3 ms·

Can you be more specific about your complaints? It's open source software. If there are bugs we can fix them and submit a pull request.

bitwize 7mo ago
Actual multithreading, and a UI that was state-of-the-art sometime later than 1978, might be a good beginning.
- teddyh 7mo ago
  Does this look like 1978 to you? <https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/ https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/>
  - PhilipRoman 7mo ago
    Don't get me wrong, I don't mind old aesthetics, but... yes? Well I wasn't exactly alive in 1978 but all the screenshots look like they are at least 20 years old
    - jbstack 7mo ago
      Firstly, the original comment was about UI rather than aesthetics. Secondly, as with everything else in Emacs, you can customise the appearance however you want. Those screenshots are from vanilla Emacs which is admittedly rather ugly. Most people heavily customise, or use an Emacs distro like Spacemacs (https://www.spacemacs.org/ https://www.spacemacs.org/) or Doom (https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs?tab=readme-ov-file) which have more sensible default appearance configs.
    - teddyh 7mo ago
      20 years ago was in 2006, not 1978.
  - internet_points 7mo ago
    I love Emacs, and while that tour doesn't quite look 1978, it sure doesn't look 2026 either. Maybe somewhere in the middle.. yup, 2002 seems about right. And for some reason, most of the screenshots on that page are in super low res, e.g. I see https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/images/gnus-small.png https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/images/gnus-small.pn... instead of https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/images/gnus.png https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/images/gnus.png , I really don't see why they'd want to make it look even worse. And then on the other hand you have people like Nicolas Rougier https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fpbg8rzynfn9e1.png https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fp... or Álvaro Ramírez https://xenodium.com/awesome-emacs-on-macos https://xenodium.com/awesome-emacs-on-macos who show how great it can really look.
- jbstack 7mo ago
  I agree with you on multithreading. But for most Emacs users, the rich and highly customisable keyboard-driven UI (including packages like embark, which-key, transient, hydra, ivy/helm/vertico, etc.) is one of its strengths over traditional GUI IDEs. It doesn't need to be "state of the art" to be good, and there's a reason that Emacs has remained popular despite its age. Sure, it's not going to appeal to most VS Code users, but that isn't the point of Emacs.
  - bitwize 7mo ago
    Emacs isn't popular. It might've been in the 90s, but its star has faded now. It has niche appeal at best. Virtually everyone I interact with professionally views it as a dim memory best left in the past, or as something just inscrutably weird. Part of the reason why is "it's the UI, stupid". It needs a far better UX out of the box and by "better" I mean "more aligned with what literally every other program you are likely to use does for UX". (Just enabling cua-mode by default, and making the user toggle on "vanilla Emacs", would go far.) Most developers these days were brought up with Windows or Mac; they don't want to pretend to be using a PDP-11 or Lisp machine. One of the truths preached in the Gospel of Mac is that ALL programs need to be consistent with one another, and use the same visual look, menu hierarchy, and keybindings for corresponding commands.
    - karthink 7mo ago
      > It needs a far better UX out of the box and by "better" I mean "more aligned with what literally every other program you are likely to use does for UX". (Just enabling cua-mode by default, and making the user toggle on "vanilla Emacs", would go far.) > ... > One of the truths preached in the Gospel of Mac is that ALL programs need to be consistent with one another, and use the same visual look, menu hierarchy, and keybindings for corresponding commands. I started using Emacs on a Mac recently and was pleased to discover that it is, in fact, consistent with other programs. - Cmd-C/X/V work as expected (copy/cut/paste from system clipboard) - Cmd-Z undoes, - Cmd-O brings up the open-file dialog, Cmd-T opens a new tab, - Cmd-F invokes search and Cmd-L goes to line, and so on. It uses the same global menu bar as other programs, and setting the font from the menu works. The only thing that didn't work is using Cmd-Shift-? to search through menu bar options. This is GNU's official MacOS build, not the custom-built emacs-mac or emacs-plus packages. Last year I helped a non-programmer get started with Emacs (for the first time) on a Mac. After a couple of weeks their only remarks were that the customize interface looks a little dated and the config/custom file has a weird format. They never brought up the keybindings or other UI as an issue. Now I understand why -- Emacs is a reasonably good citizen on MacOS.
throwaway27448 7mo ago
I'll submit more bug requests, I guess. But the emacs community is very hostile to criticism.

