4 ms·

I started out with VSCode hoping it would be an easier, more modern Emacs. Calva was the closest thing to a good experience I could get. Now I am switching to E

I started out with VSCode hoping it would be an easier, more modern Emacs. Calva was the closest thing to a good experience I could get. Now I am switching to Emacs for CIDER and generally the Emacs ecosystem. I doubt I'll ever not use vim when I'm working/thinking in systems mode, though. The thought of waiting for a "real" editor to launch when I just want to edit a tiny unstructured file is a sad one to me.

kangaroopouch 5y ago
If you're interested in a reliably-quick-to-start editor, and prefer the Emacs ecosystem, consider https://www.gnu.org/software/zile/ https://www.gnu.org/software/zile/ . It's built for that purpose.
- yaantc 5y ago
  I used to use a light editor for quick edits, jed, but now I use Emacs too. It turns out that Emacs in text mode without a full configuration (so: "emacs -Q -nw") starts nearly instantly on a few years old laptop, so I just aliased jed to this command. It's about ~110ms for start+exit, good enough for me. And all of Emacs is there, even my init if needed.
loxias 5y ago
> The thought of waiting for a "real" editor to launch when I just want to edit a tiny unstructured file is a sad one to me. Amen to that. That's why I use emacs. ;) Just timed it myself, started and ready to go in 120ms. Pretty sure we can shave more time off that.
- kamaal 5y ago
  >>Just timed it myself, started and ready to go in 120ms. Let me get this straight. You plan to code for hours, and your biggest concern at this point in time is your editor takes 1 - 2 seconds more to start? A second is 1.666666666667% of a minute. And 0.02777777777% of an hour. Just how much more productive are you getting by saving this time? On the other hand emacs is notorious for making users spend days to get a decent working set up. And even that's more like bad vscode clone than anything else.
  - stnmtn 5y ago
    Programmer brains are weird, and are stimulated thoroughly by any and all optimization, especially ones that are impossible to not see On the scale of reality, it's obviously less time to just pick up VScode in a few hours of learning (if that), and then deal with it taking 2-3 seconds to launch But on the scale of programmer brain, it's clearly wayyyy better to invest days into learning emacs, writing custom configs for it, learning plugin ecosystems, and the like so that you can see and FEEL that 150ms startup every time.
    - kamaal 5y ago
      That's ok if all you write is something like C or C++. If you are writing html, css, react, js, python, sql and myriad other things. Then having all of this configured to your likings is a multi month project. While vscode gets you up and running in minutes. Edit efficiency should be least of your worries. vscode constantly reminds me if I forgot to import something, or if I imported something and forgot to use it. It lets me navigate code semantically, not just through text tags. It lets me debug, have a project running on a remote box, and let me work on it like Im working locally etc etc. Writing a full feature list will make this a blog post/book. At the end of the day my job is write code, not to work on side tooling projects.
  - loxias 5y ago
    > Let me get this straight. You plan to code for hours, and your biggest concern at this point in time is your editor takes 1 - 2 seconds more to start? NO. Mine isn't. I happily used emacs when it took a solid half a minute to fully load. Hell, I once was stuck on an AIX machine that needed lots of maintenance and figured it would "save time in the long run" if I built emacs from source so I could debug things there instead of copying files back and forth. Eight megs and constantly swapping and I feel fine. :) I was just pointing out the startup time as an easy way to pop the nonsensical argument that on today's hardware emacs is anything but lightning fast. > On the other hand emacs is notorious for making users spend days to get a decent working set up. Days? Powerful tools can take years to master! The best are those which let you be productive immediately, while providing a natural and built-in path for you to grow as you need to. Make easy things easy, hard things possible, &c.

kangaroopouch 5y ago

If you're interested in a reliably-quick-to-start editor, and prefer the Emacs ecosystem, consider https://www.gnu.org/software/zile/ https://www.gnu.org/software/zile/ . It's built for that purpose.

yaantc 5y ago
I used to use a light editor for quick edits, jed, but now I use Emacs too. It turns out that Emacs in text mode without a full configuration (so: "emacs -Q -nw") starts nearly instantly on a few years old laptop, so I just aliased jed to this command. It's about ~110ms for start+exit, good enough for me. And all of Emacs is there, even my init if needed.

loxias 5y ago

> The thought of waiting for a "real" editor to launch when I just want to edit a tiny unstructured file is a sad one to me. Amen to that. That's why I use emacs. ;) Just timed it myself, started and ready to go in 120ms. Pretty sure we can shave more time off that.

kamaal 5y ago
>>Just timed it myself, started and ready to go in 120ms. Let me get this straight. You plan to code for hours, and your biggest concern at this point in time is your editor takes 1 - 2 seconds more to start? A second is 1.666666666667% of a minute. And 0.02777777777% of an hour. Just how much more productive are you getting by saving this time? On the other hand emacs is notorious for making users spend days to get a decent working set up. And even that's more like bad vscode clone than anything else.
- stnmtn 5y ago
  Programmer brains are weird, and are stimulated thoroughly by any and all optimization, especially ones that are impossible to not see On the scale of reality, it's obviously less time to just pick up VScode in a few hours of learning (if that), and then deal with it taking 2-3 seconds to launch But on the scale of programmer brain, it's clearly wayyyy better to invest days into learning emacs, writing custom configs for it, learning plugin ecosystems, and the like so that you can see and FEEL that 150ms startup every time.
  - kamaal 5y ago
    That's ok if all you write is something like C or C++. If you are writing html, css, react, js, python, sql and myriad other things. Then having all of this configured to your likings is a multi month project. While vscode gets you up and running in minutes. Edit efficiency should be least of your worries. vscode constantly reminds me if I forgot to import something, or if I imported something and forgot to use it. It lets me navigate code semantically, not just through text tags. It lets me debug, have a project running on a remote box, and let me work on it like Im working locally etc etc. Writing a full feature list will make this a blog post/book. At the end of the day my job is write code, not to work on side tooling projects.
- loxias 5y ago
  > Let me get this straight. You plan to code for hours, and your biggest concern at this point in time is your editor takes 1 - 2 seconds more to start? NO. Mine isn't. I happily used emacs when it took a solid half a minute to fully load. Hell, I once was stuck on an AIX machine that needed lots of maintenance and figured it would "save time in the long run" if I built emacs from source so I could debug things there instead of copying files back and forth. Eight megs and constantly swapping and I feel fine. :) I was just pointing out the startup time as an easy way to pop the nonsensical argument that on today's hardware emacs is anything but lightning fast. > On the other hand emacs is notorious for making users spend days to get a decent working set up. Days? Powerful tools can take years to master! The best are those which let you be productive immediately, while providing a natural and built-in path for you to grow as you need to. Make easy things easy, hard things possible, &c.