Comment by randomstring | Hacker News Reader

Comment by randomstring | Hacker News Reader

I've been using emacs as my primary editor since 1989. It has for that entire time been a PITA to configure. My first customization was to map backspace to ^H and map the insert key to 'nil.

I used to dedicate a couple days every January to investigate new emacs tools. Read about the latest features or new modes, often from my org-mode TODO list where I bookmarked them. I have learned to never update emacs mid-project as I've on multiple occasions shattered my emacs config updating versions or moving to a new distros. MacOS brew install vs .dmg install? Aquaemacs? DoomEmacs? Oh, hello the malpa repo URL changed and is https only now.

"eldoc" error wrong-type-argument stringp number-or-marker-p

Googling that doesn't get you anywhere.

VSCode has a healthy extension marketplace, something emacs should adopt.

elisp is dead. Not because it is dead, or deserves to be dead, but because everyone "believes" it dead. Same goes for Perl.

I love emacs, it has been a rock my entire programming life, but it's a time suck to configure. I know there are some who have created a Sistine Chapel in their .emacs.d, and I'm jealous. There's a fine balance between spending time and effort optimizing and sharpening your tools and emacs is deep on the wrong side of the line for me.

I don't want emacs to ever die. But come on, if you're losing to vim in popularity, you are already dead.

> elisp is dead

I’m not sure it was ever alive to begin with. Not in the classical sense. I mean, I don’t think elisp ever got good (or any) use outside of emacs configuration and extension. There weren’t any popular web frameworks, numerical libraries etc. written in elisp.

Inside its target space, though, it seems as vibrant as ever. New, helpful packages keep appearing that are written in elisp. For better or worse, the extension ecosystem is not nearly as fragmented as some other editors.

That’s not to say that elisp doesn’t need serious improvements, though. Making it natively multi threaded alone will advance the story quite a bit imo.

> VSCode has a healthy extension marketplace, something emacs should adopt.

What’s wrong with MELPA?

Yeah, MELPA is solid. Great, even.

> There is a balance between …

Common mistake. The problem is procrastination and bike shedding, not emacs. It’s because some people love their tools, sometimes more than the craft. It’s the same with cars, photography and woodworking. Maybe because hacking emacs lisp, supercharging a Miata, retro-fitting lenses or Tuning a pre-war Stanley handplane feels as good as using them.

>>everyone "believes" it dead. Same goes for Perl.

This week I did with Python what I used to generally do with Perl. Write big throwaway programs, written quickly. I realise this was possible because Python has been heavily Perlified over time.

That way we just managed to write Perl in Python, by converting Python to Perl.

Python is Perl 6.

> elisp is dead

I guess I'm a necromancer.

I'm ok with this.

> elisp is dead. Not because it is dead, or deserves to be dead, but because everyone "believes" it dead. Same goes for Perl.

I wonder if it's possible to move on from elisp. Create a EMACS 2. Maybe with Scheme. Maybe a language neutral extension system/API? (So you can use whatever language you want.)

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