5 ms·

I mean rock solid as in being able to edit buffers with very different contents of half a million characters, every day for decades without crashing. I wouldn't

I mean rock solid as in being able to edit buffers with very different contents of half a million characters, every day for decades without crashing. I wouldn't call what you describe fragile. It sounds more like a typical learning experience. You did something, Emacs obeyed and then you who didn't like what you just did :). There is a market for restricting choice, so you are clearly not alone! But I don't think that the Emacs learning curve should be exaggerated, either. If you start it up and follow the instructions, you very quickly become productive. What gets people into trouble is usually when they expect Emacs to be like software X which they already know, so they don't read what's on the screen and kind of skip the introduction. And then they get frustrated when they find out that Emacs is Emacs. I'm not saying that's you, or that it is stupid, impatient etc. or whatever. I'm just saying that I've seen it quite a few times.

coldtea 5y ago
>I wouldn't call what you describe fragile. It sounds more like a typical learning experience. You did something, Emacs obeyed and then you who didn't like what you just did That's the definition of fragile. The famous "You're holding it wrong", even sounds benign compared to "it's just a learning experience".
- Kessler83 5y ago
  No, the definition of fragile is that if you use something in a wrong way, it breaks. But Emacs doesn't break. It obeys and keeps running. With your reasoning, all software that gives you a choice, anything that can be configured, all programming languages etc. etc., become fragile, because as soon as someone says "I did this but I didn't like the result," your case has been proved. In other words, it is a circular definition. Anyway, I didn't mean learning experience in a condescending way. The user I answered indicated himself that he was learning---and we all are, when it comes to Emacs.
  - nawgz 5y ago
    > With your reasoning, all software that gives you a choice, anything that can be configured, all programming languages etc. etc., become fragile, because as soon as someone says "I did this but I didn't like the result," your case has been proved That's not at all true. It's called "validation" and "error handling". What kind of farce are you getting at? You unironically think a text editor that lets you break its settings panel by trying to use the settings panel normally isn't fragile? Edited to remove cheapshot at parent comment
    - nawgz 5y ago
      I am quite annoyed at downvotes that don't challenge my assertion. Any UI which allows you to directly compromise the environment to the point of requiring a fresh install is the very definition of fragile. I understand that HN is strongly biased against UI development and undervalues the domain, believing instead that tools only accessible to experts are fine, but I think this is an extremely user-hostile POV and to advocate for tools to have this level of footgun built into A FONT MENU is comically sloppy. I can only imagine the comments if someone did this in JS, yet because it's emacs? No comments, only downvotes
  - AJRF 5y ago
    emacs users just live in another world entirely, this whole interaction I find typical of users who evangelize for emacs, and for some reason those users can never see the error of their thinking. You sound like a zealot for thinking a settings menu breaking when trying to change a setting is acceptable.
    - Kessler83 5y ago
      Don't mean to come off like a zealot. To me, it sounds like the user accessed a show/hide-function in the graphical interface while using the mouse, and then didn't know how to bring it back (Control-Right Click or menu-bar-mode). The mistake and the ability to hide the menu-bar are both super common in any application and don't make Emacs fragile. Instructions for how to hide/un-hide stuff are in the manual. I think people are just kidding themselves when they arrive at the conclusion that a program like Emacs---which is super mature, has a huge user base amongst very picky programmers and has survived in fierce competition for 45 years---is somehow fundamentally flawed, fragile etc. Of course it isn't. But it might not be your thing, and that's fine.
