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The "killer feature" that Emacs brings is automatic indentation. Parenthesis matching is important, but an easy feature for non-progammable editors to support.

The "killer feature" that Emacs brings is automatic indentation. Parenthesis matching is important, but an easy feature for non-progammable editors to support. Knowing how much whitespace belongs at the beginning of each line is harder, and pretty much requires programmability in the editor. Once you have had it, you will miss it when it is taken away. Manual indentation breaks your "flow" while composing code. This is true in C-like languages, but it is much more critical in Lisp, where there are fewer punctuation cues.

aerique 16y ago
No, the killer future that Emacs brings is Slime.
- malkia 16y ago
  The killer feature is the editor knowing what's going on in the image. For example typing (blah - he can check from the current package - whether that's function, special symbol, etc. - and if it's in a table of specially formatted ones (if, when, unless, etc.) it can do better formatting. Not only that but you can inform about this in the actual. Same goes for Lispworks, and maybe for AllegroCL. Difference is emacs communicates with slime to the swanked image, and if that image hangs, your editor is still there - not the same with LispWorks and AllegroCL (but if you are careful, and know when it can explode then it's ok).
- sedachv 16y ago
  SLIME is cool, but the underlying communications protocol (SWANK) is not only network transparent, but also editor-agnostic. Besides Emacs, it's also used by MCLIDE and the Cusp plugin for Eclipse.
Xurinos 16y ago
vim does automatic indention, too, fwiw. Although the author talked about manual shifting, he did not mention vim's "=". This is equivalent to emacs's default behavior for tab (for when emacs's automatic indention is bypassed). I agree with the other responder: slime. It is pretty much the only allure for me to emacs, and the only feature I really miss with current vim packages is the intellisense that understands what package I am working in, what new symbols I introduced. I am okay without, but I could probably work slightly faster if I had it.
srean 16y ago
Isn't this the feature that Steele and Stallman were working on, in Guy Steele's example of extreme pair programming. http://cycle-gap.blogspot.com/2007/09/extreme-pair-programming-guy-steele-and.html http://cycle-gap.blogspot.com/2007/09/extreme-pair-programmi...

aerique 16y ago

No, the killer future that Emacs brings is Slime.

malkia 16y ago
The killer feature is the editor knowing what's going on in the image. For example typing (blah - he can check from the current package - whether that's function, special symbol, etc. - and if it's in a table of specially formatted ones (if, when, unless, etc.) it can do better formatting. Not only that but you can inform about this in the actual. Same goes for Lispworks, and maybe for AllegroCL. Difference is emacs communicates with slime to the swanked image, and if that image hangs, your editor is still there - not the same with LispWorks and AllegroCL (but if you are careful, and know when it can explode then it's ok).
sedachv 16y ago
SLIME is cool, but the underlying communications protocol (SWANK) is not only network transparent, but also editor-agnostic. Besides Emacs, it's also used by MCLIDE and the Cusp plugin for Eclipse.

Xurinos 16y ago

vim does automatic indention, too, fwiw. Although the author talked about manual shifting, he did not mention vim's "=". This is equivalent to emacs's default behavior for tab (for when emacs's automatic indention is bypassed). I agree with the other responder: slime. It is pretty much the only allure for me to emacs, and the only feature I really miss with current vim packages is the intellisense that understands what package I am working in, what new symbols I introduced. I am okay without, but I could probably work slightly faster if I had it.

srean 16y ago

Isn't this the feature that Steele and Stallman were working on, in Guy Steele's example of extreme pair programming. http://cycle-gap.blogspot.com/2007/09/extreme-pair-programming-guy-steele-and.html http://cycle-gap.blogspot.com/2007/09/extreme-pair-programmi...