Yup. And not entirely coincidentally it uses Lisp, which is not so much a programming language as a tool for writing custom programming languages.
I hate this meme and wish it would die.
Emacs is a perfectly suitable editor that happens to have really bad defaults because the developers are mostly out of touch grognards.
With a modest amount of effort, emacs could be made to have appealing aesthetics and sane defaults, but because eMaCs Is An OpErAtInG sYsTeM it stays bad.
I'm asking because I learned its defaults before windows had the market prevalence that it does, and it just doesn't seem all that different from an outside perspective.
I think the term 'grognard' is not helpful to your case. When I read it I find myself assuming that you're dismissing the experiences of people whose context starts before yours. You might prefer to give a different impression.
There are dozens of low hanging fruit.
Off the top of my head:
- dispensing with the absurd references to Alt as Meta that haven't been relevant for 35 years
- bringing the terminology in the documentation into the 2000s by fixing what's called window, a pane, etc.
- including CUA mode as default for ease of onboarding windows users
- including per-pixel/smooth scrolling which AFAICT is only available via the emacs-mac port
- updating the graphical interface to make it look modern and sophisticated instead of the current look which can best be described as "abandonware chic"
- improving handling of large files with long lines so the editor doesn't choke
- setting the gc threshold to a much higher value
- the yes/no vs y/n thing that literally everyone rebinds
- make middle click insert at the cursor instead of where the mouse is
I'm certain there are dozens of others.
The main problem, as they often mention on the mailing list, is that the manpower is low. There is no reason they don't want to solve the large technical problems, like very large files.
The master branch (Emacs 29) has this in `pixel-scroll-precision-mode` and it seems to perform better than the emacs-mac implementation.
It would seem you and I have very little common ground.
Being different too much can be bad too. Emacs has not much big fails, but many small things which lead to being bad by thousand little cuts.
> When I read it I find myself assuming that you're dismissing the experiences of people whose context starts before yours.
Why does it matter? Nobody want's to take your emacs from you. The discussion is always about bringing in new people, and why people leave emacs. And that emacs has a problem with this is not new. Emacs is always swinging between hype and death, and it's not like this has become much better over time.
I guess most people know by now, but Emacs’ keybindings were designed for a specific keyboard that had way more keys that usual: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/495/what-...
As Emacs was ported, they replaced dedicated keys with chords and sequences and we ended up in this mess, instead of at some point doing a full review of the default keybindings to match the input devices we actually have, merging in the conventions that had developed in the meantime.
After three decades of use, I have internalized those defaults because I keep having to use Emacs in its default configuration from time to time, have remapped many keys in my workstation, bound custom functions and all that. It’s still a paper cut, and also prevents me from recommending Emacs to more casual users.
Sure, for some peoples use cases. Also “modest amount” isn’t really true for new users. The time it takes to look up potential configs, figure out how to make changes, play around and see if that’s what they want from their editor, and in general figure out what’s possible doesn’t really happen in a “modest amount” of time.
> “>Emacs is not so much an editor as it is a tool well-suited for writing custom editors.”
There is nothing wrong with this comment, it is a correct statement because emacs by your own admission is a flexible tool that can be modified to one’s liking. For a lot of people that means tailoring it around their workflows/uses before it’s actually useful to them.
I'm saying that the developers could, with modest effort, provide a dramatically improved out-of-the-box experience for 80% of users that obviates the need for a lot of config futzing.
Used it enough until 2005 to get it several features burned on my brain.
Nowadays I really don't see the point, and ironically neither does the creator of XEmacs.
https://www2.computerworld.com.au/article/207799/don_t_use_e...
Also: Emacs user here, for more than a decade. My opinion: the defaults in Emacs are horrible. They were set in different times, on different computers, with different keyboards. They should get changed. I think most users agree with that. The problem is that whatever we would change the defaults to, it would estrange a part of the community. So nothing gets done. Advanced users don't see the point of struggling, since they already have everything rebound to the keys/menus/toolbars/etc. they want and need. New user see the need, but don't have the skills. It's really a Gordian-knot type of problem.
As an aside: similar thing goes on with Emacs' terminal support. It's obvious that maintaining compatibility with display technology from the '70s takes a real toll on both developers time, and improvements that would be possible if not for that compatibility. But then you get a huge crowd that uses Emacs via SSH somewhere, and they go rabid if you mention anything about dropping the terminal support.
Why defend somebody who's quite literally asking for it? Doesn't make sense.
Just some shmuck whose identity is all wrapped up in his text editor.
Kinda sad really.
The difference is I'm not a zealot.
You're not actually understanding what I've written, if this is your takeaway.
If there isn’t already a good mode for what you want to do, Emacs is good only if you want to write the mode. For instance Haskell support in Emacs is not great; the most-used mode is not part of GNU Emacs and falls well short of the quality standards of the modes GNU ships. I found myself trying to do Haskell in Emacs because I already used Emacs for Orgmode. This was a mistake. I was better off doing Haskell in Vim.
So for stuff that has a good mode—Org, lisp, C, mail if that is your kind of thing—use Emacs. Otherwise don’t bother, unless you like programming your editor.