4 ms·

The Power That is GNU Emacs

64 points by apgwoz 18y ago

st3fan 18y ago
"""I'm not going to lie—not even a little bit, in 2003, Emacs was slow.""" Really? In 2003 most of us were working on G4 Macs, Pentium IVs at 3Ghz or even Xeons. Emacs worked fine and very fast on all those machines. Personally I have been using Emacs since around 1997 and even then it was not slow. Not on intel machines that were slow by today's standard and it was certainly not slow on the Sun Sparcs that I used to work with and develop on. I think the author is confused and really meant to say: emacs had a reputation of being slow. Considering emacs originated in 1976 this is not surprising.
- apgwoz 18y ago
  I'm referring more to startup time than I am responsiveness. Emacs has only ever been "sluggish" when I've used it on a system with little memory.
  - rbanffy 18y ago
    It's sluggish on Cygwin. I guess, though, it's not Emacs' fault.
    - aoeu 18y ago
      I gave up with the Cygwin version and switched to the native port (http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/ http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/). Some Cygwin integration is supported by adding to .emacs: (require 'cygwin-mount) (setq cygwin-mount-cygwin-bin-directory "C:/cygwin/bin") (cygwin-mount-activate) And I use the following alias to open files directly from bash: alias emacs='D:/tools/emacs-22.3/bin/emacsclient.exe --no-wait --alternate-editor=D:/tools/emacs-22.3/bin/runemacs.exe'
      - windsurfer 18y ago
        Man, if my D: drive had emacs installed on it, it would be a :D drive.
  - biotech 18y ago
    I have the same problem. Startup time is over a second on some modern systems. There is some good advice on how to avoid this on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/778716/how-can-i-make-emacs-start-up-faster http://stackoverflow.com/questions/778716/how-can-i-make-ema...
    - ellyagg 18y ago
      Haha. You must be missing a ton of cool extensions. My startup time is like 10 seconds. I could certainly work hard to bring it down, but who cares? I never turn off emacs or my computer.
  - pohl 18y ago
    I used to live in emacs, so the startup time was a one-time penalty in the morning. All subsequent interactions were opening new buffers from within that one instance. (This was the X11 version of the interface, not the one that runs inside an xterm.) I loved it. Eventually I weened myself off of emacs because I felt that I needed to become intimate with one of the fancier IDEs, a move that I do not regret.
    - windsurfer 18y ago
      What IDE did you switch to? Eclipse?
      - pohl 18y ago
        NetBeans, using the GWT4NB plugin for a GWT-based project. It's funny you should ask, as I've started looking, longingly, over at the better GWT support in the Eclipse world. (Google writes the plugin for Eclipse, so it's a well-worn path...GWT4NB is a small, volunteer effort with no official support from anywhere.)
  - scorpion032 18y ago
    With the kind of sluggishness we are adopted to these days with firefox and network responses; I think Emacs is definitely is not sluggish.
- davidw 18y ago
  I started using Linux on a 386 with 4 megs of memory, and Emacs was definitely slow on that machine, so I used jed. I think most people use faster computers these days, though:-)
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  I think part of it comes from Emacs running as one process, so things like Gnus that run periodically can make everything seem to freeze. Firefox does this a lot, as well, and it seems to be the new program that people criticize for being slow and bloated. It's not slow as such, but interface freezes (like when you move a window and stuff under it doesn't redraw) have a disproportionately large impact on how slow programs seem to users. You can do relatively heavyweight, long-running operations without people even noticing as long as you do them in the background and don't make the interface stall out.
richieb 18y ago
Emacs is an operating system, cleverly disguised as an editor.....
- rbanffy 18y ago
  Emacs is an operating system where the default shell is a text editor.
- sown 18y ago
  Linux is emacs's boot loader.
- jodrellblank 18y ago
  Curiously, this comment is so old it predates Emacs by almost a decade.
- aaronblohowiak 18y ago
  the version I've heard is "Emacs is a great operating system. Shame that it lacks a decent editor.."
- iamwil 18y ago
  Emacs is not just a text editor, but a way of life.
  - rbanffy 18y ago
    It's the One True Text Editor

