[HN Gopher] IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs
        
       Author : nogajun
       Score  : 289 points
       Date   : 2025-11-16 00:56 UTC (22 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (codeberg.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (codeberg.org)
        
       | tiffanyh wrote:
       | I was always bummed OniVim v2 didn't take off.
       | 
       | It was a native IDE but fully supported VS Code plugin system.
       | 
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20210627210456/https://v2.onivim...
        
         | arbitrandomuser wrote:
         | onivim also seperated the core functionality of the vim editor
         | into a seperate library libvim , this would have been great for
         | other people looking to make their own gui frontend to vim .
         | 
         | neovim does not give a libneovim, but exposes an rpc where you
         | communicate with neovim running as another process, this I
         | would have thought have more latency but apparently is fast
         | enough , this is how the vscode plugin for neovim is able to
         | provide a near complete vim experience. Other neovim guis like
         | neovide use this too
        
         | koiueo wrote:
         | From a quick glance, I can't understand the target audience.
         | 
         | Vim users would be annoyed by bizarre input lag of an electron
         | application and perhaps by EULA. VS code users don't really
         | care about Vim...
        
           | forgotpwd16 wrote:
           | >of an electron application
           | 
           | It isn't an Electron application*, that's why GP said native.
           | The EULA part though was probably a block to adoption.
           | 
           | *It uses Revery, a, made by OniVim's devs, cross-platform GUI
           | framework (similar to Flutter but build on Reason/OCaml).
        
             | koiueo wrote:
             | Oh, ok, now I'm curious to try it despite EULA (although
             | these days the wide choice of (neo)vim distributions
             | utilizing LSP makes their offering less appealing). Thanks
             | for the clarification.
             | 
             | The site doesn't stress the not-electron part enough, maybe
             | that contributed to the failure.
        
               | forgotpwd16 wrote:
               | Should've probably mentioned it before but it actually
               | used a dual-license model by having an MIT version that
               | lagged behind upstream for 18 months (could be found in
               | oni2-mit repo). During last month when development
               | stopped it was fully re-licensed under MIT (hence
               | oni2-mit repo no longer exists).
        
       | trenchpilgrim wrote:
       | This would have been great when I was learning Lisp in school! I
       | tried emacs but due to joint issues the keybinds were painful to
       | use, so I gave up and did the course in vim+SBCL's REPL instead.
        
         | dmead wrote:
         | Which joint issues? Have you tried evil mode?
        
           | trenchpilgrim wrote:
           | > Which joint issues?
           | 
           | Pretty sure it's rheumatoid arthritis.
           | 
           | > Have you tried evil mode?
           | 
           | This was like fifteen years ago and I just went back to my
           | working Vim setup I was already using for all my other
           | classes.
        
             | dmead wrote:
             | Sorry to hear that. I have a family history of that as
             | well. I think I'm starting to show signs of it.
             | 
             | Vim forever I guess. Im typing on a full split with cherry
             | reds (very soft). What are you on?
        
               | trenchpilgrim wrote:
               | Started using an Ergodox EZ with a custom map after I
               | shattered one of my wrists in a vehicle crash, have stuck
               | with it since.
        
         | yvdriess wrote:
         | It is fairly common for emacs users to bind Ctrl or Meta to
         | caps lock for improved ergonomics. There's also a bunch of RSI
         | sufferers that are using foot pedals, which actually makes a
         | lot of sense.
         | 
         | I personally switched to emacs for more than just Lisp when I
         | started developing early signs for RSI. Switching to a purely
         | KB driven interface has saved my wrists.
        
           | contrapunctus wrote:
           | I use kmonad to make Space act as Control when held, and it's
           | absolutely life-changing - not just in Emacs, but in all
           | applications.
           | 
           | This is my configuration -
           | 
           | https://codeberg.org/contrapunctus/dotfiles/src/branch/produ.
           | ..
           | 
           | And here's my blog post about it -
           | 
           | https://contrapunctus.codeberg.page/blog/keyboard-
           | machinatio...
        
           | qiine wrote:
           | wait foot pedals ?
        
             | newcup wrote:
             | Or an accordion!
             | https://x.com/ykarikos/status/1038145486618861573
        
       | pizlonator wrote:
       | That screenshot is super pretty. Very impressive!
        
         | contrapunctus wrote:
         | Thank you!
        
       | tom_ wrote:
       | C-x, C-c, C-w, C-s, C-k, C-g, C-] - goodness me, somebody
       | absolutely does not give a shit what anybody thinks. I would
       | never use this, but, somehow, I still love it.
       | 
       | I dare the author to rebind M-x as well.
        
         | skullt wrote:
         | In fairness, Emacs has long had cua-mode for rebinding C-c,
         | C-v, C-x, and C-z to copy, paste, cut, and undo, so at least
         | those changes are not too radical.
        
         | az09mugen wrote:
         | Agree with you. Coming from sublime and always wanting to give
         | emacs a fair try, I found ergoemacs [0] that wanted to expand
         | the cua mode for beginners, but that was not enough for me. I
         | wanted more, and now with IDEmacs it is almost like what I
         | want. With emacs you can do pretty much anything, why not a
         | full cua mode ?
         | 
         | [0] : https://ergoemacs.github.io/
        
       | charcircuit wrote:
       | I would really like to see this kind of work be done upstream.
       | Emacs still looks the same as it did decades ago despite other
       | editors advancing and becoming more user friendly.
        
         | raincole wrote:
         | I'm afraid that many people consider "looking the same as
         | decades ago" a feature...
        
           | compiler-devel wrote:
           | It is, the default UI is stable and can be changed somewhat
           | easily.
        
         | manithree wrote:
         | Please, no. Emacs could use some interface/toolkit update, I
         | don't deny that. And I like IDE features. I use tree-sitter,
         | LSPs, copilot.el, copilot-chat.el, and others all day, every
         | day.
         | 
         | But don't force me to turn off treemacs, and minimap like I
         | have to do in VSCode all the time just because some useless,
         | space-wasting eye-candy is trendy.
        
         | stackghost wrote:
         | A huge portion of the emacs community seems resistant to any UI
         | improvement. I think it's a counterculture thing.
        
           | komali2 wrote:
           | It's because a lot of us resist the implicit argument that UI
           | changes are automatically improvement when in fact it's just
           | as often regression.
        
             | brabel wrote:
             | Yep. Look at IntelliJ. It just copied VsCode when it
             | already had a great UI where things were easy to find and
             | consistent. Now it's got meaningless icons and hides
             | important stuff by default, making it modern but far worse
             | than before. Thank goodness emacs is not trying to chase
             | the latest and stupidest.
        
           | anon291 wrote:
           | There is no better UI for text editing that I have ever come
           | across. I'm not sure why so many people are resistant to the
           | idea that emacs has the correct answer to most UI issues.
           | More programs would stand to take lessons from emacs. Emacs
           | is, in its own right, a very successful piece of software.
           | When eclipse was a thing everyone was saying how great it was
           | vs emacs. But eclipse is gone (I think?) and emacs is still
           | GOATed.
           | 
           | There's a particular kind of hubris from non emacs users
           | (especially those who swear by new ides), that us losers are
           | somehow deprived. We are not and don't need your advice.
           | Nothing to do with counterculture. I tried many editors
           | before I became obsessed with emacs.
        
