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Most Emacs users love Emacs because of the amount of customization it offers, not because of the keybindings. In fact, I've never seen an Emacs user who hasn't

Most Emacs users love Emacs because of the amount of customization it offers, not because of the keybindings. In fact, I've never seen an Emacs user who hasn't customized his keybindings. I don't get what you mean by "moving on". Just because people started writing Emacs 30 years ago does not mean the code is crufty and old. Both Emacs and Vim work well with all modern desktop environments on all major operating systems. I don't see why anyone should be "moving on". You might love your IDE, but many people hate them. Some of us don't like bloated software with features we don't need or use. (I'm a Vim user, BTW :) )

amichail 17y ago
But emacs is bloated software. Eclipse at least gives you amazing functionality. Have you actually tried the Java editor in Eclipse?
- adharmad 17y ago
  How is emacs bloated? Size of emacs 22.1 (windows): 36MB Size of eclipse galileo (windows) 189MB
  - gaius 17y ago
    Emacs runs in 4M resident on this box... Eclipse is closer to 500M. That is bloat.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Do you know anything about emacs? There is actually not that much bloat. There is code to support each platform and windowing system emacs runs on. There is support for managing buffers, and other very primitive editor functionality like that. Then there is the Lisp VM and associated data structures ("Lisp_Object") to glue everything together. On top of that are some primitive functions ("and", "cdr", etc.), along with some primitive editing functions ("next-line") implemented in C. That's about it; the rest is all Emacs Lisp code that you can simply choose not to run. (Yes, some gets compiled right into the Emacs binary to speed startup, but you can skip that.) Sure, you can argue that many emacs extensions (hello, Gnus) are bloat. But you can just pretend it doesn't exist; nobody is forcing you to use anything. Plain emacs is a very simple toolkit for building your own editor. Emacs with simple.el (and friends) is still a very simple, but rich, text editor. As you add packages, you add functionality and complexity... but you can choose what to add, Emacs is infinitely malleable and does not care what you do to it. I am not too familiar with Eclipse, but I doubt that it is simpler than Emacs.
  - amichail 17y ago
    I'm interested in an editor that works the way I like with minimal customization required. Notepad++ is like that. Emacs isn't.
    - yason 17y ago
      There's a difference between editing text files and editing text. In the former, all you need is some mechanism to type, delete, and move text. In the latter, you want to work with the contents itself in a huge number of ways. There's no such things as an editor that works the way you like unless you only have very basic text editing needs. This is where people generally resort to Notepad or Word. In the other case you really want a good editor that fits both your fingers and thinking, and that's where you had better write the editor yourself. It is at this stage when many people have figured out that starting with Emacs is the easiest path.
- prodigal_erik 17y ago
  Eclipse sometimes can't keep up with my typing. That's amazing, but not in a good way.
- kevbin 17y ago
  No comparison. Eclipse is a great integrated development environment: a relatively static (though extensible) application for writing applications. Emacs is a lifestyle. Embrace it.
- lispm 17y ago
  Eclipse is a great window environment. It only needs a good IDE.
  - mulander 17y ago
    People said similar things about Emacs (a great OS needing a decent text editor). Such statements mostly underestimate the tools in question unless this is just an intended reference to the Emacs quote.
garnet7 17y ago
> In fact, I've never seen an Emacs user who hasn't customized his keybindings. Here's one. I only make 2 minor additions (no customizations) to the default key bindings. By now, the defaults are pretty much hardwired into my hands.
- lacker 17y ago
  It's a sign of how true the original statement is that you consider "only adding 2 extra keybindings" to be essentially the same as "haven't customized your keybindings."

amichail 17y ago

But emacs is bloated software. Eclipse at least gives you amazing functionality. Have you actually tried the Java editor in Eclipse?

adharmad 17y ago
How is emacs bloated? Size of emacs 22.1 (windows): 36MB Size of eclipse galileo (windows) 189MB
- gaius 17y ago
  Emacs runs in 4M resident on this box... Eclipse is closer to 500M. That is bloat.
jrockway 17y ago
Do you know anything about emacs? There is actually not that much bloat. There is code to support each platform and windowing system emacs runs on. There is support for managing buffers, and other very primitive editor functionality like that. Then there is the Lisp VM and associated data structures ("Lisp_Object") to glue everything together. On top of that are some primitive functions ("and", "cdr", etc.), along with some primitive editing functions ("next-line") implemented in C. That's about it; the rest is all Emacs Lisp code that you can simply choose not to run. (Yes, some gets compiled right into the Emacs binary to speed startup, but you can skip that.) Sure, you can argue that many emacs extensions (hello, Gnus) are bloat. But you can just pretend it doesn't exist; nobody is forcing you to use anything. Plain emacs is a very simple toolkit for building your own editor. Emacs with simple.el (and friends) is still a very simple, but rich, text editor. As you add packages, you add functionality and complexity... but you can choose what to add, Emacs is infinitely malleable and does not care what you do to it. I am not too familiar with Eclipse, but I doubt that it is simpler than Emacs.
- amichail 17y ago
  I'm interested in an editor that works the way I like with minimal customization required. Notepad++ is like that. Emacs isn't.
  - yason 17y ago
    There's a difference between editing text files and editing text. In the former, all you need is some mechanism to type, delete, and move text. In the latter, you want to work with the contents itself in a huge number of ways. There's no such things as an editor that works the way you like unless you only have very basic text editing needs. This is where people generally resort to Notepad or Word. In the other case you really want a good editor that fits both your fingers and thinking, and that's where you had better write the editor yourself. It is at this stage when many people have figured out that starting with Emacs is the easiest path.
prodigal_erik 17y ago
Eclipse sometimes can't keep up with my typing. That's amazing, but not in a good way.
kevbin 17y ago
No comparison. Eclipse is a great integrated development environment: a relatively static (though extensible) application for writing applications. Emacs is a lifestyle. Embrace it.
lispm 17y ago
Eclipse is a great window environment. It only needs a good IDE.
- mulander 17y ago
  People said similar things about Emacs (a great OS needing a decent text editor). Such statements mostly underestimate the tools in question unless this is just an intended reference to the Emacs quote.

garnet7 17y ago

> In fact, I've never seen an Emacs user who hasn't customized his keybindings. Here's one. I only make 2 minor additions (no customizations) to the default key bindings. By now, the defaults are pretty much hardwired into my hands.

lacker 17y ago
It's a sign of how true the original statement is that you consider "only adding 2 extra keybindings" to be essentially the same as "haven't customized your keybindings."