6 ms·

The Tao of Acme

74 points by black_knight 5y ago

smegger001 5y ago
Is it just me or does the way the lack of features is used as a feature here seem like the 'your holding it wrong excuse'. Just from this essay and never having used Acme, I wonder what advantage the has over other minimalist text editors. I mean if lack of features is the feature why not just use ed.
- Avshalom 5y ago
  That specific phrase came to my mind too. On the other hand sometimes people are just holding things wrong.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  There's something to that criticism, but plan9 was also built for improved modularity and compositionality when compared to earlier Unix. Some features that are not included in Acme may be achieved simply by leveraging outside code.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  Acme was (is?) built by the same people who built Go, and a lot of the same complaints about this way of thinking are heard about Go. Simplicity as a design goal means that there are trade-offs. YAGNI is one of those trade-offs: "yes we could probably add that feature, but it would make things complicated and we don't think the additional complexity is worth it for this feature". I'm a huge fan of this approach. Mostly because in a majority of cases, YAGNI was true: by thinking more about the problem I needed less language features (as the article says). I'm curious about ACME. I'm annoyed with VSCode (getting too slow), and IntelliJ/Goland feels too Java-y. Vim is fantastic but corrupts my muscle memory, and I can't get past the tutorial for Emacs.
  - nmz 5y ago
    You should try out vis-editor by martanne. its acme but in vi form.
    - jdougan 5y ago
      I would claim that it is Sam in vi form. Still good but not as strong at external integration as acme.
ehnto 5y ago
> When one talks about software, it’s common to start by listing out a program’s features. When it comes to acme, however, it’s perhaps more appropriate to start by talking about what features it does not include. I think this assumes you do have an idea of the program you're building already, which means you already have idea of it's shape and featureset. I agree with the premise but I think you can't realistically start at "What don't we do". You still need to know what roughly you're building so you know what to take away.
- enneff 5y ago
  I think when starting out a design the non-goals are just as important as the goals.
pfraze 5y ago
I have watched a number of demos of Acme and I have two general takeaways. The idea of adding “buttons” (so to speak) to the toolbar by just writing text seems incredibly cool, and I doubt I would ever enjoy actually using Acme. Like a lot of people, I went through an EMacs/Vim phase. Then went SublimeText, and now I live happily in VSCode. I feel very uncool to say it, but I just work really quickly with VSCode and I think it’s more because of a thousand micro-optimized UX choices by Microsoft rather than a particularly elegant core design, which is how I’d characterize Acme based on those demo videos. This is sadly how I feel about a lot of software these days. I’d be happy to be wrong.
- uluyol 5y ago
  I used acme as my main text editor for a few years and a lot of what you say resonates with me. The biggest problem I had with amce wasn't the editor itself but the lack of easy to use integrations. Acme integrates well with external programs. This is really nice, but I don't want to spend the time writing all of my own integrations. Maybe I can justify that effort if I work in one codebase for a long time, but I've bounced around and haven't thought the investment would be worthwhile. Compare with vscode: actively developed and you just click some buttons to get all the integrations. Just so much less friction. If acme had an active community around it the situation may be different. But that's just not the case.
  - coliveira 5y ago
    This is an important point: not only the Acme community doesn't want to implement features, they also don't want to share the way things can be automated. This article is a good example: the author spends 90% of the time explaining why things shouldn't be done, instead of explaining how exactly he does it. This is not a great way to create a community.
- ilovecaching 5y ago