      - AJRF 5y ago
        I use emacs daily and have done for 5+ years now. Even with that, It's undeniable that it makes some tragic choices that keep it from being popular in the modern day. You see every few years a project to modernize emacs and get wider mindshare among developer community, and they always fail due to some stubborn choices due to stalwarts not admitting when they are wrong. I have more faith in VSCode sticking around for the next 10 years than I do Emacs.
        Koshkin 5y ago
        I am sure emacs will be alive and well in 20 years. (8MB and constantly swapping and all…)
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - AlexCoventry 5y ago
    I just tried changing the font through the menubar (Options -> Set Default Font) and wound up with a font which was unreadable, due to being only a couple of pixels high. I never use the menubar, so I'm insulated from that kind of issue (and I'm running bleeding-edge emacs, so it could be a transient bug), but I could see it being a showstopper for new users.
- danielvaughn 5y ago
  I'm on the fence about this one, because tools for consumers are a bit different than tools for technologists. Yes UX matters for us as well, but there's a commonly accepted belief that initial-difficulty-of-use is worth the eventual efficiency gains that the tool offers. I've never gotten into Emacs but I believe devs when they say it makes them hyper-productive.
bmitc 5y ago
> I mean rock solid as in being able to edit buffers with very different contents of half a million characters, every day for decades without crashing. There's nothing you can say to make me believe that. Emacs is fragile. Any change, even the most simple change, to one's .emacs file can cause unexpected behavior. From fonts, to shell changes, etc. I have really wanted to like Emacs and get into it, but it's fragile from the very start. > What gets people into trouble is usually when they expect Emacs to be like software X This is the problem with Emacs. By default and by itself, it's nothing more than a glorified text editor. You have to update and configure it to get things to work as they should, but that's where the fragility comes in. I've gone through this multiple times. Every time I try Emacs for some new language, I end up in configuration hell. The moment I switch to VSCode, while not perfect things just work, and I get to coding. Maybe I'll eventually bunker down in a hole and get Emacs to work as I'd expect, but that has not been accomplishable yet. And I generally actually prefer using dedicated IDEs for languages. Otherwise, you're reliant on someone having implemented a usable Emacs mode.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  I'm going to get downvoted to hell for this, but it's true. Emacs is like dating a redhead. You're right: it is more fragile. It takes effort and dedication to figure out what you can do with it (more than you initially thought) and how to not upset it (more easily than you initially thought). But like the redhead, it's worth the effort.
- jimmyvalmer 5y ago
  > Emacs is fragile. Correct. As an undergraduate in the 90s when OOP got in vogue, I puzzled at the bureacratic notion of data hiding and private variables. Emacs set me straight on why those things are important.
- TacticalCoder 5y ago
  > Emacs is fragile. Any change, even the most simple change, to one's .emacs file can cause unexpected behavior. From fonts, to shell changes, etc. I have really wanted to like Emacs and get into it, but it's fragile from the very start. In Emacs you have control over absolutely everything so, of course, you can mess it up. The solution however is very simple, trivial even: just version your entire Emacs config in Git. Screw up something? Checkout the last known working version. There are people even going as far as versioning their entire user directory under Git (not just Emacs but everthing). At the OS level there are people using NixOS: where everything is reproducible. You make it sound like it's not possible to have a deterministic system. It's not just possible: it's very easy (any dev should know how to use Git to revert back to a working Emacs config). > And I generally actually prefer using dedicated IDEs for languages. Then try the JetBrains tools. It's leaps and bounds above anything MS has to offer.

