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Ask HN: Is there other software similar to Vim and Emacs?

I'm looking for software that is powerful, understandable, hackable, extensible, reliable, future-proof (few breaking updates) and feature-rich. The two tools I've found so far that come close to this are TiddlyWiki (notetaking) and Vim/Emacs (same text editor niche). TiddlyWiki loses some points on hackability because it's web technology and fairly sandboxed. Vim/Emacs are only for text, obviously. I think what these tools have in common is that they all have a strong core idea (Vim: modal, TiddlyWiki: a quine of tiddlers, Emacs: elisp) that provides insane feature breadth at relatively low cost to learnability. Other software is usually on a spectrum of low feature count (most tools in the UNIX philosophy) to low understandability (IDEs, most other text editors, all OSes). Then a few rare ones are extremely powerful, but so old and poorly designed that I don't think they make the cut (e.g. Bash in my opinion). Are there other tools similar to Vim, that maybe even cover other application areas? Doesn't have to be terminal-based. I'd love to hear your opinions!

darthrupert 4y ago
Visual Code, I guess obviously. Has mostly overtaken both Emacs and Vim.
- rlpb 4y ago
  Overtaken how? Download size? Startup time? Ubiquitous availability? Number of kernel hackers who use it as their daily driver? What's your metric?
  - jshzglr 4y ago
    Relax and open your eyes.
  - wruza 4y ago
    Not a fan of vscode (or emacs, which it “has overtaken”, not vim), but I think it fits OP’s first paragraph.
  - darthrupert 4y ago
    Popularity, features, quality. I still use Emacs myself but I'm not fucking blind.
  - worthless-trash 4y ago
    Memory usage and CPU time ! Heyooo!
    - jhbadger 4y ago
      I remember when Emacs was viewed as requiring a lot of resources (in the early 1990s) and I remember the sysadmin of our shared UNIX system scolding us if we had more than one emacs process running (as opposed to opening multiple files in different buffers).
      - groovy2shoes 4y ago
        The old joke was that EMACS stood for Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping. Of course, eight megs is nothing these days.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  That's like saying the phone has overtaken the horse. I doubt many people sshing into a box using vim will choose visual code. There might have been some people using vim for daily development who switched but probably not many
  - nnoitra 4y ago
    Really? Did you miss the part where both of them are editors?
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      Are you opening visual code in your putty session to edit a config variable? They are as similiar as word and pico.
      - nnoitra 4y ago
        No, but that's for basic text editing only. Anything more serious and you spending 2 hours per 6 hour development time configuring vim.
        Vijayvithal 4y ago
        You configure Vim Daily? For every Task? Wow! I have once .vimrc configured for all the languages that I use/know. Whenever I work with a new client. I pull that .vimrc on the allocated machine. Run PluginInstall and in minutes I am ready to go!
        5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
        I would claim the opposite — VSCode is nearly unusable without very heavy customization unless you're fine with being very inefficient. Hotkeys for many common operations are not assigned out of the box. Without that, using it involves driving the interface with both the mouse and the keyboard. Those that are assigned are awkward and look like they've been designed for a spider since they require you to reach keys on the opposite sides of the keyboard. I always get the feeling that its own authors don't use it for anything more complicated than editing /etc/hosts, although it's quite obviously not true.
- GrollingGrakbor 4y ago
  I've been using VSCode kinda on and off, but I haven't learned it properly yet. Do you think it's truly worth it? It seems to me like you'd use it mainly when you don't have access to a full IDE, so I haven't really found a niche yet.
  - anonuser123456 4y ago
    VSCode is magical in my experience. I say this as a 20 year emacs user, and 10 year Vim user.
    - Vijayvithal 4y ago
      VSCode is good. But it is a memory hog compared to Vim. I need that memory for my compile/simulate tasks.
      - worthless-trash 4y ago
        I wish someone could show me actual repl work in vscode for a lisp or erlang. It sometimes gets the way there, but doesn't to make it. I think the plugin writers are either shoe-horned by VCCodes lack of plugin capability or they are basing their work off some other toolings expected behavior and it doesn't "sit right" with how I work.
Jtsummers 4y ago
Smalltalk, my experience has mostly been with the Squeak and Pharo variants. It hits everything on your list, in my opinion.
