4 ms·

> smelled like elitism and I had to call it out It's not elitism. It might be a lack of empathy, but it's not premeditated. The thing is that, being the live

> smelled like elitism and I had to call it out It's not elitism. It might be a lack of empathy, but it's not premeditated. The thing is that, being the live environment in the vein of Smalltalk is a major selling point of Emacs. Being able to interactively evaluate and debug code of the running system is meaningless if you don't use it to code and debug. It's easy to assume that if you don't want to do this, you should choose another tool. This doesn't mean that "not going deep" is somehow wrong, obviously, but it also doesn't mean that going there is elitist. And from the perspective of someone who did "go deep", debugging your config once in a while is actually not a big deal. It's certainly more pleasant than debugging most anything else.

pdimitar 6y ago
> It's not elitism. It might be a lack of empathy, but it's not premeditated. Sure, that's fair, but again -- what about the people who don't want to debug their config? Is it such an outrageous crime to want to have your tool work with minimal configuration? Tool fatigue is real. We are expected to learn a million things throughout our career and this learning must be kept up almost daily. At one point your brain literally pushes back and you have no choice anymore -- you can't do it even if you think you want to. Even if you try, you start drifting away, lose focus, think of something else etc. Obviously this isn't directed at you in particular. But after Emacs being around for so long I had hopes that it will become ergonomic. So far I am only seeing the reverse: entrenching. I fail to see how debugging my editor's config is even relevant to my daily work. It's like, I won't go to VS Code, no, but Emacs can be more everyday-friendly. But it seems that it won't ever be.
- smitty1e 6y ago
  Emacs is a huge menu of endless configurability. I, for one, fancy the Spacemacs distribution for modal editing and a less 'exciting' configuration experience. But software configuration is so subjective that expectations of ergodicity (to use that elite-sounding term I just nicked from the other thread) seem premature.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    > I, for one, fancy the Spacemacs distribution for modal editing and a less 'exciting' configuration experience. Same, but it's a moving and a rather fragile target. I had to rewind commits or re-clone the repo a number of times in order to get back to a working editor. > But software configuration is so subjective that expectations of ergodicity (to use that elite-sounding term I just nicked from the other thread) seem premature. Maybe -- 50/50. You could also argue that a big disclaimer -- "This is an editor for people who enjoy endlessly configuring and debugging it" -- would be a fair announcement and maybe I wouldn't have started with Emacs at all.
    - smitty1e 6y ago
      Emacs is to editors what Gentoo is to distributions. I tend not to tinker too heavily with .spacemacs, and got off of source distros after blowing up X11.
      - pdimitar 6y ago
        Good analogy, yep!
      - jimmyvalmer 6y ago
        > Emacs is to editors what Gentoo is to distributions. I spent the last month futzing with Gentoo with no previous exposure. Yes, a thousand times yes.
- tarboreus 6y ago
  So choose literally every other text editor or IDE, except possibly Vim. There's nothing wrong with not wanted to customize your environment, but don't sour grapes when people get excited about the one tool that actually lets you seriously and relatively easily modify things.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    I am "sour graping" it because I can easily bet $50 that it won't work for me on the first try. :) I am considering VIM btw because I also want my editor to work in TUI mode. Why do you recommend against it? I've been told by people who use both editors that VIM is easier to customize. Do you think that's not true?
