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Emacs - although there's a lot of accumulated cruft in the form of whacky APIs and elisp functions, the design of Emacs is stunningly effective. The way that mi

Emacs - although there's a lot of accumulated cruft in the form of whacky APIs and elisp functions, the design of Emacs is stunningly effective. The way that minor modes and keymaps are composed to customize the interaction mode for each individual buffer is clever and beautiful, to name just one thing out of many. And, as janky as elisp is, it's one of the few extension languages that's actually good at its job, and the Emacs elisp API allows you complete freedom over virtually every aspect of the editor. Unironically, Emacs is not a text editor - it's a toolkit for creating text-oriented applications. Forth, Lisp (Scheme, in particular - I love CL but it's the C++ of Lisps), and Lua - three languages that take a small set of elegant primitives and synthesize them to give you incredible power. Remember the Milk is a task-tracking SaaS that is one of the few pieces of software that I actually like, which is especially impressive given that it's proprietary. Cheap, fast, effective, and with a UI design that continually impresses me with its mix of intuitiveness and ergonomics.

svat 5y ago
> it's a toolkit for creating text-oriented applications Good examples IMO are Magit and Org-mode. They are basically large applications created in Emacs, and each so good that they are worth learning/using Emacs just for using them (I'd say AucTeX is also in this category).
hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
I use emacs, but would love to see a from scratch modern rebuild which deals with rough edges like threading and performance.
- throw10920 5y ago
  Oh, I completely agree! Emacs is only elegant along some axes, and those two are particular pain points for me, too.
- lytedev 5y ago
  Emacs is quite popular and has some of the most skilled programmers I know using it. I'm really surprised that there hasn't been a neovim-equivalent project for emacs. Or maybe it's out there and I just don't know about it?
  - xunn0026 5y ago
    Spacemacs had some Neovim-like fame at some point. I don't see it promoted that much anymore.
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
  And to be clear, I don’t know of many 40 year old projects without warts, emacs has done incredibly well
- fidelramos 5y ago
  Emacs 28.1 [0], recently released, has support for native compilation [1], which greatly speeds up some workflows. [0] https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/emacs/news/NEWS.28.1 https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/emacs/news/NEWS.2... [1] https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/speed-up-emacs-libjansson-native-elisp-compilation https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/speed-up-emacs-libjan...
doublepg23 5y ago
Writing Scheme (Guile Scheme on Guix) has been the only time I've actually felt a "eureka moment" and feeling like I understood fully what my code was doing.

svat 5y ago

> it's a toolkit for creating text-oriented applications Good examples IMO are Magit and Org-mode. They are basically large applications created in Emacs, and each so good that they are worth learning/using Emacs just for using them (I'd say AucTeX is also in this category).

hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago

I use emacs, but would love to see a from scratch modern rebuild which deals with rough edges like threading and performance.

throw10920 5y ago
Oh, I completely agree! Emacs is only elegant along some axes, and those two are particular pain points for me, too.
lytedev 5y ago
Emacs is quite popular and has some of the most skilled programmers I know using it. I'm really surprised that there hasn't been a neovim-equivalent project for emacs. Or maybe it's out there and I just don't know about it?
- xunn0026 5y ago
  Spacemacs had some Neovim-like fame at some point. I don't see it promoted that much anymore.
hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
And to be clear, I don’t know of many 40 year old projects without warts, emacs has done incredibly well
fidelramos 5y ago
Emacs 28.1 [0], recently released, has support for native compilation [1], which greatly speeds up some workflows. [0] https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/emacs/news/NEWS.28.1 https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/emacs/news/NEWS.2... [1] https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/speed-up-emacs-libjansson-native-elisp-compilation https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/speed-up-emacs-libjan...

doublepg23 5y ago

Writing Scheme (Guile Scheme on Guix) has been the only time I've actually felt a "eureka moment" and feeling like I understood fully what my code was doing.