  I'm against VSCode because it's a Microsoft product. I've been working on kernels for several decades and I remember when they tried to kill Linux and ran an entire ad campaign around it. Their entire embrace, extend, extinguish is still alive, and they're only embracing OSS because they lost their end user device battle (because their OS is trash) and had to pivot to cloud where people were already embracing OSS. WSL, running my editor in the cloud and paying for a subscription, having Microsoft control your editor, it's all clearly a dystopia for developers that leads to lock in, paying for things that should be free, and an invasion of privacy that should be avoided at all cost. There are so many editors to choose from. I get that not everyone wants invest in Vim/Emacs, even though you should and it will pay off, and the vast majority of the programmers that are doing great things are using Vim/Emacs (seriously, I have a list of big names and except for some rare exceptions like James Gosling who apparently uses Netbeans, EVERYONE noteworthy uses Vim/Emacs), and it's OSS, and in Vim's case it's also helping a charity. But if you are the person who just can't get there with Vim/Emacs, at least don't give yourself over to Microsoft. Use Sublime, Nova, BB, etc. They're all great editors by small companies making cool stuff and they'll get way more out of your support than Microsoft.
vessenes 5y ago
Oh wow. I really don’t relate to the “mouse + keyboard together is annoying, therefore I choose more mouse” reaction. Since we have to type to code anyway, my pick is keyboard only, and since I don’t want RSI, I switched from emacs to vim 20 years ago or so, and I’ve been mostly happy ever since. I do really love the idea of super simple bindings out to shell scripts in acme, that’s not … super simple in vim, but other than that this post filled me with a mix of consternation and revulsion; I guess like he mentions upfront, acme isn’t for everyone :)
0des 5y ago
If you like the authentic experience of emacs on linux, check out acme on plan9!
jimbokun 5y ago
A lot of these arguments sound like Calvin's Dad: https://calvinandhobbes.fandom.com/wiki/Building_character https://calvinandhobbes.fandom.com/wiki/Building_character
- ilovecaching 5y ago
  The less is more philosophy isn't new, in fact, it's rooted in some of the world's oldest philosophies, religions, art, etc. It's not something that engineers grasp easily. Engineers see the world in terms of features, and features that increase convenience as a net good. But convenience is often bartered against critical thinking, and that's why conveniences in editing code like syntax highlighting, autocomplete, may not be the clear wins they are assumed to be.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
KerrAvon 5y ago
I don’t buy the thing about syntax highlighting. Even if I did think turning it off made me write better code — I do not — I still have to work with code that I have no control over. I agree about tabs and proportional fonts, but I think those are lost causes.
- bravura 5y ago
  I studied with Russ Cox. We did competitive programming together—and, earlier, against each other. I asked Russ why he didn’t use syntax highlighting and he was like: “Do you color code all your English by part of speech?” That stuck with me.
  - jdougan 5y ago
    Yes, when I have the option and I'm proofing text. Less useful for writing, very useful for bulk reading.
  - ilovecaching 5y ago
    What's he like in person? It seems like he's a considered person and definitely an acolyte of Rob from the outside.
  - whoopdedo 5y ago
    Maybe we should. We already have Grammarly for linting of prose. Throw in syntax highlighting, auto-complete. If you want to get really creative find a way to identify the relevant proper noun when you hover the mouse over a pronoun.
  - layer8 5y ago
    > Do you color code all your English by part of speech? I would if its function was to express strict logic that will be interpreted by a merciless computer.
  - servytor 5y ago
    If I was paid to read massive amounts of repetitive English with only 25 keywords besides nouns you are darn right I would setup syntax highlighting.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
shp0ngle 5y ago
I never used Acme for similar reason I have never used Emacs. I never used Acme because I don't have a middle mouse button. (I never used Emacs because I don't have a META key on keyboard.)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > (I never used Emacs because I don't have a META key on keyboard.) Your keyboard has no Alt? I prefer to use the C-[ prefix, but I've never had a keyboard that was missing the key.
ilovecaching 5y ago
ACME is a really cool editor and it's approach to the Unix philosophy is something I wish would have caught on in other TUIs/GUIs. That said, the real takeaway from ACME is you don't need an IDE to be a noteworthy programmer. In fact my list of noteworthy programmers (currently has a little over 100 devs on it), which includes Linux kernel devs, GNU devs, Bell Lab devs, programming language author devs, compiler devs, other people who wrote famous software, etc. contains 99% Vim/Emacs users. And no, it's not just people from an older generation, the list contains plenty of up and comers and even teenagers and college students who are already doing great things. Clearly more features, smarter IDEs, etc. isn't the deciding factor in doing great things. I think what ACME really teaches us is that by taking a less is more approach, we can train ourselves to understand code at a deeper level by paying more attention and taking our time, and giving us the creative freedom to compose code in any way we choose.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bitwize 5y ago
