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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

True, but it's a question of accessibility.

Far more people can program in JavaScript than Lisp, and far more people use GUI desktop software that follows traditional GUI user-interface paradigms, than do things inside their terminal. (Edit: or terminal-style buffers/frames.)

So that's why my statement was limited to what "desktop software" could be. :) I mean, I use LibreOffice, which is FOSS, but I am never going to touch its code in a million years. The cost-to-benefit ratio is too high. But Atom makes doing that sound almost trivial. That's the paradigm shift.

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> That's the paradigm shift.

You can make desktop apps in Python, Ruby, Tcl, hell even PHP for a long time now. No compilation needed.

Whether this works effectively or not comes rests almost entirely on how good their architecture is. "Hackable" doesn't mean anything if the codebase is a coupled mess. Given GH's pedigree, I don't expect that this is the case; which means there will be some ramp-up time learning the various subsystems.

Desktop apps aren't things that you can cram into this week's hipster JS framework.

I don't follow. These hipster JS frameworks have to work well on phones and various inconsistent browsers. Targeting the desktop and one JS environment seems feasible.

Redcar is a TextMate compatible editor in Ruby (JRuby).

http://redcareditor.com/

But like all editors, they have to have some clear advantages and a community, or it's not a viable option.

Yes, Redcar is pretty cool! This is an inspiring talk on how to hack on it - even though I'm still mostly using vim/sublime it was pretty eye opening to me, rubies all the way down:

Crafting iOS Dev Tools in Redcar - Delisa Mason (#inspect 2013)

https://vimeo.com/69745309

Emacs is GUI desktop software. Few people use it in a terminal.

Also, people didn't born knowing Javascript. They learnt it. And one could argue that Lisp is just as easy to learn, if not easier.

I mostly agree with that although I think it's also kind of irrelevant in a practical sense because many programmers already have to know javascript for their work so you get a lot more people who can contribute right away.

Aside from that -- lisp or javascript as the extension language, I'd love to see a brand-new extensible editor like emacs just to have a shot at changing terminology and some of the APIs. Emacs terminology is a little off-putting because it was invented before the GUIs were widely adopted so it doesn't map that well. I also find some of the APIs a bit weird, but that could just be me.

It's true that a lot of people work with Javascript, but honestly I wouldn't say that they can contribute to anything right away. A lot of these people don't know more than

  $('#element').hide();

In fact, I would wager that there are more potential contributors to Emacs than there are to Atom.

But if someone just wants to customize their text editor, $('#element').hide();, or something not orders of magnitude more complex, would actually be useful.

Yeah, it's definitely true that a large percentage of people who "know" javascript have about that much knowledge. But still, if you look at absolute numbers of people who can make a function and write a for loop in JS, it's still going to dwarf the number of people who can loop and write a defun in elisp.

That's totally exaggerating. Anyone who is that green to code is probably not even thinking extending their editor yet, and any working programmer has picked up more than enough JS in their to be able to write and understand far more than that line.

Plus, Emacs is a ghost town anyway. You're going to run into the problem that there are not bodies willing to use the editor, let alone extend it.

What'd be cool is an editor that had LLVM IR as a low-level extension language. At runtime, it'd JIT your plugin, and go.

Have you seen Light Table? Go check it out!

Good point!

Most emacs users I know alias emacs to emacs-nw, or install emacs-nox.

Myself included (:

Most emacs users I know don't. Myself included.

Yup. Terminals ahoy.

I have it aliased but for some reason I still add -nw every time I open it. Silly muscle memory.

> people didn't born knowing Javascript. They learnt it. And one could argue that Lisp is just as easy to learn

Just about everyone here knows javascript. Almost know one here knows Lisp, make your own conclusions.

* Almost know one here knows Lisp, make your own conclusions.

nor English it seems :)

Still waiting for someone to correct the GP...

"No one is born knowing JS" or "No one was born..."

Looks like timmm isn't a native English speaker, should his command of English be more important than his message?

There are languages where "to be born" is one verb and it makes it reasonable to make the mistake and think that in english it would be the same: "to born".

I apologize if i came off as snarky. I was trying every bit not to. I didn't correct it immediately, but when i saw another user correcting, I added my own correction to his comment.

Btw, English isn't my first language either, so please do not see this as "arrogant English speaker wants everyone to speak his language". In fact, my mother tongue is far far different from english (we dont even have a common script!)

You do realize this site was written in Lisp?

Unless the authors of the software behind HN make up a large portion of its comment contributors, I don't see the relevance.

Where did you get that impression from?

I'm sure the emacs GUI runs great on your macbook, but for people who live on remove linux servers day in and day out, trust me they are using emacs in the terminal.

That or they're using tramp to ssh in to the remote machine and edit that way.

Actually it doesn't run great. It's so clunky you might as well just run it in the terminal.

Emacs has pull down menus, cut and paste, CUA bindings, displays graphics, plays sounds...

WTF do you mean by "terminal-style buffers/frames?"

I don't mean to sound hipster or anything but I prefer software with native look-n-feel on the platform I'm using.

I tried Emacs on OS X (proglang on Coursera asks students to use it for editing SML), gave it a couple of hours and switched back to Sublime.

I understand I missed all its glory and power but at least Sublime scrolls like OS X apps scroll, has shortcuts like OS X apps and looks like a OS X app.

But then again, I understand why you might think this is a fool's position. I'm okay with that.

you ain't going to get native look and feel from atom.

Scrolling in WebKit is native, scrolling in Emacs isn't.

so write ruby or python for vim then.

not saying vim doesn't have it shortcomings, but people always forget that a scripting language for random app xyz still means you have to learn it's grammar. just like people who use ruby motion have to painfully learn that in the end while it looks like ruby it's still cocoa.

All programmers end up either learning or rewriting Lisp.

Just because people can program in Javascript doesn't mean they will be able to easily modify the code. Complicated code is complicated in any language, and Javascript in particular allows to write completely incomprehensible code that even pros would have trouble with. In addition, you'd still have to learn all the necessary APIs which might be harder than learning a new language.

Paradigm shift? I don't know, I've been writing desktop software in JavaScript for years now, it has its place but it also has big disadvantages yet, especially with accesibility stuff, which comes free if you use the stuff your OS offers for free.

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