt it will get faster with time.
- gnosis 16y ago
  You might want to check out viper and vimpulse: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ViperMode http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ViperMode http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-es/Vimpulse http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-es/Vimpulse
  - lelele 16y ago
    or Vim mode: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/VimMode http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/VimMode
- sjs 16y ago
  It'd be a small annoyance but literally every Emacs user customizes Emacs and has a config file. The veterans would grumble and drag their feet to upgrade to the "broken" version, and then we'd simply bind C-[npfbae] and forget about the switch. Changes can be made there just needs to be a lone decision maker who can say "this is the way it's going to be, like it or lump it".

spacemanaki 16y ago

Poor guy, I hope he stuck with it. After all, doesn't pg use vi? Eta Someone indeed pointed this out as the first comment in 2007.

technomancy 16y ago

One time I tried using Eclipse for a screencast, and it felt like coding with oven mitts on. However, I didn't blog about the experience, because it contributed nothing useful. I wonder if the same thought occurred to the author.

Stormbringer 16y ago

It baffles me whenever someone announces their discovery that Java didn't invent objects and garbage collection as though that invalidates the whole language. I wonder what rock they have been hiding under. How could any true language enthusiast not have an understanding of their language's history? ==== Java has very few original features. However, it did serve as a sort of 'feature aggregator', where it pulled in a very large pile of features from other languages and housed them all under one roof. What I (vaguely) remember about Java from the early days as being it's (other) main advantages were: (1) incredibly easy networking (compare sockets with C for example) (2) applets (yes they suck(ed), but no other language had that browser adoption) (3) it wasn't Microsoft (not such a big deal now, but back in the day Microsoft were a lot more aggressive) (4) it was open(ish) (you could look at the library code to figure out how it was doing stuff) (compare with Visual Basic where everything either magically works or magically doesn't) (5) Threads (compare again to semaphores) (6) Free (as in beer) In some cases, such as early Java, I think a feature most people don't really take into account is not what was put into the language, but what was left out. By hiding pointers behind the curtain, it made the language a lot easier. Easier to write, and easier to read. Even then it had its wrinkles, the people I know who were uber-productive in Java tended to use a small subset of the languages features. Over the years of course feature creep has slipped in, so it now has bits of perl (regex) and bits of C++ (templates/generics). A lot more of the base code is a lot uglier than it used to be.... ==== As for Lisp, I don't really buy the argument that lack of a good IDE held it back. I think the following reasons are more to the point: A) butt ugly syntax (I'm talking about the random lengths of indents, not the ()s - to understand why this is bad, go learn you some usability) B) greedy corporate interests (if the developer kit for Java had cost $10,000 no one would ever use it either) (early on) C) language fracturing and speciation (there are too many 'little lisps' for any one of them to gain momentum) (later on) D) lack of well written textbooks (compare to the veritable explosion of books for Java in its early days. Back when I was actually interested in Lisp I used to pick up books on it, and they'd invariably spend the first 2 pages showing some vague equivalency to lambda calculus and then it seemed as though they felt their teaching duty was done) speaking of the lambdas... E) programmers got better at naming variables and functions (having anonymous functions may be a neat party trick, but nowdays when we put on our big boy pants we like to name stuff) F) missed the OO boat because they were too caught up in their own cleverness (early OO implementations in Lisp were butt ugly and broken (didn't do encapsulation and/or inheritance well)). You may argue (as the author of the original article does) that currently Lisp does wonderful OO, but you have the same problem as say Java does, overcoming the slowness myth(s). I wonder if it is possible to predict the critical junctures where the myths about a language solidify. In any case, it doesn't help to make a new lisp with more/better/faster features (in an attempt to create new myths), because that just feeds the confusion (see point C above) edit for irony: missed a )

Luyt 16y ago

Ha! Editing Clojure source with UltraEdit over a WinSCP SSH connection to my server! There is no need to force yourself to using either emacs or vi (both of which I use sometimes).

dto 16y ago

Emphasis seems odd here. Keybindings are just about the most trivially (and commonly) customized part of Emacs, and things like CUA-mode and customized Mac builds of Emacs are common ways of dealing with the issue. Whereas the major benefit of Emacs for Lisp development---having your development environment written in Lisp, by Lispers, who have collectively spent 30 years or so improving its Lisp editing/development capabilities both in included and in third-party elisp libraries---is not mentioned. I think the poster implicitly points out something interesting---that Java and Common Lisp are both large languages that require sophisticated tools to use effectively. I'm not talking about Emacs versus Eclipse here, I mean the toolset in your brain. Money quote: "IntelliJ makes Java programming as easy as it can possibly be. It more or less compiles your code as you type it, points out most bugs as they occur, intelligently suggests code completion to finish your words for you. I generates all the annoying repetitive code, like getters and setters and equals() methods for you. Without it, Java would be much more laborious to program in..." So to Java users, writing annoying repetitive code is a life-saving feature of the IDE, whereas for Common Lisp it would simply be bad style.

Ingaz 16y ago

Hm. I'm using emacs just several days. I've used: vim, visual studio, Delphi/CBuilder IDEs, PyScripter, notepad++, PL/SQL Developer, TOAD, others. What I found pleasant in emacs: It does not have learning curve at all. All I need to figure is just Alt-x (M-x). Than it became fun. I've read documentation only for cua-mode. Everything else was found through guessing and experimentation. Of course, maybe I'm just novice and I do not know some hidden emacs dangers, one day they will pop up and bite my ass. Dunno.