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I have realized recently that a value that is gaining a lot of importance for me is the stability of my cognitive investments, in terms of tooling, across a tim

I have realized recently that a value that is gaining a lot of importance for me is the stability of my cognitive investments, in terms of tooling, across a time frame that goes beyond my "current project", and more into the "my entire career" territory. In that sense, I feel more and more that the choice of learning and owning Emacs, more than 20 years ago, while in school, has paid off tremendously, in the sense that it has always constituted a solid and consistent backbone from which I can always start a new project, no matter what the context is (corporate or personal). I feel this would have been harder to achieve with a tool which is asking me to update it every 3 days, and which periodically introduce important paradigm changes forcing me to reconsider the way I work. In short, I value Emacs' stability and consistency across time and tech fashions more than anything else, as I grow older.

olivertaylor 5y ago
This is the reason I left the whole app ecosystem. Apps are cool, and sometimes really great, but there’s no sense of permanence, no guarantee that your data will survive for long, that the app will be maintained, or that future devices will be able to run the app or access the data.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > This is the reason I left the whole app ecosystem. How... Uh, how do you use computers then? Isn't everything we do with them in some way through "an app"?
  - akho 5y ago
    Few of us would call Emacs an “app”. I’m pretty sure they are referring to mobile/Web stuff. You do have to be very careful there…
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      Yeah, I still use the boomer vocabulary: there is system software, and application software. The first category is called "operating system", and everything that runs on top of it is an "application". And outside of the old quip ("Great OS, shame about the editor") Emacs is AFAIK not an operating system but runs on top of one, so it's an application. Lazy young whippersnappers should come up with their own damn terms for new concepts in stead of just trying to co-opt and redefine existing ones.
      - akho 5y ago
        I’m fine with “application” and “app” having different meanings. E. g.: there was recently a post here promoting some group making “an app ecosystem for your terminal”. That’s very convenient — you immediately know you need to close the tab.
II2II 5y ago
The way I usually put it is you have a choice: learning your tools in depth or relearning old skills each time your tools tools. I decided upon the former and firmly believe it was the right decision. That being said, there is a cost. Tools that adapt with the times try to reduce the effort needed to get contemporary tasks done. Stable tools tend to reflect the times in which they were created (or at least peaked), meaning that it may take more effort to get things done in the here and now. Unfortunately, Emacs is very much a reflection of this.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
edanm 5y ago
That sounds good in theory. But if you're working with a more-than-30-year-old tool, you're either: 1. Missing out on "new innovations" (and using older gui/etc paradigms which don't mesh with anything else you are used to). 2. Finding ways to update your tool to take advantage of "new innovations", which costs time, and often gives you a worse outcome. I was a vim user for 8 years, then used spacemacs for another 2, but have lately switched to VSCode (with vim mode, obviously). The ease of just downloading vscode and having it work with almost no tinkering, having it look good, and being able to, for the most part, double-click an extension name if I need it... that ease of use means that whatever learning curve I do have to pay sometimes, it's worth it. (And the learning curve for making VSCode have the vim/emacs features I need was tiny compared to managing my vim/emacs config).
- zzzzzzzza 5y ago
  i was looking into vscode/vscodium recently (i'm emacs user, but arguably more comfortable in javascript than emacs lisp). if you want to define a custom function do you have to write your extension? it seems like settings.json, is just that, a json file, as opposed to emacs config where you can drop a line into your config or even just eval some elisp in a buffer and have it modify your editor... basically it seems less hackable, is that a wrong impression? (and json files don't allow for comments right?)
  - edanm 5y ago
    It's for sure less extensible than EMACs/Vim (you probably can write extensions but I've never done it, but it's not as easy as popping in some elips or whatever). That said, you can configure a lot of things you care about, e.g. you can do remappings, including complex remappings from "sequence of keys" to "sequence of keys or existing commands". And since there are lots of pre-defined commands etc, there's a lot you can do. (BTW I mean this espeically in vim mode for vscode, I don't have experience with using vscode without it).
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  I think the way vscode is currently managed, it won't hold up to time if the trend continues. A competitor that strips the baggage might just kill it, even if there is a lot of user content by then. Vim and Emacs are console editors for me. The most significant difference for me is sensible mouse support. I used Emacs just for LaTeX, otherwise I use mostly unhacked vim. It is very useful to be familiar with one of them, but nano is awesome too and I always mention it for new developers. I believe vscode is successful because it is simple. Just like how JSON was successful compared to XML for simple applications. It isn't better than XML, but most applications are too simple to warrant XML features and resulting complexity. For C# I prefer VS instead of vscode and I fear vscode tries to be both, a code editor with extended features vs a fully integrated IDE. For some language like JS vscode already has become an IDE with advantages and disadvantages and it is quite often very opinionated here.
iso1631 5y ago
I agree with you, I like my tools to just work. I last changed my windows manager when I started using wifi regularly over a decade ago. Vim 8 broke this philosophy though - it changed defaults and broke workflows - changing how search works by default, breaking copy-paste by including some mouse support so when I click a line, it moves the cursor. These aren't security improvements, these aren't transparent improvements (like allowing arrow keys as well as hjkl was way back), and they're not even odd workflows like xkcd.com/1172. Search is presumably one of the most used functions in vim, and I'm sure that clicking and highlighting text to copy into a different application isn't unusual. Changing the default behaviour is a choice that the developers made, presumably to "make vim better". I don't want vim "better", I want it stable, if I wanted "better" I'd use something that redesigns itself every 5 years. What's worst though, is while I can adjust my workflow to automatically copy a fixed .vimrc onto any machine I ssh to, it leaves me wondering "what will change next". It's unsettling.

olivertaylor 5y ago

This is the reason I left the whole app ecosystem. Apps are cool, and sometimes really great, but there’s no sense of permanence, no guarantee that your data will survive for long, that the app will be maintained, or that future devices will be able to run the app or access the data.

