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You think emacs is one of the worst things to happen to computer science? Thus putting it in the same rhetorical category as patents, multithreading, mutable data, garbage collection, open source, closed source, closed journals, governments, debugging and Microsoft? Any one of which has far better credentials for that role? And you say this because the language it is largely written in is grotty? My god, man, get some perspective. The rest of your rant is nearly as content free--there have been more attempts at sound systems programming languages in the last five years than in the previous fifty.

Look, Emacs is among the last survivors of a very powerful paradigm, along with Squeak, some Forths, AutoCAD to some degree, and a handful of others. It is one of the last metarecursive programming environments. It is not even the zenith of that paradigm--I would probably give the nod to the Symbolics machines with Zwei, but I am largely ignorant of Interlisp and know it is much beloved. These environments are self documenting (for a very specific sense of "document"), extensible, discoverable (for example, C-h k on a key sequence and then click through to the source code; or on the Symbolics you could I think Super-left click a user interface element and immediately start discovering its code, instrument it for debugging, what have you), have internals written in the same language (mostly) as the user script, and any part can be modified at run time, with the modifications taking effect immediately which is what distinguishes them from the Eclipses of the world. These environments are, almost to a man, time consuming to learn; amorphous; frequently kinda pokey; and phenomenally, improbably productive. The fact that some of them can edit text is almost an accident.

I've used a cross section of editors and IDEs and build environments and what have you from recent innovations to decrepit monsters like TECO, and almost none of them have learned anything from Emacs. Some of them have better excuses than others (ed, for example, predating visual terminals). Of the alternatives the ones I found most interesting and most productive are Acme (which is brilliant, but ultimately I think too good at editing itself and not good enough at editing anything else) and Sublime Text 2 (the first new editor I can remember in years with an apropos function), and I'm including the latter mostly on promise rather than actual competence at this time.

I know there are worse things. But that's why I ranted against emacs.

It's good, but we can do so much better. So much. I have faith in you guys, and it's just, well hell I get sad when I see you writing something amazing in C or in emacs. You should be writing the next amazing C or the next emacs. Those tools are the keystones to how cs is able to express itself in a practical manner. And yet almost all new efforts are treated poorly or mocked.

Like, that shit you are describing earlier? Those amazing modifiable and inspectable systems? Why aren't you preaching that from the roof tops? Why do I, the guy who barely knows emacs, have to whine? Cause seriously, that shit sounds fucking amazing. If anything, you should be the one whining "Jeez, after all those advances we only get emacs?"

Languages and text editors aren't the bottleneck, so writing the 'next amazing C' or the 'next emacs' is counter-productive at this stage.

    "Why do I, the guy who barely knows emacs, have to whine?"

Because once you know emacs, you stop whining about it and start using it.

You sound mad because all these people are using emacs and you just don't understand it yet or something. Spend time, learn emacs or vim and then you will understand.

It is ridiculous for you to rant on something you obviously don't understand or recognize the power it possesses.

Emacs and Vim have been around forever. There is a reason.

I generally agree with the sentiment that writing programs, which are supposed to be advanced technology, is done with tools that are often woefully bad and seem stuck in a long past decade, but be wary of generalizing about "you" so much. I use emacs because I find I'm the most productive with emacs, and because it's the best environment for Common Lisp development, but I'm aware of its warts and will happily criticise them at length -- even when talking to vim users! Not everyone who uses emacs is as breathless about it as the author of the article.

I do think your jab at emacs lisp is spot on -- it's really not the lisp you want, and Common Lisp is certainly good enough these days to have a stab at writing an emacs clone in it. I don't know enough about Scheme to comment about it though.

My favourite candidate for most decrepit CS tool is GDB -- it astounds me that this is still the best the open source / Unix world can produce in the field of debuggers, especially since debuggers are the sort of non-user-facing, lots-of-interesting-technical-problems type of area that open source usually excels at. Every time it repeatedly segfaults and kills my carefully constructed debugging state I just want to cry.

Have you heard of LLDB http://lldb.llvm.org/goals.html?

Wow! That's really good news!

I am very, very good with Emacs. There are no other editing platforms that have its power and convenience. If I didn't have it, I would be forced to invent it. (I did in fact do a small Emacs implementation for a microcomputer, back in the 80s. It was fun).

