4 ms·

I've been using Emacs for 25 years, and I use a stock install and I never even touch the .emacs file. It's just a text editor. For many tasks it has better usa

I've been using Emacs for 25 years, and I use a stock install and I never even touch the .emacs file. It's just a text editor. For many tasks it has better usability than the competition. This is why I use it. (Not for everything, though, and that's okay.) I'd guess most people are like me. Configuring text editors is not our hobby.

_y5hn 4y ago
Spacemacs got lots configured out of the box, which allows to keep this workflow but still not miss out on much.
- otabdeveloper4 4y ago
  I don't care about LSP and today's iteration of "IntelliSense", so I'm not missing out much in any case. Since most people today are more than happy to code in Jyputer notebooks (yuck), I guess I'm not actually that weird.
  - gpderetta 4y ago
    Jupyter has code completion. Once in a while it even works.
bachmeier 4y ago
> It's just a text editor. I'll never understand comments like this. There's a full Lisp implementation available in there. Other text editors don't come with org-mode, either.
- spopejoy 4y ago
  As a former elisp package maintainer and emacs bigot ... ... I really just use it as an editor/IDE these days, and couldn't be happier. Emacs is how I learned LISP which forever transformed me as a programmer and I'm grateful. But let's be clear WHY I was doing that: it was horrible as an IDE at the time and I needed it to do the thing. Now, with elpa, great themes, solid modes for every major language, magit etc, it just works. I customize ... via customization. I still have my .emacs (dating myself there) and a few nifty functions I wrote. I maintain a programming language, so pact-mode is still there. The ugly truth there is that it's actually easier to write integrations (for a LISP-like no less!) for VS Code than write a major mode. I miss hacking on emacs but I'm more productive for it.
- ColonelPhantom 4y ago
  > There's a full Lisp implementation available in there. Okay? Neovim and Lite XL ship with full Lua implementations. VSCode ships with a full JS implementation. Being scriptable is not unique to Emacs. Though I do think the combination of - big ecosystem (missing for Lite) - scripting freedom (missing for VSC, iirc its plugin APIs are kinda limiting) - GUI (neovim) is pretty much unique. A lot of other editors are also extensible, either via scripting or dynamically linking native code. The only reason Org is unique to Emacs is that it's "too large to clone", i.e. it'd be a lot of work. I think a lot of editors could provide the same features with a plugin, given sufficient effort.
  - ubermonkey 4y ago
    I think it's 100% clear that Org could exist in several other places if there was a will to implement it. My first target would probably be Obsidian.
- IncRnd 4y ago
  Most people get a car in order to drive from point A to point B. Not everyone puts a bra, rear-spoiler, fancy wheels, and other customizations on their car. I imagine the people who do those things also wonder why other people don't.
- lispm 4y ago
  For him it's a text editor, that's how he sees it, since the Lisp underneath is not touched by him. True, some extensive modes written in Lisp by users are a work of art. That's a layer a non-programming-user may not see.
chucksmash 4y ago
> I use a stock install and I never even touch the .emacs file. Not even to centralize the `backup.foo~` and `#auto-save.foo#` files that emacs loves to litter the file system with? I can't wrap my mind around it.
- otabdeveloper4 4y ago
  I don't mind the backup files. And once in a blue moon they're useful.
  - dmd 4y ago
    Yes, but they're more useful in a central location.
    - hirvi74 4y ago
      So, put them all in a central location. It's very doable, for I have this very thing in my config. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BackupDirectory https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BackupDirectory
      - dmd 4y ago
        Exactly. Did you miss the gp comment?
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- lkjdsklf 4y ago
  I find it fun to find random poop.cpp~ from 5 years ago in some random place on the filesystem. It's like discovering buried treasure. Who knows what's in there? Could be anything!
whartung 4y ago
I'm in this camp. My first, very brief, foray into Emacs was at the suggestion of a friend back in, oh, '91-92. He raved about the buffers and the shell windows. Well, I couldn't run my 4GL programs in the shell windows, since they were full screen programs, and the terminal emulation wasn't working. So, I just stopped and went back to what I was doing. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. For this what the heart of the UNIX explosion. Everybody and their mother had some new box running some sort of UNIX, and we were installing software on all of them. While I spent my day in SCO on 486/66 (Shared by 8 other people), we were installing on Suns, IBM, NCRs, DG, Sequent, HP, and probably something else. I was always on someone else machine. vi, of course, was everywhere. Not so much Emacs. I was also working in their environments, not mine, so box stock was the norm. And at the time, vi was more than suitable and capable. I still use vi pretty much the same way. Today I have multiple windows, unlike back then, but beyond that those formative years were so ingrained, those patterns and habits stick to this day. vi doesn't need plugins, it has bang-pipe. My file systems (notably tmp) are littered with x.x, y.y, z.z, etc. files adding as ad hoc cut and paste buffers. If I couldn't do the work with bang-pipe, shell out, bonk on some data in /tmp/x.x, pop back into vi and :r /tmp/x.x. Is it a single keystroke? No. But it's not in vi either. yyp is about as short as you can get. Later, as I moved into Java and Python, I started adopting Emacs. I was particularly attracted to its auto formatting support for Java. Later on I chose Ant (Java build tool) because is had a -emacs switch to make the output compatible with emacs so I could jump to compiler errors. But that's stock behavior in emacs, we get that "for free", Ant conformed to emacs, vs the other way around. I still kept my vi habits in emacs. If I wanted to refactor something, I was more apt to do something like vi `find . -name "*.java" | xargs grep methodToRename` than use emacs. I had multiple windows, so this was simple to do. Since Java is strictly typed, it coped well with yelling at my ham fisted endeavors when I went stomping through the code base. I finally moved to an IDE, NetBeans, around NB 5 or so. Auto complete spoiled me. Today my use of Emacs is mostly only for Lisp, and even then my Nerd Cred isn't up to par. I don't use Slime. I use emacs for lisp almost solely for auto indent, and paren matching. vi's lisp indent isn't spectacular, but emacs' is pretty good. The paren matching is about par, it doesn't bother me to use % in vi to test parens, but emacs is better. Then, I just ^S, and reload the file in my REPL. I've tried Slime, but simply I don't do enough Lisp to make it worthwhile. It doesn't stick, so I have to relearn it when I come back. Just not worth the bother. I just want to work and get stuff done, not fight tools. Emacs on the Mac works well enough out of the box for me. Scroll wheel scrolls, Cmd-XCV cuts/copies/pastes, I can mouse around and double click things. You know, text editor. I also like messing with elisp in the scratch buffer. Even an old guy like me can remember ^J. Basically what I've learned in my computing career, having to jump around every place, there's one commonality that's at every location I visit. Me. Rather than relying on adapted environments, I rely on an adaptable me. I like tools, I use tools, but I pick tools that work well out of the box. I want a tool, not a kit. Unix, thankfully, comes with a base set that I learned a long time ago. The important ones (important to me) have stuck with me. I can awk all day long, but I can't even spell 'perl', and it's my go to shotgun if I need it.

