Is emacs still relevant?

[1clue]

Saying that vim and emacs are the same because they both evolved from line editors decades ago is rather much like saying chimpanzees and humans are the same because we share a common ancestor. Yes, there are similarities in lineage, and function (in the case of editors)/appearance (in the case of primates), but they are in fact very, very different entities now.

We've gone way out of the context of my original point, which was that because (I thought) they shared a common heritage and still had that original functionality built in, all the rest is dressing. Which negates the point of editor wars.

It turns out they don't share the common heritage, but both have an extremely similar line editor core, and my opinion is still that editor wars are stupid with two highly capable programming editors like that.

Vim still has an ex mode, where you are editing the file with ex. Whether vim wraps ex or re-implements it I neither know nor care. I'm not an emacs user but I assume you can get into a core line editor mode with that too.

I do like Emacs on principle in that it has emacs lisp as part of it. Anything involving lisp gets bonus points from me.

Really? Lisp? What would you use it for? I learned a bit of it in the 80's and have never once had to solve a problem for which lisp was an appropriate tool.

If I'm writing code I'll be doing it in an X session where I can use much more useful editors. Like Geany, Gedit, or even a full-blown IDE like MonoDevelop, Eclipse, or CodeBlocks.

I DO use Eclipse. I also use TextMate on a Mac. When neither of those can do something particularly complex, I switch over to vim. If I were oriented toward emacs, that would do everything vim can.

Modern IDE editors can handle some regex changes, but not nearly as conveniently as vim. More yet, vim and emacs let you use any application on your system to edit your text file. I use that a lot.

To answer the OP's secondary question, I do a lot of C and C++ coding and generally use Geany. It's just become my default text editor for pretty much everything. I'm starting to play around with CodeBlocks and QtCreator for some of my larger projects though. Haven't used them enough to really form an informed opinion yet, but they generally seem like decent IDEs.

I think there are a lot more -nox users out there than you think. Most of the old-timers probably use the -nox version of emacs the same as they would use a -nox version of vim. I use -nox because I don't see it adding anything to my experience.

This is the modern front-end for emacs (of course, this isn't vanilla emacs. There are a few extensions in action there, but they're all very easy to set-up). The only obvious thing I have found missing in emacs is an in-built form-builder. There is some amazing integration between emacs and development tools, but most people just don't look for it (or don't know how, not that it's very difficult to find). Projects like CEDET have attempted to bundle everything you would need to get the ultimate IDE experience out of emacs.

Really, I just think most people's analysis of emacs comes from the vanilla version, which while having a lot of abilities actually coupled with it, doesn't have the vast majority actually turned on, so without exploring the system a bit, you don't actually realise what you're missing out on. The project emacs-starter-kit (which should come default with every version of emacs) turns on most useful things, and certainly gives a new user the ability to experience more of emacs to make an informed decision whether or not the editor is actually relevant.

Edit:


I'd be interested to know (beyond my claim that emacs doesn't have an in-built form-builder) what an IDE does that emacs doesn't.

One thing that vim/emacs don't do that well is jump to definitions or references of functions when multiple implementations of that name exist. To highlight a call and say, "who calls this?" and only get the places where that particular implementation, with that particular parameter list are called.

That said, an IDE is a real pain in the rear to set up. Eclipse often goes wonky on me and I spend hours getting it working again. The intelligence tat comes with the code-aware editor just isn't worth it half the time.

[jpkotta]

Not trolling at all, but in the effort of finding references I found out that emacs started out to be some macro scripts for the TECO editor, which was designed as a (paper) Tape Editor and COrrector. TECO goes back to 1963.

Vim, on the other hand, comes from ed, which started as a line editor on a terminal and was first written in 1971. That turned into ex, and then vi, and finally vim.

While they don't share the same code base as I thought, the definitely both grew from line editors. There's nothing wrong with that, these editors have been around since the days when big computer manufacturers wouldn't have imagined a mainframe with as much memory as your cell phone has now.

Please do a bit of research before you get offended on principle.

(Sorry that I implied that you were trolling.)