- Qem 4y ago
  I second this recommendation. Squeak and Pharo are awesome, not limited to text, and have fast virtual machines.
  - igouy 4y ago
    > fast virtual machines Compared to what? To do what?
    - Qem 4y ago
      Well, compared to popular dynamic languages with similar levels of abstraction, like Python or Ruby. Squeak was just released with SistaV1, so I think the speculative inclining JIT is just around the corner. While using Pharo, I'm used to get code running 2-3 faster than the equivalent in Python.
      - worthless-trash 4y ago
        Man i wish I could really understand pharoh.
        znpy 4y ago
        one of the most annoying things about smalltalk/pharo is that the "marketing" tell you it's simple and the syntax fit in a sheet of paper, yet all the times i tried to try it i had to go through a lot of pharo introductory tutorial before i could even start to type an "hello world". needless to say I got bored ad moved on.
        scroot 4y ago
        `Transcript show: 'Hello, World'` Not especially complex syntax. It just doesn't have a lot in common with languages with Algol-like syntax
commotionfever 4y ago
not in a similar category but foobar2000 for windows is infinitely customisable and really powerful. including its UI, plugins, embedded language for tag properties. for example check the reddit and look at peoples setups. all wildly different
hulitu 4y ago
Ed. Ed is the standard text editor.
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.en.html https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.en.html
drmaximus 4y ago
Sioyek: https://sioyek.info https://sioyek.info It's a PDF viewer with many powerfull features ( for example you can preview references even when the document doesn't have links) and vim-like keybinds. Although it is a little too soon to determine if it will be future proof.
wruza 4y ago
Window managers: awesome, i3.
hcs 4y ago
I've heard this about AutoHotKey: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/ahk/ https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/ahk/ Not just macros, but deeper automation of anything in a Windows UI, with a great depth of community scripts and knowledge.
haunter 4y ago
FFMpeg and its libraries https://ffmpeg.org/about.html https://ffmpeg.org/about.html
marttt 4y ago
Rob Pike's acme text editor for the Plan 9 operating system: http://acme.cat-v.org/ http://acme.cat-v.org/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M (excellent overview of the editor by Russ Cox) And acme's predecessor sam: http://sam.cat-v.org http://sam.cat-v.org You'll need plan9port to run acme on Linux, though. But the core ideas are very simple and powerful (sam: everything is a huge string; acme: everything is a clickable file) and thus hopefully long-lasting. I would also mention edbrowse, a line-oriented web browser initially for blind people. Maybe this is too far on the fringe, though. It does have a lot of depth (excellent scripting capabilities); it's an amazing project actually: http://edbrowse.org/ http://edbrowse.org/
thetic 4y ago
- qutebrowser - vifm - ranger - i3 - sway - tmux - zathura - tig
- GrollingGrakbor 4y ago
  Vifm looks really interesting, and admittedly I haven't tried ranger. Will give them a go, thanks! The others are all very fine pieces of software I all use but imo not nearly on the same level. They're essentially programs with fancy keyshortcuts.
  - akrifari 4y ago
    You should also check out nnn (https://github.com/jarun/nnn https://github.com/jarun/nnn) if you're looking for terminal-based file manager.
    - atmosx 4y ago
      IIRC the golden standard is midnight commander ( https://midnight-commander.org/ https://midnight-commander.org/ ), which is another old timer. I wonder how nnn and vifm compare to mc.
ERAAlex 4y ago
[dead]
- waynesonfire 4y ago
  oh wow, free today, what a deal. Can't wait to pay you tomorrow, once all my notes are in your proprietary system and it's difficult for me to export them.
  - noSyncCloud 4y ago
    Looks like it exports to Markdown and HTML: https://era.sh/blog/update_1.12.0 https://era.sh/blog/update_1.12.0
  - ERAAlex 4y ago
    If we add a pricing model, we won't force you to pay to have access to your notes - all your notes are stored locally in a sqlite db. You can export them as HTML and MD file.
    - waynesonfire 4y ago
      That's cool. This looks way better than Evernote.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- chiheisen 4y ago
  Not FOSS like emacs/vim, same username as product. I dislike calling someone a shill but this is blatant.
  - ERAAlex 4y ago
nnoitra 4y ago
VSCode demolishes Vim and Emacs. Want something easier to extend? Write your own editor.
saltcured 4y ago
