<story><title>The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla</title><url>https://www.murilopereira.com/the-values-of-emacs-the-neovim-revolution-and-the-vscode-gorilla/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>emptysongglass</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t understand why people are moving Linux --&amp;gt; Windows. At the company I work for everything is native to Linux--I am floored by the number of interns we get who are using Windows (it&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; of them). We have an intake script for getting them up on WSL2 with our stack on top but man these graduates are CompSci people and they did 4 plus years of CompSci using Windows? I can only imagine the pain. Or rather, I know the pain since I have occasionally dipped my toes back into that world of hurt.&lt;p&gt;A non-WSL2 Windows person doesn&amp;#x27;t get the benefits of Nix, usually doesn&amp;#x27;t live life on the shell (since every Windows program is gui first), doesn&amp;#x27;t do dotfiles management (you can but paths for the git Atlassian method are non-obvious), ssh password protected keys are a PITA...good God I could go on ad nauseum.&lt;p&gt;I work in this industry because I love computing. But these Windows jockeys I dunno I get the feeling they don&amp;#x27;t necessarily love computing? Or in the way that it&amp;#x27;s this mundane tool for the production of money-points that they can then exchange for money. I also am receiving the money-points and it is good. But lemme crack open your head and pour in the &lt;i&gt;magic&lt;/i&gt; y&amp;#x27;know?</text></item><item><author>hibbelig</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s very interesting.  I used Emacs for a long time, but slowly got weaned off it.&lt;p&gt;- I used it for email, then I had to collaborate with people who wrote &amp;quot;please see my comments in orange below&amp;quot;.  (Of course, they were Outlook users.)  Emacs did not show that orange color, so I didn&amp;#x27;t know...  Maybe these days it&amp;#x27;s possible to read Outlook emails nicely in Emacs.&lt;p&gt;- I used it for development, then the Java software I worked on got too big to internalize all APIs and Eclipse completion and refactoring really helped.  I did try to build the Eclipse &amp;quot;quickfix&amp;quot; thing in Emacs, but all I got done was to add a missing import (because JDEE, I think it was, provided that functionality).&lt;p&gt;- I switched from Linux to Windows because the world around me was like that, and so I could help junior colleagues with their EOL problems...&lt;p&gt;- I used Mercurial (hg) for a while and TortoiseHg was really nice, so I didn&amp;#x27;t feel the need to use Emacs for this.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a pity, really.  Some aspect here, some aspect there, and then you get pulled away from Emacs.&lt;p&gt;Now, with LSP, perhaps Emacs could offer code completion and refactoring, but the Java app I work on builds with gradle, and I have no clue how to tell the Java&amp;#x2F;LSP thing about the class path...  So I&amp;#x27;m on IntelliJ...</text></item><item><author>submeta</author><text>When you finally learn to master and config Emacs, you run circles around all other editors. Emacs is so much more than just an editor. But even if you only use it for coding: Magit is the best git client I have used in years (coming from PyCharm + Git Tower App, which is nice), then there‘s Ztree-Diff (excellent folder diff tool; previously using Kaleidoscope app), then Eshell for interacting with the server from within Emacs (programmatically if you like), Tramp for remote editing, excellent integration of ripgrep and silversearcher (ag) into Emacs for code navigation, yasnippet as an excellent templates&amp;#x2F;snippet manager, and many more packages.&lt;p&gt;What makes Emacs exceptional is you can link all these packages together, create your own workflows by scripting Emacs in Lisp. And I write the docu in Emacs in org-mode, with org-babel I can run shell-scripts &amp;#x2F; python-scripts and other code in my org-file and see the output underneath it (like Jupyter notebooks), link to code fragments in my org files etc&lt;p&gt;I manage several projects with it and switch contexts with one key-combination: Vagrant box is started, project folder is changed, necessary files opened, ready to hack, build, deploy, do server restarts with a single key stroke.&lt;p&gt;I think VS Code is a nice coding environment with good defaults and many things done right (compare installing packages in VS Code to Sublime! What an improvement) but nowhere near the capabilities and the productivity of Emacs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BeetleB</author><text>&amp;gt; But these Windows jockeys I dunno I get the feeling they don&amp;#x27;t necessarily love computing?&lt;p&gt;When I was younger, I wanted to work in places that had a passion for these types of things.&lt;p&gt;Older me realized that was a bad idea. It inevitably seeps into things unrelated to doing the actual work (even performance reviews via 360 feedback). People are paid to do a job, and I&amp;#x27;ve found that whether they love computing or not is mostly orthogonal. Sure, there are some that are wiz&amp;#x27;s because of it, but they&amp;#x27;re usually neutralized by those who become ideological and inflexible because of it.&lt;p&gt;Tangentially related: I&amp;#x27;m a Linux guy - it&amp;#x27;s been my primary OS for almost 20 years now. However, at my current company, I prefer roles that don&amp;#x27;t involve Linux. The reason is they typically will not give me my own machine - I&amp;#x27;ll merely get an account on some server, with a poor window manager, and missing a lot of the nicer tools I use on my home machine, and no superuser privileges. In the last job I had, their provided Emacs was a little too old for some of the features I used, and I had to compile my own Emacs from scratch (along with tens of other dependent packages). This was time wasted for me and the company. At least on my Windows machine at work, I have Admin privileges and can make things nicer.&lt;p&gt;Paradoxically, it is &lt;i&gt;because&lt;/i&gt; I&amp;#x27;m a &amp;quot;hard core&amp;quot; Linux user that I prefer Windows for work. I&amp;#x27;ve optimized my Linux workflow, and if my work cannot provide me my preferred tools&amp;#x2F;window managers, I might as well just use Windows.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t even use WSL. I use xonsh, which works fairly well on Windows. I have multiple desktops on Windows. And most importantly, I live in Emacs which for the most part works just as it would in Linux :-)&lt;p&gt;(And no, using&amp;#x2F;installing Emacs on Windows is not a pain, despite what you often hear - the last time I did it some months ago, it was literally &amp;quot;Download and unzip into directory and you&amp;#x27;re good to go.&amp;quot;)</text></comment>
