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Comment by wolpoli | Hacker News Reader

I have read plenty of anecdotes on HN about people choosing the wrong platform. In my opinion, Emacs displays characteristics of a wrong platform to invest time in.

I know that Emacs is a very powerful and completely open-source platform, but I have questions about its long-term viability. It's not commonly introduced in CS programs/bootcamps so it'll lead to a declining market share, and its most powerful capabilities require knowledge of LISP, which is not a popular language.

Time and energy spent learning Emacs is also non-transferable as it has a one-of-a kind shortcut/user interface. The student will be locked in to Emacs.

Students should invest time learning VSCode instead. At least it'll be easy to switch to other products.

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Do you also give reviews of books you've never read?

What was the last version of Emacs you've used?

This is one of the most FUD-like posts I've read on this site in a long time.

Good question. I admit I am not an expert on emacs. I tried out Emacs a few years ago, left, tried again to get into it but got the version of Emacs on Windows with the broken package manager due to an SSL issue. My recollection was that there was nothing on the site that indicates it was broken, I then found discussions online saying that they weren't going to patch the windows only SSL issue, and that I should use an older release or wait for a new dot release in a few months. It certainly doesn't make a great (second) impression.

I apologize if I got anything wrong. If you have any specific points about what I got wrong, for example, the average age of contributors or usage isn't related to the ecosystem. I am happy to change my mind.

> it has a one-of-a kind shortcut/user interface

The system-wide OS keyboard shortcuts for basic text editing in macOS are the same as emacs. I discovered this accidentally and people wonder why I can navigate basic stuff on the mac so well and my answer is "I used emacs for many years."

Thanks! I was not aware of that.

GNU readline is also all over the place and has emacs like keybindings.

https://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html

Which shortcuts? You have a link to a list? I only know Cmd-left/right to skip words. But anything more fancy?

if you are using left/right arrow keys, that is not emacs. Control with F, B, A, E, K, etc are the ones I'm talking about.

Ok. Interesting. Where on macOS can I use these for navigating inside text? If I’m inside Textmate, for instance, typing F just… well, types an F. And it would seem to me that that’s the case anywhere on macOS where there is a cursor, no?

anywhere you type text -- right now, while I'm typing this, or in a browser address bar, command line, anywhere the keyboard is functional and doing something with text

You have to use Control with it, of course. F by itself is... F.

if you swap caps lock with Control as most developers do, then it's a nice, simple, ergonomic addition.

Pretty much all text fields in macos have emacs keybindings. I guess you haven't used macos for more than a week yet?

Wrong. I’m using it for over 15 years now! And I’ve never ever even just heard about this. And keyboard shortcuts are the first thing I look for in any app. Hence my surprise

Wrong on your part. Macos had these keybindings since forever. They are not just per app but everywhere.

> I’m using it for over 15 years now! And I’ve never ever even just heard about this.

Wow, that is embarrassing.

Edit: For example

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...

I’m not embarrassed at all. Else I wouldn’t have dared to ask. And would never learn anything new.

Sorry, I meant embarrassing for apple. It tells you something about their UX if features like these can be missed for 15 years. I included a link in the previous post. Apps using cocoa inherit the emacs keybindings automatically and hence they are widespread on mac.

Side note: emacs keybindings are less widespread on Linux, because you don't have such a component and GNU readline has a too strong license. So ironically emacs makes a strong case for using a proprietary OS.

Ha. Thanks for clarifying. I had read your comment the other way around and thought you were trying to be rude.

I guess if someone knows emacs then maybe they’ll just try those key bindings and discover that they work. I never worked with emacs, but I would have learned the shortcuts had I known they existed.

It’s what I’m going to do now.

> You have a link to a list?

`man readline`

the best predictor of something's future lifespan is its past lifespan. Emacs has been around for 50 years, the likelihood that it's going to vanish is much smaller than whatever is new on the scene. You can fill an entire graveyard with bootcamp fads.

And being locked into Emacs isn't really an issue because it does everything. It's like saying you're locked into the dotnet ecosystem. I mean, so what?

And an important thing to note is that you may be locked into Emacs, but with every other tool you're locked out. What is there to learn about something like VSCode? You click on the marketplace and install extensions. Emacs might teach you things that aren't transferable (which I'd also question), but at least it's teaching you something.

> It's not commonly introduced in CS programs/bootcamps so it'll lead to a declining market share

Bootcamp a few years ago would have made me an expert in coding in Ruby/RoR under Atom with Ember.js; man, am I ready for those market shares!

> but I have questions about its long-term viability.

Emacs has existed 40 years, do you assume it'll just go away?

I probably shouldn't have used the word viability. It will probqbly survive, but will it getting the latest features and adopting to trends if it has a small market share?

I would bet that emacs has a better chance than vscode of getting the latest features and adopting to trends in 10 years.

For a recent example of adopting to trends, see the amount of time it took for lsp integration to 1) exist in external plugins and then 2) be put into emacs itself after lsp proved to be something that will likely stick around for a bit.

> questions about its long-term viability

I guess people have been having them for the last 47 years now.

You'd do well to start here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs and stop regurgitating half-understood opinions of others.

Emacs with Org-Mode, M-x calc with Gnuplot and literary programming can bash every other IDE alone. Org Mode it's a beast, it has its own book and with Texlive and Auctex combined with Org-Mode for programming can do things far superior to any IDE/Notebook ever. Nothing comes close.

And I say this as an nvi/Unix tools user with TMUX because I have vi keys ingrained in muscle memory, but Emacs with Org Mode+calc+ELlSP+Texlive+Gnuplot is something out of this world.

Why stick to what's popular? A larger ecosystem doesn't mean anything there is actually any better—or at least the better parts aren't guaranteed to be discoverable.

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