The reason editors seem to be a well populated niche, I think, is not only because it is a common need but because it is an application domain ripe for having an application+framework+extensions hybrid. The generic nature of the content being manipulated means that a generic buffer management framework can go a long way to allow humans to adapt it to many purposes. This generic approach also limits the complexity of writing an extension, which makes it more accessible to new or narrowly motivated hackers. Other content-generating applications with similar scripting potential exist in imaging and graphics, e.g. photoshop, gimp, cinepaint, blender. I am sure there are audio equivalents but I know less about those. An even more robust and powerful application plus framework is arguably an RDBMS system. Even if you limit yourself to the intended usage model, the commercial products like MSSQL and Oracle meet many of your criteria. Of course, the open source ones like PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and SQLite take this even further. They have pretty extensive internal interfaces you can also extend, if you are not content with the planned extensibility of SQL, stored procedures, etc. But, are you limiting yourself to standalone applications? Many frameworks are very modular and meet many of your criteria for software, but are intended to be consumed by developers and so may not have as much standalone function. Consider web app frameworks, conventional thick GUI frameworks, and more focused tooling like parser generators. And of course developers may be blind to them, but the operating systems and compilers we use are also rather elaborate and extensible frameworks. I think things like GCC and the Linux kernel demonstrably meet these criteria today, as they did when I was starting my career ~25 years ago.
anonuser123456 4y ago
Visual Studio Code. I don’t know if any comparable editing system.
esrh 4y ago
Some people have mentioned window managers, but nothing comes quite close in terms of extensibility and feature as dwm[0] and xmonad[1], which is a near dwm reimplementation in haskell with many more interesting features. Both programs are configured by writing code, which compiles to a binary that you then use. Xmonad and xmonad-contrib are maybe more accurately described as haskell libraries that make writing your own window manager trivial. Highly recommend if you enjoy configuration, you can do some really cool stuff with it. [0] https://dwm.suckless.org/ https://dwm.suckless.org/ [1] https://xmonad.org/ https://xmonad.org/
- tiberious726 4y ago
  Adding stumpwm to this list---interactively programming your window manager is an amazing feeling
- hulitu 4y ago
  There was a time when GWM (generic window manager) was quiet popular. It had a Lisp config language (Wool).
- rozab 4y ago
  I eventually found my dream WM, and it's Awesome: https://awesomewm.org https://awesomewm.org It's pretty far from suckless philosophy, which for me is a good thing. I think this makes it way more flexible and usable. Great documentation, loads of features, and infinitely extensible with lua configuration. If you aren't bothered by your WM using a few megs of memory then I think it's the best choice.
  - clircle 4y ago
    Currently using DWM-flexipatch for the last 6 months. Would be interested in learning what features I gain from switching to Awesome.
Jeaye 4y ago
A dialect of Lisp. Choose your flavor, though I recommend Clojure. I would say this counts because the language itself is programmable. The lisp I use can be tailored to exactly how I want to write code, just like my vim setup. Anyone who's been using CL for the past couple of decades basically has their own dialect on their hands, given all the tools they've built around the standard ones. I'm not saying this is the best way to collaborate with code that others need to muck with, just as I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to do anything of use in my vim setup. It's for you.
- billfruit 4y ago
  Clojure is more lisp for java programmers, than java for lisp programmers. Unless you have your feet well grounded in the Java ecosystem, using Clojure to develop anything meaningful will be somewhat of a struggle.
zzo38computer 4y ago
A feature which is useful in my opinion is that the end user can enter commands to use external programs with pipes. There are other good ideas such as standard I/O, command lines, etc. Better also is: you have enough ropes to hang yourself, and also a few more just in case (this is UNIX philosophy). Most web browsers are the opposite of what is any good, though; they do not believe the end user, offer too few controls, do things automatically that they should not do, break things, etc. I do not know of any good ones, and most of them just become worse over time. I try to write better programs, although of course, if it is any good or not, is a matter of your opinion. I wrote a ZZT editor which is has some similarities with vim (it has a modal interface similar to vim, using various key commands for many operations (even can use hjkl for cursor movement, and numeric prefixes, like vim does), and also you can enter SQL codes to perform queries and batch operations, and can use SQL codes to customize keybindings too). You can also use external text editors to edit ZZT-OOP text (later might also be adding option to allow a built-in text editor too, with syntax highlighting and auto-completion). I had written other programs too, and there are probably many that I had not written, too. However, many newer programs are not designed well like that and instead include only a few options that are nearly worthless. I try to oppose that and write a better one.
