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One also has to consider other factors. Despite the evolution of the core of Emacs not being impressive and possibly even stagnating, it is remarkable how many

One also has to consider other factors. Despite the evolution of the core of Emacs not being impressive and possibly even stagnating, it is remarkable how many external packages are available. GitHub alone hosts numerous Emacs Lisp packages, making it the largest body of Lisp code among various Lisp dialects, surpassing Clojure, Common Lisp, Racket, and others. Isn't that impressive? Can someone name a single scripting language used exclusively for configuring a specific editor that is as widely used as Emacs Lisp? Elisp is not a general use programming language; it's not very popular, even among Lisp-hackers; it's not even a great Lisp - it lacks tons of nice features other Lisp dialects had for decades. Yet it is undeniably, the most used Lisp of them all. How can anyone observe all of this and claim that Emacs is dying?

charcircuit 3y ago
>How can anyone observe all of this and claim that Emacs is dying? Because LISP is also dying. Compare JavaScript vs Emacs Lisp on Google Trends. It doesn't make sense to have an editor exclusively have it's own language instead of reusing a commonly existing one.
- iLemming 3y ago
  Lisp is not "dying". Lisp is constantly evolving and keeps influencing other languages, like Elixir, Julia and others. Even modern Javascript borrowed tons of features from Clojure - a language that many big and small companies succesfully use in production. There are constantly new experimental things happening in Lisp. People building their Hammerspoon, AwesomeWM and Neovim configs with Fennel. Researches keep publishing papers, experimenting in Racket. Even writing books about type theory, which may sound strange since most Lisps are dynamically typed. You seem to be completely oblivious to the world of modern Lisp, we stopped capitalizing each letter around 1980s. No actual programmer who wrote at least a few Lisp functions would write it today as "LISP". > It doesn't make sense to have an editor exclusively have it's own language It may not make sense to you because you don't seem to see the benefits of Lisp. Some extensions for VSCode are written in Clojurescript. Even with obvious overhead, some people see the benefits of choosing that path. While it is possible to go the other route - writing Javascript or Python that emits Lisp, I don't know why anyone would do that. Nobody stopping anyone from writing a Javascript transpiler/compiler that emits Elisp code to configure Emacs. But why would you do that, if Elisp (admittedly not even being the greatest Lisp) is still much more powerful? > Compare JavaScript vs Emacs Lisp on Google Trends. What's your point? Javascript is a general-purpose language, it's used in browsers, cloud computing, embedded devices, Game Dev, IoT, Desktop Apps, etc. Elisp is not. Its sole purpose is to be used as a configuration language for one, specific piece of software, that (at least officially) only runs on desktop, and that's it. Yet despite all that, there's quite a lot of it. And people keep writing more. There are few new packages get announced every month or so on r/emacs. That's what I'm saying.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    >Lisp is constantly evolving and keeps influencing other languages, like Elixir, Julia and others. A language doesn't have to be alive to evolve or influence other languages. >Clojure - a language that many big and small companies succesfully use in production. This sounds less dead, but Clojure can get away with being semi dead due to its interopt with normal java libraries. No one at my university or the people I have worked with have used Clojure, so it is at most niche. >People building their Hammerspoon, AwesomeWM and Neovim configs with