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> but no matter what, you will never be as fast or flexible as an F1 car (GNU Emacs). The massive flaw in your analogy being that Emacs has more to do with an

> but no matter what, you will never be as fast or flexible as an F1 car (GNU Emacs). The massive flaw in your analogy being that Emacs has more to do with an old and crumbling collection racing car than a F1. Its users constantly need to tinker it to make it somewhat run like a normal car. It’s still slower and less ergonomic but they are blinded by their love and habit to its obvious flaws. The amount of IDE and editors that just work well with little customisation and have great refactoring features is now so high, it leaves little place for emacs.

klodolph 5y ago
I would love to meet this mythical Emacs programmer which is blinded to its flaws, I don't think they're common.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  There are people in this thread talking positively of ELisp (a shameful language even by the low standards set by other Lisp) and who thinks the emacs GUI experience is acceptable in 2021. Some are even arguing that having to write 1000 lines of the previously cited terrible language to get the UX behaviours everyone has been expecting from a text editor in the past three decades is a worthwhile time investment. I would argue that apparently they are numerous.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    It sounds like you are saying that people who don't share your opinion on ELisp are blinded to its flaws... but that doesn't make sense. Are you saying that?
  - throwaway2331 5y ago
    I'm thinking about converting to a modern IDE away from emacs-nox. What can they do that emacs can't?
    - klodolph 5y ago
      There's very little that they can do that Emacs can't. It's just that if you're on the easy path, the IDE will give you a pretty high-quality experience with very little time spent configuring it. The "easy path" supports more and more use cases each year, but my experience is still that the more custom your build system is, the more likely it is that you'll not get your nice IDE integrations. That's was true in the 1990s as it is today.
      - throwaway2331 5y ago
        Any recommendations for one that runs on Linux?
        klodolph 5y ago
        VS Code and JetBrains (various products) are my top recommendations for Linux. MonoDevelop is ok. It is hard to give a general recommendation because your needs will vary.
- oblio 5y ago
  I've read a bunch of articles where long time Emacs users are put into a position where they have to achieve something on a tight deadline. Many of them try to muddle through their Rube Goldberg contraption of a local config and under time pressure or advised by someone else they try a modern IDE and suddenly realize why many professional developers use them. They realize that despite the potentially subpar text editing experience, a highly polished modern Integrated Development Environment is a power tool and a productivity machine for the environment it's aimed at. One simple example, maybe Emacs can do this. Can Emacs through a press of a button, show a tooltip or a hovering window, directly over the text where my cursor is? Not another window to the side of the editing window or below it. I want my eyes to be stationary and I want the tooltip to be easily dismissable. Plus, IDEs have professional developers writing integrations so I don't have to, and they're paid to do that for tens of thousands of paying customers, so they pretty much are guaranteed to work. They are also pretty much guaranteed to work well with other advanced integrated features.
  - convolvatron 5y ago
    which is all absolutely fantastic if you are following the script.
    - oblio 5y ago
      The script these days is a lot more flexible than it used to be back in the 90's with Visual Studio. It's flexible to cover maybe 90-95% of development needs for the main language targeted. And for those clearly defined use cases, modern IDEs generally fly. Which is far from guaranteed with bespoke configurations (Emacs, Vim).
      - klodolph 5y ago
        90-95% of my time is spent working in at least two languages. Usually JavaScript and some backend language, like Go or Python.
        ReleaseCandidat 5y ago

klodolph 5y ago

I would love to meet this mythical Emacs programmer which is blinded to its flaws, I don't think they're common.

WastingMyTime89 5y ago
There are people in this thread talking positively of ELisp (a shameful language even by the low standards set by other Lisp) and who thinks the emacs GUI experience is acceptable in 2021. Some are even arguing that having to write 1000 lines of the previously cited terrible language to get the UX behaviours everyone has been expecting from a text editor in the past three decades is a worthwhile time investment. I would argue that apparently they are numerous.
- klodolph 5y ago
  It sounds like you are saying that people who don't share your opinion on ELisp are blinded to its flaws... but that doesn't make sense. Are you saying that?
- throwaway2331 5y ago
  I'm thinking about converting to a modern IDE away from emacs-nox. What can they do that emacs can't?
  - klodolph 5y ago
    There's very little that they can do that Emacs can't. It's just that if you're on the easy path, the IDE will give you a pretty high-quality experience with very little time spent configuring it. The "easy path" supports more and more use cases each year, but my experience is still that the more custom your build system is, the more likely it is that you'll not get your nice IDE integrations. That's was true in the 1990s as it is today.
    - throwaway2331 5y ago
      Any recommendations for one that runs on Linux?
      - klodolph 5y ago
        VS Code and JetBrains (various products) are my top recommendations for Linux. MonoDevelop is ok. It is hard to give a general recommendation because your needs will vary.
oblio 5y ago
I've read a bunch of articles where long time Emacs users are put into a position where they have to achieve something on a tight deadline. Many of them try to muddle through their Rube Goldberg contraption of a local config and under time pressure or advised by someone else they try a modern IDE and suddenly realize why many professional developers use them. They realize that despite the potentially subpar text editing experience, a highly polished modern Integrated Development Environment is a power tool and a productivity machine for the environment it's aimed at. One simple example, maybe Emacs can do this. Can Emacs through a press of a button, show a tooltip or a hovering window, directly over the text where my cursor is? Not another window to the side of the editing window or below it. I want my eyes to be stationary and I want the tooltip to be easily dismissable. Plus, IDEs have professional developers writing integrations so I don't have to, and they're paid to do that for tens of thousands of paying customers, so they pretty much are guaranteed to work. They are also pretty much guaranteed to work well with other advanced integrated features.
- convolvatron 5y ago
  which is all absolutely fantastic if you are following the script.
  - oblio 5y ago
    The script these days is a lot more flexible than it used to be back in the 90's with Visual Studio. It's flexible to cover maybe 90-95% of development needs for the main language targeted. And for those clearly defined use cases, modern IDEs generally fly. Which is far from guaranteed with bespoke configurations (Emacs, Vim).
    - klodolph 5y ago
      90-95% of my time is spent working in at least two languages. Usually JavaScript and some backend language, like Go or Python.
      - ReleaseCandidat 5y ago