b5n 4y ago
> Emacs are only for text, obviously. I don't know if I missed something in your post, but this couldn't be further from the truth. It's cliche to refer to emacs as it's own OS, and it is not uncommon for users to do all of their computing inside of emacs - web browsing, email, note taking, documentation, writing, version control, terminal, ide, window manager, remote admin, etc. Based on your criteria emacs seems like a perfect fit, I encourage you take take a deeper look at emacs if you're interested. https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs
- deleted 4y ago
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- lvass 4y ago
  There are Emacs packages that themselves have the qualities listed here. GNU Hyperbole, org-mode, calc, org-roam/denote, evil are some examples.
- noobly 4y ago
  Yeah its been described as a virtual lisp machine as well. I use emacs for everything personally, aside from Firefox (which I launch within emacs/exwm). Its hard to go back once you get used to consistent keybindings and commands across your OS. I sure wish RSS was more popular, too. I wouldnt even really need Firefox if that were the case.
therealmocker 4y ago
For a different application area consider the Minecraft sandbox environment.
- infinitezest 4y ago
  Or Minetest if you want to go the FOSS route
  - TheFreim 4y ago
    There's also classicube which is a FOSS implementation of minecraft classic.
ajvs 4y ago
Obsidian and Logseq. Both work with Markdown files and have a large number of community plugins.
viraptor 4y ago
Blender is kind of vim/emacs of the 3d world. Especially with its extensibility through python.
- TT-392 4y ago
  And I guess kicad (pcb cad) is getting there.
- m463 4y ago
  I've always thought a python-based emacs would be really fun. I just seem to write code in python so much more naturally than lisp.
amitprayal 4y ago
jEdit - Java based editor with lots of plugins and extremely customizable.
seydor 4y ago
blender, if it ever manages to make a consistent experience. ableton, is sort-of-there but it could be less verbose PHP as a scripting tool , has everything fast Secondlife/opensimulator as gaming platform. Unfortunately too much legacy stuff and not enough innovation, but more open and hackable than others
brennen 4y ago
VisiData: https://www.visidata.org/ https://www.visidata.org/ WeeChat: https://weechat.org/ https://weechat.org/ fzf: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
bvoq 4y ago
Check out micro which is supposed to be a modern nano. https://github.com/zyedidia/micro https://github.com/zyedidia/micro
- tpoacher 4y ago
  Or check out nano, which is actually a modern nano!
euger 4y ago
Surfingkeys https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys is a browser extension for surfing web with vim like interface. It has lots of built-in functionality, for example: focus on the first input, edit URL and visit the changed URL, go one path up in URL, go to audio playing tab, copy column(s) of a table, copy code blocks... It's extensible, you can bind JS functions to keymaps.
listenallyall 4y ago
I think Excel checks off all your boxes: - powerful - understandable - hackable - extensible - reliable - future-proof (few breaking updates) <-- can't promise anything but you can open an XLS from 1995 in Excel 2021. - feature-rich
t6jvcereio 4y ago
Sooo.... Am I the only one who thinks this looks like a post promoting "tiddlywiki"?
jdougan 4y ago
Nyxt, the lisp enhanced web browser
galfarragem 4y ago
Autocad[0], the emacs for CAD. Since 1982 and still the industry standard. You can even script it with lisp[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoCAD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoCAD [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoLISP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoLISP
porcc 4y ago
My friends and I call these "golden software." Things that are reliable, meaningfully F/OSS, versatile and extremely useful. Our top tier is: - Syncthing - OBS - VLC Personally I also think: - Licecap - TouchDesigner - Stylish
dontbenebby 4y ago
Pico was used in the examples in undergrad to avoid derailing the class teaching how to exit Vi (the GNU version is "nano") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_(text_editor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_(text_editor)