CRConrad 5y ago
> This is the reason I left the whole app ecosystem. How... Uh, how do you use computers then? Isn't everything we do with them in some way through "an app"?
- akho 5y ago
  Few of us would call Emacs an “app”. I’m pretty sure they are referring to mobile/Web stuff. You do have to be very careful there…
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    Yeah, I still use the boomer vocabulary: there is system software, and application software. The first category is called "operating system", and everything that runs on top of it is an "application". And outside of the old quip ("Great OS, shame about the editor") Emacs is AFAIK not an operating system but runs on top of one, so it's an application. Lazy young whippersnappers should come up with their own damn terms for new concepts in stead of just trying to co-opt and redefine existing ones.
    - akho 5y ago
      I’m fine with “application” and “app” having different meanings. E. g.: there was recently a post here promoting some group making “an app ecosystem for your terminal”. That’s very convenient — you immediately know you need to close the tab.

II2II 5y ago

The way I usually put it is you have a choice: learning your tools in depth or relearning old skills each time your tools tools. I decided upon the former and firmly believe it was the right decision. That being said, there is a cost. Tools that adapt with the times try to reduce the effort needed to get contemporary tasks done. Stable tools tend to reflect the times in which they were created (or at least peaked), meaning that it may take more effort to get things done in the here and now. Unfortunately, Emacs is very much a reflection of this.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

edanm 5y ago

That sounds good in theory. But if you're working with a more-than-30-year-old tool, you're either: 1. Missing out on "new innovations" (and using older gui/etc paradigms which don't mesh with anything else you are used to). 2. Finding ways to update your tool to take advantage of "new innovations", which costs time, and often gives you a worse outcome. I was a vim user for 8 years, then used spacemacs for another 2, but have lately switched to VSCode (with vim mode, obviously). The ease of just downloading vscode and having it work with almost no tinkering, having it look good, and being able to, for the most part, double-click an extension name if I need it... that ease of use means that whatever learning curve I do have to pay sometimes, it's worth it. (And the learning curve for making VSCode have the vim/emacs features I need was tiny compared to managing my vim/emacs config).

zzzzzzzza 5y ago
i was looking into vscode/vscodium recently (i'm emacs user, but arguably more comfortable in javascript than emacs lisp). if you want to define a custom function do you have to write your extension? it seems like settings.json, is just that, a json file, as opposed to emacs config where you can drop a line into your config or even just eval some elisp in a buffer and have it modify your editor... basically it seems less hackable, is that a wrong impression? (and json files don't allow for comments right?)
- edanm 5y ago
  It's for sure less extensible than EMACs/Vim (you probably can write extensions but I've never done it, but it's not as easy as popping in some elips or whatever). That said, you can configure a lot of things you care about, e.g. you can do remappings, including complex remappings from "sequence of keys" to "sequence of keys or existing commands". And since there are lots of pre-defined commands etc, there's a lot you can do. (BTW I mean this espeically in vim mode for vscode, I don't have experience with using vscode without it).
raxxorrax 5y ago
I think the way vscode is currently managed, it won't hold up to time if the trend continues. A competitor that strips the baggage might just kill it, even if there is a lot of user content by then. Vim and Emacs are console editors for me. The most significant difference for me is sensible mouse support. I used Emacs just for LaTeX, otherwise I use mostly unhacked vim. It is very useful to be familiar with one of them, but nano is awesome too and I always mention it for new developers. I believe vscode is successful because it is simple. Just like how JSON was successful compared to XML for simple applications. It isn't better than XML, but most applications are too simple to warrant XML features and resulting complexity. For C# I prefer VS instead of vscode and I fear vscode tries to be both, a code editor with extended features vs a fully integrated IDE. For some language like JS vscode already has become an IDE with advantages and disadvantages and it is quite often very opinionated here.

iso1631 5y ago

I agree with you, I like my tools to just work. I last changed my windows manager when I started using wifi regularly over a decade ago. Vim 8 broke this philosophy though - it changed defaults and broke workflows - changing how search works by default, breaking copy-paste by including some mouse support so when I click a line, it moves the cursor. These aren't security improvements, these aren't transparent improvements (like allowing arrow keys as well as hjkl was way back), and they're not even odd workflows like xkcd.com/1172. Search is presumably one of the most used functions in vim, and I'm sure that clicking and highlighting text to copy into a different application isn't unusual. Changing the default behaviour is a choice that the developers made, presumably to "make vim better". I don't want vim "better", I want it stable, if I wanted "better" I'd use something that redesigns itself every 5 years. What's worst though, is while I can adjust my workflow to automatically copy a fixed .vimrc onto any machine I ssh to, it leaves me wondering "what will change next". It's unsettling.