6 ms·

Gnu emacs is only 38 years old. And vscode is a fad...?

by hfkwer 3y ago

weebull 3y ago
VSCode is very much a fad, much like Eclipse, Atom, Sublime and any number of others before it. Emacs and Vim just keep going whilst others fade away.
- Aurelius108 3y ago
  I agree that sublime is a fad and maybe atom. Sublime’s biggest mistake imho way their proprietary model combined with a plugin system, it’d probably be better to either make it free or make it very ease to use. I don’t see eclipse or VSCode as fads though. To my knowledge eclipse is the only way to develop Java code on Linux platforms without paying for richer tools (let’s face it, eMacs or vim doesn’t have much support for Java). Also Microsoft seems very invested in VSCode
  - shakow 3y ago
    > eclipse is the only way to develop Java code on Linux platforms without paying for richer tools All the people I know are using IntelliJ CE.
- pk2200 3y ago
  I'm a long-time Emacs user, but VSCode is definitely not a fad. Microsoft is all-in on it, and it appears to be by far the most popular text editor. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-technologies-integrated-development-environment https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-t... https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/1690728000?hl=en-US&tz=300&date=all&geo=US&hl=en&q=%2Fm%2F0134xwrk,%2Fm%2F01yp0m,vim,%2Fm%2F0b6h18n&sni=3 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/16907280...
  - ParetoOptimal 3y ago
    > VSCode is definitely not a fad. Microsoft is all-in on it Similar to those who were all-in on Eclipse, Atom, Sublime? I do think vscode will stick around longer, but not convinced it'll be long enough to not feel like a fad.
    - pk2200 3y ago
      The two URLs I provided don't convince you that this isn't a fad? Of all the SWEs I know, every single one who previously used Eclipse, Atom, or Sublime is now using VSCode. Some of my Emacs & Vim friends have switched, too. I can't imagine what would change this trend in the next 5-10 years. Perhaps a new editor with an integrated LLM coding assistant that's FAR ahead of all competitors? Except VSCode is currently leading there, too.
    - The_Colonel 3y ago
      I think we're stretching the definition of "fad" a lot here. Editor being one of the most popular for 10 years (not yet there, but will be for sure) can't be considered "fad".
    - nullifidian 3y ago
      >Similar to those who were all-in on Eclipse, Atom, Sublime? But all these (except sublime) including vscode are basically the same type of IDE. Yes, implementations change, but their share of the "market" remains about the same.
      - alex_smart 3y ago
        Eclipse and vscode are the same type of IDE? What?
- EddieJLSH 3y ago
  VSCode is not a fad - it has huge support from Microsoft, is the most popular code editor by far, and is a very good tool that's beginner friendly and allows for customisation. It is already almost a decade old. Visual Studio has been around since 1997 so there's a good chance VSCode will be around for a good few years too.
  - gjvc 3y ago
    IT is a fashion business, and fashion is fickle.
- 7e 3y ago
  There will always be an editor which is an order of magnitude more popular than emacs or vim, because it is an order of magnitude better. It doesn’t much matter which one it is. People will switch to it, and be productive. And when something better comes along, they will move to that.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I strongly disagree that any editor will be an order of magnitude better than Emacs or Vim. Some new editors will be better in certain ways, or add cool new features before Emacs/Vim do, but there's nothing completely better than them. I doubt there ever will be.
    - bitwize 3y ago
      Emacs requires fiddling. Once you get past a certain age, you no longer want to fiddle with your tools; they should just work. A tool that just works may well be therefore orders of magnitude better than Emacs.
      - kstrauser 3y ago
        I think that downplays how much fiddling other tools take. I've never used another similarly powerful editor that didn't require similar amounts of configuration to be useful. And if getting some random plugin working means you have to tweak its code, it's almost certainly going to be fast and easier in Emacs than in the other. With Emacs, you can generally just replace a function after its been loaded. In other things, you may be forking a repo, editing/compiling it, and figuring out how to get the editor to load your version of it.
        bitwize 3y ago
        > In other things, you may be forking a repo, editing/compiling it, and figuring out how to get the editor to load your version of it. This is more a theoretical problem in VSCode. If you just want to start programming using a mainstream language or framework, in VSCode it's literally a matter of saying 'code .', downloading whatever extensions it recommends for the language it autodetected, and starting work with autocomplete, debugging support, and all that ready to go. Read @bborud's comments in this thread. He had been using Emacs for even longer than I, and he switched to VSCode and is not looking back. Because Emacs requires fiddling to keep running and VSCode does not. And that makes VSCode better.