darthrupert 4y ago

Visual Code, I guess obviously. Has mostly overtaken both Emacs and Vim.

rlpb 4y ago
Overtaken how? Download size? Startup time? Ubiquitous availability? Number of kernel hackers who use it as their daily driver? What's your metric?
- jshzglr 4y ago
  Relax and open your eyes.
- wruza 4y ago
  Not a fan of vscode (or emacs, which it “has overtaken”, not vim), but I think it fits OP’s first paragraph.
- darthrupert 4y ago
  Popularity, features, quality. I still use Emacs myself but I'm not fucking blind.
- worthless-trash 4y ago
  Memory usage and CPU time ! Heyooo!
  - jhbadger 4y ago
    I remember when Emacs was viewed as requiring a lot of resources (in the early 1990s) and I remember the sysadmin of our shared UNIX system scolding us if we had more than one emacs process running (as opposed to opening multiple files in different buffers).
    - groovy2shoes 4y ago
      The old joke was that EMACS stood for Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping. Of course, eight megs is nothing these days.
ipaddr 4y ago
That's like saying the phone has overtaken the horse. I doubt many people sshing into a box using vim will choose visual code. There might have been some people using vim for daily development who switched but probably not many
- nnoitra 4y ago
  Really? Did you miss the part where both of them are editors?
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Are you opening visual code in your putty session to edit a config variable? They are as similiar as word and pico.
    - nnoitra 4y ago
      No, but that's for basic text editing only. Anything more serious and you spending 2 hours per 6 hour development time configuring vim.
      - Vijayvithal 4y ago
        You configure Vim Daily? For every Task? Wow! I have once .vimrc configured for all the languages that I use/know. Whenever I work with a new client. I pull that .vimrc on the allocated machine. Run PluginInstall and in minutes I am ready to go!
      - 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
        I would claim the opposite — VSCode is nearly unusable without very heavy customization unless you're fine with being very inefficient. Hotkeys for many common operations are not assigned out of the box. Without that, using it involves driving the interface with both the mouse and the keyboard. Those that are assigned are awkward and look like they've been designed for a spider since they require you to reach keys on the opposite sides of the keyboard. I always get the feeling that its own authors don't use it for anything more complicated than editing /etc/hosts, although it's quite obviously not true.
GrollingGrakbor 4y ago
I've been using VSCode kinda on and off, but I haven't learned it properly yet. Do you think it's truly worth it? It seems to me like you'd use it mainly when you don't have access to a full IDE, so I haven't really found a niche yet.
- anonuser123456 4y ago
  VSCode is magical in my experience. I say this as a 20 year emacs user, and 10 year Vim user.
  - Vijayvithal 4y ago
    VSCode is good. But it is a memory hog compared to Vim. I need that memory for my compile/simulate tasks.
    - worthless-trash 4y ago
      I wish someone could show me actual repl work in vscode for a lisp or erlang. It sometimes gets the way there, but doesn't to make it. I think the plugin writers are either shoe-horned by VCCodes lack of plugin capability or they are basing their work off some other toolings expected behavior and it doesn't "sit right" with how I work.

Jtsummers 4y ago

Smalltalk, my experience has mostly been with the Squeak and Pharo variants. It hits everything on your list, in my opinion.