64 points by apgwoz 18y ago

"""I'm not going to lie—not even a little bit, in 2003, Emacs was slow.""" Really? In 2003 most of us were working on G4 Macs, Pentium IVs at 3Ghz or even Xeons. Emacs worked fine and very fast on all those machines. Personally I have been using Emacs since around 1997 and even then it was not slow. Not on intel machines that were slow by today's standard and it was certainly not slow on the Sun Sparcs that I used to work with and develop on. I think the author is confused and really meant to say: emacs had a reputation of being slow. Considering emacs originated in 1976 this is not surprising.

apgwoz 18y ago
I'm referring more to startup time than I am responsiveness. Emacs has only ever been "sluggish" when I've used it on a system with little memory.
- rbanffy 18y ago
  It's sluggish on Cygwin. I guess, though, it's not Emacs' fault.
  - aoeu 18y ago
    I gave up with the Cygwin version and switched to the native port (http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/ http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/). Some Cygwin integration is supported by adding to .emacs: (require 'cygwin-mount) (setq cygwin-mount-cygwin-bin-directory "C:/cygwin/bin") (cygwin-mount-activate) And I use the following alias to open files directly from bash: alias emacs='D:/tools/emacs-22.3/bin/emacsclient.exe --no-wait --alternate-editor=D:/tools/emacs-22.3/bin/runemacs.exe'
    - windsurfer 18y ago
      Man, if my D: drive had emacs installed on it, it would be a :D drive.
- biotech 18y ago
  I have the same problem. Startup time is over a second on some modern systems. There is some good advice on how to avoid this on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/778716/how-can-i-make-emacs-start-up-faster http://stackoverflow.com/questions/778716/how-can-i-make-ema...
  - ellyagg 18y ago
    Haha. You must be missing a ton of cool extensions. My startup time is like 10 seconds. I could certainly work hard to bring it down, but who cares? I never turn off emacs or my computer.
- pohl 18y ago
  I used to live in emacs, so the startup time was a one-time penalty in the morning. All subsequent interactions were opening new buffers from within that one instance. (This was the X11 version of the interface, not the one that runs inside an xterm.) I loved it. Eventually I weened myself off of emacs because I felt that I needed to become intimate with one of the fancier IDEs, a move that I do not regret.
  - windsurfer 18y ago
    What IDE did you switch to? Eclipse?
    - pohl 18y ago
      NetBeans, using the GWT4NB plugin for a GWT-based project. It's funny you should ask, as I've started looking, longingly, over at the better GWT support in the Eclipse world. (Google writes the plugin for Eclipse, so it's a well-worn path...GWT4NB is a small, volunteer effort with no official support from anywhere.)
- scorpion032 18y ago
  With the kind of sluggishness we are adopted to these days with firefox and network responses; I think Emacs is definitely is not sluggish.
davidw 18y ago
I started using Linux on a 386 with 4 megs of memory, and Emacs was definitely slow on that machine, so I used jed. I think most people use faster computers these days, though:-)
silentbicycle 18y ago
I think part of it comes from Emacs running as one process, so things like Gnus that run periodically can make everything seem to freeze. Firefox does this a lot, as well, and it seems to be the new program that people criticize for being slow and bloated. It's not slow as such, but interface freezes (like when you move a window and stuff under it doesn't redraw) have a disproportionately large impact on how slow programs seem to users. You can do relatively heavyweight, long-running operations without people even noticing as long as you do them in the background and don't make the interface stall out.

richieb 18y ago

Emacs is an operating system, cleverly disguised as an editor.....

rbanffy 18y ago
Emacs is an operating system where the default shell is a text editor.
sown 18y ago
Linux is emacs's boot loader.
jodrellblank 18y ago
Curiously, this comment is so old it predates Emacs by almost a decade.
aaronblohowiak 18y ago
the version I've heard is "Emacs is a great operating system. Shame that it lacks a decent editor.."
iamwil 18y ago
Emacs is not just a text editor, but a way of life.
- rbanffy 18y ago
  It's the One True Text Editor