_y5hn 4y ago

Spacemacs got lots configured out of the box, which allows to keep this workflow but still not miss out on much.

otabdeveloper4 4y ago
I don't care about LSP and today's iteration of "IntelliSense", so I'm not missing out much in any case. Since most people today are more than happy to code in Jyputer notebooks (yuck), I guess I'm not actually that weird.
- gpderetta 4y ago
  Jupyter has code completion. Once in a while it even works.

bachmeier 4y ago

> It's just a text editor. I'll never understand comments like this. There's a full Lisp implementation available in there. Other text editors don't come with org-mode, either.

spopejoy 4y ago
As a former elisp package maintainer and emacs bigot ... ... I really just use it as an editor/IDE these days, and couldn't be happier. Emacs is how I learned LISP which forever transformed me as a programmer and I'm grateful. But let's be clear WHY I was doing that: it was horrible as an IDE at the time and I needed it to do the thing. Now, with elpa, great themes, solid modes for every major language, magit etc, it just works. I customize ... via customization. I still have my .emacs (dating myself there) and a few nifty functions I wrote. I maintain a programming language, so pact-mode is still there. The ugly truth there is that it's actually easier to write integrations (for a LISP-like no less!) for VS Code than write a major mode. I miss hacking on emacs but I'm more productive for it.
ColonelPhantom 4y ago
> There's a full Lisp implementation available in there. Okay? Neovim and Lite XL ship with full Lua implementations. VSCode ships with a full JS implementation. Being scriptable is not unique to Emacs. Though I do think the combination of - big ecosystem (missing for Lite) - scripting freedom (missing for VSC, iirc its plugin APIs are kinda limiting) - GUI (neovim) is pretty much unique. A lot of other editors are also extensible, either via scripting or dynamically linking native code. The only reason Org is unique to Emacs is that it's "too large to clone", i.e. it'd be a lot of work. I think a lot of editors could provide the same features with a plugin, given sufficient effort.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  I think it's 100% clear that Org could exist in several other places if there was a will to implement it. My first target would probably be Obsidian.
IncRnd 4y ago
Most people get a car in order to drive from point A to point B. Not everyone puts a bra, rear-spoiler, fancy wheels, and other customizations on their car. I imagine the people who do those things also wonder why other people don't.
lispm 4y ago
For him it's a text editor, that's how he sees it, since the Lisp underneath is not touched by him. True, some extensive modes written in Lisp by users are a work of art. That's a layer a non-programming-user may not see.

