5 ms·

The fact that about 10% maintains an elisp package, and that about 90% can program in elisp, makes me suspect the outcomes are skewed. Either that, or emacs is

by tgv 4y ago

The fact that about 10% maintains an elisp package, and that about 90% can program in elisp, makes me suspect the outcomes are skewed. Either that, or emacs is doomed.

blahgeek 4y ago
> or emacs is doomed. Can you elaborate? Isn’t a high developer/user ratio a good thing?
- NeutralForest 4y ago
  No, it means that only people highly involved in the ecosystem keep using Emacs. Ideally, you'd like people completely unaware of how it works to use it; like for VSCode for example.
  - pluijzer 4y ago
    The low maintainer/user ratio could be explain by the low barrier that Emacs provide to extend it in comparison to other editors like vscode. Most people I have met using vscode use it very vanilla, maybe thet use a handful of plugins bit non of them have written custom code for it. All Emacs users I have met though were quite fanatical in customizing the editor.
    - NeutralForest 4y ago
      Fair enough, I just don't have sufficient numbers and analysis to have a good opinion on this.
    - aeonik 4y ago
      This is definitely partially true, I'm already working on my own package after only having used emacs for a few months. That being said, as a a newbie, even when M-x <command> it's pretty hard for me to figure out commands. Documentation is also a bit hard for me to understand and seems to assume you know what you are doing already. I think having the menu system expose more commands from minor and major modes might go a long way to reducing friction from new users.
      - wara23arish 4y ago
        in case u didnt know C-h m i believe that lists all of the functions/variables of the current major mode you have I think also C - M x (not sure abt this one) is like M-x but basically only displays commands related to the modes you have active
        tmtvl 4y ago
        M-S-x, actually, C-M-x is eval-defun in Elisp mode (and similar functions for Slime and Geiser).
    - tgv 4y ago
      Emacs definitely doesn't have a low barrier. How many people know LISP in the first place? > All Emacs users I have met though were quite fanatical in customizing the editor. Indeed, and that's the bias of the poll, too. So emacs has a problem getting people on-board. I got into emacs via a Symbolics. It was great, back then, but it's such a specific combination of skills, and the user experience of emacs is completely outdone by e.g. VSCode. Add to that that most devs nowadays have a very shallow technical understanding, and emacs seems to be cornered in a niche. The only opportunity I see for it to come back is when the terminal interface becomes fashionable again.
      - gpderetta 4y ago
        I don't think that emacs need to cater to those with very shallow understanding [1] to survive. It has prospered for decades in its niche and I think it is perfectly fine like this. The percentage of developers that use it might shrink, but the absolute numbers are very likely going up. [1] mind, I don't think that emacs requires very deep understanding either, but I might be overestimating the average programmer.
      - User23 4y ago
        > How many people know LISP in the first place? The basics of Lisp are trivial. I’d happily no-hire any supposed developer that couldn’t easily pick it up. > and the user experience of emacs is completely outdone by e.g. VSCode. I heard this too. I was starting a new job using Ruby, which I hadn’t used in years. Despite being a long time Emacs user, since I hadn’t used Emacs in a few years and by far the most popular editor used by my team was VS Code, I thought I’d give it a shot. To my surprise it didn’t work anywhere near out of the box. I, and other developers on slack too, spent several days mucking with plugins and configs to get sorbet and other language servers working. At that point it was still a laggy lousy experience, but one where I was forced to use the mouse and had poor discoverability. So I said eff this, pulled spacemacs, and had a fully featured lsp based ruby IDE customized to my liking in about four hours. My conclusion from all this is that people say VS Code has a superior user experience they either don’t know what they’re talking about or are drawing the most superficial of conclusions.
  - ergonaught 4y ago
    It seems likely that only people highly involved in the ecosystem completed the survey, because only people highly involved in the ecosystem would even know that the survey existed.
  - gpderetta 4y ago
    Things is, with time you will learn a bit of elisp by osmosis, if anything else by copy-pasting bits from the 'net and then playing around with it. So it is not very surprising that many emacs users know a bit of elisp. 10% being plugin authors is a bit surprising to me and it is possible that the survey is somehow skewed.
e3bc54b2 4y ago
> about 10% maintains an elisp package IMO that is probably better than most other ecosystems where this percentage is often 1-3%. > about 90% can program in elisp Emacs doesn't really make a distinction between user and developer, and its a major driving principle behind the whole endeavor. > makes me suspect the outcomes are skewed Very much possible. But the survey was advertised over HN, matrix, IRC and Reddit. The last being a lot more 'general' audience than other 3, which I expect skews other ways. Anyway, knowing what Emacs is itself is a selection bias, so this is hardly unexpected. > or emacs is doomed If current breakneck speed of development of core Emacs as well as ecosystem at large is any indicator, I'm not preparing the doomsday shelter any time soon :)
- guestbest 4y ago
  Is there any security for elisp?
- NeutralForest 4y ago
  Good points, but rn it seems that Emacs is playing a game of catching up. Thinks like LSP integration, tree-sitter are coming now but it's still really rough. I'm glad they are! But we're not there yet.
  - pritambaral 4y ago
    Merging into core is not really needed for a feature; it just bakes it in. That's the point of emacs: it's made to be extended, no need to draw a line between a user and a developer. LSP integration has been available for very long time, just not from the core emacs repo. For example, Ubuntu does not ship with Blender, because no official build of Ubuntu is available with Blender pre-installed in the iso, but that doesn't mean Blender is not available on Ubuntu. Emacs is a lot like that. Similarly for tree-sitter. Available as a package for a while, only now also available built-in. An Emacs release is not needed to get a feature in Emacs.
    - NeutralForest 4y ago
      I just don't agree, a text editor/IDE should have user ergonomics in mind. The fewer steps there are between your spinning the IDE and having a working setup, the better it is for the end user. Extensibility is important and useful but it also comes at a heavier mental load for users because it introduces complexity, and Emacs is already complex enough imo.
agumonkey 4y ago
doomed ? because of rot ? i'm not involved in emacs-devel but I've never seen so much activity in emacs core and core packages. it seems emacs survived very well before having that much contribution, which makes me believe it's gonna be fine.
TacticalCoder 4y ago
> Either that, or emacs is doomed. I think that the kind of people participating in the survey do skew the results but in any case... Emacs is thriving atm. I've never seen so much interest in Emacs as lately. I've been using it since the late nineties, with a short XEmacs stint, and still use Emacs to this day. And it keeps only getting better and better. I don't see Emacs as being doomed at all.
natrys 4y ago
Or it's not so much the outcome that is skewed, but Emacs attracts a certain type of people in the first place. This is not a doom, rather a boon.
grumpyprole 4y ago
Elisp is really easy though, far easier than trying to write a VSCode plug-in.
- gpderetta 4y ago
  it is a bit like shell scripting; you start with useful oneliner in your .emcas and with time and patience they might grow into fully fledged "plug-ins".