My customizations? Nada. I rarely bother. My ".emacs" file is about 20 lines long, mostly turning stuff off that I don't care for.

If you whip up a tool that is /better/ at working with million-line-plus projects in C/C++, let me know. You seem to be on fire about it.

[I use Visual Studio for C#, and for its debugger. But the heavy lifting is still done in Emacs]

That's the thing though. You're comment about the debugger? That gives it all away.

My comment isn't just about emacs. It's about all the tools we use. There is no real incentive to fix them. To make them work together. We wait for other people to make it. We all wait.

I can't whip up a tool better than emacs. I can't even imagine it. But, that doesn't mean it can't exist. And you're attitude towards my complaints? That's probably putting off your coworker, someone who could invent it.

There are better complaints than yours. I can't whip up some. I can't even imagine them. But, that doesn't mean they can't exist.

This is your bizarro logic in action.

"Something better surely exists".

Well, no shit Sherlock.

Either 1) do something, 2) propose something better than someone else can implement, or 3) shut up.

Your comments are idiotic. Who told you that there aren't real people out there trying to implement something better than Emacs?

XCode 4's use of an actual parser's AST for code completion, refactoring and syntax highlighting comes to mind. Or Visual Studio's overall integration. Or even Eclipse meta-platform extensibility. Subethaedit's concurrent editing ability. And a lot more stuff, besides...

"Where are my robot ponies and flying-cars, they just have to be" is idiotic.

You seem awfully riled up about a text editor. This rant is mostly incoherent, and probably a troll, but I'll bite.

> I think emacs is probably one of the biggest mistakes to ever happen to computer science.

Emacs has nothing more to do with computer science than hammers and nails do with architecture. It's just a tool used to write code; computer science is about thinking algorithmically and mathematically about computation and problem solving.

> First, let's remember that emacs is not powerful in and of itself. It requires mastery to understand the potential and power that lies in it. The inclusion of emacs lisp is amazing, but seriously? Have you programmed a separate application in emacs lisp? You haven't? What? You used Scheme or Common Lisp instead? Than why the fuck are you defending emacs lisp?

Does anyone really push Emacs Lisp as a general purpose language? Really? I realize that Emacs is quite a bit more than just a text editor, but I've never heard it seriously recommended as an alternative to other languages for application development. No one is writing the next big revolution in software using Emacs Lisp, nor is anyone saying that we should.

The language is specialized for customizing and extending Emacs, and nothing more. Vim has its own extension language too, which is even more domain-specific. Are you seriously arguing that the use of specialized languages for the tasks that they're designed to accomplish is indefensible, simply because general-purpose languages also exist?

> And that's the whole fucking point of computer science. It's not writing the "greatest" programs. It's sharing. Sharing techniques, skills, libraries and ideas. And emacs is an artificial barrier. And worse than that, the most elite people in CS continue to protect it and cannot comprehend that their elitism is to the detriment to CS as a whole. It's complicated, arbitrary and designed in a terrible manner. I don't care if it makes sense to you. What matters is that you should be able to easily defend any design decision. And you can't.

How in the world is Emacs, or any programming tool, a "barrier" to computer science? No one is forcing you to use Emacs. If you don't like it, don't use it. There is nothing about Emacs that prevents "sharing techniques, skills, libraries, and ideas". Whether or not it's "complicated, arbitrary, and designed in a terrible manner" is a matter of opinion. Plenty of people feel that way; plenty of others don't.

Souped-up text editors like Emacs and Vim are certainly designed for expert users and do little to assist newcomers. So should those of us that are experts just throw out our advanced tools and switch to MS Notepad? The learning curve exists, no doubt, but there is a payoff to surmounting it. Why else would these tools have so many adherents?

> We need more people to start programming. We need better editors. Why is it that CS has some of the oldest, most decrepit tools with the most adamant defenders? Why?

Emacs is old, sure. That says nothing about whether it's worthwhile. Sometimes the earliest ideas in a particular field are the most revolutionary. And if you have better ones, then what's stopping you from making them a reality?