<story><title>The values of Emacs, the Neovim revolution, and the VSCode gorilla</title><url>https://www.murilopereira.com/the-values-of-emacs-the-neovim-revolution-and-the-vscode-gorilla/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>emptysongglass</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t understand why people are moving Linux --&amp;gt; Windows. At the company I work for everything is native to Linux--I am floored by the number of interns we get who are using Windows (it&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; of them). We have an intake script for getting them up on WSL2 with our stack on top but man these graduates are CompSci people and they did 4 plus years of CompSci using Windows? I can only imagine the pain. Or rather, I know the pain since I have occasionally dipped my toes back into that world of hurt.&lt;p&gt;A non-WSL2 Windows person doesn&amp;#x27;t get the benefits of Nix, usually doesn&amp;#x27;t live life on the shell (since every Windows program is gui first), doesn&amp;#x27;t do dotfiles management (you can but paths for the git Atlassian method are non-obvious), ssh password protected keys are a PITA...good God I could go on ad nauseum.&lt;p&gt;I work in this industry because I love computing. But these Windows jockeys I dunno I get the feeling they don&amp;#x27;t necessarily love computing? Or in the way that it&amp;#x27;s this mundane tool for the production of money-points that they can then exchange for money. I also am receiving the money-points and it is good. But lemme crack open your head and pour in the &lt;i&gt;magic&lt;/i&gt; y&amp;#x27;know?</text></item><item><author>hibbelig</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s very interesting.  I used Emacs for a long time, but slowly got weaned off it.&lt;p&gt;- I used it for email, then I had to collaborate with people who wrote &amp;quot;please see my comments in orange below&amp;quot;.  (Of course, they were Outlook users.)  Emacs did not show that orange color, so I didn&amp;#x27;t know...  Maybe these days it&amp;#x27;s possible to read Outlook emails nicely in Emacs.&lt;p&gt;- I used it for development, then the Java software I worked on got too big to internalize all APIs and Eclipse completion and refactoring really helped.  I did try to build the Eclipse &amp;quot;quickfix&amp;quot; thing in Emacs, but all I got done was to add a missing import (because JDEE, I think it was, provided that functionality).&lt;p&gt;- I switched from Linux to Windows because the world around me was like that, and so I could help junior colleagues with their EOL problems...&lt;p&gt;- I used Mercurial (hg) for a while and TortoiseHg was really nice, so I didn&amp;#x27;t feel the need to use Emacs for this.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a pity, really.  Some aspect here, some aspect there, and then you get pulled away from Emacs.&lt;p&gt;Now, with LSP, perhaps Emacs could offer code completion and refactoring, but the Java app I work on builds with gradle, and I have no clue how to tell the Java&amp;#x2F;LSP thing about the class path...  So I&amp;#x27;m on IntelliJ...</text></item><item><author>submeta</author><text>When you finally learn to master and config Emacs, you run circles around all other editors. Emacs is so much more than just an editor. But even if you only use it for coding: Magit is the best git client I have used in years (coming from PyCharm + Git Tower App, which is nice), then there‘s Ztree-Diff (excellent folder diff tool; previously using Kaleidoscope app), then Eshell for interacting with the server from within Emacs (programmatically if you like), Tramp for remote editing, excellent integration of ripgrep and silversearcher (ag) into Emacs for code navigation, yasnippet as an excellent templates&amp;#x2F;snippet manager, and many more packages.&lt;p&gt;What makes Emacs exceptional is you can link all these packages together, create your own workflows by scripting Emacs in Lisp. And I write the docu in Emacs in org-mode, with org-babel I can run shell-scripts &amp;#x2F; python-scripts and other code in my org-file and see the output underneath it (like Jupyter notebooks), link to code fragments in my org files etc&lt;p&gt;I manage several projects with it and switch contexts with one key-combination: Vagrant box is started, project folder is changed, necessary files opened, ready to hack, build, deploy, do server restarts with a single key stroke.&lt;p&gt;I think VS Code is a nice coding environment with good defaults and many things done right (compare installing packages in VS Code to Sublime! What an improvement) but nowhere near the capabilities and the productivity of Emacs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spamizbad</author><text>Having used all 3 major platforms, for me the developer experience in Linux really is the best. And I say this as someone currently trapped on MacOS. For personal hacking I use an older Dell XPS15 w&amp;#x2F;Ubuntu and it’s like a breath of fresh air every time I dig into a project. Containers just seem to work so much faster, there’s fewer weird things, no hiccups, and things like git and Emacs scream compared to Windows.&lt;p&gt;I totally get why people prefer Mac and Windows outside of software development. But as a working developer it’s really worth the effort, if given the option, to invest in learning Linux and developing on it.&lt;p&gt;Interns doing the whole WSL thing makes me cringe. Not great for your career IMO unless you plan on making a quick exit from the dev side of things.&lt;p&gt;This might be a controversial take, but I feel like A “worse” developer with a solid workflow in Linux will appear more productive than a somewhat more skilled developer getting dragged down by WSLisms.</text></comment>