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> Since then it seems like editors/ides have advanced and eaten emacs’s lunch Citation needed, my Emacs talks to the same LSP daemon that my coworkers' VSCode

> Since then it seems like editors/ides have advanced and eaten emacs’s lunch Citation needed, my Emacs talks to the same LSP daemon that my coworkers' VSCode instances talk to, and Emacs has a lot of text editing features VSCode doesn't Plus VSCode is just uglier, and is Microsoft and is it even GPLv3? Maybe I'm becoming irrelevant and I'm going to find myself without a job soon

ssivark 5y ago
I'm all for Emacs, but calling it prettier than VSCode is a bit of a stretch :D Of course aesthetic taste is quite subjective, but I think a lot of people will agree that most modern software (including VSCode) looks much slicker than Emacs (excluding extensively customized outliers). As for my personal taste, Atom is by far the visually most appealing editor I've seen. I don't know enough graphic design to articulate the difference, but I wonder why the look & feel is not replicated more widely.
- xlii 5y ago
  > excluding extensively customized outliers I might be wrong here but extensive customization is hallmark of Emacs. I would find it very odd if someone wouldn’t customize its presentation to The Exact Way They Like.
  - neolog 5y ago
    Emacs is a text-based editor so it cannot be customized as much as a browser can.
    - useragent86 5y ago
      Emacs is a Lisp machine. Even Firefox during its XUL heyday was not as customizeable as Emacs is. Nowadays, with browsers using WebExtensions, browsers are laughably inflexible by comparison. Here are a few topics for you to consider: * Function advice (https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Advising-Functions.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Ad...) * Generalized variables and the cl-letf macro (https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/cl/Modify-Macros.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/cl/Modif...) * Hooks * Lisp macros in general * Special variables and dynamic binding (note that Emacs Lisp has supported lexical binding for years; some still don't know this) * Buffer-local variables * Live evaluation of Lisp code, including redefining functions and variables, vs. building and loading an extension in a browser Or maybe you were just joking, in which case, you got me good!
      - neolog 5y ago
        Not joking. Emacs can't even do wysiwyg word processing, let alone the kind of interactive environments that browsers support. Chromium/Electron is a Javascript machine, with graphical debugger; network monitoring; the world's largest package ecosystem; tab-local variables [1], built-in support for peripherals via webUSB, obviously live evaluation of js, 3D webgl, ... [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/sessionStorage https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/sess...
        iLemming 5y ago
        It feels like you haven't gotten deep enough into Lisp and Emacs. Emacs is quite the epitome of malleable software systems. There isn't a single software product as flexible and configurable by design. Just because it is currently doesn't have a graphical layer or cannot run a browser engine within (which is just a matter of time), that doesn't make it less flexible.
        neolog 5y ago
        That's just stating the claim again, not providing evidence. How many browser extensions have I written? How many emacs extensions? Fwiw I did everything in Emacs for many years. Regardless of the differences in the core platform, the ecosystem is where the real power is. The number of full-time paid contributors to Chromium/Electron/VSCode is dramatic, and it shows. The reach of the VSCode ecosystem means there are now competitive ports of Magit and other key packages. Maybe the Emacs system has a little more power than a browser. VSCode disallows extensions from messing with the DOM to ensure stability; Emacs doesn't, which means less stability and more flexibility. But it's not much use in practice, or I haven't seen the use. Anyway, Javascript and Elisp are both basically low-end lisps, largely written in C/C++, and running on x86 machines. Neither resembles the theoretical Symbolics machines of yore. Maybe with billions in funding Emacs could start competing with the Chromium/Electron/VSCode teams. But that's not gonna happen. I can't afford to write my whole environment alone, so I go where the people are.
        5y ago
- AlexCoventry 5y ago
  What I like about emacs, from an aesthetic perspective, is that I can turn off everything except the buffers and the minibuffer, and quickly tile the views I need.
krageon 5y ago
VSCode's licensing is a travesty. Nobody at a company with any serious IP should be using it anywhere.

ssivark 5y ago

I'm all for Emacs, but calling it prettier than VSCode is a bit of a stretch :D Of course aesthetic taste is quite subjective, but I think a lot of people will agree that most modern software (including VSCode) looks much slicker than Emacs (excluding extensively customized outliers). As for my personal taste, Atom is by far the visually most appealing editor I've seen. I don't know enough graphic design to articulate the difference, but I wonder why the look & feel is not replicated more widely.

xlii 5y ago
> excluding extensively customized outliers I might be wrong here but extensive customization is hallmark of Emacs. I would find it very odd if someone wouldn’t customize its presentation to The Exact Way They Like.
- neolog 5y ago
  Emacs is a text-based editor so it cannot be customized as much as a browser can.
  - useragent86 5y ago
    Emacs is a Lisp machine. Even Firefox during its XUL heyday was not as customizeable as Emacs is. Nowadays, with browsers using WebExtensions, browsers are laughably inflexible by comparison. Here are a few topics for you to consider: * Function advice (https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Advising-Functions.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Ad...) * Generalized variables and the cl-letf macro (https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/cl/Modify-Macros.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/cl/Modif...) * Hooks * Lisp macros in general * Special variables and dynamic binding (note that Emacs Lisp has supported lexical binding for years; some still don't know this) * Buffer-local variables * Live evaluation of Lisp code, including redefining functions and variables, vs. building and loading an extension in a browser Or maybe you were just joking, in which case, you got me good!
    - neolog 5y ago
      Not joking. Emacs can't even do wysiwyg word processing, let alone the kind of interactive environments that browsers support. Chromium/Electron is a Javascript machine, with graphical debugger; network monitoring; the world's largest package ecosystem; tab-local variables [1], built-in support for peripherals via webUSB, obviously live evaluation of js, 3D webgl, ... [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/sessionStorage https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/sess...
      - iLemming 5y ago
        It feels like you haven't gotten deep enough into Lisp and Emacs. Emacs is quite the epitome of malleable software systems. There isn't a single software product as flexible and configurable by design. Just because it is currently doesn't have a graphical layer or cannot run a browser engine within (which is just a matter of time), that doesn't make it less flexible.
        neolog 5y ago
        That's just stating the claim again, not providing evidence. How many browser extensions have I written? How many emacs extensions? Fwiw I did everything in Emacs for many years. Regardless of the differences in the core platform, the ecosystem is where the real power is. The number of full-time paid contributors to Chromium/Electron/VSCode is dramatic, and it shows. The reach of the VSCode ecosystem means there are now competitive ports of Magit and other key packages. Maybe the Emacs system has a little more power than a browser. VSCode disallows extensions from messing with the DOM to ensure stability; Emacs doesn't, which means less stability and more flexibility. But it's not much use in practice, or I haven't seen the use. Anyway, Javascript and Elisp are both basically low-end lisps, largely written in C/C++, and running on x86 machines. Neither resembles the theoretical Symbolics machines of yore. Maybe with billions in funding Emacs could start competing with the Chromium/Electron/VSCode teams. But that's not gonna happen. I can't afford to write my whole environment alone, so I go where the people are.
        5y ago
AlexCoventry 5y ago
What I like about emacs, from an aesthetic perspective, is that I can turn off everything except the buffers and the minibuffer, and quickly tile the views I need.

krageon 5y ago

VSCode's licensing is a travesty. Nobody at a company with any serious IP should be using it anywhere.