             | charcircuit wrote:
             | >But eclipse is gone (I think?) and emacs is still GOATed.
             | 
             | The 2024 stack overflow developer survey [0] puts Eclipse
             | at over double Emac's market share. If Eclipse is gone,
             | then Emacs is double gone. Emacs struggles to attract and
             | retain new users. This advice is not calling existing Emacs
             | users deprived. It's rooted from the bad defaults giving
             | new users a bad impression of Emac's viability because the
             | default is so bad. If emacs built out proper telemtry they
             | could actually track how the defaults they provide affect
             | the new user experience in order for them to optimize it
             | and figure out what users are looking for.
             | 
             | [0] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology
        
               | anon291 wrote:
               | > If emacs built out proper telemtry they could actually
               | track how the defaults they provide affect the new user
               | experience in order for them to optimize it and figure
               | out what users are looking for.
               | 
               | I can't tell if this is an attempt at humor or something
               | people actually believe
        
           | jibal wrote:
           | Nonsense. Many emacs users spend their whole lives inside of
           | it so they're quite sensitive to what is actually an
           | improvement and what is not. The arrival of the various
           | modern completion packages -- vertico, orderless, consult,
           | etc. have been welcomed ... but note that these are all add-
           | on packages. Likewise, all of the "improvements" provided by
           | the OP are a matter of loading and configuring packages.
           | 
           | People who aren't regular emacs users tend not to understand
           | it and are not reliable reporters about the editor or its
           | community.
        
           | natrys wrote:
           | It can hardly be called resistance to improvement, when
           | everyone do improve it - just in their own ways. The default
           | isn't some fashion statement, some aesthete that's
           | objectively good (though I am sure some people do
           | subjectively like it). But it's meant to be sort of a least
           | presumptuous blank state that everyone can radically
           | overhaul. So arguably it's an encouragement for improvement
           | just like everything else in Emacs, which focuses on making
           | the tools for improvement easier.
           | 
           | It's just that "improvement" as a matter of public consensus
           | that everyone can agree on to elect the next blank slate has
           | been to impossible to settle on. But the counterculture here
           | broadly might be extreme reluctance to inconvenience even a
           | minority of existing users, in pursuit of market
           | share/growth.
        
           | allarm wrote:
           | It's not counterculture. It's understanding of what's
           | important. Functionality, discoverability and extendability
           | over opinionated UI/UX that nobody asked for.
        
             | roman_soldier wrote:
             | Well people will vote with their mouse clicks, and they
             | have, < 1% of devs use Emacs vs VS Code which is probably
             | 20-30x.
        
               | allarm wrote:
               | I mean, okay? That's their choice. Not everything is a
               | competition.
        
         | ssivark wrote:
         | Switching the default experience away from what people have
         | grown used to over decades seems incredibly rude (despite what
         | commercial software has normalized).
         | 
         | The magic of emacs is infinite customizability. And it's quite
         | easy for users to find and start with emacs "distributions" or
         | "starter packs". So that's probably the best route forward.
         | 
         | Potential improvements:
         | 
         | 1 Base emacs continues to make it easier to try out a bunch of
         | configurations and switch between them, obviating solutions
         | like chemacs
         | 
         | 2 There's a web repository of a a variety of starter packs with
         | screenshots and reviews and installation instructions, to help
         | beginners find everything in one place.
         | 
         | 3 ...
        
           | ares623 wrote:
           | Could be done with a flag tbh. One version to opt in. Next
           | version it's opt out.
        
         | fergie wrote:
         | Emacs is probably the most user-friendly editor. Its just not
         | very beginner-friendly.
        
           | self_awareness wrote:
           | The problem is that you need to spend 20 years to get out of
           | the "beginner" zone.
        
             | hbogert wrote:
             | The curse as a power user is that you want to know how it
             | works. I let that feeling go with emacs. I've been happily
             | using it since. My first gateway and killer use case was
             | magit. Life with git will never be the same.
        
             | fergie wrote:
             | I'm 25 years in and still firmly in the beginner zone
        
         | allarm wrote:
         | > Emacs still looks the same as it did decades ago
         | 
         | That's a good thing. I don't want to change my habits every
         | time a designer of whatever product I use decides that he
         | deserves a raise and breaks my workflow in some subtle way.
        
         | imiric wrote:
         | I didn't downvote you, but you have a misconception.
         | 
         | There's no such thing as an Emacs "look". Its appearance, UI
         | and UX, are wildly different depending on how the user wants it
         | to look and behave. Considering that it is a very configurable
         | system that happens to expose building blocks for a text
         | editor, every Emacs installation is thus different from
         | another.
         | 
         | We could say that the Emacs GUI toolkit and perhaps its
         | internals are dated by modern standards, but even those would
         | be personal preferences. Being single-threaded is arguably
         | holding it back in some aspects, though that isn't a major
         | limitation for most use cases.
        
           | charcircuit wrote:
           | My comment is discussing the defaults. Most users will use
           | the defaults and not customize their editor, especially if
           | they are just using it for the first time. The defaults are
           | important.
           | 
           | The single threaded issue is a problem, but one that can be
           | somewhat worked around. I consider emac's bad deals an
           | existential issue that significantly hurts adoption.
        
             | imiric wrote:
             | > Most users will use the defaults and not customize their
             | editor
             | 
             | But those are not the users who choose Emacs in the first
             | place. Emacs is _made_ for customization.
             | 
             | Besides, there are many preconfigured distributions of it,
             | such as the one discussed here, which can effectively be
             | used as the defaults, if you don't like the ones shipped
             | OOB.
             | 
             | > I consider emac's bad deals an existential issue that
             | significantly hurts adoption.
             | 
             | Well, I reckon you're wrong. Emacs in all of its
             | incarnations has been in use for nearly half a century, and
             | its adoption has never been greater. Some people will point
             | to low percentages in developer surveys, but that is the
             | wrong metric to focus on. Its usage will never reach
             | mainstream numbers, which is probably for the best, but it
             | will continue to be enjoyed by enthusiastic users for a
             | long time to come.
        
       | giancarlostoro wrote:
       | I would love to see a project that rebuilds the Emacs UI but
       | keeps the underlying core to give it a modern facelift, some
       | things in emacs blend together and are a pain for my eyes to
       | figure out whats what. It would be nice if the UI was modernized
       | but the core was left as-is. I'm reminded of some of my favorite
       | editors that are niche being Lisp related ones, where if you held
       | down ctrl it would show you shortcuts in the UI itself and what
       | they lead to. I also always enjoyed Racket's import arrows and
       | other small things that are visually amazingly impressive despite
       | being so simple.
        
