7 ms·

Magit is truly a magnificent application and it's telling how it's ideas are ported to other editors. Reference to the previously posted "You Can Choose Tools

by zkry 1y ago

Magit is truly a magnificent application and it's telling how it's ideas are ported to other editors. Reference to the previously posted "You Can Choose Tools That Make You Happy" > Emacs is a Gnostic cult. And you know what? That’s fine. In fact, it’s great. It makes you happy, what else is needed? You are allowed to use weird, obscure, inconvenient, obsolescent, undead things if it makes you happy. Juxtaposing Emacs with the adjectives obsolescent, and undead is sad to read. Emacs is constantly reinventing and readapting itself, and just like Emacs takes and incorporates the best ideas from other tools, ideas from Emacs find their way to other environments.

squishington 1y ago
Yes! I found Emacs on a 1997 CD ROM inside a book about VHDL "functional bus models" in my university library in 2014. Over the years it has become an extension of my body. There's always something new coming along in terms of performance and functionality. My co-workers have never been inspired to explore it. Most people think it is a relic.
- sureglymop 1y ago
  I find it interesting because they probably unknowingly could already control emacs quite well. The gnu readline key bindings are pretty much the same as the emacs ones and are universally used in text editing environments and REPLs. For example in html text inputs or in all text editing contexts on macOS. They were the first thing I missed when first trying out insert mode in vim. I also think the concept of major and minor modes is overall simpler and easier to understand than how this works in e.g. neovim. However I still prefer neovim because I believe lua to be overall nicer to use. Nothing against lisp and I understand it is incredibly simple and powerful. But I feel most people just want to have an easy way to configure their editor and imo the developer ergonomics for lua are better. Especially also with formatting, typing and other tooling. Nested lua tables look almost exactly like json, while the same structure in elisp would probably confuse someone switching over from vs code.
  - squishington 1y ago
    Admittedly I struggle with emacs out of the box. My emacs configuration has evolved over the years. It's a personal thing. I couldn't tell you about my key bindings. My hands just know them instinctively. That's what I love about it. You can craft it to your personal needs. I map ctrl key to spacebar (only when spacebar is held down), and meta to return key (when held down). No more RSI for me.
eviks 1y ago
Has emacs reinvented itself to incorporate the best ideas of being very performant, allowing better languages for extensions, replacing health-hazardous default keybinds with something ergonomic, using commonly understood terms for its interface?
- brendonjohn 1y ago
  Yes
- dhruvrajvanshi 1y ago
  > Has emacs reinvented itself to incorporate the best ideas of being very performant, allowing better languages for extensions, replacing health-hazardous default keybinds with something ergonomic, using commonly understood terms for its interface? Yes! It's called Evil mode. It emulates vim keybindings. In terms of "normal" keyboard shortcuts, it could but no one who uses Emacs is asking for it. Mind that ergonomics is also very subjective. You might not find lisp very ergonomic, but Emacs users do. They find other languages unergonomic. Other ways Emacs has borrowed ideas from other editors. It now has first party tree sitter integration for better syntax highlighting. I believe this was borrowed from the neovim world. It has plugins for LSP...borrowed straight from the VSCode world. If it matters, I've never used Emacs in my life, so I'm not a part of their weird cult. But i can see that they do things the way they do for a reason. They're not a bunch of morons.
  - eviks 1y ago
    Evil mode is not that default, so it's a no (besides, vim defaults are also bad, so even then it wouldn't be incorporating the best idea) > it could but no one who uses Emacs is asking for it. That would be impossible for no one to ask for better defaults over the course of so many years, and examples of such asks is a short search away. Besides you forgot the much bigger group of people who could be using emacs if it incorporated such best ideas as ergonomic UI... > Mind that ergonomics is also very subjective. Unless it's objective. As in, if your defaults lead to RSI on heavy use, they are objectively bad > You might not find lisp very ergonomic, but Emacs users do. So? The idea wasn't about banning lisp, but allowing other languages. And before going with the other ways were half left from the original way
jsilence 1y ago
Have been using Spacemacs and Doom Emacs some time ago, but turned off evil mode, bc I was not used to vim style editing. Lately I understood that vim key bindings is actually an editing language and finally found joy in vim [0]. Surely going to return to Doom-Emacs with evil mode on. Maybe switching to evil god mode later. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlR5gYd6um0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlR5gYd6um0

