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I have been a faithful Emacs user for more than fifteen years now, even using a version of Emacs on my Amiga back in the 80s when I was just a kid. Over time, I

I have been a faithful Emacs user for more than fifteen years now, even using a version of Emacs on my Amiga back in the 80s when I was just a kid. Over time, I have ported almost every aspect of my computational life to Emacs, including my editor, IDE, git-client, writing, documenting, and workflow automation. While I love the tool and enjoy tinkering with it, I have come to realize that there are dedicated tools out there that offer a much better user experience with less effort. For example, when it comes to emailing, MailMate is an excellent tool that I have found to be much more effective. And for programming, VS Code is unbeatable for the overall experience. When it comes to my personal wiki, I find that Obsidian is simply too good to use Emacs + Orgmode. And for quickly capturing ideas, the Drafts app with its javascript extensibility is sweet, and a big plus: it's also available on my mobile phone. Ultimately, I have come to realize that tinkering is a luxury that not everyone can afford. While I still use Emacs extensively as an editor with macros for transforming text, I find that those who want to focus on the task at hand cannot afford to spend more time tinkering than doing the job. In conclusion, Emacs will always have a special place in my heart, but I have learned to recognize the value of specialized tools that offer a superior user experience with less effort. However, I should note that when it comes to regex-replace across files, BBEdit is the only thing that can beat Emacs.

blackpill0w 4y ago
I can think of only two types of people who use emacs (same thing for vim) . 1. Old folks who are used to working with them and don't bother switching. 2. Young fellas who spend a significant amount of time tinkering and playing with config files. VScode (VScodium really :) offers everything that emacs or vim has to offer (as far as editing file is concerned) with much less time spent in the config files. With that in mind, I still use emacs bacause I belong to that second category.
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crabbone 4y ago
> VS Code is unbeatable for the overall experience. What is this shilling for VSCode? It's awful. But, somehow everyone who says positive things about it either turns out to not know how those things work, or just saying something vague, never pointing at any concrete feature that makes it better than something else... But, the reality of it is that all there is to it is a crappy CUA text editor with nothing special going on for it. There were dozens like it before. So far, over the years of working with other people using this average-at-best editor the only remarkable thing I found about it is that it has a plugin that allows some Jenkins integration, which may be useful if you are in DevOps, but... I can live without it, not a deal-breaker, not by a long shot. The awfully lacking text editing abilities of this editor completely erase any benefit I could get from that plugin. Stuff like modal windows, mouse-only navigation, missing most useful commands of structured text navigation and proprietary nature make this tool a complete non-starter for me.

blackpill0w 4y ago

I can think of only two types of people who use emacs (same thing for vim) . 1. Old folks who are used to working with them and don't bother switching. 2. Young fellas who spend a significant amount of time tinkering and playing with config files. VScode (VScodium really :) offers everything that emacs or vim has to offer (as far as editing file is concerned) with much less time spent in the config files. With that in mind, I still use emacs bacause I belong to that second category.

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crabbone 4y ago

> VS Code is unbeatable for the overall experience. What is this shilling for VSCode? It's awful. But, somehow everyone who says positive things about it either turns out to not know how those things work, or just saying something vague, never pointing at any concrete feature that makes it better than something else... But, the reality of it is that all there is to it is a crappy CUA text editor with nothing special going on for it. There were dozens like it before. So far, over the years of working with other people using this average-at-best editor the only remarkable thing I found about it is that it has a plugin that allows some Jenkins integration, which may be useful if you are in DevOps, but... I can live without it, not a deal-breaker, not by a long shot. The awfully lacking text editing abilities of this editor completely erase any benefit I could get from that plugin. Stuff like modal windows, mouse-only navigation, missing most useful commands of structured text navigation and proprietary nature make this tool a complete non-starter for me.