4 ms·

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/et

by 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.
Kototama 5y ago
What is more innovative, a light IDE with plugins written in JavaScript and backed by a big company or a small Lisp machine disguised as a text editor where every key is bound to a Lisp command and every changes and extensions in its code or extensions can be tested interactively in a "live coding" environment, where the user is empowered to modify and extend what he wants?
- edanm 5y ago
  I don't care about innovative in that sense, I care about features - what can my text editor actually do, and how well does it fit with how I use my computer in other cases. E.g. the simplest example - intellisense and inline linting, debugging etc. are all really awesome features. I've set them up once or twice with vim and emacs, but it's always a pain, always takes a long time, breaks often, etc. With VSCode, I click a button and I have everything I need for Python installed in a second. That's the difference between actually using a feature, and not. When I install a new computer, I will actually use e.g. Python linting with VSCode, but not with vim, cause I won't bother to set it up.
  - Kototama 5y ago
    For some of the IDE functionalities Emacs can be behind. Like debugging, or jumping to function definition (it depends of the languages and extensions). For some other functionalities it is far more advance, like support for Git (magit) or very fast navigation inside the project (projectile, Helm etc), mass renaming things (grep, ag and wgrep) etc. In general IDEs are very bad at text manipulation and good at structural manipulation, whereas Emacs is very good at text manipulation and okay at structural manipulation (or excellent for it but only for Lisp). The set of functionalities in an IDE is fixed, whereas Emacs is extensible, by it users.
    - edanm 5y ago
      So I think you're actually wrong on some of these. And again, I say this as a massive fan of vim and emacs. Support for git is awesome in vscode. You install a plug-in and get great support for various commands. Another plugin and you can have every line annotated with a git blame (a faded text at the end of the line), as well as having a git blame annotation at the top of each function. These were game changers for me. Though full disclosure, I haven't used magit much - but that's part of the problem. The learning curve on the vscode stuff was zero. Project navigation is dead simple in vscode, I don't think emacs has any advantage. As for text manipulation, as a vim snob, I'll just point out that text editing is really only good with Vim. Luckily vscode has a vim mode that's decent. Not perfect at all, but decent. As for extensibility - all the above are plugins. It is extensible.

by edanm 5y ago

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.

Kototama 5y ago

What is more innovative, a light IDE with plugins written in JavaScript and backed by a big company or a small Lisp machine disguised as a text editor where every key is bound to a Lisp command and every changes and extensions in its code or extensions can be tested interactively in a "live coding" environment, where the user is empowered to modify and extend what he wants?

edanm 5y ago
I don't care about innovative in that sense, I care about features - what can my text editor actually do, and how well does it fit with how I use my computer in other cases. E.g. the simplest example - intellisense and inline linting, debugging etc. are all really awesome features. I've set them up once or twice with vim and emacs, but it's always a pain, always takes a long time, breaks often, etc. With VSCode, I click a button and I have everything I need for Python installed in a second. That's the difference between actually using a feature, and not. When I install a new computer, I will actually use e.g. Python linting with VSCode, but not with vim, cause I won't bother to set it up.
- Kototama 5y ago
  For some of the IDE functionalities Emacs can be behind. Like debugging, or jumping to function definition (it depends of the languages and extensions). For some other functionalities it is far more advance, like support for Git (magit) or very fast navigation inside the project (projectile, Helm etc), mass renaming things (grep, ag and wgrep) etc. In general IDEs are very bad at text manipulation and good at structural manipulation, whereas Emacs is very good at text manipulation and okay at structural manipulation (or excellent for it but only for Lisp). The set of functionalities in an IDE is fixed, whereas Emacs is extensible, by it users.
  - edanm 5y ago
    So I think you're actually wrong on some of these. And again, I say this as a massive fan of vim and emacs. Support for git is awesome in vscode. You install a plug-in and get great support for various commands. Another plugin and you can have every line annotated with a git blame (a faded text at the end of the line), as well as having a git blame annotation at the top of each function. These were game changers for me. Though full disclosure, I haven't used magit much - but that's part of the problem. The learning curve on the vscode stuff was zero. Project navigation is dead simple in vscode, I don't think emacs has any advantage. As for text manipulation, as a vim snob, I'll just point out that text editing is really only good with Vim. Luckily vscode has a vim mode that's decent. Not perfect at all, but decent. As for extensibility - all the above are plugins. It is extensible.