3 ms·

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 customiz

by 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.
- donio 4y ago
  Yep, people tend to ignore the time spent mucking about with GUI based configurations even though it often adds up to enormous amounts of time. The big difference between the two approaches is that the effort I've spent customizing Emacs has continued to pay dividends over the past 20 years. And I only had to make each change once instead of every time I move to a new computer.
- torben-friis 4y ago
  Alternatively, you are confusing familiar with intuitive. If you hit a wall with vs code, which many people consider the most user friendly editor because of lack or familiarity, imagine how it is for emacs newcomers, when the community’s approach to user experience is “you’re a user? Nope, you’re one of the devs now”.
  - User23 4y ago
    > Alternatively, you are confusing familiar with intuitive. That's why I mentioned that other developers were having the same problem. There were dozens, if not hundreds all struggling to get a decent Ruby IDE going in VS Code. Enough so that documenting and sharing VS Code config became a week long hack days project. My familiarity with Emacs doesn't explain that away. > If you hit a wall with vs code, which many people consider the most user friendly editor because of lack or familiarity, imagine how it is for emacs newcomers, when the community’s approach to user experience is “you’re a user? Nope, you’re one of the devs now”. I never claimed that Emacs doesn't have a learning curve too. My claim is that VS Code required at least as much effort to configure to be a proper Ruby IDE as Emacs did. And that's not an argument, it's a factual statement based on my experience and my observation of my peers' experiences. Maybe VS Code is a great out of the box IDE for some blub, but as soon as you need to configure it, it's just as much of a hassle if not more so due to its inferior discoverability. You do raise a good point though that the Emacs community has a high average level of respect for Emacs users. It's one of the things I find refreshing. Even in places like reddit where the default discourse is around the cesspool level, the Emacs community is great and practically encourages achieving competency and then mastery.
3836293648 4y ago
You learn lisp because of emacs, not the other way around

by tgv 4y ago

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.

donio 4y ago
Yep, people tend to ignore the time spent mucking about with GUI based configurations even though it often adds up to enormous amounts of time. The big difference between the two approaches is that the effort I've spent customizing Emacs has continued to pay dividends over the past 20 years. And I only had to make each change once instead of every time I move to a new computer.
torben-friis 4y ago
Alternatively, you are confusing familiar with intuitive. If you hit a wall with vs code, which many people consider the most user friendly editor because of lack or familiarity, imagine how it is for emacs newcomers, when the community’s approach to user experience is “you’re a user? Nope, you’re one of the devs now”.
- User23 4y ago
  > Alternatively, you are confusing familiar with intuitive. That's why I mentioned that other developers were having the same problem. There were dozens, if not hundreds all struggling to get a decent Ruby IDE going in VS Code. Enough so that documenting and sharing VS Code config became a week long hack days project. My familiarity with Emacs doesn't explain that away. > If you hit a wall with vs code, which many people consider the most user friendly editor because of lack or familiarity, imagine how it is for emacs newcomers, when the community’s approach to user experience is “you’re a user? Nope, you’re one of the devs now”. I never claimed that Emacs doesn't have a learning curve too. My claim is that VS Code required at least as much effort to configure to be a proper Ruby IDE as Emacs did. And that's not an argument, it's a factual statement based on my experience and my observation of my peers' experiences. Maybe VS Code is a great out of the box IDE for some blub, but as soon as you need to configure it, it's just as much of a hassle if not more so due to its inferior discoverability. You do raise a good point though that the Emacs community has a high average level of respect for Emacs users. It's one of the things I find refreshing. Even in places like reddit where the default discourse is around the cesspool level, the Emacs community is great and practically encourages achieving competency and then mastery.

3836293648 4y ago

You learn lisp because of emacs, not the other way around