         | pama wrote:
         | You mean something like which-key? It existed for a long time
         | as an external package and was added to main emacs recently.
         | https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/commit/fa4203300fde682...
        
           | tiu wrote:
           | Alternatively beside which-key, hydras exist which are very
           | nice for certain contexts (dired in the particular case for
           | me) and provide a nice shortcut interface whenever activated.
           | Demo at [0].
           | 
           | [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qZliI1BKzI
        
           | setopt wrote:
           | As far as I know, which-key only helps with key sequences. If
           | you press C-c in Org-mode it will show you keys like C-c C-e,
           | but if you hold Ctrl down it won't show you C-RET for
           | example.
        
             | pama wrote:
             | If you want all keybindings, C-h b typically helps, and you
             | can search within the single buffer it returns. Every key
             | in Emacs is bound to something, but a plain modifier key
             | event like Ctrl will not be sent from a terminal to any
             | command that runs inside it, eg Emacs, only the modified
             | key. (There exist modifications/extensions of this
             | protocol, eg kitty, but most combinations wouldnt see these
             | events.)
        
               | setopt wrote:
               | Sure, I know about C-h b and C-h m and find those useful.
               | But I think what the GP post describes is more
               | contextual: A way to not display every keybinding, but
               | only those directly accessible by pressing the currently
               | held modifier combo followed by one key (so holding
               | Ctrl+Meta for more than a couple of seconds might remind
               | you of all structural editing commands for example).
               | 
               | This is indeed not possible in a classical terminal
               | emulator (don't know if kkp for example has extensions
               | for it). But most GUI apps can detect individual
               | modifiers being pressed and released, even as separate
               | events. Some editors like VSCode can also bind modifier
               | taps to actions using this ability. In Emacs however this
               | is AFAIK not possible even in the GUI, because of how
               | keybindings are handled deep down.
               | 
               | The UI pattern described by the GP does exist in some
               | other apps and platforms. For example, if you connect an
               | external keyboard to an iPad, holding down the Cmd
               | modifier for a couple of seconds will show you a popup
               | which-key-like overview of all Cmd+key keybindings.
        
             | skydhash wrote:
             | A good shortcut is "C-h m" which shows the help for the
             | major mode (and current active minor modes). It will also
             | shows all the bindings that those modes define.
        
         | koiueo wrote:
         | I'd argue the opposite. UI is ok, it can be configured to look
         | timeless (not modern).
         | 
         | But the core with its single thread processing and constant
         | hangs, requiring you to repeatedly hit C-g at least once a day,
         | is first in line for "facelift".
        
           | setopt wrote:
           | > requiring you to repeatedly hit C-g at least once a day
           | 
           | And bind `pkill -SIGUSR2 emacs` or similar to a OS-level
           | keybinding...
        
           | yvdriess wrote:
           | Agree, those hangs are especially bad when programming with
           | eglot or project management over a slow Tramp (remote)
           | connection. An auto save hijacking your time for two seconds
           | at random is flow breakingly frustrating. It's something that
           | could perfectly well run in the background.
        
           | Myrmornis wrote:
           | You can make it look modern: get rid of all menus and bars so
           | that there is nothing on screen except for the text you're
           | editing. (e.g. search for minimal.el) It looks
           | indistinguishable from any other modern editor / IDE in zen
           | mode. Menus and bars are not necessary in these sorts of
           | applications if you use then daily -- more efficient and
           | powerful to use the command palette and key bindings.
        
             | koiueo wrote:
             | > nothing on screen except for the text you're editing
             | 
             | Just wanted to clarify, to me that's timeless. Modern would
             | be having modern menus, pop-up configuration screen et al..
             | All the candy that appeals to a less experienced user, who
             | worked with Idea, Sublime of VS code before.
        
               | Myrmornis wrote:
               | I guess I'm not really sure that menus are modern. But
               | anyway I hate the stubbornness over the vanilla emacs UI.
               | The nonsense in the menus and the stupid pixelated
               | pictures of scissors or whatever.
               | 
               | But I've never really got the idea of why emacs should
               | appeal to less experienced users. I think that's
               | misguided: the entire point of Emacs is that you write
               | some emacs lisp. If you're not interested in writing any
               | lisp, then you definitely shouldn't bother with emacs (I
               | used emacs intensively for 20 years and am the author of
               | Emacs packages). And if you're less experienced and
               | looking for Idea/Sublime experience then at this point in
               | your life there's a good chance you aren't interested in
               | writing lisp.
        
               | skydhash wrote:
               | There's a reason there's no beginner car, no beginner
               | guitar, and no beginner drill. Those are either tools or
               | toys. If all you want is to type some text, notepad (or
               | the equivalent in other OS) is enough. But programmers do
               | more with text. So they should know what tools provide
               | those and how to use those tools. But then you'll find a
               | lot of programmers barely go one level up from notepad
               | with their tools.
        
             | ffaser5gxlsll wrote:
             | Second this. The "ui" is perhaps useful when learning to
             | use emacs, but every emacs user I've seen after a while has
             | all of it disabled.
             | 
             | I've been using emacs with the "lucid" build since forever,
             | as it's the leanest build that still gets a graphical
             | window working on X11 and see none of the actual "toolkit".
             | 
             | I guess the pgtk build is required nowdays for native
             | wayland support.
        
           | volemo wrote:
           | So we all agree we need Emacs 2.0(tm), rewriting both the UI
           | and the guts? /j
        
         | znpy wrote:
         | I would actually change as little as possible.
         | 
         | The current UI has it quirks, but has the great advantage that
         | it looks the same irrespective of whether you're in an
         | graphical environment (Xorg/Wayland/Windows/MacOS) on in a
         | terminal (either local or remote via ssh).
         | 
         | I *love* that treemacs looks pretty much the same everywhere.
        
           | setopt wrote:
           | It doesn't really look the same by default.
           | 
           | Most new users end up disabling the toolbar, menu bar, scroll
           | bars, etc. and only then does it look the same in the
           | terminal. Even then, many themes and packages frivolously
           | change font sizes or switch to non-monospace fonts in some
           | GUI contexts, so for users that like the uniformity of the
           | interface you need to do extra work to disable these
           | features.
           | 
           | (I personally like the terminal aesthetic, and configure the
           | GUI to look like a terminal. That basically required advising
           | load-theme to loop over all faces and disable font properties
           | I don't like after each theme change...)
        
         | chiffaa wrote:
         | It's not exactly what you're looking for but you might be
         | interested in Lem[0]. It's an emacs-style editor but written
         | completely in Common Lisp on top of curses/SDL2. I haven't used
         | it that much (same for Emacs itself, really), but it looks like
         | a very solid foundation
         | 
         | [0]: https://github.com/lem-project/lem
        
           | giancarlostoro wrote:
           | Does look interesting, in the meantime I've been hooked on
           | Zed which has users building support for missing Vim
           | features, they claim their goal isn't to 100% emulate Vim
           | functionality, but I would not be shocked if it just winds up
           | having most if not everything most people like about Vim
           | fully baked in.
        
