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It's very interesting. I used Emacs for a long time, but slowly got weaned off it. - I used it for email, then I had to collaborate with people who wrote "ple

It's very interesting. I used Emacs for a long time, but slowly got weaned off it. - I used it for email, then I had to collaborate with people who wrote "please see my comments in orange below". (Of course, they were Outlook users.) Emacs did not show that orange color, so I didn't know... Maybe these days it's possible to read Outlook emails nicely in Emacs. - I used it for development, then the Java software I worked on got too big to internalize all APIs and Eclipse completion and refactoring really helped. I did try to build the Eclipse "quickfix" thing in Emacs, but all I got done was to add a missing import (because JDEE, I think it was, provided that functionality). - I switched from Linux to Windows because the world around me was like that, and so I could help junior colleagues with their EOL problems... - I used Mercurial (hg) for a while and TortoiseHg was really nice, so I didn't feel the need to use Emacs for this. It's a pity, really. Some aspect here, some aspect there, and then you get pulled away from Emacs. Now, with LSP, perhaps Emacs could offer code completion and refactoring, but the Java app I work on builds with gradle, and I have no clue how to tell the Java/LSP thing about the class path... So I'm on IntelliJ...

dleslie 6y ago
> I switched from Linux to Windows This is where many people leave Emacs. It's not that there's better tools on Windows, it's that Emacs on windows is terrible. Magit is orders of magnitude slower, for instance, and external tool integration is grossly impeded by the poor availability and quality of package management on Windows. Maintaining Emacs on windows takes considerable effort. Personally, I make do with WSL1 and Emacs. WSL2 is intolerably broken when working on NTFS folders, so it's a nonstarter. This means Docker is broken (mounts don't work) but Emacs works well. Yah, it sucks.
- mbrumlow 6y ago
  Well with wsl2 I gave windows a go for my work dev environment. And so far emacs had been amazing via wsl2 and a x server. I should note I did modify the xserver to allow me to toggle individual windows going fullsceen. And am running native emacs (which is blazing fast)
  - dleslie 6y ago
    WSL2 + X server was my go-to for a few weeks, but then a rather large repo I access, with git-lfs, became corrupted due to WSL2 + NTFS bugs. They've been mentioned on HN before. Thereafter, every day or two the same bug would arise and I'd have to lose an hour or two recovering the repo. Just a week or so ago I switched back to WSL1, and I ssh into an RPi4 to access docker containers, using qemu and binfmt to execute x86 code slowly. Yah, it sucks. ;)
- zupatol 6y ago
  I've been using the mingw windows version every day for years. I used to spend time now and then to make new things work, recently I switched to doom emacs, and almost every new functionality or package I try works out of the box. It's true that Magit is slow, but I still prefer it to the command line.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    I'm going to give Doom a shot; I ignored Spacemacs because rebinding native keys and forcing evil-mode was a nonstarter for me. If I wanted to use Vim then I would, and did for a time.
    - dleslie 6y ago
      ... and that was an immediately disappointing experience. 1. Saving customizations didn't work. 2. Launching Emacs as a client that auto-launches a server _always_ failed the first time. 3. I really don't need a custom package manager built on top of another custom package manager to replace the core package manager. straight.el would've been enough, thanks. 4. My batteries-included Emacs launches a server in a few seconds, a client almost instantaneously; doom took minutes to launch a server on my Pinebook Pro and clients took a few seconds. 5. Another needless dotfile dir in my home. ~/.doom.d could easily have been ~/.emacs.d/doom.d
    - kenbolton 6y ago
