What maintenance? I have not changed a single line of my .emacs file for 3 years.
I have ~80 lines outside the customize variable block added by emacs. Nothing too fancy but there are a few hot keys and functions that I can't live without.
1. lsp-mode/eglot
2. package management
3. treesitter grammars
4. Portability - win/linux/mac/unix/android
5. Graphical User Interface - you can browse the web and watch YouTube in Emacs. Customize has buttons, forms, menus.
6. Treemacs/Treeview/speedbar: you know the multipanel view in Intellij or the project explorer in Intellij/vscod? Yeah, that.
7. Actual macros and function definitions, without needing to post them as an extension.
8. Interactive repl.
9. 5 different terminal emulators built-in.
10. Automated fuzzy everything with helm-M-x and helm. Exactly like Command-p in vscode.
11. github, gitlab integration with magit.
12. Copilot, tabnine, and chatGPT integration.
13. Hundreds of themes.
14. We've had shareable, secure remote collaboration for over a decade with wemux.
15. Use any ttf.
16. Mouse editing and command binding.
17. Use every build tool with projectile-compile-project.
18. Refactoring with lsp.
19. Autocompletion and jump to source.
20. Session save and restoration with desktop-save.
21. Slack integration.
22. Debugger with dap-mode.
23. Individual test only runs with dap and avy-lens.
24. blame with.magit-blame.
25. Pixel scrolling.
25. Transparency with seethru.
28. Rest client with variables and session storage (like postman, but free).
29. Browse compressed files as if they are normal directories and save to them.
30. Containerized deployment via flatpak.
31. Docker, docker-compose integration, kubernetes, aws, datadog, Azure integrations...
All of this fits in around 500 lones of copy_paste/cloneable emacs configuration, most of which is use-package declarations. Nary a defun or global-bind-key in sight, and because emacs is a full elisp ide, and it is actually executable code, it's debuggable on launch, unlike myriads of json files.
I'm trying to think of anything else that can possibly be interpreted as 'modern' from a ux standpoint. I certainly can't think of a feature that Intellij has that emacs doesn't that is core to the ide experience. And most of my emacs tools are better than the vscode version of them, at least in terms of invasion into the editor buffer or integration with the editor ux.
The one thing that's not modern is the standard copy and paste commands, but that's super easy to customize. I guess you can't drag and drop buffer frame borders in multiple buffer layouts if you hide scrollbars, and the message buffer isn't resizable...
As someone who uses emacs most often: VSCode is shaped a lot more closely to a modern aesthetic by default. If you've been following along with emacs all this time and keep up to date with the latest changes, you can easily accrete the configuration to make your emacs look like a modern tool, but it doesn't start configured that way.
Are you sure ?
I know you see this fashionable UX as an advantage, but what I think about is how you're going to have fashionable evolution in UX thinking inflicted on you. It feels to me like someone coming into my shop and moving all my tools.
Gratuitous example from an adjacent area of nerdliness: Were you around when Microsoft decided to drop the UX they'd been using for a few decades and change to "The Ribbon" ?
Yes, I am. That's very convenient for me.
> Were you around when Microsoft decided to drop the UX they'd been using for a few decades and change to "The Ribbon" ?
I was, and you're right. Microsoft functionally owns the chrome for vscode and it isn't as configurable as far as I can tell as emacs at that layer. There's certainly a possibility they will make a decision later to mess everything up.
But for now, my previous observation stands. I have to do less configuration out of the box to get vscode into a daily use work configuration than a naked emacs install.
I highlight this because it's not an unsolvable problem for emacs. It requires making a recommended default configuration that will be more correct for the 95% use case and advocating that configuration on the install channels for the tool.
For people interested in this, I know about Doom Emacs [1] and Spacemacs [2].
[1] https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs [2] https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs
It is like assembling IKEA furniture if IKEA furniture didn't come with a usable manual and there are nine different descriptions online of how to assemble your new chair. Of which 5 don't actually produce a chair and two that are strangely incompatible with how you prefer to situate your couch.
Rather than be angry with people for pointing out something that is very likely to be true, how about listening to _valid_ user criticisms? And perchance see if something can be learned from it?
This is valid feedback.
I don't think that's true.
Do you include installing emacs packages as out of the box as you would vscode plugins though?
