3 ms·

Yeah definitely ignore all the seasonal requests for the latest fads, and just focus on the last paragraph. I think the post author agrees, hence the sarcastic

Yeah definitely ignore all the seasonal requests for the latest fads, and just focus on the last paragraph. I think the post author agrees, hence the sarcastic tone. The fact is Emacs does many neat things but is also a giant steaming pile of sh-- tech debt. I'm sure VSCode will get there too as time passes, but older editors simply have a head start in this regard. Emacs needs it's Neovim (which also contributes back to Vim) moment. My old favorite would be returning to https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs and finishing that off. No reason Emacs needs to also maintain it's own Lisp engine, and I'm sure lexical scope would help reign in tech debt too. Oh, and make emacsclient to a eamcsserver on another machine work, please! That would be such a killer app.

mjw1007 6y ago
emacsclient to an emacsserver on another machine works fine. You'll want to tunnel it over ssh. If the machines don't have a shared filesystem namespace, I suggest writing a small wrapper that translates the file's pathname to what the server needs (whether that's a mounted network filesystem or a tramp string or whatever).
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  > emacsclient to an emacsserver on another machine works fine. You'll want to tunnel it over ssh. Yeah after a bunch of dumb stackoverflows said it was impossible because it uses a unix domain socket (eyeroll), I tried that. > If the machines don't have a shared filesystem namespace, I suggest writing a small wrapper that translates the file's pathname to what the server needs (whether that's a mounted network filesystem or a tramp string or whatever). Err but I don't want to try to align the file systems at all. I want the server to do all the work so the client is just doing human<->computer IO.
klodolph 6y ago
I would love something like “Emacs’s Neovim”. Guile should be enough. Keep packages out of the global namespace. Get rid of Elisp and all its differences. Let me use C-Z/X/C/V for undo/cut/copy/paste (or maybe C-Shift-C is fine?) Keep org-mode, web-mode, etc :-)
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  I don't think we even need Guile (though I wouldn't complain). Just cleaning up the way packages install (a proper package system, which could be optional) would be a vast improvement for elisp. By creating a package system, making everything default into the el-user package if not otherwise specified, and moving the core elisp capabilities to the el/emacs-lisp package (used by el-user, importing everything), you'd create a clean path for moving forward. I have zero time and energy to contribute to emacs, but this is really the only fundamental change I'd want as someone who does delve into elisp frequently (or used to, not so much in the past year or so).
  - klodolph 6y ago
    Personally, I would love Guile. There are just so many quirks to Elisp, and Scheme is more “known”.
evolve2k 6y ago
Yes this 100%. My son is just finishing high school and is taking an interest in code to the level of questioning if it’s worth learning emacs/vim. At the time I spoke of how emacs seems to be approaching a neovim moment and then pointed out that practically if the community was not prepared to invest in supporting new users like him, then he’s better off not supporting them and to look solidly at neovim (beyond the default of vscode).
evolve2k 6y ago
As I see it the older emacs users see many of their decisions as right because they made them. What I’m sensing is a total lack of basic design thinking. A “neoEmacs” could achieve this, get clear who the new target audience is and based around this what a neoEmacs clear project goals would be (something like “position an emacs to be the editor of choice for people born after the year 2000”) [or whatever] and then with a new persona start to unpack critical design considerations and priorities a project plan from there. For emacs to survive/thrive it will need to go through a process of transformation. Even from these conversations I can see right now that can’t happen with the current core emacs project. I neoEmacs would be a great way forward.
- abhiyerra 6y ago
  Not saying this is the way to do it but there is a remacs which is working on rewriting Emacs in Rust and fixing the C level issues in the process: https://github.com/remacs/remacs https://github.com/remacs/remacs

mjw1007 6y ago

emacsclient to an emacsserver on another machine works fine. You'll want to tunnel it over ssh. If the machines don't have a shared filesystem namespace, I suggest writing a small wrapper that translates the file's pathname to what the server needs (whether that's a mounted network filesystem or a tramp string or whatever).

Ericson2314 6y ago
> emacsclient to an emacsserver on another machine works fine. You'll want to tunnel it over ssh. Yeah after a bunch of dumb stackoverflows said it was impossible because it uses a unix domain socket (eyeroll), I tried that. > If the machines don't have a shared filesystem namespace, I suggest writing a small wrapper that translates the file's pathname to what the server needs (whether that's a mounted network filesystem or a tramp string or whatever). Err but I don't want to try to align the file systems at all. I want the server to do all the work so the client is just doing human<->computer IO.

klodolph 6y ago

I would love something like “Emacs’s Neovim”. Guile should be enough. Keep packages out of the global namespace. Get rid of Elisp and all its differences. Let me use C-Z/X/C/V for undo/cut/copy/paste (or maybe C-Shift-C is fine?) Keep org-mode, web-mode, etc :-)

Jtsummers 6y ago
I don't think we even need Guile (though I wouldn't complain). Just cleaning up the way packages install (a proper package system, which could be optional) would be a vast improvement for elisp. By creating a package system, making everything default into the el-user package if not otherwise specified, and moving the core elisp capabilities to the el/emacs-lisp package (used by el-user, importing everything), you'd create a clean path for moving forward. I have zero time and energy to contribute to emacs, but this is really the only fundamental change I'd want as someone who does delve into elisp frequently (or used to, not so much in the past year or so).
- klodolph 6y ago
  Personally, I would love Guile. There are just so many quirks to Elisp, and Scheme is more “known”.

evolve2k 6y ago

Yes this 100%. My son is just finishing high school and is taking an interest in code to the level of questioning if it’s worth learning emacs/vim. At the time I spoke of how emacs seems to be approaching a neovim moment and then pointed out that practically if the community was not prepared to invest in supporting new users like him, then he’s better off not supporting them and to look solidly at neovim (beyond the default of vscode).

evolve2k 6y ago

As I see it the older emacs users see many of their decisions as right because they made them. What I’m sensing is a total lack of basic design thinking. A “neoEmacs” could achieve this, get clear who the new target audience is and based around this what a neoEmacs clear project goals would be (something like “position an emacs to be the editor of choice for people born after the year 2000”) [or whatever] and then with a new persona start to unpack critical design considerations and priorities a project plan from there. For emacs to survive/thrive it will need to go through a process of transformation. Even from these conversations I can see right now that can’t happen with the current core emacs project. I neoEmacs would be a great way forward.

abhiyerra 6y ago
Not saying this is the way to do it but there is a remacs which is working on rewriting Emacs in Rust and fixing the C level issues in the process: https://github.com/remacs/remacs https://github.com/remacs/remacs