Yes, and the fact that they both have line editors as an ancestor was the only thing true in your post, if you allow 'ed' to stand for 'a line editor'. To be fair, I never knew TECO was a line editor until I looked it up before replying.

We've gone way out of the context of my original point, which was that because (I thought) they shared a common heritage and still had that original functionality built in, all the rest is dressing. Which negates the point of editor wars.

It turns out they don't share the common heritage, but both have an extremely similar line editor core, and my opinion is still that editor wars are stupid with two highly capable programming editors like that.

Emacs is definitely not a line editor at its core. Emacs is a lisp interpeter, whose primary purpose is editing text. It operates on buffers, which are fundamentally just arrays of characters (along with some local state and metadata). I can't speak for Vim, but I'd guess it's similar.

I'd go on to say that the implementation details of an editor are completely irrelevant compared to the philosophy behind it. That is why there are editor wars. Not because Emacs people think Vim is not as capable as Emacs or vice versa; the debate continues because they do things differently, and have different mindsets. That's why editors are religion: you can't objectively say that one is better than the other. You just find one that you like and embrace it, then maybe evangelize and crusade against the nonbelievers.

I like the big ideas behind Emacs, many others do too, and that's what (indirectly) keeps it relevant. It stays relevant because enough people like Emacs to write extensions and improvements for it. It's why Vim is also relevant. Editors (or any piece of software, for that matter) that don't have people regularly improving them are doomed to die in obscurity (unless they fill a niche like sed or Notepad).

[ve4cib]

Really? Lisp? What would you use it for? I learned a bit of it in the 80's and have never once had to solve a problem for which lisp was an appropriate tool.

Given that Emacs is essentially a text-editing-specific lisp interpreter you can use it for pretty much anything you want. Need some kind of custom text-editing script? Emacs Lisp. Want games? Emacs Lisp. Want to play around with one of the weirdest, most fun-to-use programming languages? Lisp of any flavour.

Is Lisp the be-all and end-all of programming languages? Definitely not. But I enjoy using it, and anything that supports it gets bonus points in my books. But really that's just a personal opinion on the matter. I don't expect anyone to agree with me.

____________

Emacs and vim are still relevant for things like server administration, where you may well never touch the physical machine and probably won't have the bandwidth to tunnel an X session. (And the server might not have X to begin with for that very reason).

If you can SSH into the machine then in theory you could mount the other computer as an SSHFS drive and edit the files with your local X server and whatever GUI-oriented editors you wanted. Less bandwidth than a tunneled X session, but still with the convenience of not having to use Vi nor Emacs. You could also mount it as an FTP drive, provided the server has an FTP daemon running on it.

[matthew.ball]

Really? Lisp? What would you use it for? I learned a bit of it in the 80's and have never once had to solve a problem for which lisp was an appropriate tool.

Really good configuration language for customising your emacs experience.

I think there are a lot more -nox users out there than you think. Most of the old-timers probably use the -nox version of emacs the same as they would use a -nox version of vim. I use -nox because I don't see it adding anything to my experience.

One thing that vim/emacs don't do that well is jump to definitions or references of functions when multiple implementations of that name exist. To highlight a call and say, "who calls this?" and only get the places where that particular implementation, with that particular parameter list are called.

In my experience most people just have the default emacs installed (which comes with emacs-gtk) and call "emacs -nw" if they want to use the command-line version - it seems most development is focussed on the emacs version too, rather than emacs-nox, so that some things have been developed almost exclusively for the gtk version and those of us using the nox have to suffer.

I have a "psuedo-tags" function which takes a boost from ido, by default it just finds the point where a function is defined, but I'm sure you could extend it to all occurrences, that or just use isearch-forward on some word and find the appropriate place - there's a useful extension to isearch (though I don't know the correct command, just the default key-binding) which searches for the word in front of the cursor, very convenient.

I mean, emacs' strength in search comes from it's use of regular expressions - they're *everywhere* - so I don't think it would be too difficult to script up a function which does what you're describing.

