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Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

> - fast loading (vscode loads much faster on my computer; specially if I have a lot of open files)

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)

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Emacs on my system is ~8sec load time, vs ~5sec load time for Code. I have not optimized either (but I have decided on using Straight as package manager on Emacs, which is arguably faster than the built-in).

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.

> Emacs on my system is ~8sec load time, vs ~5sec load time for Code

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 ...

Run emacs as a server when you start the machine and use emacsclient to connect with it. Way faster start times.

> Could understand why someone with less experience programming would find [LSP] helpful

Have you considered the possibility that people with more experience programming than you might find it useful?

Yes.

Then that covers everyone.

Parent does have quite a bit of experience:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davis_(programmer)

I'm so used to empty boasts and humblebrags from tyros on HN that I overlooked the real McCoy. That's on me.

I hope to one day be cool enough to write my own Wikipedia entry

So renaming all the symbols in your whole project with just one command is not for you ? Navigating to declaration/searching all the usages of a symbol etc. All that isn't for you ? And these are the two most basic features You make it sound like LSP is a small gimmick that appeals to less experienced developer while it's actually a huge productivity boost that has literally no link to being experienced or not.

I also think that parent's comment is overly dismissive of LSP. But for me, Emacs with lsp-mode does the things that you describe.

I mean, I wanted to love LSP. Everything I read about it suggested that I would. But I tried it out for two weeks, working (as normal) on my 600k LOC C++ project, and found it somewhere between irritating and not-actually-helpful.

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).

Considering C++ is almost impossible to write reliably good tools for it's entirely possible that LS for C++ is simply not very good and that with languages that can reliably provide a good LS experience you'd view this differently. I don't think it has anything to do with programming experience level. I've programmed for 24 years and I find language servers great when I can have them. 20 or so years on top of this is unlikely to change anything.

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.

What is "dynamic completion" ?

I have it bound to Ctrl-\ ... Emacs scans backwards through the current buffer, then all other buffers, to look for completions for the word at the cursor. Press it again (after one completion) and it will cycle through other possible completions (and keep doing this as long as you keep pressing that).

It's great for completing variable names, but also if you writing just regular text, finishing longer words and so on.

That sounds like

    M-x dabbrev-expand

which is bound to M-/ by default (and yeah, I love it). Though I do like the context sensitive completions that lsp provides as well. They are particularly good for showing you structure members (since the language server knows the types).

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