  On my list of noteworthy programmers is John Carmack, who has praised Microsoft's Visual Studio and other tooling for offering the best development experience, especially for game dev. No amount of faffing about with Emacs, compilers, and command line tools will give you the equivalent of DirectX GPU debugging. Also on my list is Dan Ingalls, who implemented much of what could be considered the primordial IDE -- Xerox PARC's Smalltalk system. You're right in that IDEs are not what enable great code. But they do make writing great code (or terrible code) faster and easier.
jesusofnazarath 5y ago
I've been using Acme exclusivly for almost 6 years now. I consider it to be the only true GUI text editor that has been developed, and the only non-trivial development in editor-technology since vim and emacs. Like emacs it is more then just an editor, it is a full programming environment. If it was extended to support more then just text it could be a full desktop environment. I see posts complaining about having to write your own integrations....well thats exactly the point of Acme. Its a programmers editor. Your write tools to make your programs, to create better tools to create better programs, to .... Acme creates an environment, like the unix shell, for all those programs to be integrated. Acme is the modern shell! It's sad that nothing better has been created since (~30 years)
black_knight 5y ago
I wrote my PhD thesis using acme. Both text (markdown+latex) and code. It was a really nice experience because you really feel like the environment is yours. If I needed to automate anything all I had to do was to write a script in any language - because the virtual file system interface is accessible to all and does not discriminate. Most often a simple shell script would suffice. In most other editors writing a plug-in is a more cumbersome endeavour.
pjmlp 5y ago
Praising ACME without ever trying the full OS experience that inspired it, Oberon, is only getting half of the picture.
- nmz 5y ago
  You mean plan9. there was inspiration from oberon, but its not necessary with plan9port.
  - jdougan 5y ago
    I found that Inferno was the best choice to try acme out, especially since that provides a much more consistent cross platform experience.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    I really mean Oberon. The way ACME UI works, it is how the whole Oberon OS works, selecting text elements with mouse chords and executing commands if they happen to match Module.Command pattern.
kkfx 5y ago
IMVHO too many fails to comprehend what "editor" means. Now it means just "something to edit text", in the past means "human-computer interface". ACME is modern respect of Tioga (Xerox) or Emacs, but it's still a classic editor, or the human-computer interface. Plan 9 while address many unix shortcoming it's still the successors of unix so it's still shell-centered and ACME was/is it's tentative to came back to classic OSes, so editors, models, while retaining unix "cheapness" and "raw simplicity". I think at Bell Labs someone have thought that "perhaps we still find a way to a non crappy and archaic OS, while satisfy big business needs against the users" so something that was a desktop but still networked in a way that push toward modern data centers/cloud model. That's because re-reading IT history since original Xerox desktops almost all the industry seems to have do it's best do deprive end users of control on their own systems to shift it toward some vendors. All we have today was essentially designed back then, and changed to be proprietary and centralized from emails (now essentially webmails and proprietary chat platforms) to modern "recommendations engines" vs classic user-local scoring tools. Editors was the biggest and more evident change: from desktop UIs to mere text-writing tools. After a certain amount of time big and narcissist IDEs arrive, explode and then people tired by their bloat want again "classic editors" without even really knowing them, so arrive the era of Sublime, VS Code etc, notebook UIs (like Jupyter) etc perhaps in another decade or two we will unveil the new shiny and powerful editor, witch happen to be a copycat of old Tioga and co...
erik_seaberg 5y ago
Any “user interface for programmers” ought to be programmable. Any tool for experts ought to reward greater expertise.
jordic 5y ago
I use acme as a personal wiki where I can store useful playbooks (executables from there). From sqls to kubectl commands. Just a big wiki with the unix at the mouse.

