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> If someone wrote an open source clone of Emacs that adopted some sane defaults, modern UI conventions, and dropped all the political BS it could be so much be

> If someone wrote an open source clone of Emacs that adopted some sane defaults, modern UI conventions, and dropped all the political BS it could be so much better. Worthy of mention, of course, is Spacemacs[1], which made Emacs approachable to me, someone who hadn't used much beyond Notepad++ and Eclipse before then. [1]: https://www.spacemacs.org/ https://www.spacemacs.org/

na85 6y ago
To me, the existence of spacemacs and doom and others are an indictment of Emacs' poor out of the box experience.
- lgessler 6y ago
  I don't disagree. I greatly appreciate Emacs now that I know (5% or less of) it, but I don't think I could have gotten here if Spacemacs hadn't provided sane defaults for packages and keybindings.
- jonfw 6y ago
  That's the makings of great open source software- you have something very lightweight and unopiniated at the core, and distributions can pack all of the features and opinion they want on top of that to target more specific use cases. This allows you to keep the opinion downstream of the core project, so changes by people with different opinions can still find their way upstream. Linux and Kubernetes are structured the same way- nobody is using that out of box on it's own
- iLemming 6y ago
  You have to understand that Spacemacs, Doom, ErgoEmacs, Prelude, etc. are not products. They are collections of recipes. And bare-bone Emacs is not a product either. Emacs is a kitchen where you use Lisp to bake your own editor/IDE/frankensteinian toy. Using Spacemacs or Doom doesn't liberate you from learning Lisp and Emacs internals.
  - mercer 6y ago
    > Using Spacemacs or Doom doesn't liberate you from learning Lisp and Emacs internals. Yes it does, for me anyways, for the most part. While I definitely plan to dive deeper, I'm using plenty of Emacs stuff via Spacemacs, and I've customized plenty of stuff by copy/pasting incomprehensible elisp snippets.
    - iLemming 6y ago
      It does in the beginning. But if you want to become a serious Emacsen, it's better to learn some emacs-lisp.
      - mercer 6y ago
        Sure, but 'using' Spacemacs is still perfectly possible without learning Lisp and Emacs internals. I use magit, orgmode, tramp, and I'm in Emacs for significant chunks of the day. I'd say that doesn't only mean that I'm a proper 'user' of Emacs, but that I'm pretty serious about it! Of course as a Lisp weenie I do intend to dive into Emacs and honestly part of the reason I don't is that I'm afraid I'll end up spending way too much time diving and tinkering.
- ssivark 6y ago
  And that’s fine, because Emacs is not meant to be an opinionated “app” or product. And that’s exactly what makes it so fantastic, in a landscape filled with crud that’s simple out-of-the-box, and then puts you in a straightjacket forever afterwards.

na85 6y ago

To me, the existence of spacemacs and doom and others are an indictment of Emacs' poor out of the box experience.

lgessler 6y ago
I don't disagree. I greatly appreciate Emacs now that I know (5% or less of) it, but I don't think I could have gotten here if Spacemacs hadn't provided sane defaults for packages and keybindings.
jonfw 6y ago
That's the makings of great open source software- you have something very lightweight and unopiniated at the core, and distributions can pack all of the features and opinion they want on top of that to target more specific use cases. This allows you to keep the opinion downstream of the core project, so changes by people with different opinions can still find their way upstream. Linux and Kubernetes are structured the same way- nobody is using that out of box on it's own
iLemming 6y ago
You have to understand that Spacemacs, Doom, ErgoEmacs, Prelude, etc. are not products. They are collections of recipes. And bare-bone Emacs is not a product either. Emacs is a kitchen where you use Lisp to bake your own editor/IDE/frankensteinian toy. Using Spacemacs or Doom doesn't liberate you from learning Lisp and Emacs internals.
- mercer 6y ago
  > Using Spacemacs or Doom doesn't liberate you from learning Lisp and Emacs internals. Yes it does, for me anyways, for the most part. While I definitely plan to dive deeper, I'm using plenty of Emacs stuff via Spacemacs, and I've customized plenty of stuff by copy/pasting incomprehensible elisp snippets.
  - iLemming 6y ago
    It does in the beginning. But if you want to become a serious Emacsen, it's better to learn some emacs-lisp.
    - mercer 6y ago
      Sure, but 'using' Spacemacs is still perfectly possible without learning Lisp and Emacs internals. I use magit, orgmode, tramp, and I'm in Emacs for significant chunks of the day. I'd say that doesn't only mean that I'm a proper 'user' of Emacs, but that I'm pretty serious about it! Of course as a Lisp weenie I do intend to dive into Emacs and honestly part of the reason I don't is that I'm afraid I'll end up spending way too much time diving and tinkering.
ssivark 6y ago
And that’s fine, because Emacs is not meant to be an opinionated “app” or product. And that’s exactly what makes it so fantastic, in a landscape filled with crud that’s simple out-of-the-box, and then puts you in a straightjacket forever afterwards.