       | jasperry wrote:
       | As a long-time Emacs user, I'm surprised by how easy it has
       | become lately to configure Emacs as an IDE, mainly due to the
       | built-in eglot. You need a lot less elisp code than you used to.
       | A working Python setup is like one line of config.
       | 
       | Which is to say, this project isn't really for me, because I'm
       | already familiar with Emacs keybindings. And as for a new user,
       | they're going to eventually have to deal with the underlying
       | configuration. Maybe it's a gateway drug?
        
         | bionsystem wrote:
         | I used emacs at school some 15 years ago and I remember it
         | being pretty seemless, I had an OCaml repl for one course and a
         | 68000 emulator with memory inspection for another, and gdb
         | integrated for C ; I do NOT remember hours of configuring that,
         | maybe put some files at the right places and that was it.
         | Switched to vim due to work (that was what's installed on
         | remote machines), kept it for years because of the ubiquity.
         | 
         | More recently in a new gig I'm finally able to install stuff on
         | my machine (with homebrew) and not just work remotely, wanted
         | to revisit my choice between (neo)vim and emacs again, but I
         | guess muscle memory is too strong and still chose the former,
         | although trying emacs I can tell that it is maybe even better
         | polished now with the package manager and everything. Turns out
         | neovim has the same with lazyvim, mason, etc. Just a bit more
         | friction sometimes maybe.
         | 
         | My main pain point right now is the lack of tooling for
         | devops/sre in general. Yes we have LSPs for ansible, groovy,
         | terraform... But they do not cover the entirety of plugins and
         | modules that can be used, and I'm not aware of good tools for
         | testing and debugging. Yes there is teamcity but that needs a
         | license and I can't have that at work apparently. I don't think
         | it is at the editor level though, just the ecosystem is
         | lacking.
        
       | pca006132 wrote:
       | What I miss from vscode is the remote functionality, can you do
       | it with emacs? For neovim there is distant.nvim, but idk if it is
       | mature enough and configuration seems a bit annoying...
        
         | hirvi74 wrote:
         | There is TRAMP.
         | 
         | https://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/
         | 
         | I am not sure if it will fit your needs or not.
        
         | stackghost wrote:
         | I believe the analogous thing in emacs is called TRAMP. I have
         | no idea if it's good, as I never edit files remotely, but it
         | exists.
        
         | brendyn wrote:
         | Emacs already does that with TRAMP via SSH -- You just open a
         | file like /ssh:user@server:/etc/hosts the main downside is if
         | your connection is laggy Emacs will lock up momentarily. There
         | is an ongoing effort to improve the multithreaded-ness and
         | async-ness of Emacs to make it nicer
        
         | blubber wrote:
         | What kind of remote functionality? Lately, somebody mentioned
         | https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/tunnels
        
         | v9v wrote:
         | I use TRAMP to edit code loaded on robots occasionally. One
         | advantage compared to VSCode is that it doesn't require the
         | installation of anything onto the computer you're connecting
         | to, since it uses the usual linux tools to work. But it can
         | freeze up once in a while.
        
         | valcron1000 wrote:
         | Not at the same level. TRAMP is way behind feature-wise.
        
           | skydhash wrote:
           | You mean like the way VSCode does by installing a whole mini
           | version of itself on the remote computer?
        
             | bergheim wrote:
             | Well, I guess? Using TRAMP with large projects is not a
             | pleasant experience. It works great for one-off files and
             | remote bookmarks etc, but for working with large projects
             | you're better off mosh/ssh-ing into the server and using
             | Emacs there. With things like term-keys [1] you can use all
             | the keys there as well. Basically only missing out on
             | images and variable fonts, both of which are none issues
             | for me at least when programming.
             | 
             | 1: https://github.com/CyberShadow/term-keys
        
       | bitwize wrote:
       | I don't see a point to this beyond hack value. Turning Emacs into
       | a shitty version of an inferior editor is kind of a waste. If you
       | really want Visual Studio Code, just use Visual Studio Code.
        
       | ruguo wrote:
       | If you don't use it that often, you might wanna try the Emacs
       | plugin for VS Code instead.
        
         | ishiguro_ wrote:
         | Do you have any recommendations?
        
           | Myrmornis wrote:
           | Yes the best one is https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/item
           | s?itemName=tuttieee...
        
         | trenchgun wrote:
         | What on earth are you talking about?
        
       | zozbot234 wrote:
       | How does this configuration behave in a non-graphical terminal,
       | e.g. as used with SSH? Can we have something that's at least on
       | par with the UX from the old Borland text-based Turbo Vision
       | IDE's (Turbo Pascal/Turbo C++), with a few modern convenience
       | features?
        
       | yanhangyhy wrote:
       | i still use emacs everyday, with the native UI. but i love the
       | idea of this project. Personaly i never get used to the UI of
       | VSCode. seems so hard to understand because in emacs you deal
       | with functions not UI buttons.
        
         | setopt wrote:
         | > Personaly i never get used to the UI of VSCode. seems so hard
         | to understand because in emacs you deal with functions not UI
         | buttons.
         | 
         | I prefer both Vim and Emacs over VSCode, but I teach intro
         | programming at a university and use VSCode in the lectures.
         | 
         | VSCode is actually quite decent if you use it as a keyboard-
         | driven thing with a distraction-free interface. By the former,
         | I mean that Cmd-Shift-P does the same as Emacs' M-x, and from
         | the keybinding hints you quickly learn any recurring useful
         | bindings (or can change them under Cmd-K Cmd-S when they feel
         | bad). By the latter, I mean that nearly every UI element can be
         | disabled (activity bar, tab bar, status bar, scroll bar, most
         | buttons, indent guides, gutters, etc.) and if you spend 30min
         | disabling the fluff it looks as minimal as Emacs. You don't
         | really need the UI elements if you learn Cmd-Shift-P and basic
         | keybindings, which as an Emacs user you'll pick up in a week.
         | 
         | Not trying to sell VSCode here, as I said I don't prefer it
         | myself. I really tried to switch some times, but I don't like
         | the Microsoft monoculture nor the importance of proprietary
         | plugins (like remote development and pylance), and an Electron
         | app usually has some weirdness when it comes to font rendering,
         | UI bugs, etc. compared to native or terminal apps.
         | 
         | But if you have to use it, it's actually not bad if you
         | approach it in the same way you'd approach Emacs: Call
         | functions with Cmd-Shift-P (can rebind to M-x if you want), and
         | invoke more common functions via keybindings instead of UI
         | elements.
        
       | Surac wrote:
       | I like to express my loyalty to the emperor of man and call this
       | heresy
        
       | noelwelsh wrote:
       | This won't take me away from Doom Emacs---I prefer the keyboard
       | centric approach of Doom---but I'm really happy to see this. I
       | feel that Emacs has some really innovative UI plugins (things
       | like Vertico) but the out-of-the-box experience is pretty bad. If
       | this makes Emacs more accessible to a different group of people I
       | think it's great.
        