- bitwize 3y ago
  VSCode is here to stay. After eight years it is by far the most popular programming editor and only becoming more so. The sun was already setting on Sublime and Atom by this long after their initial release.
  - gjvc 3y ago
    computing is a pop-culture; that which completely ignores what went before it, and continues to spend much of its time naively re-inventing the wheel
    - bitwize 3y ago
      Indeed, but VSCode is "sticky" in the way those other editors are not. It now has a critical mass of developer interest such that language and framework developers now put out tooling for it first (if it's not the only editor with official support). Other editors will have to make do with third-party tooling from a dwindling pool of contributors, falling farther and farther behind the state of the art.
      - gjvc 3y ago
        will we ever escape javascript in our lifetimes?
- bborud 3y ago
  I used Emacs for all development work from about 1990 to 2018. About 28 years of development work in a dozen different programming languages. I also used Emacs for reading Usenet News and my email. I also used it for calendaring, planning, tracking work and a few other things. Gnus made Emacs a great Usenet news reader, but I could never get it to fit with my email regimen. And eventually Usenet died too. For about a decade I used a mail client that someone else originally wrote, but which I modified over the years to do email like I wanted to. But this became really tedious to maintain alone so I have up. Along the way I tried various IDEs like the tools from IntelliJ and Eclipse. None of them took. In fact, I figured it had to be me, so I promised myself to spend a few months every 2-3 years or so trying to get used to IDEs. (I still can't stand the IntelliJ and Eclipse tools). I think what made me switch to VSC was that I eventually grew tired of the constant annoyance of having to fix my setup so it would be reasonably useful for Go development. Emacs support for the Go language server was slow and shaky, and eventually I got so tired of having to make a patchwork of Emacs packages work that I gave Visual Studio Code a second chance. And the second time around it stuck. I'm not entirely sure why it stuck, but it did. It's been 5 years and I'm still using it. And I'm still not entirely sure why. I think it is mostly that I'm a programmer - not an editor enthusiast. Emacs was a pain in the neck to keep running when I switched. I liked Emacs, but VSC has better support for just about any language you care to program in. I ditched Emacs because I'm interested in writing code. I'm not interested in spending a day figuring out how to keep barely working Go support running so I can get work done. It's a tool. And when maintaining the tool starts eating into my productivity, it isn't worth the effort. The problem with Emacs is that it doesn't have a sufficiently large community. Which in turn means that if you are interested in creating tooling, your efforts will have a much bigger payoff if you choose something millions of other developers use. This is a vicious cycle. Last I checked, VSC had about 14 million users. Out of a global population of 25'ish million developers. That's slightly over half the global developer population. That's a pretty big market. I think a fair guess (given the stack overflow surveys) is that less than a million people use Emacs as their primary development environment. Which I find surprisingly high, but it should give people hope. Is VSC a fad? Who gives a crap? What matters is that, for me, and for a lot of other people, it is a better tool than Emacs. Because it is. If VSC is replaced by something else that works even better, and VSC disappears: who cares. Better tools is a good thing. Getting overly attached to tools that offer less is just weird and unproductive.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  it's a bit wider and better than eclipse/atom/sublime there's also the devcontainer and vscode server thing which make vscode a sophisticated commodity i don't use it, but i've seen the previous eras, the eclipse haydays .. and vscode doesn't feel the same
- PurpleRamen 3y ago
  Eclipse and Sublime do still exist and receive improvements. And VS Code is at the moment far too big to fade away in the next years, maybe even decade.
sph 3y ago
Sorry, for some reason I thought it was started in the mid 70s. But yes, compared to Emacs , Code is a passing fad, and I doubt it'll be around in 15 years, let alone in 38
- _emacsomancer_ 3y ago
  Emacs did start in 70s ('76, I think), GNU Emacs is later.
gjvc 3y ago
vscode is the bitcoin of editors

Gnu emacs is only 38 years old. And vscode is a fad...?

by hfkwer 3y ago

Gnu emacs is only 38 years old. And vscode is a fad...?