coldtea 5y ago

>I wouldn't call what you describe fragile. It sounds more like a typical learning experience. You did something, Emacs obeyed and then you who didn't like what you just did That's the definition of fragile. The famous "You're holding it wrong", even sounds benign compared to "it's just a learning experience".

Kessler83 5y ago
No, the definition of fragile is that if you use something in a wrong way, it breaks. But Emacs doesn't break. It obeys and keeps running. With your reasoning, all software that gives you a choice, anything that can be configured, all programming languages etc. etc., become fragile, because as soon as someone says "I did this but I didn't like the result," your case has been proved. In other words, it is a circular definition. Anyway, I didn't mean learning experience in a condescending way. The user I answered indicated himself that he was learning---and we all are, when it comes to Emacs.
- nawgz 5y ago
  > With your reasoning, all software that gives you a choice, anything that can be configured, all programming languages etc. etc., become fragile, because as soon as someone says "I did this but I didn't like the result," your case has been proved That's not at all true. It's called "validation" and "error handling". What kind of farce are you getting at? You unironically think a text editor that lets you break its settings panel by trying to use the settings panel normally isn't fragile? Edited to remove cheapshot at parent comment
  - nawgz 5y ago
    I am quite annoyed at downvotes that don't challenge my assertion. Any UI which allows you to directly compromise the environment to the point of requiring a fresh install is the very definition of fragile. I understand that HN is strongly biased against UI development and undervalues the domain, believing instead that tools only accessible to experts are fine, but I think this is an extremely user-hostile POV and to advocate for tools to have this level of footgun built into A FONT MENU is comically sloppy. I can only imagine the comments if someone did this in JS, yet because it's emacs? No comments, only downvotes
- AJRF 5y ago
  emacs users just live in another world entirely, this whole interaction I find typical of users who evangelize for emacs, and for some reason those users can never see the error of their thinking. You sound like a zealot for thinking a settings menu breaking when trying to change a setting is acceptable.
  - Kessler83 5y ago
    Don't mean to come off like a zealot. To me, it sounds like the user accessed a show/hide-function in the graphical interface while using the mouse, and then didn't know how to bring it back (Control-Right Click or menu-bar-mode). The mistake and the ability to hide the menu-bar are both super common in any application and don't make Emacs fragile. Instructions for how to hide/un-hide stuff are in the manual. I think people are just kidding themselves when they arrive at the conclusion that a program like Emacs---which is super mature, has a huge user base amongst very picky programmers and has survived in fierce competition for 45 years---is somehow fundamentally flawed, fragile etc. Of course it isn't. But it might not be your thing, and that's fine.
    - AJRF 5y ago
      I use emacs daily and have done for 5+ years now. Even with that, It's undeniable that it makes some tragic choices that keep it from being popular in the modern day. You see every few years a project to modernize emacs and get wider mindshare among developer community, and they always fail due to some stubborn choices due to stalwarts not admitting when they are wrong. I have more faith in VSCode sticking around for the next 10 years than I do Emacs.
      - Koshkin 5y ago
        I am sure emacs will be alive and well in 20 years. (8MB and constantly swapping and all…)
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- AlexCoventry 5y ago
  I just tried changing the font through the menubar (Options -> Set Default Font) and wound up with a font which was unreadable, due to being only a couple of pixels high. I never use the menubar, so I'm insulated from that kind of issue (and I'm running bleeding-edge emacs, so it could be a transient bug), but I could see it being a showstopper for new users.
danielvaughn 5y ago
I'm on the fence about this one, because tools for consumers are a bit different than tools for technologists. Yes UX matters for us as well, but there's a commonly accepted belief that initial-difficulty-of-use is worth the eventual efficiency gains that the tool offers. I've never gotten into Emacs but I believe devs when they say it makes them hyper-productive.

bmitc 5y ago

> I mean rock solid as in being able to edit buffers with very different contents of half a million characters, every day for decades without crashing. There's nothing you can say to make me believe that. Emacs is fragile. Any change, even the most simple change, to one's .emacs file can cause unexpected behavior. From fonts, to shell changes, etc. I have really wanted to like Emacs and get into it, but it's fragile from the very start. > What gets people into trouble is usually when they expect Emacs to be like software X This is the problem with Emacs. By default and by itself, it's nothing more than a glorified text editor. You have to update and configure it to get things to work as they should, but that's where the fragility comes in. I've gone through this multiple times. Every time I try Emacs for some new language, I end up in configuration hell. The moment I switch to VSCode, while not perfect things just work, and I get to coding. Maybe I'll eventually bunker down in a hole and get Emacs to work as I'd expect, but that has not been accomplishable yet. And I generally actually prefer using dedicated IDEs for languages. Otherwise, you're reliant on someone having implemented a usable Emacs mode.

dotancohen 5y ago
I'm going to get downvoted to hell for this, but it's true. Emacs is like dating a redhead. You're right: it is more fragile. It takes effort and dedication to figure out what you can do with it (more than you initially thought) and how to not upset it (more easily than you initially thought). But like the redhead, it's worth the effort.
jimmyvalmer 5y ago
> Emacs is fragile. Correct. As an undergraduate in the 90s when OOP got in vogue, I puzzled at the bureacratic notion of data hiding and private variables. Emacs set me straight on why those things are important.
TacticalCoder 5y ago
> Emacs is fragile. Any change, even the most simple change, to one's .emacs file can cause unexpected behavior. From fonts, to shell changes, etc. I have really wanted to like Emacs and get into it, but it's fragile from the very start. In Emacs you have control over absolutely everything so, of course, you can mess it up. The solution however is very simple, trivial even: just version your entire Emacs config in Git. Screw up something? Checkout the last known working version. There are people even going as far as versioning their entire user directory under Git (not just Emacs but everthing). At the OS level there are people using NixOS: where everything is reproducible. You make it sound like it's not possible to have a deterministic system. It's not just possible: it's very easy (any dev should know how to use Git to revert back to a working Emacs config). > And I generally actually prefer using dedicated IDEs for languages. Then try the JetBrains tools. It's leaps and bounds above anything MS has to offer.