       | self_awareness wrote:
       | For me, VSCode implements everything that I've always expected
       | from Emacs/Vim.
       | 
       | I've spent years to configure emacs/vim to be a good programming
       | editor. Years, multiple configurations, vanilla configs,
       | space/doom emacs configs, multiple predefined configs for
       | vim/neovim. Something always was broken, something was missing,
       | something was non-optimal just below the tolerance line. Missing
       | features, discontinued packages, initialization errors, bad
       | versions, "known issues", LSPs not starting, packages replaced by
       | some newer shinier package with different usage, cryptic setups
       | that are wrapped in "convenience layers" that obscure details,
       | making it completely incomprehensible.
       | 
       | Then VSCode came and it had everything. Remote development is
       | trivial through ssh. Completion simply works without any setups.
       | Massive number of languages supported. It's a mess inside, but
       | the UX is more stable and more consistent than anything I've ever
       | seen in emacs/vim. Sometimes something breaks, but I can restart
       | the window backend without closing the app easily.
       | 
       | This is really telling. Despite dedicating _years_ to configure
       | an  "infinitely configurable" system, I wasn't able to achieve
       | anything stable. I've given up and i just use VSCode daily. This
       | way, I have more than I ever had with emacs/vim.
       | 
       | The only thing I have from vim that's left is the keyboard
       | layout. For this, I'm thankful to Vim, but the editor itself for
       | me is just for editing config files. I don't even have Emacs
       | installed anymore.
        
         | roman_soldier wrote:
         | This, most people that try and use these legacy editors spend
         | most of their time configuring it get it to be as good as vs
         | code and usually fail. A lot of wasted time and frustration
         | when one click gives you a perfectly modern fast editor with a
         | smorgasbord of great extensions that just work. I do use vim
         | for quick editing of files in the terminal but never for
         | serious work.
        
           | omnicognate wrote:
           | Not sure where you get "most" from. Personally I've found the
           | exact opposite: Despite having been forced by work
           | constraints to use most major IDE platforms at one point or
           | another, sometimes for years at a time, I always come back to
           | emacs with great relief and find it better in pretty much
           | every way. I know better than to assume my experience is that
           | of "most" people, though.
        
             | roman_soldier wrote:
             | The data shows VS Code is used by double digit % of
             | developers, whereas Emacs is less than 1%, I think that
             | qualifies for most.
        
           | iLemming wrote:
           | > one click gives you a perfectly modern fast editor with a
           | smorgasbord of great extensions that just work
           | 
           | I use over 300 hundred packages in my Emacs setup. I honestly
           | not sure if I can install even half of that number of VSCode
           | extensions and expect it to still run smoothly, maybe people
           | do that, I just don't know.
           | 
           | They are called "packages" and not "extensions" for a reason
           | - an extension that e.g., ships with a browser has
           | limitations. In Emacs I can reuse functions of one package in
           | another - in VSCode they have to be explicitly exposed via
           | public API, must be activated in order, they need to be aware
           | of their extension IDs, there's no discovery mechanism - in
           | Elisp, I don't have to deal with any of that.
           | 
           | in Emacs I can explore, modify and bend the source code of
           | _any_ package - built-in or third-party. I can do it in a way
           | that is simply impossible anywhere else. I can granularly
           | change selected behavior of any command without having to
           | rewrite it fully.
           | 
           | That "just works(tm)" part I don't ever buy it - all software
           | is faulty by nature. In Emacs, when something fails - I know
           | exactly how to troubleshoot it, to the specific line in the
           | specific package code; I can profile; debug and trace it. I
           | can modify code in question in a scratch buffer and
           | immediately check how it affects things. Not only I don't
           | have to restart anything, I don't even have to save that code
           | anywhere.
           | 
           | You call it "a legacy editor" without the slightest clue of
           | what Emacs hackers are capable of doing - for what the most
           | "modern" alternatives simply have no answers.
           | 
           | I agree, Emacs is not for the faint-hearted - many people
           | (maybe most) lack the patience required to grok it. Yet make
           | no mistake, those who have tamed this beast are not staying
           | in it simply because "they don't know any better". They know
           | - something better is yet to be made, if ever. VSCode is
           | great, yet still not better.
           | 
           | Learning Emacs has liberated me from experiencing tool-FOMO
           | ever again - I can switch to VSCode without abandoning Emacs,
           | and I can even probably figure a way to control one from
           | another if I get annoyed enough; I just never found a
           | pragmatic reason to use VSCode more. So really, I have zero
           | envy or crave to even become a full-time VSCode user; if
           | anything, I might be forced into it by circumstances, and
           | that's just fine.
        
         | iLemming wrote:
         | > For me, VSCode implements everything that I've always
         | expected from Emacs/Vim.
         | 
         | Good. For me, VSCode unlikely will ever become anything that I
         | expect from my _text_ editor.
         | 
         | For coding, sure, Emacs may not be great for any specific
         | language except some Lisps, but for plain text manipulation,
         | OMG, Emacs still is the king.
         | 
         | I just can't see it ever replacing it for note-taking - just
         | yesterday I was showing someone "reproducible research"
         | workflow example in Org-mode where I had a source block that
         | sends http requests, then passes that into a bash block where
         | the results get converted to EDN, then connected it to a
         | Clojure REPL, explored and visualized data in it. Name one
         | system that allows you to seamlessly pipe results of one
         | computational block into another, mixing different languages.
         | 
         | Today I made a table with some formulas to calculate some
         | numbers. Does your note-taking app has spreadsheets-capable
         | tables and embedded math formulas?
         | 
         | Two weeks ago I was dealing with a slew of logs coming from k8s
         | pod, and I want it to explore it in my editor - I piped from
         | terminal directly into an Emacs buffer. I can similarly pipe
         | the content of any given buffer into a different unix command.
         | 
         | I control video playback directly from Emacs - it's very nice
         | when I'm taking notes. My pdf documents blend-in into my color
         | theme, which btw. changes based on time of day automatically -
         | Emacs has a built-in solar and lunar calendars.
         | 
         | I search through my browser history and through open tabs
         | directly from Emacs - it's great for finding and grabbing
         | specific piece of text from the browser - so I can put it into
         | my notes.
         | 
         | I rarely need to open Jira in my browser, Emacs understands
         | that "XYZ-12345" is a ticket and shows the ticket description
         | in a tooltip, I can browse its content in-place, same is for
         | RFCs. My Emacs understands that a url is a PR and allows me to
         | review it in-place. It knows when it's looking at a GitHub repo
         | url and allows me to clone it with a keypress, or explore
         | CircleCI logs.
         | 
         | I never type anything longer than three words in any app. I've
         | built a workflow that allows me to quickly move the text into
         | my editor and back into the app. Why would I do it differently?
         | I have all the tools I need - thesaurus, spellchecker,
         | translation, etymology lookup, LLMs, etc.
         | 
         | Finally, once I got the plain text under control, I realized
         | that code is nothing but structured text. I have things like
         | fetching the path to exact line on GitHub, while supplementing
         | the fully-qualified name of the function - my colleagues don't
         | have to guess what they're staring at, they can simply see it
         | without ever opening the link.
        