Fennel. These are configured with Lua. They do not support Fennel by default from what I can tell. >Researches keep publishing papers, experimenting in Racket Researches alone can't make a language reach mass adoption. >Even writing books about type theory, which may sound strange since most Lisps are dynamically typed. And such languages produced in those are incredibly niche and likely dead. >Nobody stopping anyone from writing a Javascript transpiler/compiler that emits Elisp code to configure Emacs. This misses the point. Javascript is the most well known language among developers. Emacs should be making their extension platform attractive to developers, allowing people to use a language they already know is better than forcing them to learn a new, unfamiliar language. >>Compare JavaScript vs Emacs Lisp on Google Trends. >What's your point? The probability that a developer knows JSON and Javascript is much higher than that developers knowing Elisp, or even a Lisp at all.
    - johasa 3y ago
      Programmers who don't know lisp are dead or dying. But keep calm, they can still be the little-seatwarmer-that-could as team leaders or agile-change-managers. There are lots of unnecessary titels out there in dire need of warm bodies.
    - iLemming 3y ago
      I just gave you a few examples of fairly modern Lisps to prove my point that it's not dying. I can list some more, Fennel team just last week shipped an update. Jank is being developed rapidly. Clojure-Dart that allows you to build Flutter apps is also relatively recent addition to the family. Besides Clojurescript and Clojure CLR, there's Babashka to write bash-scripts and NBB to write nodejs scripts in Clojure. There's Clojerl and LFE to write Lisp for ErlangVM. There's Hy - Lisp dialect embedded in Python. There's Lux that targets JVM, JS, Python, Lua and Ruby. There's Joker written in Go. There's Calcit built with Rust. These are all quite vibrant and frequently updated projects, if I start listing projects that have not seen comits in their main branches for a few months, the list would be long. You're mistaking Lisp for languages like COBOL, Fortran, ObjectiveC, and Pascal. These languages can be considered as dying. I'm hesitant to add PHP to this list because there's still a ton of PHP code out there, and it is still being developed, but it seems that people are finally, slowly moving away from it. > is better than forcing them to learn a new, unfamiliar language. But have you actually tried it? Have you ever tried comparing JSON and EDN, JSX/HTML with Hiccup; Javascript coding experience with Clojurescript? I have. I have seen the both worlds. Besides popularity, there's not much that Javascript (in my opinion) can offer to improve simplicity and joy of writing software compared to Clojurescript. > No one at my university or the people I have worked with have used Clojure Compared to other programming languages, Clojure is niche, yet actively used in the industry. Big companies like Apple, Walmart, and Cisco have large Clojure codebases. There are also smaller startups like Pitch.com and Shortcut.com that use Clojure. Interesting projects like XTDB, Roam Research, and Loqseq are built with Clojure. Even NASA uses Clojure. It's easy to be blindsided when you're constantly focused on popular things like JavaScript and Python. But if you actually take the time to look around, you may be surprised to see some interesting things. I promise you, Lisp is far from dying. On the contrary, it just keeps popping back. Maybe one day try learning it, you may find quite a few unexpected gems and finally understand the reasons why it refuses to die.
buster 3y ago
"there is a lot of X" does not imply "X is increasing". That's what i am pointing out. There is also a lot of COBOL code. It doesn't mean that COBOL code is increasing. The Pyramides are huge and impressive. It doesn't mean that more pyramids are built.