74 points by black_knight 5y ago

Is it just me or does the way the lack of features is used as a feature here seem like the 'your holding it wrong excuse'. Just from this essay and never having used Acme, I wonder what advantage the has over other minimalist text editors. I mean if lack of features is the feature why not just use ed.

Avshalom 5y ago
That specific phrase came to my mind too. On the other hand sometimes people are just holding things wrong.
zozbot234 5y ago
There's something to that criticism, but plan9 was also built for improved modularity and compositionality when compared to earlier Unix. Some features that are not included in Acme may be achieved simply by leveraging outside code.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
Acme was (is?) built by the same people who built Go, and a lot of the same complaints about this way of thinking are heard about Go. Simplicity as a design goal means that there are trade-offs. YAGNI is one of those trade-offs: "yes we could probably add that feature, but it would make things complicated and we don't think the additional complexity is worth it for this feature". I'm a huge fan of this approach. Mostly because in a majority of cases, YAGNI was true: by thinking more about the problem I needed less language features (as the article says). I'm curious about ACME. I'm annoyed with VSCode (getting too slow), and IntelliJ/Goland feels too Java-y. Vim is fantastic but corrupts my muscle memory, and I can't get past the tutorial for Emacs.
- nmz 5y ago
  You should try out vis-editor by martanne. its acme but in vi form.
  - jdougan 5y ago
    I would claim that it is Sam in vi form. Still good but not as strong at external integration as acme.

ehnto 5y ago

> When one talks about software, it’s common to start by listing out a program’s features. When it comes to acme, however, it’s perhaps more appropriate to start by talking about what features it does not include. I think this assumes you do have an idea of the program you're building already, which means you already have idea of it's shape and featureset. I agree with the premise but I think you can't realistically start at "What don't we do". You still need to know what roughly you're building so you know what to take away.

enneff 5y ago
I think when starting out a design the non-goals are just as important as the goals.

pfraze 5y ago

I have watched a number of demos of Acme and I have two general takeaways. The idea of adding “buttons” (so to speak) to the toolbar by just writing text seems incredibly cool, and I doubt I would ever enjoy actually using Acme. Like a lot of people, I went through an EMacs/Vim phase. Then went SublimeText, and now I live happily in VSCode. I feel very uncool to say it, but I just work really quickly with VSCode and I think it’s more because of a thousand micro-optimized UX choices by Microsoft rather than a particularly elegant core design, which is how I’d characterize Acme based on those demo videos. This is sadly how I feel about a lot of software these days. I’d be happy to be wrong.

uluyol 5y ago
I used acme as my main text editor for a few years and a lot of what you say resonates with me. The biggest problem I had with amce wasn't the editor itself but the lack of easy to use integrations. Acme integrates well with external programs. This is really nice, but I don't want to spend the time writing all of my own integrations. Maybe I can justify that effort if I work in one codebase for a long time, but I've bounced around and haven't thought the investment would be worthwhile. Compare with vscode: actively developed and you just click some buttons to get all the integrations. Just so much less friction. If acme had an active community around it the situation may be different. But that's just not the case.
- coliveira 5y ago
  This is an important point: not only the Acme community doesn't want to implement features, they also don't want to share the way things can be automated. This article is a good example: the author spends 90% of the time explaining why things shouldn't be done, instead of explaining how exactly he does it. This is not a great way to create a community.
ilovecaching 5y ago
I'm against VSCode because it's a Microsoft product. I've been working on kernels for several decades and I remember when they tried to kill Linux and ran an entire ad campaign around it. Their entire embrace, extend, extinguish is still alive, and they're only embracing OSS because they lost their end user device battle (because their OS is trash) and had to pivot to cloud where people were already embracing OSS. WSL, running my editor in the cloud and paying for a subscription, having Microsoft control your editor, it's all clearly a dystopia for developers that leads to lock in, paying for things that should be free, and an invasion of privacy that should be avoided at all cost. There are so many editors to choose from. I get that not everyone wants invest in Vim/Emacs, even though you should and it will pay off, and the vast majority of the programmers that are doing great things are using Vim/Emacs (seriously, I have a list of big names and except for some rare exceptions like James Gosling who apparently uses Netbeans, EVERYONE noteworthy uses Vim/Emacs), and it's OSS, and in Vim's case it's also helping a charity. But if you are the person who just can't get there with Vim/Emacs, at least don't give yourself over to Microsoft. Use Sublime, Nova, BB, etc. They're all great editors by small companies making cool stuff and they'll get way more out of your support than Microsoft.

