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Comment by molteanu | Hacker News Reader

Many people also use the classic Emacs, particularly for larger editing tasks. (Of course, any modern software developer working on an extensive project is unlikely to use only a pure text-based editor and should also be familiar with modern graphical IDEs and tools.)

Huh?! Unlikely?!

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I belong to a 100+ team working on the Chromium code base; a project having 150+ third party sub-projects, all tied up by and build in the command line with a few build tools like GN and ninja.

Not one in my team use an IDE because they die merely trying to index everything. Everyone uses a simple editor of choice: Emacs, Vim, VS Code and Notepad++ are the popular choices. Everyone has at least two Bash/CMD instances open.

The systems programming world is a different one unlike the web programming world where everything is small and self contained for an IDE and GUI.

I tried getting sublime to work with a 60k file code base, I got the indexer down to 20k but the CPU usage of the indexing process was always at 100% when building (diagnostics showed it wasn't doing any index db changes) even though I filtered out most of the build cruft, third party code, and useless sub directories.

Vim with cscope/ctags is the best of both worlds. Index your project once -- no penalty when building. Symbolic searching is a must have on any large code base (declaration, usage, etc).

Is VS Code not an IDE at this point?

It more or less is, my use case for it is more or less Notepad++ with Intellisense and a few of the marketplace apps. I like it though, it's lightweight and I've used it as a text editor a few times.

That being said, my most used is probably either regular Notepad or Notepad++ in a Windows env.

Yes, not everyone is a unix purist / keyboard warrior.

(I've got 10+ years of experience in software development and I just can't get to grips with it, at best I can do basic operations in Vim (for git). Looked at emacs the other day but I need to read a lot of manuals and tutorials and practice to get to grips with it)

I'm currently using VS Code, before that it's been IDEA, Atom for a little while (but it was slow), Sublime Text (I still miss it), and much longer ago, notepad++ and eclipse. (the folder I have all my code in is still called "workspace").

Well, let me know if you need help getting started with it. The built in tutorial usually helps.

Yes, well, see what happens? Every time fads change or new languages appear, you have to change your editors. What if you could have just one editor for everything? For text files and taking notes, for all the programming languages in the world that you just learn once and learn it well, and be done with it. No more need for new editors.

This is exactly why I stick to Emacs. I have used it since senior high school and haven’t had to switch ever since. Really convenient IMHO.

It was the built-in tutorial that got me started. One just needs to type C-h t and then you’re good! Each to their own but that has suited me well at least.

I’ve never understood getting so passionate about IDEs or editors. I use VScode at the moment. I’d be just as happy using any other number of editors. If I wanted to switch to sublime or webstorm or anything else, it wouldn’t take me very long at all to get it up and running and get back to work. They all do the job I need them for perfectly well.

Maybe the Blub paradox applies to code editors as well,

As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power continuum, he knows he's looking down. Languages less powerful than Blub are obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub.

Emacs is not just a code editor. It will change the way you approach programming. As long as you don't understand it you might (rightfully, I guess) compare it to just "another text editor, only with these weird commands". Some of the stuff that Emacs can do and the way it integrates into your daily activities, cannot be seen in other text editors, so you're not even expecting such benefits from the other tools or realize that they exist out there, in the wild.

> Emacs is not just a code editor. It will change the way you approach programming.

This is the most pretentious nonsense I've ever read. Writing code is writing code. God could create for you the most perfect IDE to ever exist, with every feature you know you want, and every feature that you don't yet know you want. Tailored exactly to your needs. But at the end of the day, you're just going to sit down and write code in it.

All I see when I look at people who endlessly tinker with their setup, are people who are spending time things that aren't providing aren't providing value to their customers. I've worked with quite a few emacs wizards. Do they write better code than me? Some do, some don't. It doesn't seem to related to their use of emacs though. Are they more efficient than me? Some are, some aren't. Did they all spend a lot more time than I did to learn how to use their text editor? Yes. Did they all have to tinker with their text editor a lot more than I did to get it working the way they want it? Yes. Have I ever had a problem that I wouldn't have had if I'd invested all the time required to master emacs? No.

In Emacs, every key is evaluating some Lisp expression. You are interactively using Emacs Lisp in a funny sort of REPL. Most of the time you just use predefined commands and they do what you want, but if you know there's a whole programming language there, then you'll see opportunities to take advantage of that sometimes, just like how sometimes it's nice to be able to write a for loop or a pipeline at a bash prompt.

Once you get used to that model of using a computer, it feels crippling to use applications that you can't easily program in on the fly. It's the difference between having a full programming language and a bunch of buttons you can press, and it's for something you're going to be doing a lot for a long time.

