16 ms·

Something like Lem[1][2] could go even further because of the richer CommonLisp ecosystem compared to Elisp one. [1] https://lem-project.github.io/ https://lem

by xvilka 2mo ago

Something like Lem[1][2] could go even further because of the richer CommonLisp ecosystem compared to Elisp one. [1] https://lem-project.github.io/ https://lem-project.github.io/ [2] https://github.com/lem-project/lem https://github.com/lem-project/lem

beepbooptheory 2mo ago
I am not sure if I would bet one way or another on who has the richer ecosystem here.. They are both great. I would probably wager elpa has more packages in general than quicklisp, but maybe not necessarily richer/higher quality.
adrian_b 2mo ago
Having CommonLisp as the extension language would indeed be a great improvement over Elisp. However, I am suspicious about the dependency of Lem on Webkit, which for me is rather associated with inefficiency and low performance than with the instant reactions that I expect from programming text editors, terminal emulators and tiled window managers. The main problem is that it is very difficult for any replacement of Emacs to offer everything that already exists for Emacs. In my opinion, the only way in which such a replacement would succeed would be if it would include an automatic translator from Elisp to CommonLisp scripts executable by it, with equivalent functionality.
- chiffaa 2mo ago
  Lem can also render via ncurses, which works fairly fine if you don't need mouse support. It used to also have an SDL2 frontend, but it was deprecated for reasons I don't remember
- anthk 2mo ago
  Emacs has cl-lib and most CL users can get into Emacs in seconds (if they are not already proficient enough, most of them btw).
- cmrdporcupine 2mo ago
  The WebKit UI is actually snappier and more performant than the previous SDL2 one. I don't think WebKit is slow at all. Browser bloat around it often is.
conartist6 2mo ago
I chose the JS ecosystem. Why does the power of Emacs not belong in the browser? These days JS is a powerful enough FP language to do it.
- all2 2mo ago
  They told me the future would have horrors beyond my comprehension. But I understand this particular horror. I might even agree... :D
- m463 2mo ago
  Maybe python can't do it, but I would love to extend my editor (and even browser) using python.
  - conartist6 2mo ago
    My core idea, CSTML, isn't implementation-language-specific: https://docs.bablr.org/guides/cstml https://docs.bablr.org/guides/cstml What it could at least let you do is view JS code using more "Pythonic" syntax rendering. The semantics would still be JS, but you could get rid of the curly braces while you were reading it if you just preferred semantic indentation, for example
- getpokedagain 2mo ago
  Nearly 40 years of stuff. People iterating on a problem space over time is the best way we have found to improve things. The JS ecosystem is not that old and also attempts to solve hundreds of unrelated problems like running software without peoples consent.
  - tonyarkles 2mo ago
    > The JS ecosystem is not that old I hate to tell ya this... LiveScript was renamed to JavaScript in 1995, and the first ECMAScript standard was published in 1997. So not 40 years old, but 31 years old. NodeJS (liberating JavaScript from the browser) was first released in 2009... so again, not 40 years old, but old enough to have a drivers license. I agree with you on the other side though: despite the language being relatively old and stable, it feels like the wheel's getting reinvented over and over again and "this will be a good enough pattern for the next decade" hasn't ever really shaken out, unlike Lisp or even Python.
stackghost 2mo ago
"Common Lisp Emacs" has been attempted a few times. Lem seems like the best effort yet, and I was really excited about it until they decided to adopt a webview renderer. I've got vscode for that.
- veqq 2mo ago
  It supports ncurses too. And if someone else wanted to maintain the SDL2 version or such, they'd be happy. The issue's just a lack of engineering effort and more people complaining than assisting. :/
iLemming 2mo ago
What do you mean by "richer ecosystem"? Have you ever seen GitHub language stats - there's so much Elisp on GitHub alone, it's absolute bananas. The amount of Elisp in the wild probably surpasses the amount of Clojure, CL and Racket combined. And mind that it isn't "a general use" PL - it exists for one and single purpose. Lem is great and I'm happy there's finally something out there to challenge Emacs' hegemony, yet pragmatically, unless someone builds a way to run Elisp in Lem, it's unlikely to overthrow Emacs anytime soon, and that's just not gonna happen. Org-mode, Magit, and thousands of packages aren't just "Elisp code" - they depend on Emacs' specific buffer model, text properties, overlays, markers, the display engine, process handling, and countless quirks packages rely on (intentionally or not). A Lem Elisp interpreter that didn't also reimplement all of that faithfully would run trivial `.el` files and choke on anything real. At that point you've reimplemented Emacs inside Lem. Elisp is not the biggest point here and Neovim proves that with pivoting to Lua; the crux is the runtime and the corpus, and reimplementing those is the actual mountain. That is real ecosystem for whatever reason you're choosing to simply ignore.
- cmrdporcupine 2mo ago
  Lem already has a clone of legit. And there's org-mode-alikes, as well. There's very little I miss when I use lem, TBH.
  - iLemming 2mo ago
    That's plausible and isn't too hard to imagine. The value of Emacs is not the concrete implementation of it - let's be honest, GNU Emacs is not void of enormously annoying warts. The value of Emacs is the nice foundational Lisp layer - something Lem does provide. One side of me wants to remain skeptical - knowing how much stuff there exists in Org-mode and Magit - piles and piles of different workflows thousands of users had to go through over the years - a bunch of well-trodden paths. At the same time, I am well-acquainted with the power of Lisp and its communities. Give Lispers a powerful engine, and they'd take it to the moon and beyond. Lem's been steadily developing over the past few years and slowly been adding users, at least I keep hearing of curious people trying it. Meanwhile Org-mode's core feels almost stagnant, and it's one of the "killer apps" of Emacs. Lem might be on the brink of making things so appealing that it would be hard to refuse it. For some lispers that's already the case. I'm wholeheartedly welcome this challenge to Emacs' hegemony. I love Emacs and I hate Emacs, because sadly (or otherwise) I don't see any practical alternative for it - anyone who thinks nvim or vscode are even in the same room are clueless. Perhaps, the time to seriously consider Lem is almost (?), already (?) here.