vessenes 5y ago

Oh wow. I really don’t relate to the “mouse + keyboard together is annoying, therefore I choose more mouse” reaction. Since we have to type to code anyway, my pick is keyboard only, and since I don’t want RSI, I switched from emacs to vim 20 years ago or so, and I’ve been mostly happy ever since. I do really love the idea of super simple bindings out to shell scripts in acme, that’s not … super simple in vim, but other than that this post filled me with a mix of consternation and revulsion; I guess like he mentions upfront, acme isn’t for everyone :)

0des 5y ago

If you like the authentic experience of emacs on linux, check out acme on plan9!

jimbokun 5y ago

A lot of these arguments sound like Calvin's Dad: https://calvinandhobbes.fandom.com/wiki/Building_character https://calvinandhobbes.fandom.com/wiki/Building_character

ilovecaching 5y ago
The less is more philosophy isn't new, in fact, it's rooted in some of the world's oldest philosophies, religions, art, etc. It's not something that engineers grasp easily. Engineers see the world in terms of features, and features that increase convenience as a net good. But convenience is often bartered against critical thinking, and that's why conveniences in editing code like syntax highlighting, autocomplete, may not be the clear wins they are assumed to be.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

KerrAvon 5y ago

I don’t buy the thing about syntax highlighting. Even if I did think turning it off made me write better code — I do not — I still have to work with code that I have no control over. I agree about tabs and proportional fonts, but I think those are lost causes.

bravura 5y ago
I studied with Russ Cox. We did competitive programming together—and, earlier, against each other. I asked Russ why he didn’t use syntax highlighting and he was like: “Do you color code all your English by part of speech?” That stuck with me.
- jdougan 5y ago
  Yes, when I have the option and I'm proofing text. Less useful for writing, very useful for bulk reading.
- ilovecaching 5y ago
  What's he like in person? It seems like he's a considered person and definitely an acolyte of Rob from the outside.
- whoopdedo 5y ago
  Maybe we should. We already have Grammarly for linting of prose. Throw in syntax highlighting, auto-complete. If you want to get really creative find a way to identify the relevant proper noun when you hover the mouse over a pronoun.
- layer8 5y ago
  > Do you color code all your English by part of speech? I would if its function was to express strict logic that will be interpreted by a merciless computer.
- servytor 5y ago
  If I was paid to read massive amounts of repetitive English with only 25 keywords besides nouns you are darn right I would setup syntax highlighting.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

shp0ngle 5y ago

I never used Acme for similar reason I have never used Emacs. I never used Acme because I don't have a middle mouse button. (I never used Emacs because I don't have a META key on keyboard.)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> (I never used Emacs because I don't have a META key on keyboard.) Your keyboard has no Alt? I prefer to use the C-[ prefix, but I've never had a keyboard that was missing the key.

