3 ms·

> emacs lisp is not the best language in the world Emacs-lisp is a Lisp. It may not be the best of Lisps, but even a bad Lisp can be far more powerful than man

> emacs lisp is not the best language in the world Emacs-lisp is a Lisp. It may not be the best of Lisps, but even a bad Lisp can be far more powerful than many other non-lispy languages. To understand what makes Emacs so awesome, one has to understand the philosophy of Lisp. Emacs Lisp is not just a text editor, IDE, email client, project management tool, scientific calculator, etc. Emacs, first and foremost is a Lisp environment. Definitely not the most ideal, but certainly the best one we have today. > I think emacs having more plugins is a consequence of its design and philosophy, not the extension language itself I believe, Emacs held the crown of "the most malleable" tool for over forty years, specifically because it builds on top of Lisp. Number of plugins is not an indicator. They also have to "play nicely" with each other. I just checked - I pull over four hundred Emacs packages in my config, including built-ins and dependency libs. I just cannot imagine any other IDE or text editor with 400 plugins installed. That's just not possible.

coliveira 5y ago
Emacs lisp is not a bad language, but it's also not the reason for the existence of Emacs. It is the other way around: it was Emacs that created Emacs lisp. Initially, emacs was created on top of TECO, arguably the worst, most difficult programmable editor ever created. TECO language was so bad that they decided to switch. But emacs, the editor, was successful even running on top of a terrible language that nobody liked at the time.
- iLemming 5y ago
  > Emacs lisp is not a bad language, but it's also not the reason for the existence of Emacs Early Emacs and the modern GNU/Emacs I think, are two distinct worlds. I believe Lisp has shaped Emacs into its modern form. I just can't imagine the possibility of building something like Org-mode, with the same level of extensibility and flexibility in any other language that is not a Lisp. I bet if you ask any serious Emacsen - authors and maintainers of Magit, CIDER, or any other serious Emacs package if they could replicate their work, for example, in Python. I have no doubts, they'd definitely say: "that's nearly impossible"
  - coliveira 5y ago
    Funny, because Magit has been ported to Vim, I use it daily.
    - iLemming 5y ago
      Magit is not just a user interface. It's also a number of emacs-lisp packages useful on their own. It's Transient that's gaining popularity for building modal key UIs in Emacs. It's Forge that paved the road for nice packages like github.com/anticomputer/gh-notify. It is Org-mode integration and many other things. What you're using is a ported subset of them.
      - coliveira 5y ago
        So much better, because what I want is to interact with git, not to manage a hodge podge of libraries.
        iLemming 5y ago
        There are always multiple paths to get something done. Some people prefer automation. Having "a bucket of bolts and nuts" makes it possible to hack your way around things. Some people like Ferrari. For some - the utilitarian value of it, is minimal. They'd rather have "a bucket of bolts and nuts" instead. They can't go camping in a Ferrari. They can't take their bullmastiff to a vet in it. They can't help a friend to move furniture. Emacs is that - it's not akin to a shiny, expensive but not very useful car. It's like a transformer - you can build a pickup truck, a camper, an ambulance, or a race car. But some people like Ferrari. And that's totally fine.

coliveira 5y ago

Emacs lisp is not a bad language, but it's also not the reason for the existence of Emacs. It is the other way around: it was Emacs that created Emacs lisp. Initially, emacs was created on top of TECO, arguably the worst, most difficult programmable editor ever created. TECO language was so bad that they decided to switch. But emacs, the editor, was successful even running on top of a terrible language that nobody liked at the time.

iLemming 5y ago
> Emacs lisp is not a bad language, but it's also not the reason for the existence of Emacs Early Emacs and the modern GNU/Emacs I think, are two distinct worlds. I believe Lisp has shaped Emacs into its modern form. I just can't imagine the possibility of building something like Org-mode, with the same level of extensibility and flexibility in any other language that is not a Lisp. I bet if you ask any serious Emacsen - authors and maintainers of Magit, CIDER, or any other serious Emacs package if they could replicate their work, for example, in Python. I have no doubts, they'd definitely say: "that's nearly impossible"
- coliveira 5y ago
  Funny, because Magit has been ported to Vim, I use it daily.
  - iLemming 5y ago
    Magit is not just a user interface. It's also a number of emacs-lisp packages useful on their own. It's Transient that's gaining popularity for building modal key UIs in Emacs. It's Forge that paved the road for nice packages like github.com/anticomputer/gh-notify. It is Org-mode integration and many other things. What you're using is a ported subset of them.
    - coliveira 5y ago
      So much better, because what I want is to interact with git, not to manage a hodge podge of libraries.
      - iLemming 5y ago
        There are always multiple paths to get something done. Some people prefer automation. Having "a bucket of bolts and nuts" makes it possible to hack your way around things. Some people like Ferrari. For some - the utilitarian value of it, is minimal. They'd rather have "a bucket of bolts and nuts" instead. They can't go camping in a Ferrari. They can't take their bullmastiff to a vet in it. They can't help a friend to move furniture. Emacs is that - it's not akin to a shiny, expensive but not very useful car. It's like a transformer - you can build a pickup truck, a camper, an ambulance, or a race car. But some people like Ferrari. And that's totally fine.