by xvilka 2mo ago

beepbooptheory 2mo ago

I am not sure if I would bet one way or another on who has the richer ecosystem here.. They are both great. I would probably wager elpa has more packages in general than quicklisp, but maybe not necessarily richer/higher quality.

adrian_b 2mo ago

Having CommonLisp as the extension language would indeed be a great improvement over Elisp. However, I am suspicious about the dependency of Lem on Webkit, which for me is rather associated with inefficiency and low performance than with the instant reactions that I expect from programming text editors, terminal emulators and tiled window managers. The main problem is that it is very difficult for any replacement of Emacs to offer everything that already exists for Emacs. In my opinion, the only way in which such a replacement would succeed would be if it would include an automatic translator from Elisp to CommonLisp scripts executable by it, with equivalent functionality.

chiffaa 2mo ago
Lem can also render via ncurses, which works fairly fine if you don't need mouse support. It used to also have an SDL2 frontend, but it was deprecated for reasons I don't remember
anthk 2mo ago
Emacs has cl-lib and most CL users can get into Emacs in seconds (if they are not already proficient enough, most of them btw).
cmrdporcupine 2mo ago
The WebKit UI is actually snappier and more performant than the previous SDL2 one. I don't think WebKit is slow at all. Browser bloat around it often is.

conartist6 2mo ago

I chose the JS ecosystem. Why does the power of Emacs not belong in the browser? These days JS is a powerful enough FP language to do it.

