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> Emacs’ biggest drawback is that you are never using it to the fullest I think that this is actually a strength. If you're using your editor to its fullest,
by throw10920 5y ago
> Emacs’ biggest drawback is that you are never using it to the fullest
I think that this is actually a strength.
If you're using your editor to its fullest, then that means that there's no more room for you to improve. If your editor is simple, then its "fullest" isn't very good. If your editor is complex, then it took you a long time to get to its "fullest", and you hit diminishing returns a while ago.
Emacs is great because the skill gap is ridiculously high, while the skill curve isn't very sharp (Emacs' modeless editing is straight-up easier to learn than vim's modal editing, whatever other people might say), so wherever you are, you can always learn a little bit more, and be a little bit more productive...or continue to work with what you have.
That is - you can stop learning Emacs exactly when you want to - no sooner, no later. If you have a relatively simple editing task, you can just start it up, use the arrow keys to navigate, then save and quit (three keybindings total? find-file, save-buffer, save-buffers-kill-terminal). If you're anticipating starting a career in programming, you can learn and improve your skill with it (and your config) continuously for decades. I don't know of any other tool that's as good at this as Emacs is.
On a tangent, I would propose to you that Emacs' greatest weakness is that it doesn't come configured out of the box. It's way easier to set up VSCode to do Python than it is Emacs, and that's going to be the final factor for a large fraction of programmers. If two editors are equally flexible (which isn't actually the case with Emacs vs. VSCode, but bear with me), the one with the better out-of-the-box experience will win. (and this is why I think that starter kits like Doom and Spacemacs are the only way for Emacs to survive)
- ashton314 5y ago>> Emacs' biggest drawback… I should have added a "/s" in there. :) I'm 100% with you on basically everything you've said. I totally agree that the biggest weakness is how bad the default Emacs experience is. I used vanilla Emacs in a terminal for years until I discovered I could install packages. What a world that opened up.