charcircuit 3y ago

>How can anyone observe all of this and claim that Emacs is dying? Because LISP is also dying. Compare JavaScript vs Emacs Lisp on Google Trends. It doesn't make sense to have an editor exclusively have it's own language instead of reusing a commonly existing one.

iLemming 3y ago
Lisp is not "dying". Lisp is constantly evolving and keeps influencing other languages, like Elixir, Julia and others. Even modern Javascript borrowed tons of features from Clojure - a language that many big and small companies succesfully use in production. There are constantly new experimental things happening in Lisp. People building their Hammerspoon, AwesomeWM and Neovim configs with Fennel. Researches keep publishing papers, experimenting in Racket. Even writing books about type theory, which may sound strange since most Lisps are dynamically typed. You seem to be completely oblivious to the world of modern Lisp, we stopped capitalizing each letter around 1980s. No actual programmer who wrote at least a few Lisp functions would write it today as "LISP". > It doesn't make sense to have an editor exclusively have it's own language It may not make sense to you because you don't seem to see the benefits of Lisp. Some extensions for VSCode are written in Clojurescript. Even with obvious overhead, some people see the benefits of choosing that path. While it is possible to go the other route - writing Javascript or Python that emits Lisp, I don't know why anyone would do that. Nobody stopping anyone from writing a Javascript transpiler/compiler that emits Elisp code to configure Emacs. But why would you do that, if Elisp (admittedly not even being the greatest Lisp) is still much more powerful? > Compare JavaScript vs Emacs Lisp on Google Trends. What's your point? Javascript is a general-purpose language, it's used in browsers, cloud computing, embedded devices, Game Dev, IoT, Desktop Apps, etc. Elisp is not. Its sole purpose is to be used as a configuration language for one, specific piece of software, that (at least officially) only runs on desktop, and that's it. Yet despite all that, there's quite a lot of it. And people keep writing more. There are few new packages get announced every month or so on r/emacs. That's what I'm saying.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >Lisp is constantly evolving and keeps influencing other languages, like Elixir, Julia and others. A language doesn't have to be alive to evolve or influence other languages. >Clojure - a language that many big and small companies succesfully use in production. This sounds less dead, but Clojure can get away with being semi dead due to its interopt with normal java libraries. No one at my university or the people I have worked with have used Clojure, so it is at most niche. >People building their Hammerspoon, AwesomeWM and Neovim configs with Fennel. These are configured with Lua. They do not support Fennel by default from what I can tell. >Researches keep publishing papers, experimenting in Racket Researches alone can't make a language reach mass adoption. >Even writing books about type theory, which may sound strange since most Lisps are dynamically typed. And such languages produced in those are incredibly niche and likely dead. >Nobody stopping anyone from writing a Javascript transpiler/compiler that emits Elisp code to configure Emacs. This misses the point. Javascript is the most well known language among developers. Emacs should be making their extension platform attractive to developers, allowing people to use a language they already know is better than forcing them to learn a new, unfamiliar language. >>Compare JavaScript vs Emacs Lisp on Google Trends. >What's your point? The probability that a developer knows JSON and Javascript is much higher than that developers knowing Elisp, or even a Lisp at all.
  - johasa 3y ago
    Programmers who don't know lisp are dead or dying. But keep calm, they can still be the little-seatwarmer-that-could as team leaders or agile-change-managers. There are lots of unnecessary titels out there in dire need of warm bodies.
  - iLemming 3y ago
    I just gave you a few examples of fairly modern Lisps to prove my point that it's not dying. I can list some more, Fennel team just last week shipped an update. Jank is being developed rapidly. Clojure-Dart that allows you to build Flutter apps is also relatively recent addition to the family. Besides Clojurescript and Clojure CLR, there's Babashka to write bash-scripts and NBB to write nodejs scripts in Clojure. There's Clojerl and LFE to write Lisp for ErlangVM. There's Hy - Lisp dialect embedded in Python. There's Lux that targets JVM, JS, Python, Lua and Ruby. There's Joker written in Go. There's Calcit built with Rust. These are all quite vibrant and frequently updated projects, if I start listing projects that have not seen comits in their main branches for a few months, the list would be long. You're mistaking Lisp for languages like COBOL, Fortran, ObjectiveC, and Pascal. These languages can be considered as dying. I'm hesitant to add PHP to this list because there's still a ton of PHP code out there, and it is still being developed, but it seems that people are finally, slowly moving away from it. > is better than forcing them to learn a new, unfamiliar language. But have you actually tried it? Have you ever tried comparing JSON and EDN, JSX/HTML with Hiccup; Javascript coding experience with Clojurescript? I have. I have seen the both worlds. Besides popularity, there's not much that Javascript (in my opinion) can offer to improve simplicity and joy of writing software compared to Clojurescript. > No one at my university or the people I have worked with have used Clojure Compared to other programming languages, Clojure is niche, yet actively used in the industry. Big companies like Apple, Walmart, and Cisco have large Clojure codebases. There are also smaller startups like Pitch.com and Shortcut.com that use Clojure. Interesting projects like XTDB, Roam Research, and Loqseq are built with Clojure. Even NASA uses Clojure. It's easy to be blindsided when you're constantly focused on popular things like JavaScript and Python. But if you actually take the time to look around, you may be surprised to see some interesting things. I promise you, Lisp is far from dying. On the contrary, it just keeps popping back. Maybe one day try learning it, you may find quite a few unexpected gems and finally understand the reasons why it refuses to die.

buster 3y ago

"there is a lot of X" does not imply "X is increasing". That's what i am pointing out. There is also a lot of COBOL code. It doesn't mean that COBOL code is increasing. The Pyramides are huge and impressive. It doesn't mean that more pyramids are built.