> What’s the problem with that? Emacs is, on balance, the best editor and ecosystem. Nothing else comes close, and time spent on anything else is ultimately wasted.
That is a pretty strong statement. Every time I try Emacs I revert to VS Code. Is it as immediately programmable? No. But it doesn't have to be because the extensions are plenty and quite good and work without mucking about with .emacs. One can go quite deep with it when developing an extension, though. VS Code has the remote server extensions as well, which are seamless. I use VS Code on three or four different computers (as in running it as a GUI as a desktop app) every day all the while developing locally, in a Docker container, in a Linux distribution through WSL, or SSHed into several Linux machines. My settings and extensions automatically sync, the extensions just work on any machine including while remoting, and its all seamless from use case to use case. No other editor has this experience. Plus, it supports rich graphics like Markdown preview, HTML preview, notebooks like Polyglot Notebooks that can share data between cells in different languages and display images and animations, and more. Emacs does not have that support to the same degree.
> Almost no languages have reasonable condition handling.
That's true. But Erlang and Elixir are major contenders. Erlang actually probably got there first.
> VS Code has the remote server extensions as well, which are seamless … No other editor has this experience.
Emacs has TRAMP.
> it supports rich graphics
Emacs supports graphics in a GUI. I view PNGs and PDFs in it all the time.
> HTML preview
Emacs has eww, w3m-el, emacs-webkit & xwidgets.
> notebooks like Polyglot Notebooks that can share data between cells in different languages and display images and animations
Have you heard of Org Mode? It’s rather more than that.
> Emacs does not have that support to the same degree.
While I am certain that is true of at least a few things, for many things it has more impressive support.
Emacs is not perfect. For one thing, it’s not written in Common Lisp (blame rms for a startlingly bad misjudgment there). And it’s certainly acquired some cruft over the course of its lifetime. But there is a very real sense in which time spent using or extending any other editor is ultimately wasted. I am fairly certain that in 40 years there will be no VisualStudio; there will be no Vimscript; there will be probably be no Lua; if we are very, very lucky there will be no JavaScript. But there will be Emacs, and there will be Lisp. Each investment made in either today will continue to pay dividends for the rest of one’s life, no matter how young one is today.
Erlang was first released in 1986, according to Wikipedia. Guy Steele’s Common Lisp the Language was released in 1984 and documented a language which had been in use for quite some time. The condition system was reported on in 1983’s Signaling and Handling Conditions.
I think that Smalltalk’s condition-handling is similar to Lisp’s. Smalltalk is a really awesome language. So’s Erlang, from what I remember!
Yes, those are always mentioned. Do you have a video or documentation showcasing that they can do these things and in an integrated fashion and don't take more than 5 minutes to setup? Do all those packages work seamlessly when remoted into another machine and across operating systems?
In VS Code, I open VS Code and install the extensions. I don't need to install an extension manager. I don't need to configure an extension manager. I don't need to go and find which extension manager the extension I want is in. And I don't need to configure the extensions once installed (but can if I want).
I guess the point is, Emacs is not the only editor with a vast amount of workflows that can be merged together. It's powerful, for sure, but it's not the objectively best editor.
That is a pretty strong statement. Every time I try Emacs I revert to VS Code. Is it as immediately programmable? No. But it doesn't have to be because the extensions are plenty and quite good and work without mucking about with .emacs. One can go quite deep with it when developing an extension, though. VS Code has the remote server extensions as well, which are seamless. I use VS Code on three or four different computers (as in running it as a GUI as a desktop app) every day all the while developing locally, in a Docker container, in a Linux distribution through WSL, or SSHed into several Linux machines. My settings and extensions automatically sync, the extensions just work on any machine including while remoting, and its all seamless from use case to use case. No other editor has this experience. Plus, it supports rich graphics like Markdown preview, HTML preview, notebooks like Polyglot Notebooks that can share data between cells in different languages and display images and animations, and more. Emacs does not have that support to the same degree.
> Almost no languages have reasonable condition handling.
That's true. But Erlang and Elixir are major contenders. Erlang actually probably got there first.