There is no shortage of editors out there that are more approachable to newbie programmers than this "advanced" kind. I'm a huge Vim user, and I think it's a fantastic piece of software that I could hardly do without, but I would not recommend anything of the sort to a newcomer. There are plenty of tools for that demographic, but when it comes to text editors for "veteran" programmers, there are really only the two big ones, plus a handful of others that lie somewhere in between in terms of complexity and power. I find it very hard to believe that new programmers are being turned off to the field by Emacs, of all things. There are countless aspects of the process of learning to program computers that are far more difficult than choosing a text editor appropriate for your needs.

> Seriously, we deal with fucking computers all day. The most arbitrary representation of knowledge possible. And all people do is whine about how things are "good enough" or "no, someone made this decision a long time ago, and now a lot of people make the same choice, so don't be stupid and choose that."

Again, you seem awfully bent on disparaging the status quo without offering any real alternatives.

> The number of new computer languages being invented is almost fucking SLOWING down. WTF? Computer science is about the drive to find better ways to express and share knowledge, and that means trying new things. Usually, they will suck. But jesus, we have to keep trying. And whatever we do, we have to help a). more people try programming, and stick to it b). support people following their own loony ideas.

The quantity of new languages being invented is hardly a great metric by which to measure innovation. Maybe most of the great ideas in programming language design have already been had, and now it's a matter of incremental refinement, ad infinitum. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case, but it could be. And what any of that has to do with text editors is utterly beyond my comprehension.

> I mean seriously, it's fucking sad how slow shit happens. Common lisp, one of the more powerful languages ever invented, got a wonderful tool called quicklisp last year. 15 FUCKING YEARS AFTER CPAN CAME OUT. Why the fuck is shit so fucked up, I mean jesus, it's fucking inexcusable. Our descendants are going to mock us to our faces til we fucking hara-kiri.

Another complete non sequitur. And liberal usage of profanity does nothing to make your argument more compelling.

Yes, Emacs is useful. Yes, it can be used for great things. Am I smart enough to know how to fix it? No. Do I have any solutions to the problems I perceive? No.

But, that DOES not mean that they do not exist.

We're riding the back of Moore's law and we can't even take advantage of it.

Think about it this way: take something you like, or think is well designed, and imagine it 10 years in the future. Now 20. Then 30. And so on. When does it start being a piece of shit? Because, you see, everything besides art and the most practical devices turn to shit eventually. It's happening to emacs, and a lot of other software, and no one wants to admit to it.

You're right, algorithms are timeless. But, you are an absolute idiot if you think that the tools we use don't influence how we conceptualize things. If you use C, it's almost impossible to think in a pointer-free manner (I mean stacks, not gc). Or that the tools we use influence who tries it. Most people have a horrid view of cs, and for good reason. The tools we use represent cs, and they do so poorly. Very, very poorly.

The point isn't emacs. Or quicklisp. It's that people become too satisfied with the status quo. They are happy to master what exists, and pride themselves in that. And they should, we need that.

But, we also need anarchy. We need people to invent things. We need new things. Change is good, it's inevitable.

I want to make this clear: I am an absolute idiot on this forum compared to most of you guys. But, that doesn't mean I can't be on the right side of fate, or understand that.

You're right, no one is forcing me to use emacs. Or gdb. Or Windows. Or C++. Or internet explorer. But guess what, they all get pushed by the popular kids.

>>We need people to invent things. We need new things. Change is good, it's inevitable.

This is right, but something like Emacs isn't a joke to invent, maintain and grow. Look of it something like, Emacs is a tool designed to work hundreds and thousands line of code. And that's only a beginning. You need to make all that text context sensitive to each other. You need features to make enable heavy text lifting, automating complex text editing, and then enabling them all through macros. And not just that, you need features to run a shell inside the editor. You need to enable code-checkin features. May be to do to a quick check you need to read some news or read email. You need enable code profiling, features to enable seamless debugging. You also need to manage to-do lists. As you will see the list is only growing.

And again, you need to make all that programmer friendly, you need to enable to do all that through just keyboard because tend to be in efficient source of input for that kind of editing.

How many tools since the advent of programming have been to do all that? And still be maintainable, relevant and usable for so long as Emacs and vim?

I hope it was as easy to build a editor that would make coding all milk and honey. But with generations of programmers and their combined effort is what Emacs and Vi is all about.

