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I think it's interesting to think about why people choose things. You can then decide "we want these qualities as well", or "we don't want those", or "we want t
by rtpg 2y ago
I think it's interesting to think about why people choose things. You can then decide "we want these qualities as well", or "we don't want those", or "we want them but haven't figured out how to get there without paying too high of a cost we want in other things".
Not a goal in itself to capture everyone, of course. But it's a data point!
- iLemming 2y ago"Data point" is simply this - Emacs and Vim have seen way too many popular editors and IDEs over the years and VSCode is just another thing in a long list of "contenders" - Brief, Wordstar, Borland Sprint/Turbo Pascal/varios 'Builders', QEdit, TextPad, Norton, Delphi, Adobe shit, Macromedia stuff, Microsoft crap, Eclipse, Netbeans, etc. Emacs proceeds strategically, not tactically. Even though it outlived so many different editors it was only a single decade, a point in history when it was considered kinda, sorta mainstream, the rest of its lifetime it wasn't. Emacs is just like Lisp itself - it never dies, and never gets to be hugely popular. Anyone wishing either speedy death or widespread popularity for Lisp (and Emacs) will likely remain disappointed. Those who value Lisp and Emacs will continue using them, even decades from now. Those who never learn to appreciate either - will keep ignoring them.
- rtpg 2y agoI mean Lisp "never dies", but there have been plenty of Lisp flavors that have come and gone. We don't write Lisp, we write some flavor (each with vastly different properties and values). There's nothing wrong with looking at the ecosystem and saying "huh, this is a pretty good idea". Emacs (the community as a whole) didn't ignore the LSP, and thanks to that it gets first-class support for tools that otherwise would have required someone to show up and "do the work" to get it to happen. I do think we're in agreement about "strategically, not tactically". Like Emacs _is_ doing its own thing. It's just that sometimes you can see good ideas from other places.
- skydhash 2y agoThe thing is Emacs, just like Lisp, can incorporate all those neat ideas without drastically transforming itself. I don’t know any strong features other editors have that users can’t replicate unless powered by closed source code. It won’t be as polished, but that mostly because users have different workflow.
- iLemming 2y agoYup, Lisp is extremely malleable and egalitarian and unrestricted - that's why there's almost universally at least one dialect of Lisp exists for any non-lispy language and almost every known programming paradigm. The only rule it insists on is the parentheses, and it's quite ridiculous how people dismiss the entirety of this foundation for incredibly powerful ideas and abstractions, solely for that reason.
- rtpg 2y agoYeah I don’t think we’re in disagreement here. The community can do a lot with the flexibility granted to it!