4 ms·
Any kind of set-up is done in textual configuration. And this is a major plus. That means you get quickly to see what you have configured, you can put it into
by jnxx 6y ago
Any kind of set-up is done in textual configuration. And this is
a major plus.
That means you get quickly to see what you have configured,
you can put it into version control and check it out
on a different machine, and so on. This is a big ergonomical
difference to IDEs.
As the technical foundation, it is rock-solid. Emacs is
based on lisp which has basic text manipulation
instructions implemented in native code. This makes it
both extremely easy to configure and extend it. It is
also from a time when Linux was not yet existant, Unix
was not yet universal, and Lisp machines were a thing,
so it has a certain platform feeling - while also
having good access to the OS. It is certainly possible
to use Emacs in text mode as a login shell or as a
terminal manager.
To that adds another quality of Emacs and vi,
one which these IDE enthusiasts can not even
understand, which is that the user interface
is incredibly stable. And this means that
something you have become used to will
not change and drift under your feet
like quicksand. And in the long run, this
really saves a ton of time. That does not
mean you can't change things, rather you can
change stuff under your control, like using
the better-defaults setup.
- jml7c5 6y agoI'm not sure I would consider Emacs's technical foundation rock-solid. Elisp is a bit of a relic, with little in the way of modern niceties, some anti-features, and a slow implementation. And heavy use of cons lists causes a lot of pointer-chasing.
- jnxx 6y agoSo, it might please you to read that there is a slow but steady process to replace elisp by Guile: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs And to me, this is a indication of a solid foundation: That you can swap out some base infrastructure for another when you need to, without messing everything up. (Another example is that Racket was switching the core implemenation to be based on Chez scheme, which compiles to native code).
- jml7c5 6y agoIt's possible my information is out of date, but I am under the impression that guile-emacs development stalled five years ago.
- jnxx 6y agoHere is a description of the current situation: https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/equuct/i_would_help_fund_the_development_of_guile_emacs/fexumlf/ https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/equuct/i_would_help_... https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs#toc1 https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs#toc1
- jml7c5 6y agoI think that confirms my suspicion. Even the guile-emacs in guix is based on a commit from 2015-05-12.