       | imiric wrote:
       | This is great to see, and I'm sure it will nudge some people to
       | give Emacs a try who wouldn't have otherwise.
       | 
       | I've been using Emacs with a custom configuration for many years
       | now, but when I needed a good IDE for working with modern
       | frontend stacks about a year ago, I decided to give VSCodium a
       | try, since the TS/LSP integration wasn't that great in Emacs. And
       | funnily enough, I did the reverse of what this project does: I
       | tried to make VSCodium look and behave more like my Emacs setup.
       | 
       | It turns out that this is incredibly difficult. Decluttering the
       | UI was easy enough; getting my Vim/evil-mode key bindings to work
       | was relatively straightforward, though not perfect; but it was
       | practically impossible to make VSCode work with the concept of
       | buffers, instead of tabs and tab groups.
       | 
       | There are some extensions that emulate this to an extent, but it
       | requires at least one change[1] to work properly that's been
       | ignored for almost 2 years now.
       | 
       | So, that, general jank and unresponsiveness, and the idea of my
       | editor being a web browser with all the security concerns of
       | installing random JS extensions, put me off it for good. I went
       | back to my "inferior" Emacs setup, spent some more time on
       | configuring it for TS, and I think it's not so bad right now.
       | Though I switched projects in the meantime, so it probably needs
       | to be brought up to date again.
       | 
       | Moral of the story: Emacs is life. I'm sorry I ever doubted it.
       | <3
       | 
       | [1]: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/204942
        
       | eamonnsullivan wrote:
       | I love these packages (like this, Spacemacs, Doom, etc.), even
       | though I've used Emacs for over 30 years. I don't use them
       | directly, but they give me ideas and alert me to packages I
       | haven't heard of (eat?). And that gives me an excuse to go on
       | another round of config-tweaking, which any Emacs user loves.
        
         | finnjohnsen2 wrote:
         | Hear hear. I poked around at almost all the packages on the top
         | of that idemacs page. <<minimap>> stood out, and is such a
         | brilliant name for its purpose. I enjoyed that discovery and
         | the smirk it gave me today.
        
       | pronik wrote:
       | Whoever thinks that VSCode does not have any learning curve or is
       | somehow magically easy, needs to take a reality check, that thing
       | is overwhelming with all its popups, hovers, sidebars etc. beyond
       | all reason when you first run it (and later too). I'm an Emacs
       | user and I don't in any way support the notion it's somehow easy
       | or intuitively workable, it's most definitely not and never has
       | been. I just think that VSCode is not it either, it's just the
       | more popular tool right now.
        
         | kace91 wrote:
         | Every piece of software that's effectively a professional
         | workbench (IDEs, DAWs, video editing, etc) is going to have
         | some complexity.
         | 
         | I can't imagine the argument that vscode's level of complexity
         | is even in the same order of magnitude as vim or eMacs though.
         | A 2 minute tutorial or half an hour or fiddling will get you
         | sorted with vscode, I needed a full ebook for neovim.
        
           | skydhash wrote:
           | VSCode rely on familiar pattern and UX to let you get started
           | easily. But out of the box, it's pretty much notepad level.
           | Vim and Emacs start from the premises that you need powerful
           | tools. And they give them to you alongside the possibility to
           | integrate external tools easily with the editor workflow.
           | With VSCode any integration needs to be a full project. With
           | emacs and vims, it's a few lines of config.
        
             | kace91 wrote:
             | What kind of integration is a full project? Integrating
             | language support for example is usually just heading to the
             | plugins section, searching for the language and clicking
             | install on the most mainstream result.
             | 
             | My config for vscode is just like 5 lines to make keyboard
             | travel between panes a bit more vim like, other than that I
             | never needed to change much from defaults.
             | 
             | For neovim the work to make it ide-like is a large list of
             | plugins and its integrations, large enough that I'm
             | comfortable outsourcing the consistency to a distro
             | (lazyvim).
        
               | t_mahmood wrote:
               | Yeah, now see, you need to do that for every programming
               | language, or tool for vscode.
               | 
               | With Lazyvim you get all at once. And you can ignore many
               | plugins if you want,
               | 
               | Sure it's not ide level, but with proper configuration
               | vim/Nvim is much more powerful than vscode. And thanks to
               | Lazyvim, you can set it up faster
               | 
               | but Nvim or vim even without plugins can do many things
               | that vscode can not do. So without plugins vscode is just
               | an editor, while Nvim/vim are powerful utilities
        
               | skydhash wrote:
               | There's a reason almost every good editor (on unix) have
               | the pipe to/from shell feature. With that you have the
               | whole power of the os at your disposal. And in vim, you
               | get the quickfix list for fast navigation according to
               | the output of a grep/build tool.
               | 
               | Someone could make a config to make vim/emacs beginner
               | friendly. But there's a reason there's no beginner
               | friendly truck or plane.
        
               | kace91 wrote:
               | >Sure it's not ide level, but with proper configuration
               | vim/Nvim is much more powerful than vscode.
               | 
               | I'm not arguing against that, I actually moved to neovim
               | and I enjoy it - plus I can now stop worrying that my
               | daily driver will be rug pulled.
               | 
               | I just don't agree with the idea that neither nvim or
               | eMacs have similar levels of ability to onboard new
               | users. Not when grokking something as simple as closing a
               | tab will get you through a history lesson on the
               | alternate namings of tabs, buffers and windows for
               | example.
        
               | skydhash wrote:
               | No one is arguing that. Just that VSCode is also complex
               | too. But it's just that out of the box, there's nothing
               | special. Then you add a few tools through plugins and
               | that's the extent of of workflow customization most
               | people stay at. If you want more, you have to start a
               | whole new project, and the complexity of that is high
               | while the return is not as good as you can have with
               | emacs/vim.
               | 
               | With emacs/vim, getting started is fairly easy (there's a
               | tutorial). The learning phase is linear, but it's just
               | practice and using the software. Creating your own tool
               | is very easy as you can jumpstart from where other's
               | plugins are and add your own stuff. In VSCode, it's
               | starting from scatch everytime.
        
               | skydhash wrote:
               | With emacs, you can just use "customize" (for options)
               | and "M-x" (for commands) and never care about anything
               | else. Yes, it's not as visible as vscode, but it's very
               | much the same thing.
               | 
               | But once you learn elisp, then you have the power of a
               | full VM at your disposal and not wait for a plugins to
               | exist and hopefully implement your workflow. And adhoc
               | integration (like having ticket number in comments be
               | clickable) is not easily feasible.
        
             | slaymaker1907 wrote:
             | You absolutely don't need extensions for JS development. It
             | is absolutely NOT notepad level. In my experience with
             | beginners, installing an extension is also incredibly easy
             | compared to getting them to edit some vim/emacs config.
        