    - tarboreus 6y ago
      Emacs works well in a terminal. I'd recommend the GUI version, but it was originally a terminal program, after all. Vim has some great advantages, like the ubiquity of Vi on servers and the ergonomic layout (though Emacs can emulate that pretty easily). But yes, Emacs is far easier to modify, it's built from the ground up for modification, and is written (mostly) in the language you modify it with, Emacs Lisp. The self-documenting element also helps tremendously with modification. If you're curious about Emacs modification, I'd recommend this article: https://malleable.systems/blog/2020/04/01/the-most-successful-malleable-system-in-history/ https://malleable.systems/blog/2020/04/01/the-most-successfu... And, not saying you should, but if you ever do want to get started with Emacs, just load it up and hit Control-h t (or select the tutorial option from the splash screen) to start the great built-in tutorial, which is really strong. If you get past that, there is a lesser-known tutorial on Emacs Lisp built in as well that is quite excellent and more people should know about it. To access it, hit Alt-x, then type info and hit Enter, then select the "Emacs Lisp Intro" tutorial from the list.
- klibertp 6y ago
  > but Emacs can be more everyday-friendly. But it seems that it won't ever be. I don't think it can; and yes, it probably won't ever be. There's simply no incentive for Emacs to become more everyday-friendly. For other editors and IDEs there's a strong motivation to make it work well on the first try, because if it doesn't work on the first try, it often won't work at all, and the users are helpless to fix it. On the other hand, with Emacs, it's pretty much expected for the users to scratch their itches on their own - because it's possible, so the perception is that it should be done. Moreover, in other editors there is a strong motivation to make them work well for everyone. Again, mostly because users are not expected to (or are unable to) customize them to their needs - the users are going to learn the tool, with its quirks, workarounds, etc. In Emacs it's the other way around: nobody has the time or motivation to make the editor "just work" for everyone, because they are busy making Emacs work ideally "just for them". It's very similar to how open-source Smalltalks work. You get an image chock-full of tools for customizing it for your needs, which is good. The bad part is that you get absolutely awful defaults, because using the defaults is a wrong way to use the software. When you can inspect and edit the code of literally everyhting with two clicks, not doing so is going against the intended use of the software. It might sound harsh, but that's just how it is. Emacs is for people who want to have total control of their experience, it's not for people who want sane defaults. Even if Doom or Spacemacs help, they won't ever fully turn Emacs into a "modern editor", because being such is not the intended use case for Emacs. Some people love it, and can't imagine working with anything else. Some people wonder how "debugging their editor config" is a good thing, and Emacs is simply not for them. Again, this is not elitist - there's nothing wrong with wanting to have a polished experience without much fiddling with config. It's just that Emacs is not, and won't ever be, a tool which provides such experience.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    > Some people wonder how "debugging their editor config" is a good thing, and Emacs is simply not for them. I am right there in that group but I can't see any good competition save for VIM which is likely loaded with similar problems... Trouble is, I went with the flow in my first job ~19.5 years ago and just recently realized that I no longer have the desire to tinker with Emacs. :\

