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Comment by smartmic | Hacker News Reader

Why must it always be either or and not in symbiosis? I understand that the author has to use different tools as required by the employer or external constraints. He even lists the various purposes Emacs serves in his digital life, such as org-journal, code editing, etc. And isn't that exactly a point for Emacs? Emacs is not just a code editor or an IDE, but a whole operating system around plain text. So even if I have to use different IDEs, I find enough reasons to use Emacs for personal knowledge management, as a Postman replacement, for journaling, and much more. All in all, the reasons to move 100% away from Emacs are not convincing to me. If everything else that Emacs offers has failed, including its hacker friendliness, there is at least the ethics to it for which I will keep it cherished among a dark, propriety neighborhood that a system that provides Visual Studio is setting.

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Exactly. At work I have Emacs running in WSL, after a bit of tweaking it runs almost as fast as on Linux and doesn't give any trouble. I also have VS Code for when some coworker wants to work on something together and asks for it. You don't have to use only one of them!

What also helps is keybindings. I like vim so I use evil and whatever the VSC equivalent is, and most other commands are done with a "leader key" in both editors, so there's not a big difference in ergonomy.

It's really not much trouble to have these two setups co-existing. In fact I'd be upset if I had to choose only one.

Because it's hard. I use tons of tools in my digital ecosystem, and the divide is tiring sometimes. Tool switching adds a little overhead, which can become not little when you're trying to do a lot of things because life demands it.

I use Eclipse as my main IDE, but for smaller stuff I use KATE on Linux and BBEdit in macOS. Similarly, my knowledge base has to be divided between two tools.

When you have time, this is no burden. But if you don't, then it starts to bother you. Also, creating digital systems requires time and experience.

However, I'm very with you on VSCode thing. It's a proprietary tool looks like a free one, and keeping people imprisoned without they realize. As a fun side note, VSCode's Java language server is a headless Eclipse instance.

VSCode looks really Free, in what way is it proprietary that you're thinking of? In which language are you using it?

vscodium is really Free. vscode's default python language server for example is not open. I think the remote connection stuff isn't either.

It's free as in beer, not Free as in speech. Tons of plug-ins are Microsoft proprietary, or being closed down step by step.

I'm not and won't be using it.

They’re extensions, nothing prevents you from reimplementing proprietary extensions as open source packages. As a matter of fact, there’s probably an oss alternative for each proprietary extension already. Maybe it’s not on par with the proprietary extension, but then… work on it?

Official VSCode builds are also closed source binaries, which comprise of latest VSCodium stable plus Microsoft's secret sauce (per their wording).

And, I don't prefer to feed closed source ecosystems with open source plugins, since the core is not open to begin with.

It's not that I'm in need of an IDE-like code editor. I got that part covered already. Also for larger needs, I use the same tool for the last 20 years, which is Eclipse.

Lastly, while I love to support Free Software, I have limited time and have to choose my battles wisely. So, instead I build the tools I need in my personal and professional life instead of developing plugins.

If I have more time, I'd rather develop plugins for Eclipse, though.

>Why must it always be either or?

OP explains as follows:

>as my Emacs usage waned, so its ancient keyboard shortcuts started to become a liability. I started mis-typing Emacs things in Visual Studio, and hitting Windows shortcuts in Emacs.

I use (basic) Emacs shortcuts everywhere via Karabiner Elements. Caps is control. And Enter is control when pressed with another key.

The point is that the basic Emacs shortcuts don’t work in VS or VSCode. Also your solution does nothing for the “temptation” to use Windows shortcuts in Emacs. There are ways of working around both of these problems with enough effort, but these workaround get exhausting and it becomes easier to just stop using Emacs.

Author here. Exactly right.

> Why must it always be either or and not in symbiosis?

At the end of the day, it's just another tool with its own weight. And if the weight becomes bigger than the benefit, it's time to move on.

Yeah, this. And sure, with enough effort, I could "scratch my own itch" and fix whatever bothers me, but it is often not a trivial effort, and afterwards... it's still emacs, and whatever my fix was, I have to remember how it works forever to navigate other challenges that will come up.