VSCode is very much a fad, much like Eclipse, Atom, Sublime and any number of others before it. Emacs and Vim just keep going whilst others fade away.

Aurelius108 3y ago
I agree that sublime is a fad and maybe atom. Sublime’s biggest mistake imho way their proprietary model combined with a plugin system, it’d probably be better to either make it free or make it very ease to use. I don’t see eclipse or VSCode as fads though. To my knowledge eclipse is the only way to develop Java code on Linux platforms without paying for richer tools (let’s face it, eMacs or vim doesn’t have much support for Java). Also Microsoft seems very invested in VSCode
- shakow 3y ago
  > eclipse is the only way to develop Java code on Linux platforms without paying for richer tools All the people I know are using IntelliJ CE.
pk2200 3y ago
I'm a long-time Emacs user, but VSCode is definitely not a fad. Microsoft is all-in on it, and it appears to be by far the most popular text editor. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-technologies-integrated-development-environment https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-t... https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/1690728000?hl=en-US&tz=300&date=all&geo=US&hl=en&q=%2Fm%2F0134xwrk,%2Fm%2F01yp0m,vim,%2Fm%2F0b6h18n&sni=3 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/16907280...
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  > VSCode is definitely not a fad. Microsoft is all-in on it Similar to those who were all-in on Eclipse, Atom, Sublime? I do think vscode will stick around longer, but not convinced it'll be long enough to not feel like a fad.
  - pk2200 3y ago
    The two URLs I provided don't convince you that this isn't a fad? Of all the SWEs I know, every single one who previously used Eclipse, Atom, or Sublime is now using VSCode. Some of my Emacs & Vim friends have switched, too. I can't imagine what would change this trend in the next 5-10 years. Perhaps a new editor with an integrated LLM coding assistant that's FAR ahead of all competitors? Except VSCode is currently leading there, too.
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    I think we're stretching the definition of "fad" a lot here. Editor being one of the most popular for 10 years (not yet there, but will be for sure) can't be considered "fad".
  - nullifidian 3y ago
    >Similar to those who were all-in on Eclipse, Atom, Sublime? But all these (except sublime) including vscode are basically the same type of IDE. Yes, implementations change, but their share of the "market" remains about the same.
    - alex_smart 3y ago
      Eclipse and vscode are the same type of IDE? What?
EddieJLSH 3y ago
VSCode is not a fad - it has huge support from Microsoft, is the most popular code editor by far, and is a very good tool that's beginner friendly and allows for customisation. It is already almost a decade old. Visual Studio has been around since 1997 so there's a good chance VSCode will be around for a good few years too.
- gjvc 3y ago
  IT is a fashion business, and fashion is fickle.
7e 3y ago
There will always be an editor which is an order of magnitude more popular than emacs or vim, because it is an order of magnitude better. It doesn’t much matter which one it is. People will switch to it, and be productive. And when something better comes along, they will move to that.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I strongly disagree that any editor will be an order of magnitude better than Emacs or Vim. Some new editors will be better in certain ways, or add cool new features before Emacs/Vim do, but there's nothing completely better than them. I doubt there ever will be.
  - bitwize 3y ago
    Emacs requires fiddling. Once you get past a certain age, you no longer want to fiddle with your tools; they should just work. A tool that just works may well be therefore orders of magnitude better than Emacs.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      I think that downplays how much fiddling other tools take. I've never used another similarly powerful editor that didn't require similar amounts of configuration to be useful. And if getting some random plugin working means you have to tweak its code, it's almost certainly going to be fast and easier in Emacs than in the other. With Emacs, you can generally just replace a function after its been loaded. In other things, you may be forking a repo, editing/compiling it, and figuring out how to get the editor to load your version of it.
      - bitwize 3y ago
        > In other things, you may be forking a repo, editing/compiling it, and figuring out how to get the editor to load your version of it. This is more a theoretical problem in VSCode. If you just want to start programming using a mainstream language or framework, in VSCode it's literally a matter of saying 'code .', downloading whatever extensions it recommends for the language it autodetected, and starting work with autocomplete, debugging support, and all that ready to go. Read @bborud's comments in this thread. He had been using Emacs for even longer than I, and he switched to VSCode and is not looking back. Because Emacs requires fiddling to keep running and VSCode does not. And that makes VSCode better.