by tgv 4y ago

The fact that about 10% maintains an elisp package, and that about 90% can program in elisp, makes me suspect the outcomes are skewed. Either that, or emacs is doomed.

blahgeek 4y ago

> or emacs is doomed. Can you elaborate? Isn’t a high developer/user ratio a good thing?

NeutralForest 4y ago
No, it means that only people highly involved in the ecosystem keep using Emacs. Ideally, you'd like people completely unaware of how it works to use it; like for VSCode for example.
- pluijzer 4y ago
  The low maintainer/user ratio could be explain by the low barrier that Emacs provide to extend it in comparison to other editors like vscode. Most people I have met using vscode use it very vanilla, maybe thet use a handful of plugins bit non of them have written custom code for it. All Emacs users I have met though were quite fanatical in customizing the editor.
  - NeutralForest 4y ago
    Fair enough, I just don't have sufficient numbers and analysis to have a good opinion on this.
  - aeonik 4y ago
    This is definitely partially true, I'm already working on my own package after only having used emacs for a few months. That being said, as a a newbie, even when M-x <command> it's pretty hard for me to figure out commands. Documentation is also a bit hard for me to understand and seems to assume you know what you are doing already. I think having the menu system expose more commands from minor and major modes might go a long way to reducing friction from new users.
    - wara23arish 4y ago
      in case u didnt know C-h m i believe that lists all of the functions/variables of the current major mode you have I think also C - M x (not sure abt this one) is like M-x but basically only displays commands related to the modes you have active
      - tmtvl 4y ago
        M-S-x, actually, C-M-x is eval-defun in Elisp mode (and similar functions for Slime and Geiser).
  - tgv 4y ago
    Emacs definitely doesn't have a low barrier. How many people know LISP in the first place? > All Emacs users I have met though were quite fanatical in customizing the editor. Indeed, and that's the bias of the poll, too. So emacs has a problem getting people on-board. I got into emacs via a Symbolics. It was great, back then, but it's such a specific combination of skills, and the user experience of emacs is completely outdone by e.g. VSCode. Add to that that most devs nowadays have a very shallow technical understanding, and emacs seems to be cornered in a niche. The only opportunity I see for it to come back is when the terminal interface becomes fashionable again.
    - gpderetta 4y ago
      I don't think that emacs need to cater to those with very shallow understanding [1] to survive. It has prospered for decades in its niche and I think it is perfectly fine like this. The percentage of developers that use it might shrink, but the absolute numbers are very likely going up. [1] mind, I don't think that emacs requires very deep understanding either, but I might be overestimating the average programmer.
    - User23 4y ago
      > How many people know LISP in the first place? The basics of Lisp are trivial. I’d happily no-hire any supposed developer that couldn’t easily pick it up. > and the user experience of emacs is completely outdone by e.g. VSCode. I heard this too. I was starting a new job using Ruby, which I hadn’t used in years. Despite being a long time Emacs user, since I hadn’t used Emacs in a few years and by far the most popular editor used by my team was VS Code, I thought I’d give it a shot. To my surprise it didn’t work anywhere near out of the box. I, and other developers on slack too, spent several days mucking with plugins and configs to get sorbet and other language servers working. At that point it was still a laggy lousy experience, but one where I was forced to use the mouse and had poor discoverability. So I said eff this, pulled spacemacs, and had a fully featured lsp based ruby IDE customized to my liking in about four hours. My conclusion from all this is that people say VS Code has a superior user experience they either don’t know what they’re talking about or are drawing the most superficial of conclusions.
- ergonaught 4y ago
  It seems likely that only people highly involved in the ecosystem completed the survey, because only people highly involved in the ecosystem would even know that the survey existed.
- gpderetta 4y ago
  Things is, with time you will learn a bit of elisp by osmosis, if anything else by copy-pasting bits from the 'net and then playing around with it. So it is not very surprising that many emacs users know a bit of elisp. 10% being plugin authors is a bit surprising to me and it is possible that the survey is somehow skewed.