Qem 4y ago
I second this recommendation. Squeak and Pharo are awesome, not limited to text, and have fast virtual machines.
- igouy 4y ago
  > fast virtual machines Compared to what? To do what?
  - Qem 4y ago
    Well, compared to popular dynamic languages with similar levels of abstraction, like Python or Ruby. Squeak was just released with SistaV1, so I think the speculative inclining JIT is just around the corner. While using Pharo, I'm used to get code running 2-3 faster than the equivalent in Python.
    - worthless-trash 4y ago
      Man i wish I could really understand pharoh.
      - znpy 4y ago
        one of the most annoying things about smalltalk/pharo is that the "marketing" tell you it's simple and the syntax fit in a sheet of paper, yet all the times i tried to try it i had to go through a lot of pharo introductory tutorial before i could even start to type an "hello world". needless to say I got bored ad moved on.
        scroot 4y ago
        `Transcript show: 'Hello, World'` Not especially complex syntax. It just doesn't have a lot in common with languages with Algol-like syntax

commotionfever 4y ago

not in a similar category but foobar2000 for windows is infinitely customisable and really powerful. including its UI, plugins, embedded language for tag properties. for example check the reddit and look at peoples setups. all wildly different

hulitu 4y ago

Ed. Ed is the standard text editor.

GauntletWizard 4y ago
https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.en.html https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.en.html

drmaximus 4y ago

Sioyek: https://sioyek.info https://sioyek.info It's a PDF viewer with many powerfull features ( for example you can preview references even when the document doesn't have links) and vim-like keybinds. Although it is a little too soon to determine if it will be future proof.

wruza 4y ago

Window managers: awesome, i3.

hcs 4y ago

I've heard this about AutoHotKey: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/ahk/ https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/ahk/ Not just macros, but deeper automation of anything in a Windows UI, with a great depth of community scripts and knowledge.

haunter 4y ago

FFMpeg and its libraries https://ffmpeg.org/about.html https://ffmpeg.org/about.html

marttt 4y ago

Rob Pike's acme text editor for the Plan 9 operating system: http://acme.cat-v.org/ http://acme.cat-v.org/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M (excellent overview of the editor by Russ Cox) And acme's predecessor sam: http://sam.cat-v.org http://sam.cat-v.org You'll need plan9port to run acme on Linux, though. But the core ideas are very simple and powerful (sam: everything is a huge string; acme: everything is a clickable file) and thus hopefully long-lasting. I would also mention edbrowse, a line-oriented web browser initially for blind people. Maybe this is too far on the fringe, though. It does have a lot of depth (excellent scripting capabilities); it's an amazing project actually: http://edbrowse.org/ http://edbrowse.org/

thetic 4y ago

- qutebrowser - vifm - ranger - i3 - sway - tmux - zathura - tig

GrollingGrakbor 4y ago
Vifm looks really interesting, and admittedly I haven't tried ranger. Will give them a go, thanks! The others are all very fine pieces of software I all use but imo not nearly on the same level. They're essentially programs with fancy keyshortcuts.
- akrifari 4y ago
  You should also check out nnn (https://github.com/jarun/nnn https://github.com/jarun/nnn) if you're looking for terminal-based file manager.
  - atmosx 4y ago
    IIRC the golden standard is midnight commander ( https://midnight-commander.org/ https://midnight-commander.org/ ), which is another old timer. I wonder how nnn and vifm compare to mc.

ERAAlex 4y ago

[dead]

waynesonfire 4y ago
oh wow, free today, what a deal. Can't wait to pay you tomorrow, once all my notes are in your proprietary system and it's difficult for me to export them.
- noSyncCloud 4y ago
  Looks like it exports to Markdown and HTML: https://era.sh/blog/update_1.12.0 https://era.sh/blog/update_1.12.0
- ERAAlex 4y ago
  If we add a pricing model, we won't force you to pay to have access to your notes - all your notes are stored locally in a sqlite db. You can export them as HTML and MD file.
  - waynesonfire 4y ago
    That's cool. This looks way better than Evernote.
- deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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chiheisen 4y ago
Not FOSS like emacs/vim, same username as product. I dislike calling someone a shill but this is blatant.
- ERAAlex 4y ago

nnoitra 4y ago

VSCode demolishes Vim and Emacs. Want something easier to extend? Write your own editor.