It is more pragmatic to simply find a tool that works for whatever I'm doing and call it a day.

I never understood the all-in approach either. Different tools handle things better.

I personally am using a mix of tools with my editors being vim for editing files quickly on cli, emacs for magit (honestly I just use it as a git tool and it works amazing, the startup and leaving it running 24/7 is no issue on a modern computer), intellij for java (it just works), and vscode for python, terraform, javascript/node.

I see absolutely no issue with this setup, I’m not sure I would recommend it to everyone but if you use a tool, that you feel works better for even a specific case why not use it for that. If new tools popup in the future I’m always willing to try them, if they work better I’ll add them to my workflow.

>Emacs is not just a code editor or an IDE, but a whole operating system around plain text.

This meme really needs to die.

I use emacs a lot, but the attitude that it's not just a text editor leads people to accept UX mediocrity.

Emacs has fallen behind VS Code in many ways, including text editing.

LOL. I use Emacs for note-taking, spreadsheets, calculations, to-do lists, calendaring, email, static site generation and more. Please show me VS Code extensions that have feature sets comparable to those of Emacs packages like Org, mu4e, calc, etc. Here, I'll save you some time by eliminating a couple options:

- VS Code Org Mode[1] has maybe 2% of the features of Org for Emacs.

- The only VS Code-based mail client I've ever found is VSCode Mail Client[1], which was developed during a single month and then abandoned.

VS Code is clearly for normies who use WYSIWYG word processors, webmail, etc. Suggesting that VS Code has surpassed Emacs for non-coding activities is laughable.

[1] https://github.com/vscode-org-mode/vscode-org-mode

[2] https://github.com/buhe/vscode-mail

“Normies” why do we belittle people who just want to get work done and move on with their lives?

>I use Emacs for note-taking, spreadsheets, calculations, to-do lists, calendaring, email, ...

Hey, me too. Or at least, I used to. I've done most of those things but you know what? There are specialty tools that do almost everything better than emacs does it.

Emacs calendar is inferior to Google calendar, thunderbird, or even Apple's calendar app.

Org mode spreadsheets pale in comparison to libre office and excel.

Emacs's email handling is straight up dog shit.

Doing simple calculations is better/easier in a python or sbcl repl than am emacs buffer.

Generation of static sites is easier, more flexible, and generally better dx with a shell script.

Actually writing text is better in vscode. It's more performant, for starters. Imagine a program in 2024 that locks up the GUI if you make a network request. Oh wait that's emacs. Embarrassing.

I've used emacs since the early 2000s and I am not afraid to admit VS Code is a better text editor than emacs.

And yet emacs is the only tool doing all these at once, able to save important emails in org mode list you can annotate and export in calc for further integration, running some python scripts to get the last vales to be included and update your static internal site with the result and progress on your tasks...

I guess I just don't see the value of having a "jack of all trades/master of none" text editor.

I'd rather use specialized tools for each task, maybe gluing them together with python or bash if needed.

I like open source, but a lot of other considerations are higher on my list of priorities.

Emacs has really funky (and useful) keyboard shortcuts and behaviors that make it awkward to switch to anything else.

It took a few weeks, but it wasn't that hard to switch, and I'd used emacs for going on 20 years. That's not to say there aren't things it did better than VSCode -- it's a given that any switch between tools will have trade-offs. But it wasn't horrible.

Escaping Emacs terminology ("buffers", "frames", etc.) was a big win, as far as I'm concerned.

Few reasons:

* Keybindings are different, and switching back and forth adds friction.

* You get looks if you use Emacs. From those over 45 it's like "I remember that from my DEC days; why use it now in the age of Eclipse/JetBrains/Atom/VSCode?" From those under 45 it's more like "You're using that ancient thing from the 70s?!" There are probably Facebook memes out there with an Emacs screenshot and the caption "If you use this to code you're a psychopath." Social pressure these days is against Emacs, so if you're going to use something else, may as well go with the flow and use something else, not something else and Emacs and be thought a weirdo.

I've been labeled a weirdo my entire life, this does not scare me.

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