I don't consider emacs successful. Succesful among fanatics, maybe, but I don't consider is valuable to a serious programmer.

Also, surely it's not that hard to switch languages? In my experience all languages are essentially the same.

>In my experience all languages are essentially the same.

That's the problem: you don't seem to have enough experience.

I dont seem to have much experience? Based on what? For having a different view than you? Isnt that a little naive?

So as far as actually talking about my point goes, what exactly am I missing? There are small differences but I've never seen a language that I couldn't get up and going in over the course of a week.

How much experience do you think I have? I've used plenty of languages, and I'm well aware that there are nuances.

>So as far as actually talking about my point goes, what exactly am I missing? There are small differences but I've never seen a language that I couldn't get up and going in over the course of a week.

That's because you either used the languages superficially, or use only very similar languages, probably of the Algol family (e.g. Ruby, Python, PHP, JS, etc).

You won't get very far with Haskell "over the course of a week". Or APL. Or Idris. Or Erlang. Or Lisp -- or any other language that's not a mere Algol derivative with some different bells and whistles. And even those have their idioms, of course, that one needs much more than a week to get competent with, but, it gets worse when we expand languages to not be "mainstream Algol derivatives". One would only be using languages like Smalltalk, OcamL, Scheme, Scala, Self, etc, superficially without getting into their idioms and nuance, which wont happen in a week (and can take years to really master).

Well of course you can't include languages like Haskell in the group of interchangeable languages. Incidentally I have used Haskell (and it did take more than a week). But it doesn't matter because we're talking about moving JavaScript developers to Java, or C++, or as you say, Algol-likes.

>Well of course you can't include languages like Haskell in the group of interchangeable languages.

Well, if you can only include "interchangeable languages" then it's not an observation but a tautology.

No kidding? What I was trying to say (I thought I was pretty clear) is that we're really only considering institutional languages here. As it turns out to my knowledge theyre basically all the same.

> I dont seem to have much experience? Based on what?

Based on the fact that you think all programming languages are essentially the same. That's just a ridiculous claim and it immediately exposes you as someone who's only used a couple of Algol derivatives.

2 things

1. I don't think literally all programming languages are the same

2. I have used Haskell, and am very aware of every language listed in the other replies to this comment, so you're completely wrong.

I kind of thought this community was better than this, to be honest.

This community is in fact pretty good you posted something wholly and totally ridiculous and the worst thing anyone has said is that you need to get out there and get more experience.

Try saying silly things on reddit and watch the hate flow in.

Well sure we beat reddit I guess, and maybe I just don't post here enough, but I feel like the community is deteriorating. I used to hold this place to higher standards. Also I still don't think what I said was ridiculous, and its something I basically believe.

Well, it might not be ridiculous IF qualified.

E.g. "most of algol-derived languages are quite similar, aside from small differences in syntax and feature set".

Or:

"Most modern mainstream languages, etc have pretty much similar feature sets and syntax (while still differing in being dynamic vs statically typed etc)"

That's not the same as what you said.

i suppose youre right

Not useful to serious programmers? Do you feel the same way about Vim? Just because you haven't gotten used to using something, doesn't mean it's necessarily total shit. There is a reason why people have been using emacs for decades.

I do actually, and I should reword that to "not useful for serious programming." VIM to me is best used for lightweight, quick and short editing tasks. THats how I use it. For any involved work, you're going to want a debugger, you're going to want automated build tools, you're going to want effortless compile/run cycles and so on..

You don't really want to implement all of that in VIM because your work won't be portable.

I have all those. They're just not integrated into my editor. I use vim; it is my editor, but not my development environment. Unix is my development environment.

I;ve tried that approach, and its cumbersome to remember all the different commands, flags, combinations etc. I might need for each different project and for each different task. IDEs simplify this process dramatically. Its akin to GUI v DOS in terms of usability benefits.

That's fine. But myself and a lot of other people get a lot of "serious programming" done using the approach.

I don't really understand what the benefit of it is.

For me, using vim+vimium for Chrome means that majority of the time my hands are on the keyboard. I barely ever use the mouse.

Have you seen a really seasoned vim user work? Purely from an efficiency point of view, vim/modal text editing is simply better than traditional text editors.

Sounds to me like you aren't familiar with Vim and the ecosystem. Plug-ins are your friends. Use a package manager like Vundle to easily install plug-ins. Not sure why you say vim isn't portable. I have my vimrc file on my github. Not only is vim available on all major platforms, it comes pre-installed on a bunch of systems. All I need is my vimrc file, Vundle and an Internet connection to customize any vim install to exactly how I want it.

Do you really conflate suitable to your own tastes with being useful or not? Further in what profession is any tool "all the same" See the blub paradox.