               | iLemming wrote:
               | > incredibly easy compared to getting them to edit some
               | vim/emacs config
               | 
               | Yet, extending just about _any_ functionality of Emacs
               | for an experienced user is _far_ simpler than in anything
               | else - you can write some expressions in a scratch buffer
               | and change the behavior of any command - built-in or
               | third-party. Not only wouldn 't you even have to restart
               | anything - you wouldn't even need to save that code on
               | the file system.
               | 
               | There's a strong correlation between perceived difficulty
               | at the beginning and notable simplicity at later stages.
               | Things that are seemingly harder to grok often open up
               | avenues for clarity later. Conversely, things that seem
               | easy to get into, later often become full of bottlenecks
               | and complexity.
               | 
               | Imagine attempting to replace all the knobs, controls,
               | buttons and switches in an Airbus A380 cockpit with a
               | single touch-based display a la Tesla and claim it's now
               | easier to train new pilots, but you've just made them
               | dependent on a system they don't deeply understand,
               | you've traded 6 months of training for a lifetime of
               | brittle expertise.
               | 
               | I am forever indebted to my younger self for investing
               | some time in understanding the grand ideas behind Vim and
               | Emacs, and never, even once, have I regretted my choices.
               | Rather the opposite - I regret wasting a big chunk of my
               | life chasing popular trends aimed at "intuitive use",
               | "easy start" and "it just works(tm)". I would have never
               | developed the true "hacker's mindset" without them.
               | 
               | Undeniably, there's an immense pedagogical value in tools
               | that make it easy for beginners, but there's also a
               | mental trap there. It's ingrained into human nature - the
               | brain simply doesn't like the grit; it naturally
               | gravitates toward comfort and minimal effort - it just
               | wants to remain lazy. Yet there's a compounding effect of
               | initial investment that pays off later. Sadly, we keep
               | trying to find ways to dumb things down.
        
         | skydhash wrote:
         | VSCode is familiar in its UX. Here is the file tree, here is
         | the editor. oh that's the terminal, or I can complete with tab,
         | and these are extensions that I can install? And that's pretty
         | much the extent of the interaction most people have with it. If
         | it does not come out of the box or prepackaged into an easily
         | extensible extension, they are not using it.
        
         | totetsu wrote:
         | I get so frustrated watching people fuss around in VSCode
         | because they're stuck in it and they've never had the
         | opportunity to see all the intuitive and more workable tools
         | that a.. just part of the basic OS they are using. .. like
         | keeping their console a tab taking up 1/4 the screen and trying
         | to read a stack-trace ..
        
         | frumplestlatz wrote:
         | I've been using emacs for very many years, and have a
         | configuration that has evolved over a decade.
         | 
         | I was able to pick up VSCode in an hour. It's not complicated.
         | I'm using it with the Haskell extension and it's great.
         | 
         | Honestly, I'm tired of Emacs' performance, bugs, complexity,
         | and poor UI that requires an enormous amount of hacking to make
         | a usable IDE.
         | 
         | VSCode is a breath of fresh air. The only things I'm not using
         | it for are languages that don't have extensions yet -- Cryptol
         | and SAW.
        
           | iLemming wrote:
           | > requires an enormous amount of hacking to make a usable
           | IDE.
           | 
           | When you're using it for one, specific purpose, like an IDE
           | for specific language(s), then yes, sure, it may feel like
           | that.
           | 
           | Yet Emacs is so much more. It's not an IDE (but it could be);
           | it's not [the best] source control tool; it's not [greatest]
           | note taking app; it's not an [amazing] mail client; it's not
           | [most beautiful] pdf reader; nor a [feature rich] terminal
           | app; etc. Emacs is not even an editor, to be brutally honest.
           | It's not the greatest concrete implementation of any of these
           | things.
           | 
           | What Emacs actually is - it's a concrete implementation of an
           | abstract idea - a Lisp REPL with a baked-in text editor into
           | it. That, for a second, is an absolutely fascinating
           | commodity. Once you grok the essence of that idea, it's
           | really difficult not to see the extreme value of it.
           | 
           | I'm sorry, I just have hard time to believe anyone who says:
           | "used it for many years... yet abandoned it anyway".
           | 
           | It typically means that they've been using it from a narrow,
           | small focused point of view, without ever exploring the
           | possibilities that "true" Lisp REPL can grant them. I just
           | don't see myself ever escaping Emacs, because there's simply
           | no practical, comparable alternatives to it. Comparing VSCode
           | to Emacs is like comparing it to Thunderbird - you didn't
           | like how Emacs handled your emails and now using something
           | else? Congrats, and that's just fine, only it's not fair and
           | proper comparison by any means.
        
         | cholantesh wrote:
         | >that thing is overwhelming with all its popups, hovers,
         | sidebars etc.
         | 
         | I think it's fairly normal if you're coming from heavy IDE use,
         | eg: Eclipse. If you've spent most of your time editing using
         | tmux/[vi|nano|emacs]], maybe that's not the case, but I can't
         | really speak to that as I've never really worked that way.
        
         | pxc wrote:
         | I'm also a daily Emacs user. I'm no wizard; I've leaned on
         | starter kits like Spacemacs and Doom my whole Emacs life.
         | 
         | Likewise, I find VSCode overstimulating and, for lack of a
         | better word, _rude_.
         | 
         | I just tried setting up RustRover for a side project at work on
         | Friday. It's my first time using an IDE since I was a Scala
         | developer near the beginning of my professional career. I only
         | had an hour or two to play, but I ended up unable to get a
         | working run configuration, or at least one that showed me
         | anything at all except sometimes when it failed. It was a lot
         | of clicking around.
         | 
         | I'll sort it out next week, I'm sure. But pointy-clicky turned
         | out not to be as ez-pz as I'd hoped it would be.
        
           | t_mahmood wrote:
           | IntelliJ shines when you use the command pallet, keyboard
           | shortcuts, and IdeaVIM
           | 
           | Double shift, to bring up the pallet, and start typing.
           | Though it also have a ton of shortcuts, and shortcuts can be
           | assigned for almost every command.
           | 
           | Try this: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9792-key-
           | promoter-x/
           | 
           | Whenever you don't use keyboard shortcut for any action, this
           | suggests you the available keyboard shortcut.
        