all2 2mo ago
They told me the future would have horrors beyond my comprehension. But I understand this particular horror. I might even agree... :D
m463 2mo ago
Maybe python can't do it, but I would love to extend my editor (and even browser) using python.
- conartist6 2mo ago
  My core idea, CSTML, isn't implementation-language-specific: https://docs.bablr.org/guides/cstml https://docs.bablr.org/guides/cstml What it could at least let you do is view JS code using more "Pythonic" syntax rendering. The semantics would still be JS, but you could get rid of the curly braces while you were reading it if you just preferred semantic indentation, for example
getpokedagain 2mo ago
Nearly 40 years of stuff. People iterating on a problem space over time is the best way we have found to improve things. The JS ecosystem is not that old and also attempts to solve hundreds of unrelated problems like running software without peoples consent.
- tonyarkles 2mo ago
  > The JS ecosystem is not that old I hate to tell ya this... LiveScript was renamed to JavaScript in 1995, and the first ECMAScript standard was published in 1997. So not 40 years old, but 31 years old. NodeJS (liberating JavaScript from the browser) was first released in 2009... so again, not 40 years old, but old enough to have a drivers license. I agree with you on the other side though: despite the language being relatively old and stable, it feels like the wheel's getting reinvented over and over again and "this will be a good enough pattern for the next decade" hasn't ever really shaken out, unlike Lisp or even Python.

stackghost 2mo ago

"Common Lisp Emacs" has been attempted a few times. Lem seems like the best effort yet, and I was really excited about it until they decided to adopt a webview renderer. I've got vscode for that.

veqq 2mo ago
It supports ncurses too. And if someone else wanted to maintain the SDL2 version or such, they'd be happy. The issue's just a lack of engineering effort and more people complaining than assisting. :/

iLemming 2mo ago

What do you mean by "richer ecosystem"? Have you ever seen GitHub language stats - there's so much Elisp on GitHub alone, it's absolute bananas. The amount of Elisp in the wild probably surpasses the amount of Clojure, CL and Racket combined. And mind that it isn't "a general use" PL - it exists for one and single purpose. Lem is great and I'm happy there's finally something out there to challenge Emacs' hegemony, yet pragmatically, unless someone builds a way to run Elisp in Lem, it's unlikely to overthrow Emacs anytime soon, and that's just not gonna happen. Org-mode, Magit, and thousands of packages aren't just "Elisp code" - they depend on Emacs' specific buffer model, text properties, overlays, markers, the display engine, process handling, and countless quirks packages rely on (intentionally or not). A Lem Elisp interpreter that didn't also reimplement all of that faithfully would run trivial `.el` files and choke on anything real. At that point you've reimplemented Emacs inside Lem. Elisp is not the biggest point here and Neovim proves that with pivoting to Lua; the crux is the runtime and the corpus, and reimplementing those is the actual mountain. That is real ecosystem for whatever reason you're choosing to simply ignore.

cmrdporcupine 2mo ago
Lem already has a clone of legit. And there's org-mode-alikes, as well. There's very little I miss when I use lem, TBH.
- iLemming 2mo ago
  That's plausible and isn't too hard to imagine. The value of Emacs is not the concrete implementation of it - let's be honest, GNU Emacs is not void of enormously annoying warts. The value of Emacs is the nice foundational Lisp layer - something Lem does provide. One side of me wants to remain skeptical - knowing how much stuff there exists in Org-mode and Magit - piles and piles of different workflows thousands of users had to go through over the years - a bunch of well-trodden paths. At the same time, I am well-acquainted with the power of Lisp and its communities. Give Lispers a powerful engine, and they'd take it to the moon and beyond. Lem's been steadily developing over the past few years and slowly been adding users, at least I keep hearing of curious people trying it. Meanwhile Org-mode's core feels almost stagnant, and it's one of the "killer apps" of Emacs. Lem might be on the brink of making things so appealing that it would be hard to refuse it. For some lispers that's already the case. I'm wholeheartedly welcome this challenge to Emacs' hegemony. I love Emacs and I hate Emacs, because sadly (or otherwise) I don't see any practical alternative for it - anyone who thinks nvim or vscode are even in the same room are clueless. Perhaps, the time to seriously consider Lem is almost (?), already (?) here.