[Shining Arcanine]

I have just started to explore emacs, and am reading up on the arguments for and against. I'm sure lots of people have views on emacs/vim, but I couldn't find anything recent searching the forum, so I've made a new topic.

My question is this: is emacs/vim still useful given today's software? I'm thinking mainly of C++ programming. For example, I can see why emacs would be useful in the past, and when accessing remote computers only using the terminal, but surely it cannot compare to modern software with bells and whistles and tab-completions and so on.

If you reply could you also answer: if you do alot of programming with C++, what editor do you use on Ubuntu?

Harry

Why did you decide to use emacs instead of xemacs?

[1clue]

Really good configuration language for customising your emacs experience.


In my experience most people just have the default emacs installed (which comes with emacs-gtk) and call "emacs -nw" if they want to use the command-line version - it seems most development is focussed on the emacs version too, rather than emacs-nox, so that some things have been developed almost exclusively for the gtk version and those of us using the nox have to suffer.

I have a "psuedo-tags" function which takes a boost from ido, by default it just finds the point where a function is defined, but I'm sure you could extend it to all occurrences, that or just use isearch-forward on some word and find the appropriate place - there's a useful extension to isearch (though I don't know the correct command, just the default key-binding) which searches for the word in front of the cursor, very convenient.

I mean, emacs' strength in search comes from it's use of regular expressions - they're *everywhere* - so I don't think it would be too difficult to script up a function which does what you're describing.

Are you talking about people or programmers?

Random users who just want an editor, those guys will probably take the default installation and the default settings, try to figure out how to use the a few features and then give up after a day or a month.

I don't know any programmers at all who haven't done extensive re-installation of a dozen different apps to get things just right, and then spend a day or two experimenting with the settings.

Again not familiar with emacs, but with vim the gui version really doesn't get you much. Anyone who started out with emacs or vim back before there was a GUI version would probably still be using the -nox one.



FWIW my original post on this thread was to say that emacs and vim are both still very relevant, and to address comments about which one is better by saying that it really doesn't matter one way or the other, each person will have a preference and that's as it should be.

Since then, I've been arguing with people who are arguing with me, apparently because I said it wasn't worth arguing about. I'm tired of this. You guys can carry on if you like but I'm done here. Have fun.

[matthew.ball]

Are you talking about people or programmers?

Random users who just want an editor, those guys will probably take the default installation and the default settings, try to figure out how to use the a few features and then give up after a day or a month.

I don't know any programmers at all who haven't done extensive re-installation of a dozen different apps to get things just right, and then spend a day or two experimenting with the settings.

Again not familiar with emacs, but with vim the gui version really doesn't get you much. Anyone who started out with emacs or vim back before there was a GUI version would probably still be using the -nox one.



FWIW my original post on this thread was to say that emacs and vim are both still very relevant, and to address comments about which one is better by saying that it really doesn't matter one way or the other, each person will have a preference and that's as it should be.

Since then, I've been arguing with people who are arguing with me, apparently because I said it wasn't worth arguing about. I'm tired of this. You guys can carry on if you like but I'm done here. Have fun.

Just like my original post was directed to kpkeerthi, I asked for possible limitations - you gave one, and I just said that surely there would be a solution.

I am not a programmer, I'm just a casual user who uses Linux, and on the way discovered emacs. It has forced me to learn emacs lisp, but I am most certainly not a programmer.

[jpkotta]

Why did you decide to use emacs instead of xemacs?

I started with GNU Emacs, then switched to XEmacs for about a year, then switched back. The simple answer is GNU Emacs has more users, and thus most add ons will work with it a bit better (though 90% will work well with either), and at the time I stopped using it, XEmacs was more prone to crash (though it would regularly run for over a week with no issues). I liked the tabs in XEmacs much better than tabbar for GNU Emacs, but since I started using ido, I don't miss them at all. I still miss the horizontal scrollbar.

This sums it up pretty well: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008...ve-xemacs.html.

[haziz]

Yes.

Using emacs every day and love it. I find vi/vim however totally unintuitive.

[perce]

I use emacs every day to write in LaTeX. Together with the browser, it's the program I'm staring the longest at.