pdimitar 6y ago

> It's not elitism. It might be a lack of empathy, but it's not premeditated. Sure, that's fair, but again -- what about the people who don't want to debug their config? Is it such an outrageous crime to want to have your tool work with minimal configuration? Tool fatigue is real. We are expected to learn a million things throughout our career and this learning must be kept up almost daily. At one point your brain literally pushes back and you have no choice anymore -- you can't do it even if you think you want to. Even if you try, you start drifting away, lose focus, think of something else etc. Obviously this isn't directed at you in particular. But after Emacs being around for so long I had hopes that it will become ergonomic. So far I am only seeing the reverse: entrenching. I fail to see how debugging my editor's config is even relevant to my daily work. It's like, I won't go to VS Code, no, but Emacs can be more everyday-friendly. But it seems that it won't ever be.

smitty1e 6y ago
Emacs is a huge menu of endless configurability. I, for one, fancy the Spacemacs distribution for modal editing and a less 'exciting' configuration experience. But software configuration is so subjective that expectations of ergodicity (to use that elite-sounding term I just nicked from the other thread) seem premature.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  > I, for one, fancy the Spacemacs distribution for modal editing and a less 'exciting' configuration experience. Same, but it's a moving and a rather fragile target. I had to rewind commits or re-clone the repo a number of times in order to get back to a working editor. > But software configuration is so subjective that expectations of ergodicity (to use that elite-sounding term I just nicked from the other thread) seem premature. Maybe -- 50/50. You could also argue that a big disclaimer -- "This is an editor for people who enjoy endlessly configuring and debugging it" -- would be a fair announcement and maybe I wouldn't have started with Emacs at all.
  - smitty1e 6y ago
    Emacs is to editors what Gentoo is to distributions. I tend not to tinker too heavily with .spacemacs, and got off of source distros after blowing up X11.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      Good analogy, yep!
    - jimmyvalmer 6y ago
      > Emacs is to editors what Gentoo is to distributions. I spent the last month futzing with Gentoo with no previous exposure. Yes, a thousand times yes.
tarboreus 6y ago
So choose literally every other text editor or IDE, except possibly Vim. There's nothing wrong with not wanted to customize your environment, but don't sour grapes when people get excited about the one tool that actually lets you seriously and relatively easily modify things.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  I am "sour graping" it because I can easily bet $50 that it won't work for me on the first try. :) I am considering VIM btw because I also want my editor to work in TUI mode. Why do you recommend against it? I've been told by people who use both editors that VIM is easier to customize. Do you think that's not true?
  - tarboreus 6y ago
    Emacs works well in a terminal. I'd recommend the GUI version, but it was originally a terminal program, after all. Vim has some great advantages, like the ubiquity of Vi on servers and the ergonomic layout (though Emacs can emulate that pretty easily). But yes, Emacs is far easier to modify, it's built from the ground up for modification, and is written (mostly) in the language you modify it with, Emacs Lisp. The self-documenting element also helps tremendously with modification. If you're curious about Emacs modification, I'd recommend this article: https://malleable.systems/blog/2020/04/01/the-most-successful-malleable-system-in-history/ https://malleable.systems/blog/2020/04/01/the-most-successfu... And, not saying you should, but if you ever do want to get started with Emacs, just load it up and hit Control-h t (or select the tutorial option from the splash screen) to start the great built-in tutorial, which is really strong. If you get past that, there is a lesser-known tutorial on Emacs Lisp built in as well that is quite excellent and more people should know about it. To access it, hit Alt-x, then type info and hit Enter, then select the "Emacs Lisp Intro" tutorial from the list.
klibertp 6y ago
> but Emacs can be more everyday-friendly. But it seems that it won't ever be. I don't think it can; and yes, it probably won't ever be. There's simply no incentive for Emacs to become more everyday-friendly. For other editors and IDEs there's a strong motivation to make it work well on the first try, because if it doesn't work on the first try, it often won't work at all, and the users are helpless to fix it. On the other hand, with Emacs, it's pretty much expected for the users to scratch their itches on their own - because it's possible, so the perception is that it should be done. Moreover, in other editors there is a strong motivation to make them work well for everyone. Again, mostly because users are not expected to (or are unable to) customize them to their needs - the users are going to learn the tool, with its quirks, workarounds, etc. In Emacs it's the other way around: nobody has the time or motivation to make the editor "just work" for everyone, because they are busy making Emacs work ideally "just for them". It's very similar to how open-source Smalltalks work. You get an image chock-full of tools for customizing it for your needs, which is good. The bad part is that you get absolutely awful defaults, because using the defaults is a wrong way to use the software. When you can inspect and edit the code of literally everyhting with two clicks, not doing so is going against the intended use of the software. It might sound harsh, but that's just how it is. Emacs is for people who want to have total control of their experience, it's not for people who want sane defaults. Even if Doom or Spacemacs help, they won't ever fully turn Emacs into a "modern editor", because being such is not the intended use case for Emacs. Some people love it, and can't imagine working with anything else. Some people wonder how "debugging their editor config" is a good thing, and Emacs is simply not for them. Again, this is not elitist - there's nothing wrong with wanting to have a polished experience without much fiddling with config. It's just that Emacs is not, and won't ever be, a tool which provides such experience.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  > Some people wonder how "debugging their editor config" is a good thing, and Emacs is simply not for them. I am right there in that group but I can't see any good competition save for VIM which is likely loaded with similar problems... Trouble is, I went with the flow in my first job ~19.5 years ago and just recently realized that I no longer have the desire to tinker with Emacs. :\