saltcured 4y ago

The reason editors seem to be a well populated niche, I think, is not only because it is a common need but because it is an application domain ripe for having an application+framework+extensions hybrid. The generic nature of the content being manipulated means that a generic buffer management framework can go a long way to allow humans to adapt it to many purposes. This generic approach also limits the complexity of writing an extension, which makes it more accessible to new or narrowly motivated hackers. Other content-generating applications with similar scripting potential exist in imaging and graphics, e.g. photoshop, gimp, cinepaint, blender. I am sure there are audio equivalents but I know less about those. An even more robust and powerful application plus framework is arguably an RDBMS system. Even if you limit yourself to the intended usage model, the commercial products like MSSQL and Oracle meet many of your criteria. Of course, the open source ones like PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and SQLite take this even further. They have pretty extensive internal interfaces you can also extend, if you are not content with the planned extensibility of SQL, stored procedures, etc. But, are you limiting yourself to standalone applications? Many frameworks are very modular and meet many of your criteria for software, but are intended to be consumed by developers and so may not have as much standalone function. Consider web app frameworks, conventional thick GUI frameworks, and more focused tooling like parser generators. And of course developers may be blind to them, but the operating systems and compilers we use are also rather elaborate and extensible frameworks. I think things like GCC and the Linux kernel demonstrably meet these criteria today, as they did when I was starting my career ~25 years ago.

anonuser123456 4y ago

Visual Studio Code. I don’t know if any comparable editing system.

esrh 4y ago

Some people have mentioned window managers, but nothing comes quite close in terms of extensibility and feature as dwm[0] and xmonad[1], which is a near dwm reimplementation in haskell with many more interesting features. Both programs are configured by writing code, which compiles to a binary that you then use. Xmonad and xmonad-contrib are maybe more accurately described as haskell libraries that make writing your own window manager trivial. Highly recommend if you enjoy configuration, you can do some really cool stuff with it. [0] https://dwm.suckless.org/ https://dwm.suckless.org/ [1] https://xmonad.org/ https://xmonad.org/

tiberious726 4y ago
Adding stumpwm to this list---interactively programming your window manager is an amazing feeling
hulitu 4y ago
There was a time when GWM (generic window manager) was quiet popular. It had a Lisp config language (Wool).
rozab 4y ago
I eventually found my dream WM, and it's Awesome: https://awesomewm.org https://awesomewm.org It's pretty far from suckless philosophy, which for me is a good thing. I think this makes it way more flexible and usable. Great documentation, loads of features, and infinitely extensible with lua configuration. If you aren't bothered by your WM using a few megs of memory then I think it's the best choice.
- clircle 4y ago
  Currently using DWM-flexipatch for the last 6 months. Would be interested in learning what features I gain from switching to Awesome.

Jeaye 4y ago

A dialect of Lisp. Choose your flavor, though I recommend Clojure. I would say this counts because the language itself is programmable. The lisp I use can be tailored to exactly how I want to write code, just like my vim setup. Anyone who's been using CL for the past couple of decades basically has their own dialect on their hands, given all the tools they've built around the standard ones. I'm not saying this is the best way to collaborate with code that others need to muck with, just as I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to do anything of use in my vim setup. It's for you.

billfruit 4y ago
Clojure is more lisp for java programmers, than java for lisp programmers. Unless you have your feet well grounded in the Java ecosystem, using Clojure to develop anything meaningful will be somewhat of a struggle.

zzo38computer 4y ago

A feature which is useful in my opinion is that the end user can enter commands to use external programs with pipes. There are other good ideas such as standard I/O, command lines, etc. Better also is: you have enough ropes to hang yourself, and also a few more just in case (this is UNIX philosophy). Most web browsers are the opposite of what is any good, though; they do not believe the end user, offer too few controls, do things automatically that they should not do, break things, etc. I do not know of any good ones, and most of them just become worse over time. I try to write better programs, although of course, if it is any good or not, is a matter of your opinion. I wrote a ZZT editor which is has some similarities with vim (it has a modal interface similar to vim, using various key commands for many operations (even can use hjkl for cursor movement, and numeric prefixes, like vim does), and also you can enter SQL codes to perform queries and batch operations, and can use SQL codes to customize keybindings too). You can also use external text editors to edit ZZT-OOP text (later might also be adding option to allow a built-in text editor too, with syntax highlighting and auto-completion). I had written other programs too, and there are probably many that I had not written, too. However, many newer programs are not designed well like that and instead include only a few options that are nearly worthless. I try to oppose that and write a better one.