      "forcing evil-mode"?! Spacemacs asks if you want to use "evil", "holy", or "hybrid" mode early in the process.
      - dleslie 6y ago
        Interesting, I suppose I missed that when skimming the GitHub repo readme.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  > it's that Emacs on windows is terrible. I use Emacs on Linux and Windows equally. I've used Emacs on Windows at work for a decade. Other than magit, there's virtually no difference in experience between the two platforms.[1] Of course, perhaps you use a different set of features than I do. > Maintaining Emacs on windows takes considerable effort. I install it on my work laptop every 2-3 years, and for the last 5 or so years, it's literally been "Download, unzip and run." Occasionally I have to make registry changes to get org-protocol to work. Even 10 years ago, it was still fairly simple - just a bit of extra work to get some GTK related stuff installed as well. But right now it couldn't be easier.[2] And I don't even use WSL. This is native Windows. [1] Of course, if your Emacs is calling out to tools like grep/find, etc, you'll have issues unless you install those tools. Although these days, it's not hard to configure it to use ripgrep and fd, which has excellent Windows support. [2] And perhaps installing LaTeX if you want to export org files to PDF.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    Mostly issues with lsp servers; particularly ccls and omnisharp.
  - tom_ 6y ago
    For whatever it's worth, I've found the same thing: that the amount of effort required to use Emacs on Windows is minimal. Since Windows is non-POSIX, inevitably some things are different, but it doesn't take much to deal with this. My .emacs.d folder (now 15 years old, and a bit of a monster, a whole git repo with thousands of lines of nonsense plus a pile of submodules) has no more than a few spot hacks for Windows vs POSIX vs macOS. (The most annoying bit has probably been keeping on top of the font names! - but interestingly these are actually super easy to deal with on Windows. It's Unix that's the pain in the arse here.)
emptysongglass 6y ago
I don't understand why people are moving Linux --> Windows. At the company I work for everything is native to Linux--I am floored by the number of interns we get who are using Windows (it's all of them). We have an intake script for getting them up on WSL2 with our stack on top but man these graduates are CompSci people and they did 4 plus years of CompSci using Windows? I can only imagine the pain. Or rather, I know the pain since I have occasionally dipped my toes back into that world of hurt. A non-WSL2 Windows person doesn't get the benefits of Nix, usually doesn't live life on the shell (since every Windows program is gui first), doesn't do dotfiles management (you can but paths for the git Atlassian method are non-obvious), ssh password protected keys are a PITA...good God I could go on ad nauseum. I work in this industry because I love computing. But these Windows jockeys I dunno I get the feeling they don't necessarily love computing? Or in the way that it's this mundane tool for the production of money-points that they can then exchange for money. I also am receiving the money-points and it is good. But lemme crack open your head and pour in the magic y'know?
- dleslie 6y ago
  Most of the world uses Windows. If you're building software targeted at most of the world it makes sense to use Windows.
  - inertiatic 6y ago
    Most of the world uses Android to run their browsers, right? Should I develop on Android?
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Actually according to Google own statistics, most of Android Studio users are on Windows.
    - BeetleB 6y ago
      Are you suggesting that most of the existing Windows SW out there could be developed on Linux and would just run fine on Windows? Can MS reasonably develop MS Office on Linux? Can Adobe develop Lightroom on Linux and it'll just work on Windows? For most Windows SW, the answer is no. So the analogy with Android doesn't make much sense.