             | iLemming wrote:
             | IntelliJ is an amazing feat of software engineering,
             | there's no denying that. I'm not saying that to make you
             | (or any other WebStorm/Pycharm/etc. user) feel better - I
             | know that from years of dedicated use.
             | 
             | I just want to share my anecdotal, personal story. I used
             | IntelliJ professionally for almost a decade. I learned some
             | advanced and undocumented features. I've collaborated with
             | Jetbrains team members to help improving the features. It
             | felt like I work for them. I still occasionally receive
             | YouTrack notification emails for the bugs I posted circa
             | 2009, that are still not fixed today, btw.
             | 
             | IntelliJ is to blame for why my transition to Emacs took me
             | two years - I carried the fear of investing too much into a
             | new thing. I feared of liking it, and someday not finding
             | some features I was so attached to in IntelliJ. I was
             | scared that I will be intellectually and emotionally
             | "locked in", while I was already vendor locked-in and
             | condemned to be using IntelliJ forever.
             | 
             | I was so wrong - not only have I found everything I needed,
             | and more, I have developed a true hacker's mindset.
             | Honestly, the only regret I still carry today, even after
             | years of Emacs use, is that I did not attempt to learn it
             | sooner. I no longer experience FOMO - I can easily pick up
             | IntelliJ whenever I want again, I just haven't found a
             | real, pragmatic reason to do so. In fact, I do fire it up
             | on occasion, just to get the feel of how things evolving
             | there, to steal some good ideas, etc.
             | 
             | > and IdeaVIM
             | 
             | Gary Bernhardt famously said - "There's no such thing as
             | vim-mode". And to the degree, he was right - pretty much
             | every editor/IDE that tries to integrate Vim features
             | invariable ends up having glaring deficiencies. IdeaVIM is
             | good enough, but only to the point - for an expert vimmer
             | it may feel annoying. VSCode vim experience is similar, and
             | Sublime as well - there's really no good comparison between
             | them to say which one is really "better", they all have a
             | spectrum of weird, quirky behaviors. There's one notable
             | exception - Evil-mode in Emacs is fantastically good -
             | sometimes you even forget that it's not a built-in feature,
             | but a third-party extension, an afterthought.
             | 
             | > shortcuts can be assigned for almost every command
             | 
             | In Emacs, you can bind keys to anything, conversely -
             | everything is a command - every keypress, every mouse click
             | and mouse-scroll. And since Emacs is inherently a modal
             | editor, you can do stuff like binding commands to a double,
             | triple, etc. keypresses. Like for example, when I'm typing
             | fast, to autofix most recent typo I'd just tap comma twice
             | - this is just one example of unbelievably fast way to stay
             | focused.
             | 
             | Most devs, once they find their favorite tool would settle
             | with it and don't even explore other options. "I don't have
             | time for that.", "I don't want to be building my editor",
             | "I am already so good with what I have, why?", they would
             | say. My suggestion is to always stay skeptical of current
             | choices and curious about unknown. It's not the concrete
             | implementations, but rather abstract ideas that may grant
             | some surprising and unexpected benefits.
        
         | jrm4 wrote:
         | Here's the thing (as someone who did Emacs for a year and then
         | gave it up)
         | 
         | The possibility and ease of _interoperability_ with other
         | general program styles is far more important that the idea is
         | given.
         | 
         | Look, there are too many other good tools out there that do
         | things like have a standard file picker, use CUA bindings etc.
         | This is primarily why I left Emacs for non programmy things
         | (and am happier with a hacked zim-wiki, though I imagine
         | obsidian et al might work too)
        
       | johnhamlin wrote:
       | Love to see this. I lost steam working my way through SICP a
       | couple of years ago because I spent so much time trying to figure
       | out Emacs instead of writing Scheme
        
       | kleiba wrote:
       | Long-time (25+ years) Emacs user. The first thing I do on a new
       | installation is turn off the GUI features (like, menus and
       | toolbars) - no-one I know who uses Emacs uses the mouse.
        
         | femiagbabiaka wrote:
         | VSCode users, especially new ones, do. The best property of
         | Emacs is that you can modify the lisp machine to do whatever
         | you want.
        
           | pxc wrote:
           | If you use an editor or IDE at work for a year, you might
           | work with it for a thousand hours that first year alone. But
           | a noisy GUI like VSCode's is optimized for just that first 30
           | minutes of playing around.
           | 
           | For me, at least, that kind of thing doesn't end up being
           | very enjoyable long-term.
        
         | globular-toast wrote:
         | Another long time (15+ years) Emacs user here. I similarly use
         | it completely keyboard driven. I have seen someone use it with
         | the mouse, though. My PhD supervisor used completely stock
         | Emacs to do LaTeX and actually used all the menus to do stuff.
         | Quite eye opening for me.
        
       | musebox35 wrote:
       | As a 15+ years emacs user the only item on my wishlist is client-
       | server remote editing mode similar to that of vs code. Then I can
       | go back to using emacs on cloud VMs. Does anyone know a solution
       | to this that works as good as VS Code even when your latency is
       | high? Hopefully, I will be pissed off with all the weird
       | configuration flags of VS Code enough to write one myself ;-) To
       | be fair its python integration is quite good at least for the
       | usual stuff.
        
         | PessimalDecimal wrote:
         | Two approaches might work here:                 1) Run Emacs on
         | your local machine and use Tramp to edit the remote files
         | 2) Run Emacs on the remote machine with the files you're
         | editing. This likely means running in the terminal itself
         | (emacs -nw  or requivalently emacs -t).
        
       | jamesgill wrote:
       | Emacs for programming is definitely one important use case. This
       | tool seems to focus on that use case, though I think I can get
       | 75% of it by just using Emacs keybindings with regular VSCode.
       | 
       | But Emacs is so much more than an 'IDE'. I realize some don't
       | like the Emacs approach of 'here's a box of parts and tools,
       | build it the way you want', but that's the point of Emacs.
       | 
       | Besides the functional approach, of course, there is the
       | philosophical stance: freedom.
       | 
       | Emacs is an elegant weapon from a more civilized age. But some
       | people prefer blasters, and that's okay.
        
         | skulk wrote:
         | > Besides the functional approach
         | 
         | Nitpick, but emacs and emacs lisp don't seem remotely
         | "functional" to me insofar as expressing computation in terms
         | of pure functions and immutable datatypes. The core
         | datastructures that an elisp program interacts with (buffers,
         | variables) are all mutable and functions (setq, buffer-string,
         | etc) are decidedly impure.
        
           | jamesgill wrote:
           | I wasn't talking about programming.
        
       | cmrdporcupine wrote:
       | I've got a whole labouriously created setup for my emacs that is
       | roughly equivalent to my RustRover setup in terms of capabilities
       | (though not [mostly] in terms of keybindings because my fingers
       | are fine with default emacs bindings). And I still barely use it,
       | and I continue to fire up RustRover constantly.
       | 
       | Because it just never feels snappy and fluid and responsive and
       | stable. RustRover is a slow dog at times, but even it outperforms
       | emacs for a lot of things.
       | 
       | The lack of proper multithreading in GNU Emacs is a problem.
        
       | jlarocco wrote:
       | Next up, how to make your Ferrari into a Fiero clone.
       | 
       | Seriously, though, this seems kind of counterproductive. The
       | power of Org mode and some of the other tools in Emacs comes from
       | being integrated into the rest of Emacs and the synergies from
       | Emacs idioms and concepts working everywhere in Emacs.
       | 
       | Just my opinion, but the time spent learning this front end would
       | be better spent just learning the Emacs UI. It's really not that
       | difficult, and pretending you can't learn it just makes it more
       | difficult in the long run.
        
       | wiggles4cash wrote:
       | As someone who doesn't use emacs how do i install this?
       | 
       | edit: i'm on windows
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-11-16 23:01 UTC)