bitwize 3y ago
VSCode is here to stay. After eight years it is by far the most popular programming editor and only becoming more so. The sun was already setting on Sublime and Atom by this long after their initial release.
- gjvc 3y ago
  computing is a pop-culture; that which completely ignores what went before it, and continues to spend much of its time naively re-inventing the wheel
  - bitwize 3y ago
    Indeed, but VSCode is "sticky" in the way those other editors are not. It now has a critical mass of developer interest such that language and framework developers now put out tooling for it first (if it's not the only editor with official support). Other editors will have to make do with third-party tooling from a dwindling pool of contributors, falling farther and farther behind the state of the art.
    - gjvc 3y ago
      will we ever escape javascript in our lifetimes?
bborud 3y ago
I used Emacs for all development work from about 1990 to 2018. About 28 years of development work in a dozen different programming languages. I also used Emacs for reading Usenet News and my email. I also used it for calendaring, planning, tracking work and a few other things. Gnus made Emacs a great Usenet news reader, but I could never get it to fit with my email regimen. And eventually Usenet died too. For about a decade I used a mail client that someone else originally wrote, but which I modified over the years to do email like I wanted to. But this became really tedious to maintain alone so I have up. Along the way I tried various IDEs like the tools from IntelliJ and Eclipse. None of them took. In fact, I figured it had to be me, so I promised myself to spend a few months every 2-3 years or so trying to get used to IDEs. (I still can't stand the IntelliJ and Eclipse tools). I think what made me switch to VSC was that I eventually grew tired of the constant annoyance of having to fix my setup so it would be reasonably useful for Go development. Emacs support for the Go language server was slow and shaky, and eventually I got so tired of having to make a patchwork of Emacs packages work that I gave Visual Studio Code a second chance. And the second time around it stuck. I'm not entirely sure why it stuck, but it did. It's been 5 years and I'm still using it. And I'm still not entirely sure why. I think it is mostly that I'm a programmer - not an editor enthusiast. Emacs was a pain in the neck to keep running when I switched. I liked Emacs, but VSC has better support for just about any language you care to program in. I ditched Emacs because I'm interested in writing code. I'm not interested in spending a day figuring out how to keep barely working Go support running so I can get work done. It's a tool. And when maintaining the tool starts eating into my productivity, it isn't worth the effort. The problem with Emacs is that it doesn't have a sufficiently large community. Which in turn means that if you are interested in creating tooling, your efforts will have a much bigger payoff if you choose something millions of other developers use. This is a vicious cycle. Last I checked, VSC had about 14 million users. Out of a global population of 25'ish million developers. That's slightly over half the global developer population. That's a pretty big market. I think a fair guess (given the stack overflow surveys) is that less than a million people use Emacs as their primary development environment. Which I find surprisingly high, but it should give people hope. Is VSC a fad? Who gives a crap? What matters is that, for me, and for a lot of other people, it is a better tool than Emacs. Because it is. If VSC is replaced by something else that works even better, and VSC disappears: who cares. Better tools is a good thing. Getting overly attached to tools that offer less is just weird and unproductive.
agumonkey 3y ago
it's a bit wider and better than eclipse/atom/sublime there's also the devcontainer and vscode server thing which make vscode a sophisticated commodity i don't use it, but i've seen the previous eras, the eclipse haydays .. and vscode doesn't feel the same
PurpleRamen 3y ago
Eclipse and Sublime do still exist and receive improvements. And VS Code is at the moment far too big to fade away in the next years, maybe even decade.

sph 3y ago

Sorry, for some reason I thought it was started in the mid 70s. But yes, compared to Emacs , Code is a passing fad, and I doubt it'll be around in 15 years, let alone in 38

_emacsomancer_ 3y ago
Emacs did start in 70s ('76, I think), GNU Emacs is later.

gjvc 3y ago

vscode is the bitcoin of editors