Here's what you can try: do a clean install of both, then document the steps you had to take to get VS Code + Go plugin to work vs getting Emacs to within a reasonable fraction of what VS Code will provide. Post your Emacs config when you are done. (As well as links to the sources where you found working configurations).
PS: good luck nailing the language server stuff on the first try on Emacs.
Vscode out-the-box is much more complete for coding than Emacs out-the-box.
While my Emacs-foo is not that great, I have relied on it for a lot over 25 years of programming. Recently, though, I gave Vscode a try, and while it's buggy as hell when you load up on the extensions you need, it's not that bad!
Slow? Yes, compared to a Vim or Emacs similarly set up. A wee bit bloated? Certainly, compared to my Vim and Emacs configuration.
But, really, it's the one I recommend to new developers. Not Vim, nor Emacs, even though I use those myself.
- code "peek" (that little windows is super useful)
- good integration with debugger (again, vscode kills it here). For example: how to look a at a numpy array in emacs (in vscode there's a data viewer for that)
- robust LSP (for example, when I complete a formatting string f"{... on a big file, emacs simply becomes unresponsive for a minute or so (it's much quicker ona powerful computer though); pylance is simply superior on edge cases.
But although I'm a long time emacs user, there's one thngs where VSCode is much better, it's discoverability. I've learned much of what I need in 2-3 weeks, without ever looking at a manual.
Note: I'm a regular emacs user since since about 10 years (I came for the freedom, stayed for the community). I'm using VSCode since about a year.
I'll be happy to ear a way to make my emacs better.
But I think most people don't care about it enough because they either never close Emacs and/or use it in server-mode where emacsclient is pretty much instantaneous. Can I ask why you don't like doing that?
So having things take time on start up is an annoyance to me (but I live with it, I was just saying that emacs is slower than VSCode)
I’m sure vscode would chew through resources during a heavy session, have you benchmarked more than just the startup of the application?
You're right: once VSCode is in memory I think it uses more of it. But that's barely nothing when compared to rust-analyzer (which emacs LSP uses too).
However, I also have many plugins installed, so it might be just that. I wonder if it is possible to install a separate instance of Emacs, then I would be able to test the performance without all the plugins and configuration.
who ever does such a thing? Emacs starts up on my machine soon after I login. It remains open until I logout. Current instance has 123 buffers (files). Loading speed just isn't important to me as a full-time native (C++) developer.
> - robust LSP
I tried LSP a bit. Gave up because it just didn't really help me with my actual work. Could understand why someone with less experience programming would find it helpful, but it just wasn't so for me (I use emacs dynamic completion a lot)
I use LSP a lot (through eglot with Emacs-29). For each "mode" in Emacs there are alternatives to LSP, mostly what was there before LSP, which may be equally good. However, I found that switching to LSP simplified my setup, and having the same functionality/keybindings between modes is great, e.g. my projects switch me between Python, Rust, and Java, earlier that was basically three different "IDEs", while today they're very similar.
yeah, but i don't give a damn. I do this once every few weeks.
ps. also, emacs is < 3 secs on my system, so even if i did care ...
It's great for completing variable names, but also if you writing just regular text, finishing longer words and so on.
M-x dabbrev-expand
Have you considered the possibility that people with more experience programming than you might find it useful?
I appreciate that people who started programming with such tools probably come to rely on it the way I rely on dynamic completion in emacs (which is a lot).
For what it's worth I'd use CLion for C++, most likely, if I ever wanted to go back to C++ outside of tiny sandbox projects.
P.S. Language servers are great for smaller ecosystems where no one can really afford to make or fund much beefier tools like IDEs, so a language server can be created by a community member and be used with pretty much all relevant editors almost instantly, meaning the ROI for the community is massive.
With lsp-mode it has that little window: https://emacs-lsp.github.io/lsp-ui/#lsp-ui-peek
Personally I use eglot with consult which temporarily switches the entire buffer to do the "peek" functionality rather than popping up a tiny window: https://github.com/minad/consult
Edit:
The unpopular opinion is to say that one has stopped tinkering with Emacs for hours and started using a tool like VS Code or intelliJ to do actual coding work.
I will use IntelliJ or Eclipse over Emacs or VS Code for Java development any day. But having used both VS Code and Doom Emacs for other development, the latter is quicker, more featureful, and more discoverable, just as easy to configure, and more extensible.
Well, I'm not that obsessed with tweaking every bits, though. When I'm using vim/emacs, I never intend to configure them into IntelliJ replacement.