b5n 4y ago

> Emacs are only for text, obviously. I don't know if I missed something in your post, but this couldn't be further from the truth. It's cliche to refer to emacs as it's own OS, and it is not uncommon for users to do all of their computing inside of emacs - web browsing, email, note taking, documentation, writing, version control, terminal, ide, window manager, remote admin, etc. Based on your criteria emacs seems like a perfect fit, I encourage you take take a deeper look at emacs if you're interested. https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lvass 4y ago
There are Emacs packages that themselves have the qualities listed here. GNU Hyperbole, org-mode, calc, org-roam/denote, evil are some examples.
noobly 4y ago
Yeah its been described as a virtual lisp machine as well. I use emacs for everything personally, aside from Firefox (which I launch within emacs/exwm). Its hard to go back once you get used to consistent keybindings and commands across your OS. I sure wish RSS was more popular, too. I wouldnt even really need Firefox if that were the case.

therealmocker 4y ago

For a different application area consider the Minecraft sandbox environment.

infinitezest 4y ago
Or Minetest if you want to go the FOSS route
- TheFreim 4y ago
  There's also classicube which is a FOSS implementation of minecraft classic.

ajvs 4y ago

Obsidian and Logseq. Both work with Markdown files and have a large number of community plugins.

viraptor 4y ago

Blender is kind of vim/emacs of the 3d world. Especially with its extensibility through python.

TT-392 4y ago
And I guess kicad (pcb cad) is getting there.
m463 4y ago
I've always thought a python-based emacs would be really fun. I just seem to write code in python so much more naturally than lisp.

amitprayal 4y ago

jEdit - Java based editor with lots of plugins and extremely customizable.

seydor 4y ago

blender, if it ever manages to make a consistent experience. ableton, is sort-of-there but it could be less verbose PHP as a scripting tool , has everything fast Secondlife/opensimulator as gaming platform. Unfortunately too much legacy stuff and not enough innovation, but more open and hackable than others

brennen 4y ago

VisiData: https://www.visidata.org/ https://www.visidata.org/ WeeChat: https://weechat.org/ https://weechat.org/ fzf: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

bvoq 4y ago

Check out micro which is supposed to be a modern nano. https://github.com/zyedidia/micro https://github.com/zyedidia/micro

tpoacher 4y ago
Or check out nano, which is actually a modern nano!

euger 4y ago

Surfingkeys https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys is a browser extension for surfing web with vim like interface. It has lots of built-in functionality, for example: focus on the first input, edit URL and visit the changed URL, go one path up in URL, go to audio playing tab, copy column(s) of a table, copy code blocks... It's extensible, you can bind JS functions to keymaps.

listenallyall 4y ago

I think Excel checks off all your boxes: - powerful - understandable - hackable - extensible - reliable - future-proof (few breaking updates) <-- can't promise anything but you can open an XLS from 1995 in Excel 2021. - feature-rich

t6jvcereio 4y ago

Sooo.... Am I the only one who thinks this looks like a post promoting "tiddlywiki"?

jdougan 4y ago

Nyxt, the lisp enhanced web browser

galfarragem 4y ago

Autocad[0], the emacs for CAD. Since 1982 and still the industry standard. You can even script it with lisp[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoCAD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoCAD [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoLISP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoLISP

porcc 4y ago

My friends and I call these "golden software." Things that are reliable, meaningfully F/OSS, versatile and extremely useful. Our top tier is: - Syncthing - OBS - VLC Personally I also think: - Licecap - TouchDesigner - Stylish

dontbenebby 4y ago

Pico was used in the examples in undergrad to avoid derailing the class teaching how to exit Vi (the GNU version is "nano") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_(text_editor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_(text_editor)