ilovecaching 5y ago

ACME is a really cool editor and it's approach to the Unix philosophy is something I wish would have caught on in other TUIs/GUIs. That said, the real takeaway from ACME is you don't need an IDE to be a noteworthy programmer. In fact my list of noteworthy programmers (currently has a little over 100 devs on it), which includes Linux kernel devs, GNU devs, Bell Lab devs, programming language author devs, compiler devs, other people who wrote famous software, etc. contains 99% Vim/Emacs users. And no, it's not just people from an older generation, the list contains plenty of up and comers and even teenagers and college students who are already doing great things. Clearly more features, smarter IDEs, etc. isn't the deciding factor in doing great things. I think what ACME really teaches us is that by taking a less is more approach, we can train ourselves to understand code at a deeper level by paying more attention and taking our time, and giving us the creative freedom to compose code in any way we choose.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bitwize 5y ago
On my list of noteworthy programmers is John Carmack, who has praised Microsoft's Visual Studio and other tooling for offering the best development experience, especially for game dev. No amount of faffing about with Emacs, compilers, and command line tools will give you the equivalent of DirectX GPU debugging. Also on my list is Dan Ingalls, who implemented much of what could be considered the primordial IDE -- Xerox PARC's Smalltalk system. You're right in that IDEs are not what enable great code. But they do make writing great code (or terrible code) faster and easier.

jesusofnazarath 5y ago

I've been using Acme exclusivly for almost 6 years now. I consider it to be the only true GUI text editor that has been developed, and the only non-trivial development in editor-technology since vim and emacs. Like emacs it is more then just an editor, it is a full programming environment. If it was extended to support more then just text it could be a full desktop environment. I see posts complaining about having to write your own integrations....well thats exactly the point of Acme. Its a programmers editor. Your write tools to make your programs, to create better tools to create better programs, to .... Acme creates an environment, like the unix shell, for all those programs to be integrated. Acme is the modern shell! It's sad that nothing better has been created since (~30 years)

black_knight 5y ago

I wrote my PhD thesis using acme. Both text (markdown+latex) and code. It was a really nice experience because you really feel like the environment is yours. If I needed to automate anything all I had to do was to write a script in any language - because the virtual file system interface is accessible to all and does not discriminate. Most often a simple shell script would suffice. In most other editors writing a plug-in is a more cumbersome endeavour.

pjmlp 5y ago

Praising ACME without ever trying the full OS experience that inspired it, Oberon, is only getting half of the picture.

nmz 5y ago
You mean plan9. there was inspiration from oberon, but its not necessary with plan9port.
- jdougan 5y ago
  I found that Inferno was the best choice to try acme out, especially since that provides a much more consistent cross platform experience.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  I really mean Oberon. The way ACME UI works, it is how the whole Oberon OS works, selecting text elements with mouse chords and executing commands if they happen to match Module.Command pattern.

kkfx 5y ago

IMVHO too many fails to comprehend what "editor" means. Now it means just "something to edit text", in the past means "human-computer interface". ACME is modern respect of Tioga (Xerox) or Emacs, but it's still a classic editor, or the human-computer interface. Plan 9 while address many unix shortcoming it's still the successors of unix so it's still shell-centered and ACME was/is it's tentative to came back to classic OSes, so editors, models, while retaining unix "cheapness" and "raw simplicity". I think at Bell Labs someone have thought that "perhaps we still find a way to a non crappy and archaic OS, while satisfy big business needs against the users" so something that was a desktop but still networked in a way that push toward modern data centers/cloud model. That's because re-reading IT history since original Xerox desktops almost all the industry seems to have do it's best do deprive end users of control on their own systems to shift it toward some vendors. All we have today was essentially designed back then, and changed to be proprietary and centralized from emails (now essentially webmails and proprietary chat platforms) to modern "recommendations engines" vs classic user-local scoring tools. Editors was the biggest and more evident change: from desktop UIs to mere text-writing tools. After a certain amount of time big and narcissist IDEs arrive, explode and then people tired by their bloat want again "classic editors" without even really knowing them, so arrive the era of Sublime, VS Code etc, notebook UIs (like Jupyter) etc perhaps in another decade or two we will unveil the new shiny and powerful editor, witch happen to be a copycat of old Tioga and co...

erik_seaberg 5y ago

Any “user interface for programmers” ought to be programmable. Any tool for experts ought to reward greater expertise.

jordic 5y ago

I use acme as a personal wiki where I can store useful playbooks (executables from there). From sqls to kubectl commands. Just a big wiki with the unix at the mouse.