dleslie 6y ago

> I switched from Linux to Windows This is where many people leave Emacs. It's not that there's better tools on Windows, it's that Emacs on windows is terrible. Magit is orders of magnitude slower, for instance, and external tool integration is grossly impeded by the poor availability and quality of package management on Windows. Maintaining Emacs on windows takes considerable effort. Personally, I make do with WSL1 and Emacs. WSL2 is intolerably broken when working on NTFS folders, so it's a nonstarter. This means Docker is broken (mounts don't work) but Emacs works well. Yah, it sucks.

mbrumlow 6y ago
Well with wsl2 I gave windows a go for my work dev environment. And so far emacs had been amazing via wsl2 and a x server. I should note I did modify the xserver to allow me to toggle individual windows going fullsceen. And am running native emacs (which is blazing fast)
- dleslie 6y ago
  WSL2 + X server was my go-to for a few weeks, but then a rather large repo I access, with git-lfs, became corrupted due to WSL2 + NTFS bugs. They've been mentioned on HN before. Thereafter, every day or two the same bug would arise and I'd have to lose an hour or two recovering the repo. Just a week or so ago I switched back to WSL1, and I ssh into an RPi4 to access docker containers, using qemu and binfmt to execute x86 code slowly. Yah, it sucks. ;)
zupatol 6y ago
I've been using the mingw windows version every day for years. I used to spend time now and then to make new things work, recently I switched to doom emacs, and almost every new functionality or package I try works out of the box. It's true that Magit is slow, but I still prefer it to the command line.
- dleslie 6y ago
  I'm going to give Doom a shot; I ignored Spacemacs because rebinding native keys and forcing evil-mode was a nonstarter for me. If I wanted to use Vim then I would, and did for a time.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    ... and that was an immediately disappointing experience. 1. Saving customizations didn't work. 2. Launching Emacs as a client that auto-launches a server _always_ failed the first time. 3. I really don't need a custom package manager built on top of another custom package manager to replace the core package manager. straight.el would've been enough, thanks. 4. My batteries-included Emacs launches a server in a few seconds, a client almost instantaneously; doom took minutes to launch a server on my Pinebook Pro and clients took a few seconds. 5. Another needless dotfile dir in my home. ~/.doom.d could easily have been ~/.emacs.d/doom.d
  - kenbolton 6y ago
    "forcing evil-mode"?! Spacemacs asks if you want to use "evil", "holy", or "hybrid" mode early in the process.
    - dleslie 6y ago
      Interesting, I suppose I missed that when skimming the GitHub repo readme.
BeetleB 6y ago
> it's that Emacs on windows is terrible. I use Emacs on Linux and Windows equally. I've used Emacs on Windows at work for a decade. Other than magit, there's virtually no difference in experience between the two platforms.[1] Of course, perhaps you use a different set of features than I do. > Maintaining Emacs on windows takes considerable effort. I install it on my work laptop every 2-3 years, and for the last 5 or so years, it's literally been "Download, unzip and run." Occasionally I have to make registry changes to get org-protocol to work. Even 10 years ago, it was still fairly simple - just a bit of extra work to get some GTK related stuff installed as well. But right now it couldn't be easier.[2] And I don't even use WSL. This is native Windows. [1] Of course, if your Emacs is calling out to tools like grep/find, etc, you'll have issues unless you install those tools. Although these days, it's not hard to configure it to use ripgrep and fd, which has excellent Windows support. [2] And perhaps installing LaTeX if you want to export org files to PDF.
- dleslie 6y ago
  Mostly issues with lsp servers; particularly ccls and omnisharp.
- tom_ 6y ago
  For whatever it's worth, I've found the same thing: that the amount of effort required to use Emacs on Windows is minimal. Since Windows is non-POSIX, inevitably some things are different, but it doesn't take much to deal with this. My .emacs.d folder (now 15 years old, and a bit of a monster, a whole git repo with thousands of lines of nonsense plus a pile of submodules) has no more than a few spot hacks for Windows vs POSIX vs macOS. (The most annoying bit has probably been keeping on top of the font names! - but interestingly these are actually super easy to deal with on Windows. It's Unix that's the pain in the arse here.)

emptysongglass 6y ago

I don't understand why people are moving Linux --> Windows. At the company I work for everything is native to Linux--I am floored by the number of interns we get who are using Windows (it's all of them). We have an intake script for getting them up on WSL2 with our stack on top but man these graduates are CompSci people and they did 4 plus years of CompSci using Windows? I can only imagine the pain. Or rather, I know the pain since I have occasionally dipped my toes back into that world of hurt. A non-WSL2 Windows person doesn't get the benefits of Nix, usually doesn't live life on the shell (since every Windows program is gui first), doesn't do dotfiles management (you can but paths for the git Atlassian method are non-obvious), ssh password protected keys are a PITA...good God I could go on ad nauseum. I work in this industry because I love computing. But these Windows jockeys I dunno I get the feeling they don't necessarily love computing? Or in the way that it's this mundane tool for the production of money-points that they can then exchange for money. I also am receiving the money-points and it is good. But lemme crack open your head and pour in the magic y'know?

dleslie 6y ago
Most of the world uses Windows. If you're building software targeted at most of the world it makes sense to use Windows.
- inertiatic 6y ago
  Most of the world uses Android to run their browsers, right? Should I develop on Android?
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Actually according to Google own statistics, most of Android Studio users are on Windows.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    Are you suggesting that most of the existing Windows SW out there could be developed on Linux and would just run fine on Windows? Can MS reasonably develop MS Office on Linux? Can Adobe develop Lightroom on Linux and it'll just work on Windows? For most Windows SW, the answer is no. So the analogy with Android doesn't make much sense.