30 year old programmer here (started programming when I was 9, in LOGO, and then BASIC).

While doing my BS in Software Eng. I tried Emacs and Vi for several months (really really wanting to like them) and I never "grok it". I've been using IDE's (Borland, Microsoft, IntelliJ, Eclispe, Netbeans, etc) and the only reason I touch Vi is to edit text files in my Linux installs.

Aside of that, I never really saw any benefit, but hey, maybe I am not cool enough.

Well as a guy who likes vim quite a bit and is playing around with emacs because being a platform is interesting, you should really just pick one to use for a while. You have to actively pick up and use it though; pick a new feature every few days to learn and use. Downloading a fairly well thought out .vimrc file and using that will be a productivity boon if you choose vim. Change the leader to a comma, change : to ; to get into the command line quickly, exit insert mode with jj pressed instead of escape, use the hjkl keys to navigate, learn how easy and amazing the macros are, text-block navigation is great. There is a reason that there is a vim mode available as a plugin for most of the IDEs that you listed; text editing and navigation is really efficient with it. learn the verb-Til-character command dt> would delete until the > character on you line.

If you want to grok vim this is the guide to read: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most...

I would love for someone to show me a comment like that one for emacs as I am learning emacs currently.

Dude, a word of advice: don't knock vim or Emacs around here EVER! You're likely to start a holy war. Just stay out of it and let the religious war ensue without becoming a casualty.

Yeah, we read your other comments. You don't use Emacs and Vim either, and are proud of it. We get it.

First year college student, right?

"First, let's remember that emacs is not powerful in and of itself. It requires mastery to understand the potential and power that lies in it."

Same can be said for Math, Computer Science or anything. What did you expect, a silver bullet?

""The inclusion of emacs lisp is amazing, but seriously? Have you programmed a separate application in emacs lisp? You haven't? What? You used Scheme or Common Lisp instead? Than why the fuck are you defending emacs lisp?""

Because it's convenient to have it inside a text editor. Until you go write that other text editor that uses Scheme, that is. We'll wait.

""And that is the biggest flaw. The flaw no one likes to talk about.""

No one like to talk about it eh? Really? Strange, because I read criticisms of Emacs lisp all the time.

""How big do you think the population of people who have tried emacs is to the number of current users? Seriously, in terms of a conversion rate, it's absolutely terrible. ""

Yeah, I can see how being one of the two more widely used programming text editors in UNIX-land is terrible.

""And that's the whole fucking point of computer science. It's not writing the "greatest" programs. It's sharing. Sharing techniques, skills, libraries and ideas. ""

Actually, computer science is not about writing programs at all. That would be software engineering. And it's also not about "sharing techniques, skills, libraries and ideas", though that could come handy.

""It's complicated, arbitrary and designed in a terrible manner. I don't care if it makes sense to you. What matters is that you should be able to easily defend any design decision. And you can't.""

Actually I can. But you seem to have already made up your mind.

""We need more people to start programming.""

Well, I for one don't. I like my job security, thank you very much.

""Seriously, we deal with fucking computers all day. The most arbitrary representation of knowledge possible. And all people do is whine about how things are "good enough" or "no, someone made this decision a long time ago, and now a lot of people make the same choice, so don't be stupid and choose that.""

Yeah. First year college student, definitely. Unable to comprehend the real world tradeoffs (like: something existing is better than your pie in the sky idea of a perfect editor).

""The number of new computer languages being invented is almost fucking SLOWING down. WTF?""

Yeah, really WHERE TF you got that impression? It is actually increasing, nearly everybody and his dog are writing a compiler these days.

And it's not like language creation is something special or really good. Especially another run on the mill language, or some academic monstrosity with no following and libs.

"" Common lisp, one of the more powerful languages ever invented, got a wonderful tool called quicklisp last year. 15 FUCKING YEARS AFTER CPAN CAME OUT. Why the fuck is shit so fucked up, I mean jesus, it's fucking inexcusable. """

Yeah, it's amazing how slow computer development is compared to all those other fields. I mean it only took like 5,000 years to invent typography.

Still, we didn't made a library-system for a language relatively few give a fuck about for 50 years? Inexcusable.

upvoted for wordcount.