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Yeah, Emacs may already be the Next Great Editor and not know it yet ;) It needs to be more novice-friendly, having pre-CUA [1] shortcuts and terms ("windows"

Yeah, Emacs may already be the Next Great Editor and not know it yet ;) It needs to be more novice-friendly, having pre-CUA [1] shortcuts and terms ("windows" & "frames") is a trivial but powerful obstacle, I think. It needs to modernize its extension language: I still can't believe a 'then' clause needs a 'progn' if it's to contain multiple statements, but 'else' doesn't. I'm crossing my fingers for Guile, which, though still a niche language (Scheme), is at least more modern and standardized. I don't know how robust the interaction between the elisp (which is, like it or not, is here to stay) and Guile code is. Emacs has a humongous codebase at over 2M lines of code [2] (of which, admittedly, 1.5M of that is elisp), with some deep black art as legacy from what it needed to run on when it started (thanks to ESR's work, the git history actually spans the entire 30 year history of the project! Here's the very first commit: [3] [Though admittedly because of RCS's per-file semantics, the early history is a bit weird). But more importantly, it needs more mindshare. I'm hoping the git transition can help that. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access [2] https://www.openhub.net/p/emacs https://www.openhub.net/p/emacs (slow server) [3] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?id=ce5584125c44a1a2fbb46e810459c50b227a95e2 http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?id=ce5584...

AceJohnny2 12y ago
Maybe the CUA thing doesn't matter. After all, Vim is much worse in first impression, but it's more popular by an order of magnitude. Maybe Emacs just needs to be installed by default, and for that, needs to slim down. Make more of its embedded elisp optional?
- wodenokoto 12y ago
  To me it is all about a sane starting point. With Sublime I could jump in and start writing code in a beautiful and immediately helpful environment, even though I had never programmed before. As I got better at programming I wanted more advanced features and most of them I found in the included batteries, and a few I got from plugins (although all the good plugins I want seem to have died). With VIM or Emacs I have no idea where to start, except for maybe a few weeks in the terminal and manual before I can even start to code. Then it is still an open question about what it will scale to. I am not sure I want my environment to look like [this].(http://blog.jetbrains.com/pycharm/files/2013/06/vim3-1024x748.gif http://blog.jetbrains.com/pycharm/files/2013/06/vim3-1024x74...) With Spyder, RStudio and Octave GUI I can start programming right away, I can see the benefit of the IDE right away, the only problem is I have 3 different text editors with their own short cuts and features.
  - tincholio 12y ago
    If it takes you a few weeks to get started with the basics (in either Emacs or vim), you're doing it wrong. Following their respective tutorials you can get up and running (for basic open/navigate/edit/save/search/replace) functionality in a few hours. You won't be proficient, but you should be able to get stuff done. The rest comes with usage; you can't learn either editor properly by reading the whole book and then not using them. Proficiency comes from constant use, and you never stop learning. I'm an Emacs user of 13 years, and using Evil for the last 3 or so, so I'm comfortable in vim as well, and I still learn new stuff about them all the time.
    - crucialfelix 12y ago
      The basic functionality is completely useless for doing actual programming work. > (for basic open/navigate/edit/save/search/replace) functionality in a few hours Do you know how long it takes in Sublime / Atom / TextMate ? Approximately zero. I use Spacemacs (Emacs with VIM inside) and even after months of working with it I'm still faster in Atom. That's not because I'm "doing it wrong".
      - RBerenguel 12y ago
        Sorry to chime being negative, but it takes you approximately zero because it uses the same paradigm as software you learnt years ago. It probably didn't take you zero time to learn how to open a file, what a files was, what a search-replace was, how it worked, etc, the first time you were confronted with it
        crucialfelix 12y ago
        Yes, that's my point. Emacs could, but does not integrate with the OS and established keys that well. Spacemacs fixes some of that integration. cmd-X C V S all work. but no cmd-F or cmd-R
        RBerenguel 12y ago
kenko 12y ago
Does vim really have an order of magnitude more users than emacs? Is emacs really lacking in mindshare? I have no real reason to doubt those claims but I find them kind of mind-boggling. I'd have guessed they were close to parity (for the first).
- AceJohnny2 12y ago
  And then some. I can't immediately find the survey that struck me, but here's a Quora answer [1] that cites O'Reilley selling twice as many Vim books than Emacs, the Debian PopCon results [2] that are rather striking (but Debian PopCon has quite the preselection bias, and the data may not cover all sub-packages properly), and Ubuntu's results [3] are a bit harder to parse but also striking, with vim-common at 2714181 / 25488 installs / "votes" (regular uses), vs emacsen-common (the highest-placed "emacs" package) at 330647 / 1669. [1] http://www.quora.com/Are-there-more-Emacs-or-Vim-users http://www.quora.com/Are-there-more-Emacs-or-Vim-users [2] https://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=vim%2C+emacs&show_vote=on&want_percent=on&want_legend=on&from_date=2010-01-01&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1 https://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=vim%2C+emacs... [3] http://popcon.ubuntu.com/by_inst http://popcon.ubuntu.com/by_inst
  - bandrami 12y ago
    Well, I'm an emacs guy, and I've bought a vi book (O'Reilley's in fact) and not an emacs book, because I needed a book to figure out how to use vi and I didn't with emacs. Just throwing that out there.
    - RBerenguel 12y ago
      Same here. I got Practical Vim and then moved to emacs+evil because I liked some of the vim concepts but wasn't willing to trade the usefulness of emacs. Never bought an emacs book either, after all "emacs is the extensible, customizable, self-documenting, real-time display editor." C-h (+ k or m) is probably one of the first key chords you are to learn when starting emacs, from there everything is downhill.
  - 12y ago