bitwize 7mo ago

Actual multithreading, and a UI that was state-of-the-art sometime later than 1978, might be a good beginning.

teddyh 7mo ago
Does this look like 1978 to you? <https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/ https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/>
- PhilipRoman 7mo ago
  Don't get me wrong, I don't mind old aesthetics, but... yes? Well I wasn't exactly alive in 1978 but all the screenshots look like they are at least 20 years old
  - jbstack 7mo ago
    Firstly, the original comment was about UI rather than aesthetics. Secondly, as with everything else in Emacs, you can customise the appearance however you want. Those screenshots are from vanilla Emacs which is admittedly rather ugly. Most people heavily customise, or use an Emacs distro like Spacemacs (https://www.spacemacs.org/ https://www.spacemacs.org/) or Doom (https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs?tab=readme-ov-file) which have more sensible default appearance configs.
  - teddyh 7mo ago
    20 years ago was in 2006, not 1978.
- internet_points 7mo ago
  I love Emacs, and while that tour doesn't quite look 1978, it sure doesn't look 2026 either. Maybe somewhere in the middle.. yup, 2002 seems about right. And for some reason, most of the screenshots on that page are in super low res, e.g. I see https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/images/gnus-small.png https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/images/gnus-small.pn... instead of https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/images/gnus.png https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/images/gnus.png , I really don't see why they'd want to make it look even worse. And then on the other hand you have people like Nicolas Rougier https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fpbg8rzynfn9e1.png https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fp... or Álvaro Ramírez https://xenodium.com/awesome-emacs-on-macos https://xenodium.com/awesome-emacs-on-macos who show how great it can really look.
jbstack 7mo ago
I agree with you on multithreading. But for most Emacs users, the rich and highly customisable keyboard-driven UI (including packages like embark, which-key, transient, hydra, ivy/helm/vertico, etc.) is one of its strengths over traditional GUI IDEs. It doesn't need to be "state of the art" to be good, and there's a reason that Emacs has remained popular despite its age. Sure, it's not going to appeal to most VS Code users, but that isn't the point of Emacs.
- bitwize 7mo ago
  Emacs isn't popular. It might've been in the 90s, but its star has faded now. It has niche appeal at best. Virtually everyone I interact with professionally views it as a dim memory best left in the past, or as something just inscrutably weird. Part of the reason why is "it's the UI, stupid". It needs a far better UX out of the box and by "better" I mean "more aligned with what literally every other program you are likely to use does for UX". (Just enabling cua-mode by default, and making the user toggle on "vanilla Emacs", would go far.) Most developers these days were brought up with Windows or Mac; they don't want to pretend to be using a PDP-11 or Lisp machine. One of the truths preached in the Gospel of Mac is that ALL programs need to be consistent with one another, and use the same visual look, menu hierarchy, and keybindings for corresponding commands.
  - karthink 7mo ago
    > It needs a far better UX out of the box and by "better" I mean "more aligned with what literally every other program you are likely to use does for UX". (Just enabling cua-mode by default, and making the user toggle on "vanilla Emacs", would go far.) > ... > One of the truths preached in the Gospel of Mac is that ALL programs need to be consistent with one another, and use the same visual look, menu hierarchy, and keybindings for corresponding commands. I started using Emacs on a Mac recently and was pleased to discover that it is, in fact, consistent with other programs. - Cmd-C/X/V work as expected (copy/cut/paste from system clipboard) - Cmd-Z undoes, - Cmd-O brings up the open-file dialog, Cmd-T opens a new tab, - Cmd-F invokes search and Cmd-L goes to line, and so on. It uses the same global menu bar as other programs, and setting the font from the menu works. The only thing that didn't work is using Cmd-Shift-? to search through menu bar options. This is GNU's official MacOS build, not the custom-built emacs-mac or emacs-plus packages. Last year I helped a non-programmer get started with Emacs (for the first time) on a Mac. After a couple of weeks their only remarks were that the customize interface looks a little dated and the config/custom file has a weird format. They never brought up the keybindings or other UI as an issue. Now I understand why -- Emacs is a reasonably good citizen on MacOS.

throwaway27448 7mo ago

I'll submit more bug requests, I guess. But the emacs community is very hostile to criticism.