by zkry 1y ago

squishington 1y ago

Yes! I found Emacs on a 1997 CD ROM inside a book about VHDL "functional bus models" in my university library in 2014. Over the years it has become an extension of my body. There's always something new coming along in terms of performance and functionality. My co-workers have never been inspired to explore it. Most people think it is a relic.

sureglymop 1y ago
I find it interesting because they probably unknowingly could already control emacs quite well. The gnu readline key bindings are pretty much the same as the emacs ones and are universally used in text editing environments and REPLs. For example in html text inputs or in all text editing contexts on macOS. They were the first thing I missed when first trying out insert mode in vim. I also think the concept of major and minor modes is overall simpler and easier to understand than how this works in e.g. neovim. However I still prefer neovim because I believe lua to be overall nicer to use. Nothing against lisp and I understand it is incredibly simple and powerful. But I feel most people just want to have an easy way to configure their editor and imo the developer ergonomics for lua are better. Especially also with formatting, typing and other tooling. Nested lua tables look almost exactly like json, while the same structure in elisp would probably confuse someone switching over from vs code.
- squishington 1y ago
  Admittedly I struggle with emacs out of the box. My emacs configuration has evolved over the years. It's a personal thing. I couldn't tell you about my key bindings. My hands just know them instinctively. That's what I love about it. You can craft it to your personal needs. I map ctrl key to spacebar (only when spacebar is held down), and meta to return key (when held down). No more RSI for me.

eviks 1y ago

Has emacs reinvented itself to incorporate the best ideas of being very performant, allowing better languages for extensions, replacing health-hazardous default keybinds with something ergonomic, using commonly understood terms for its interface?

brendonjohn 1y ago
Yes
dhruvrajvanshi 1y ago
> Has emacs reinvented itself to incorporate the best ideas of being very performant, allowing better languages for extensions, replacing health-hazardous default keybinds with something ergonomic, using commonly understood terms for its interface? Yes! It's called Evil mode. It emulates vim keybindings. In terms of "normal" keyboard shortcuts, it could but no one who uses Emacs is asking for it. Mind that ergonomics is also very subjective. You might not find lisp very ergonomic, but Emacs users do. They find other languages unergonomic. Other ways Emacs has borrowed ideas from other editors. It now has first party tree sitter integration for better syntax highlighting. I believe this was borrowed from the neovim world. It has plugins for LSP...borrowed straight from the VSCode world. If it matters, I've never used Emacs in my life, so I'm not a part of their weird cult. But i can see that they do things the way they do for a reason. They're not a bunch of morons.
- eviks 1y ago
  Evil mode is not that default, so it's a no (besides, vim defaults are also bad, so even then it wouldn't be incorporating the best idea) > it could but no one who uses Emacs is asking for it. That would be impossible for no one to ask for better defaults over the course of so many years, and examples of such asks is a short search away. Besides you forgot the much bigger group of people who could be using emacs if it incorporated such best ideas as ergonomic UI... > Mind that ergonomics is also very subjective. Unless it's objective. As in, if your defaults lead to RSI on heavy use, they are objectively bad > You might not find lisp very ergonomic, but Emacs users do. So? The idea wasn't about banning lisp, but allowing other languages. And before going with the other ways were half left from the original way

jsilence 1y ago

Have been using Spacemacs and Doom Emacs some time ago, but turned off evil mode, bc I was not used to vim style editing. Lately I understood that vim key bindings is actually an editing language and finally found joy in vim [0]. Surely going to return to Doom-Emacs with evil mode on. Maybe switching to evil god mode later. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlR5gYd6um0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlR5gYd6um0