AceJohnny2 12y ago

Maybe the CUA thing doesn't matter. After all, Vim is much worse in first impression, but it's more popular by an order of magnitude. Maybe Emacs just needs to be installed by default, and for that, needs to slim down. Make more of its embedded elisp optional?

wodenokoto 12y ago
To me it is all about a sane starting point. With Sublime I could jump in and start writing code in a beautiful and immediately helpful environment, even though I had never programmed before. As I got better at programming I wanted more advanced features and most of them I found in the included batteries, and a few I got from plugins (although all the good plugins I want seem to have died). With VIM or Emacs I have no idea where to start, except for maybe a few weeks in the terminal and manual before I can even start to code. Then it is still an open question about what it will scale to. I am not sure I want my environment to look like [this].(http://blog.jetbrains.com/pycharm/files/2013/06/vim3-1024x748.gif http://blog.jetbrains.com/pycharm/files/2013/06/vim3-1024x74...) With Spyder, RStudio and Octave GUI I can start programming right away, I can see the benefit of the IDE right away, the only problem is I have 3 different text editors with their own short cuts and features.
- tincholio 12y ago
  If it takes you a few weeks to get started with the basics (in either Emacs or vim), you're doing it wrong. Following their respective tutorials you can get up and running (for basic open/navigate/edit/save/search/replace) functionality in a few hours. You won't be proficient, but you should be able to get stuff done. The rest comes with usage; you can't learn either editor properly by reading the whole book and then not using them. Proficiency comes from constant use, and you never stop learning. I'm an Emacs user of 13 years, and using Evil for the last 3 or so, so I'm comfortable in vim as well, and I still learn new stuff about them all the time.
  - crucialfelix 12y ago
    The basic functionality is completely useless for doing actual programming work. > (for basic open/navigate/edit/save/search/replace) functionality in a few hours Do you know how long it takes in Sublime / Atom / TextMate ? Approximately zero. I use Spacemacs (Emacs with VIM inside) and even after months of working with it I'm still faster in Atom. That's not because I'm "doing it wrong".
    - RBerenguel 12y ago
      Sorry to chime being negative, but it takes you approximately zero because it uses the same paradigm as software you learnt years ago. It probably didn't take you zero time to learn how to open a file, what a files was, what a search-replace was, how it worked, etc, the first time you were confronted with it
      - crucialfelix 12y ago
        Yes, that's my point. Emacs could, but does not integrate with the OS and established keys that well. Spacemacs fixes some of that integration. cmd-X C V S all work. but no cmd-F or cmd-R
        RBerenguel 12y ago

kenko 12y ago

Does vim really have an order of magnitude more users than emacs? Is emacs really lacking in mindshare? I have no real reason to doubt those claims but I find them kind of mind-boggling. I'd have guessed they were close to parity (for the first).

AceJohnny2 12y ago
And then some. I can't immediately find the survey that struck me, but here's a Quora answer [1] that cites O'Reilley selling twice as many Vim books than Emacs, the Debian PopCon results [2] that are rather striking (but Debian PopCon has quite the preselection bias, and the data may not cover all sub-packages properly), and Ubuntu's results [3] are a bit harder to parse but also striking, with vim-common at 2714181 / 25488 installs / "votes" (regular uses), vs emacsen-common (the highest-placed "emacs" package) at 330647 / 1669. [1] http://www.quora.com/Are-there-more-Emacs-or-Vim-users http://www.quora.com/Are-there-more-Emacs-or-Vim-users [2] https://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=vim%2C+emacs&show_vote=on&want_percent=on&want_legend=on&from_date=2010-01-01&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1 https://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=vim%2C+emacs... [3] http://popcon.ubuntu.com/by_inst http://popcon.ubuntu.com/by_inst
- bandrami 12y ago
  Well, I'm an emacs guy, and I've bought a vi book (O'Reilley's in fact) and not an emacs book, because I needed a book to figure out how to use vi and I didn't with emacs. Just throwing that out there.
  - RBerenguel 12y ago
    Same here. I got Practical Vim and then moved to emacs+evil because I liked some of the vim concepts but wasn't willing to trade the usefulness of emacs. Never bought an emacs book either, after all "emacs is the extensible, customizable, self-documenting, real-time display editor." C-h (+ k or m) is probably one of the first key chords you are to learn when starting emacs, from there everything is downhill.
- 12y ago