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> Emacs Lisp, or Elisp, is generally hated That seems unnecessary; of all the options above, it might be the one seeing the /most/ active development, and (giv

> Emacs Lisp, or Elisp, is generally hated That seems unnecessary; of all the options above, it might be the one seeing the /most/ active development, and (given that "Guile-macs" isn't happening anytime soon) will continue to be in active development for a long time to come.

alpaca128 6y ago
Yes, it's not ideal because of its lack of tail call optimisation, but as a Vim user I'm kind of envious now and then when I try to write a custom function myself. Then again afaik Vim doesn't throw errors when you have a bracket imbalance in comments(!), so that's nice.
- minerjoe 6y ago
  > errors ... bracket imbalance in comments Not sure where this is coming from. Elisp doesn't error on anything in comments.
  - alpaca128 6y ago
    I think it was due to org-mode, which has its share of bugs and glitches. Either way Emacs refused to evaluate a function because I had a commented out line with a closing parentheses in it, and would only accept it after I deleted that line.
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      If you can reproduce it it would be worth submitting a bug report. Comments like: (defun foo () ;; old code) new code) Should just get discarded when parsing/running the lisp code. There was a lot of code like that in my old .emacs file back when I was learning how I wanted it to behave but didn't want to delete old configurations (before I got into the git everything habit, especially).
      - alpaca128 6y ago
        I just checked, it doesn't happen in an actual elisp buffer, but every time in a standard .org file. It'll always throw a 'Lisp error: (scan-error "Unbalanced parentheses")'. You might rightly say that evaluating lisp code directly in an org-mode code block might not be the best idea, I just don't expect it to mostly work but mess up the syntax depending on comments.
        wtetzner 6y ago
        Yeah, sounds like an org-mode bug, not an Emacs Lisp bug.
        Jtsummers 6y ago
        Interesting. I frequently write Common Lisp code in org blocks and execute from there, but not Emacs Lisp. And I don't have emacs on my phone so I can't test it. Can you copy a sample org file here?
saurik 6y ago
I read this, and then went and read the article, and was expecting it to be hating on Elisp, but in fact the article defends it; FWIW, Elisp is generally hated, and that is one of the first (unfortunate) things I think of when I hear it come up in a conversation, so given that this author does not seem to agree I don't see anything wrong with this statement.
roenxi 6y ago
Elisp is popular, but not likely through any strength of the language. Emacs' rich history of people writing crazy extensions is just so compelling it can't be avoided. There isn't really an argument for why a text editor needs its own different brand of lisp vs. using Common Lisp with a dedicated library for the Emacs interpretation of how text works. It only ended up this way from inertia. But it is nevertheless extremely telling that the only major implementation of Elisp is Emacs.

alpaca128 6y ago

Yes, it's not ideal because of its lack of tail call optimisation, but as a Vim user I'm kind of envious now and then when I try to write a custom function myself. Then again afaik Vim doesn't throw errors when you have a bracket imbalance in comments(!), so that's nice.

minerjoe 6y ago
> errors ... bracket imbalance in comments Not sure where this is coming from. Elisp doesn't error on anything in comments.
- alpaca128 6y ago
  I think it was due to org-mode, which has its share of bugs and glitches. Either way Emacs refused to evaluate a function because I had a commented out line with a closing parentheses in it, and would only accept it after I deleted that line.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    If you can reproduce it it would be worth submitting a bug report. Comments like: (defun foo () ;; old code) new code) Should just get discarded when parsing/running the lisp code. There was a lot of code like that in my old .emacs file back when I was learning how I wanted it to behave but didn't want to delete old configurations (before I got into the git everything habit, especially).
    - alpaca128 6y ago
      I just checked, it doesn't happen in an actual elisp buffer, but every time in a standard .org file. It'll always throw a 'Lisp error: (scan-error "Unbalanced parentheses")'. You might rightly say that evaluating lisp code directly in an org-mode code block might not be the best idea, I just don't expect it to mostly work but mess up the syntax depending on comments.
      - wtetzner 6y ago
        Yeah, sounds like an org-mode bug, not an Emacs Lisp bug.
      - Jtsummers 6y ago
        Interesting. I frequently write Common Lisp code in org blocks and execute from there, but not Emacs Lisp. And I don't have emacs on my phone so I can't test it. Can you copy a sample org file here?

saurik 6y ago

I read this, and then went and read the article, and was expecting it to be hating on Elisp, but in fact the article defends it; FWIW, Elisp is generally hated, and that is one of the first (unfortunate) things I think of when I hear it come up in a conversation, so given that this author does not seem to agree I don't see anything wrong with this statement.

roenxi 6y ago

Elisp is popular, but not likely through any strength of the language. Emacs' rich history of people writing crazy extensions is just so compelling it can't be avoided. There isn't really an argument for why a text editor needs its own different brand of lisp vs. using Common Lisp with a dedicated library for the Emacs interpretation of how text works. It only ended up this way from inertia. But it is nevertheless extremely telling that the only major implementation of Elisp is Emacs.