35 ms·

The defaults. They aren't very good, IMO. Many users don't want to spend time with customizing, they want a system which works instantly with language plugins,

The defaults. They aren't very good, IMO. Many users don't want to spend time with customizing, they want a system which works instantly with language plugins, and so on. VSCode does a very good job at that. Emacs is for people who like to deeply personalize their editors. That's why I use it. But it takes time and learning elisp and many people are unwilling to do that.

mrspeaker 7y ago
My theory is that the awful defaults are a test: a baptism of (pretty ugly) fire. It's designed to make you take one look and walk away in amused bewilderment... which I'd say is the right choice for most people! People want "it just works tm". Emacs is not that kind of application. If you actually go through the crazy slog of making it usable and beautiful, then you pass the test and are hooked forever.
- jpxw 7y ago
  I’m not sure this is true. The enormity of the amount of things that need to be configured before it becomes usable leads new people to use things like Spacemacs etc. This means they rely on other peoples’ config, and aren’t able to customise the editor for themselves. The same issue exists in Vim. So many nice features of Vim (such as file management using buffers) are underused, because by default they aren’t configured in a usable way.
  - clarry 7y ago
    Otoh Vim has some good stuff out of the box that emacs sorely needs. Completion? ^N/^P and the same prefixed with ^X are very useful, no configuration required, and I have not found anything like that for emacs. Ctags works out of the box. It's a bit weird that cscope integration is worse (you need a script that scans up your directory hierarchy to find the database; ctags support has this built in). In emacs you can install the xcscope package but it's miserable compared to vim's built-in cscope support, and doesn't integrate with evil's tag stack.. sigh.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      > Completion? ^N/^P and the same prefixed with ^X are very useful, no configuration required For each their own I suppose. I despise those bindings and use the tab key instead, like nearly every other program that has completion.
- brlewis 7y ago
  I remember using emacs for C programming with make. M-x compile worked out of the box. I don't think emacs culture would suffer if TypeScript worked out of the box today.
patrec 7y ago
Even if you are an elisp expert, emacs is by now quite inferior to VSCode for most things; what you get out of the box with vscode beats laborious customization by expert hands in emacs 9 times out of 10. Emacs still does some fundamentals better (undo), can be used in a terminal and, if you avoid bloatware like spacemacs, also offers better performance. If one is willing to ignore the spyware and proprietary component aspects, vs code by now is a better choice even for most power users, IMO.
- taeric 7y ago
  I find this hard to believe. Not that you may like one over the other, but that one is superior. Getting used to tramp, magit, and eshell has effectively made it so I will be in Emacs forever. Adding in developer modes helps. Same for org. But really it is the seamless eshell ability to "cd /ssh:mycomputer/" and not with about reconnecting a terminal over and over that is something I don't want to leave.
  - jasondclinton 7y ago
    That's also built into VSCode. The feature is called "Remote".
    - taeric 7y ago
      Not the same, from what I have seen. But, more pointedly, I have been doing this specific workflow for over the last decade. So, it is close. But most of Emacs "just works" over a tramp connection. From git to old and new code completion. And has done so for a long time.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  I tried typescript lsp in emacs (tide) and it gave me a lot for free (realtime type check, formatting). What else VSCode has ? nicer hints (dom based) and refactoring ? Genuinely curious. Also VSCode puts my poor laptop to its knees. Core i5 cannot handle few keystrokes in a row.. that was quite a shocker tbh.
agumonkey 7y ago
But I believe people trying emacs are attracted by it because something in them makes them crave customization above out-of-the-box productivity.

mrspeaker 7y ago

My theory is that the awful defaults are a test: a baptism of (pretty ugly) fire. It's designed to make you take one look and walk away in amused bewilderment... which I'd say is the right choice for most people! People want "it just works tm". Emacs is not that kind of application. If you actually go through the crazy slog of making it usable and beautiful, then you pass the test and are hooked forever.

jpxw 7y ago
I’m not sure this is true. The enormity of the amount of things that need to be configured before it becomes usable leads new people to use things like Spacemacs etc. This means they rely on other peoples’ config, and aren’t able to customise the editor for themselves. The same issue exists in Vim. So many nice features of Vim (such as file management using buffers) are underused, because by default they aren’t configured in a usable way.
- clarry 7y ago
  Otoh Vim has some good stuff out of the box that emacs sorely needs. Completion? ^N/^P and the same prefixed with ^X are very useful, no configuration required, and I have not found anything like that for emacs. Ctags works out of the box. It's a bit weird that cscope integration is worse (you need a script that scans up your directory hierarchy to find the database; ctags support has this built in). In emacs you can install the xcscope package but it's miserable compared to vim's built-in cscope support, and doesn't integrate with evil's tag stack.. sigh.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    > Completion? ^N/^P and the same prefixed with ^X are very useful, no configuration required For each their own I suppose. I despise those bindings and use the tab key instead, like nearly every other program that has completion.
brlewis 7y ago
I remember using emacs for C programming with make. M-x compile worked out of the box. I don't think emacs culture would suffer if TypeScript worked out of the box today.

patrec 7y ago

Even if you are an elisp expert, emacs is by now quite inferior to VSCode for most things; what you get out of the box with vscode beats laborious customization by expert hands in emacs 9 times out of 10. Emacs still does some fundamentals better (undo), can be used in a terminal and, if you avoid bloatware like spacemacs, also offers better performance. If one is willing to ignore the spyware and proprietary component aspects, vs code by now is a better choice even for most power users, IMO.

taeric 7y ago
I find this hard to believe. Not that you may like one over the other, but that one is superior. Getting used to tramp, magit, and eshell has effectively made it so I will be in Emacs forever. Adding in developer modes helps. Same for org. But really it is the seamless eshell ability to "cd /ssh:mycomputer/" and not with about reconnecting a terminal over and over that is something I don't want to leave.
- jasondclinton 7y ago
  That's also built into VSCode. The feature is called "Remote".
  - taeric 7y ago
    Not the same, from what I have seen. But, more pointedly, I have been doing this specific workflow for over the last decade. So, it is close. But most of Emacs "just works" over a tramp connection. From git to old and new code completion. And has done so for a long time.
agumonkey 7y ago
I tried typescript lsp in emacs (tide) and it gave me a lot for free (realtime type check, formatting). What else VSCode has ? nicer hints (dom based) and refactoring ? Genuinely curious. Also VSCode puts my poor laptop to its knees. Core i5 cannot handle few keystrokes in a row.. that was quite a shocker tbh.

agumonkey 7y ago

But I believe people trying emacs are attracted by it because something in them makes them crave customization above out-of-the-box productivity.