I don’t doubt that a skilled Emacs user would be more efficient at editing text than I am. But I don’t have any problems with my ability to efficiently edit text. The problems that I get paid to solve are ‘how do I effectively deliver value to my customers’ and ‘how can I design solutions and systems that meet the business’ needs’. The kind of challenges that I have to overcome to meet these goals do not include ‘I’m not efficient enough at editing text’. If I were to reach a perfect 100% efficiency in text editing, I doubt it would have much impact on my productivity, and I know that I would have no impact at all on the quality of my work. My IDE already has a lot of productivity tools, perhaps I could improve that by learning Emacs, but I’ve never seen the RoI in devoting time to that, over devoting time to learning any number of other things that would actually make me better at my job.

> Once you get used to that model of using a computer, it feels crippling to use applications that you can't easily program in on the fly.

Funnily enough, that's how I feel about Lisp itself: I love having a language I can program at runtime, at compile-time, at read-time (and, in a decent editor, at edit-time).

It really makes me wish that there were a decent modern Lisp OS. It'd need some solution to run Firefox and emulate emacs. Maybe when I retire I'll devote my remaining years to that.

I feel obligated to point out that people have run emacs as pid 1 on Linux. That's... some level of lisp OS, surely.

I don't believe they have, in any real capacity. Can emacs reap processes? Is there an elisp binding for every kernel syscall?

I'd be interested to see the results of a survey of how many Emacs users use Emacs Lisp in any capacity beyond cut-and-pasting examples found online into their .emacs or .emacs.d/ configs.

>I've worked with quite a few emacs wizards. Do they write better code than me? Some do, some don't. It doesn't seem to related to their use of emacs though. Are they more efficient than me? Some are, some aren't.

Are they really wizards then? :^)

You know, I am personally much more comfortable with using emacs as an extremely configurable text editor. As time passes, I want less and less to create ad-hock lisp scripts and to debug my editing commands.

That Blub paradox was insightful. However, you do realize that people using Emacs might be Blub programmers as well!

I think you got a point that some emacs users might severly underestimate the power of limited choices and pre-configured workflows. However, as in understood Blub, this is strictly about power of expression. I think emacs is at the top of the foodchain here, at least I don't know a text editor that would be extensible with such easy as emacs.

Same with the LISPs (which Blub is about btw) - Some LISP programs become unmantainable for people that did not write it, but without a doubt, LISP is one of, if not the most expressive language there is.

Funny enough, as I was reading this I was thinking the users and non-users of Blub were switched.

The argument is symmetrical.

> Looked at emacs the other day but I need to read a lot of manuals and tutorials and practice to get to grips with it)

My recommendation: Go with spacemacs. It is perfect for people who just want to use the goodness of emacs without it weird edges and spending hours on configuration. One day I might switch to emacs, but for the coming time I am perfectly happy with using a pre-configured emacs. The time I don't spent working, I'd rather read more papers and do non-compsci-stuff.

I tried spacemacs, but found the documentation to be lacking, and the "everything and the kitchen sink" approach lead to some slow behavior. Right now I'm trying emacs+evil, and slowly building it up with features I like. I still have to be careful about enabling the wrong feature and slowing things down though.

Most people I know use IDE with code style enforcement, automatic variable renaming, unused variable warning, etc.

i.e. Emacs? Or Vim? Or VSCode? Especially with language servers there isn't much difference between the three, except that VSCode is a bit primitive in the editing department, but if it works for you, by all means.

yes, unlikely. most people use IDE's, very few limit themselves to simple editors.

they're very rare but do exist.

I don't think using a text editor is limiting, using an IDE certainly is. When using Visual Studio, you're definitely limited to Windows. When you're using an IDE, they lock you into a certain set of paradigms.

An editor like Vim or Emacs ia great because eventually

_the editor adapts itself to the programmer and not the other way around_.

Every other configuration of Emacs and Vim have been different, suiting the programmer writing it. People have distros of Emacs/Vim

- Doom - Spacemacs - NeoVim

Etc.

> I don't think using a text editor is limiting, using an IDE certainly is.

I agree. nonetheless, most developers use IDEs. This in turn means that a developer is unlikely to use only simple editors.

Maybe actually read the comment chain you're responding to?

I know that Stack Overflow is not representative of developers at large but as of 2018[1] most developers on Stack Overflow use "simple" editors.

1: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#technology-_-...

That question was "select all that apply".

VSCode, Visual Studio, Intellij may be fighting for mindshare on laptops, but if you ssh into a server, I bet you're using vim.

I mean, sometimes I run vim in the integrated terminal in VSCode. :) Whatever is quicker/handy. I know I answered that question with "VSCode, Sublime, Emacs, and Vim".

So you think emacs is a simple editor, eh?

I'm reading that "simple" word on the GP as something that doesn't impose a workflow on you. (What's ironically best described by "versatile", but somebody not used to the tool can not use most of the functions.)

By any other meaning, emacs and vim wouldn't qualify.

Vanilla emacs without config and plugins, started as a terminal application is a simple editor, just the same as vim. Yes.

But that is entirely besides the point. The parent was outraged how developers are unlikely to use only simple text editors. And the phrase he was taking an issues with didn't say that emacs is a simple editor either. So you're either willingly misinterpreting everything or just unable to read and understand simple sentences.

Name a feature and I bet Emacs has it.

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