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Comment by lupusreal | Hacker News Reader

One of those "Never Ever" projects. The idea appeals to me, but most of the emacs user community seems uninterested so I don't think it will ever succeed. Nonetheless, Godspeed.

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In a kind of tragic irony of sorts, we now have VSCode (Electron based, similar in resource consumption as when Emacs was new, hence the "eight megabytes and constantly swapping" joke), using JavaScript as extension language, which was supposed to be originally based on Scheme.

VSCode is very different from Emacs in terms of philosophy. VSCode is notepad with extensions bolted on (like every other common editors). Emacs defines a more purposeful environment for working with text. And that is why you can get features like Compilation Mode, Occur Mode, systems like Org-Mode, and whole applications like magit, ebib, emms.

As someone that favoured XEmacs instead, I am well aware of the philosophy, and also why very few of newer generations even bother, as shown on its userbase share nowadays as per developer surveys.

It’s a community project, increasing userbase should not be a priority concern. Though it should be user-friendly (emacs is as long as the user RTFM), I believe going for the common denominator instead of solving the community’s problem efficiently is less pragmatic. Before VSCode there were many, and there will be many afterwards.

And VSCode is still strongly reliant on Microsoft’s resources.

A project with dwindling community is certainly a concern.

VSCode isn't the only option, indeed.

Completely anecdotally, but my personal experience over the past ~2.5 years of using Emacs has been the opposite of a dwindling community. Releases are frequent, often containing exciting new features; the community maintains many great packages, with new ones get released frequently; and I see more Emacs discussions online than I did when I started using Emacs, many of which involve new users. Emacs has a brutal learning curve, awful defaults and ancient bones, so will always appeal to a smaller number of people than VSCode or (Neo)Vim. However, for those willing to learn the arcane art, it can wield immense power.

i am not user of emacs, but looking into as next switch.

using mainstream more structured language is good point go into emacs.

it also will lead to rewrite of some plugins. for example many rust rewrites just better c versions, but more consistent and structured. there was not reason not to rewrite these in c but better. very good for newcomers to unix world.

another point is async. i have heard that is one of problems of no async. if emacs has plan it could be intresting either doing async or properly avoiding. for me it is prove point emacs will not die with its creators.

> using mainstream more structured language is good point go into emacs.

Are you really trying to tell use that Guile Scheme is more mainstream than Emacs Lisp?

Cmon, I'm pretty sure all schemes combined don't have a fraction of programmers or libraries as elisp alone.

Possibly all lisp combined!

There are code bases for SINGLE Lisp applications which go into several million lines of code. For example PTC's CAD system had several years ago >7 million lines of Common Lisp.

I never really thought about this angle, but it’s still worth pointing out that elisp is not used outside of emacs, while other lispen are.

as per wiki, several gui apps use guile as scripting language. also guix of interest. if emacs would have guile, i would have single language lisp machine.

emacs lisp is not standard, while guile R7RS. so even more sharing.

so for me emacs with guile, were people during rewrites improved emacs extetensions, and i can do all in guile, music taxes money debugging productivity all in guile. is very attractive.

https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/#apps-using-guile

''Guile is used in many programs under the GNU project umbrella (GDB, Make, Guix, GNU TeXmacs, GnuCash, LilyPond, Lepton-EDA...)[8] but it also sees use outside of that, for example in Google's schism.''

also seems guile is jit, emacs lisp interpreted.

and guile favors immutable, unlike emacs lisp. which i favor too.

there is also guile hoot giving me option for browser.

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