e3bc54b2 4y ago

> about 10% maintains an elisp package IMO that is probably better than most other ecosystems where this percentage is often 1-3%. > about 90% can program in elisp Emacs doesn't really make a distinction between user and developer, and its a major driving principle behind the whole endeavor. > makes me suspect the outcomes are skewed Very much possible. But the survey was advertised over HN, matrix, IRC and Reddit. The last being a lot more 'general' audience than other 3, which I expect skews other ways. Anyway, knowing what Emacs is itself is a selection bias, so this is hardly unexpected. > or emacs is doomed If current breakneck speed of development of core Emacs as well as ecosystem at large is any indicator, I'm not preparing the doomsday shelter any time soon :)

guestbest 4y ago
Is there any security for elisp?
NeutralForest 4y ago
Good points, but rn it seems that Emacs is playing a game of catching up. Thinks like LSP integration, tree-sitter are coming now but it's still really rough. I'm glad they are! But we're not there yet.
- pritambaral 4y ago
  Merging into core is not really needed for a feature; it just bakes it in. That's the point of emacs: it's made to be extended, no need to draw a line between a user and a developer. LSP integration has been available for very long time, just not from the core emacs repo. For example, Ubuntu does not ship with Blender, because no official build of Ubuntu is available with Blender pre-installed in the iso, but that doesn't mean Blender is not available on Ubuntu. Emacs is a lot like that. Similarly for tree-sitter. Available as a package for a while, only now also available built-in. An Emacs release is not needed to get a feature in Emacs.
  - NeutralForest 4y ago
    I just don't agree, a text editor/IDE should have user ergonomics in mind. The fewer steps there are between your spinning the IDE and having a working setup, the better it is for the end user. Extensibility is important and useful but it also comes at a heavier mental load for users because it introduces complexity, and Emacs is already complex enough imo.

agumonkey 4y ago

doomed ? because of rot ? i'm not involved in emacs-devel but I've never seen so much activity in emacs core and core packages. it seems emacs survived very well before having that much contribution, which makes me believe it's gonna be fine.

TacticalCoder 4y ago

> Either that, or emacs is doomed. I think that the kind of people participating in the survey do skew the results but in any case... Emacs is thriving atm. I've never seen so much interest in Emacs as lately. I've been using it since the late nineties, with a short XEmacs stint, and still use Emacs to this day. And it keeps only getting better and better. I don't see Emacs as being doomed at all.

natrys 4y ago

Or it's not so much the outcome that is skewed, but Emacs attracts a certain type of people in the first place. This is not a doom, rather a boon.

grumpyprole 4y ago

Elisp is really easy though, far easier than trying to write a VSCode plug-in.

gpderetta 4y ago
it is a bit like shell scripting; you start with useful oneliner in your .emcas and with time and patience they might grow into fully fledged "plug-ins".