chucksmash 4y ago

> I use a stock install and I never even touch the .emacs file. Not even to centralize the `backup.foo~` and `#auto-save.foo#` files that emacs loves to litter the file system with? I can't wrap my mind around it.

otabdeveloper4 4y ago
I don't mind the backup files. And once in a blue moon they're useful.
- dmd 4y ago
  Yes, but they're more useful in a central location.
  - hirvi74 4y ago
    So, put them all in a central location. It's very doable, for I have this very thing in my config. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BackupDirectory https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BackupDirectory
    - dmd 4y ago
      Exactly. Did you miss the gp comment?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
lkjdsklf 4y ago
I find it fun to find random poop.cpp~ from 5 years ago in some random place on the filesystem. It's like discovering buried treasure. Who knows what's in there? Could be anything!

whartung 4y ago

I'm in this camp. My first, very brief, foray into Emacs was at the suggestion of a friend back in, oh, '91-92. He raved about the buffers and the shell windows. Well, I couldn't run my 4GL programs in the shell windows, since they were full screen programs, and the terminal emulation wasn't working. So, I just stopped and went back to what I was doing. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. For this what the heart of the UNIX explosion. Everybody and their mother had some new box running some sort of UNIX, and we were installing software on all of them. While I spent my day in SCO on 486/66 (Shared by 8 other people), we were installing on Suns, IBM, NCRs, DG, Sequent, HP, and probably something else. I was always on someone else machine. vi, of course, was everywhere. Not so much Emacs. I was also working in their environments, not mine, so box stock was the norm. And at the time, vi was more than suitable and capable. I still use vi pretty much the same way. Today I have multiple windows, unlike back then, but beyond that those formative years were so ingrained, those patterns and habits stick to this day. vi doesn't need plugins, it has bang-pipe. My file systems (notably tmp) are littered with x.x, y.y, z.z, etc. files adding as ad hoc cut and paste buffers. If I couldn't do the work with bang-pipe, shell out, bonk on some data in /tmp/x.x, pop back into vi and :r /tmp/x.x. Is it a single keystroke? No. But it's not in vi either. yyp is about as short as you can get. Later, as I moved into Java and Python, I started adopting Emacs. I was particularly attracted to its auto formatting support for Java. Later on I chose Ant (Java build tool) because is had a -emacs switch to make the output compatible with emacs so I could jump to compiler errors. But that's stock behavior in emacs, we get that "for free", Ant conformed to emacs, vs the other way around. I still kept my vi habits in emacs. If I wanted to refactor something, I was more apt to do something like vi `find . -name "*.java" | xargs grep methodToRename` than use emacs. I had multiple windows, so this was simple to do. Since Java is strictly typed, it coped well with yelling at my ham fisted endeavors when I went stomping through the code base. I finally moved to an IDE, NetBeans, around NB 5 or so. Auto complete spoiled me. Today my use of Emacs is mostly only for Lisp, and even then my Nerd Cred isn't up to par. I don't use Slime. I use emacs for lisp almost solely for auto indent, and paren matching. vi's lisp indent isn't spectacular, but emacs' is pretty good. The paren matching is about par, it doesn't bother me to use % in vi to test parens, but emacs is better. Then, I just ^S, and reload the file in my REPL. I've tried Slime, but simply I don't do enough Lisp to make it worthwhile. It doesn't stick, so I have to relearn it when I come back. Just not worth the bother. I just want to work and get stuff done, not fight tools. Emacs on the Mac works well enough out of the box for me. Scroll wheel scrolls, Cmd-XCV cuts/copies/pastes, I can mouse around and double click things. You know, text editor. I also like messing with elisp in the scratch buffer. Even an old guy like me can remember ^J. Basically what I've learned in my computing career, having to jump around every place, there's one commonality that's at every location I visit. Me. Rather than relying on adapted environments, I rely on an adaptable me. I like tools, I use tools, but I pick tools that work well out of the box. I want a tool, not a kit. Unix, thankfully, comes with a base set that I learned a long time ago. The important ones (important to me) have stuck with me. I can awk all day long, but I can't even spell 'perl', and it's my go to shotgun if I need it.