Re: Emacs's popularity

[Richard Riley]

Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> writes:

> Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> "Lennart Borgman" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 11:28 PM, Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> But Vim is not only installed; it's really used a lot. In Debian Vim has
>>>>>> always been a bit more popular than Emacs but in the first half of 2007
>>>>>> Vim really got popular (around Vim 7.1 and Debian 4.0 release). This
>>>>>> "used actively" graph compares vim-common, emacs21-bin-common and
>>>>>> emacs22-bin-common packages:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    http://preview.tinyurl.com/5thmmx
>>>>>
>>>>> That is a bit strange since the vi emulator Viper in Emacs is now so good.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Not strange at all Lennart, Why would someone run the Emacs OS to run
>>>> emulated vim  when they can run the real thing in 100th of the
>>>> footprint?
>>>
>>> Exactly why do you think the footprint matter?
>>
>> Are you serious?
>>
>> Memory usage, start speed, response, and all thinks linked.
>>
>> And with the boom in netbooks and OSen on USB sticks, emacs finds itself
>> more and more pushed into that "heavy dinosaur" category. I'm not saying
>> I *agree* with it, just those are my observations.
>>
>> Personally I detest Vi and clones.
>
> I think its an apples and oranges comparison. People who like vi*
> editors are less likely to like emacs and vice versa. They serve

That's a little obvious :-;

(ps Please note I love emacs  and dont take any arguments below as ill
meant or retaliatory - it's just an interesting banter and exchange)


> different audiences and different ways of working. I was a vi user for

I don't think they do serve different audiences if you define audiences
as people wanting to do a job of work. Both appeal to techy programmer
types. The emacs appeal is for people who make that one further step IMO
and say "hell, I spend most time in my editor, why the hell should I
leave it for peripheral tasks like IRC (erc), EMail (Gnus), or file
management (dired).". For me the advantage of keeping the Emacs UI and
the consistency across task buffers generally more than makes up for any
loss (if such exists) in functionality. We also have an advantage in
that most emacs users who do stick with it have a vested interest in
seeing things work properly. And being programmer types things that are
commonly a PITA get fixed. Its almost never I come across in Emacs which
annoys me which doesnt turn out to be for a very, very good reason and
which suddenly doesnt annoy me any more when I realise the bigger
picture. Emacs is, for me, the "bigger picture" editor ...

> nearly 15 years before I switched to emacs and I've now been using emacs
> for 10 years. They way I work with each editor is completely
> different. 
>
> When I started using emacs I had to change the way I worked because
> emacs required it. Instead of opening my editor, doing some work,
> closing it and moving on, with emacs, I open it, leave it open and only
> close it when I'm logging out, rebooting etc. 
>
> The biggest hurdle to emacs isn't due to 'odd' user interface defaults,
> odd terminology or most of the claims that periodically come up in this
> group. The hurdle is in the fact that emacs is significantly different
> to other text editors. While it has much of the same functionality, the
> way you use it is very different and requires something even more

Which is "odd" (your word not mine) interface defaults, terminology etc.

> difficult than learning new commands - it requires a paradigm shift and
> a change in habits. I failed in my first few attempts simply because I

I don't agree with that. Many editors have buffers and windows for
example. Paradigm shift is too big a word. Emacs is a customisable
editor - you can do a lot of things in it you might have used multiple
programs for before. I would not call this necessarily a paradigm shift.

> didn't really have the inclination or drive to make that shift and learn
> new habits. Changing defaults, turning on CUA mode, changing terminology
> etc is unlikely to have any real impact - this is just surface
> stuff. In

You really think so? My experience of watching new people adopt emacs is
that those are the things which do turn new users off. Even the idea of
pasting in a foreign and alien language like elisp drives a lot of
people off. Can it be helped? Probably not. You want the power then you
must get the license.

> fact, it cold have a negative impact in that people are likely to make
> comparisons based on the common low level functionality and decide there
> is nothing about emacs that is any better than, lets say, vi, textmate,
> etc. 

Exactly - the surface stuff, when not properly guided through, leaves
some people thinking emacs is lacking. My running emacs (and most users
here I dare say) bares little resemblance to the out of the box
experience :-;

>
> I also remain unconvinced by the claims that emacs is dying and needs to
> become more popular. Even in the late 80s and 90s, the majority of
> people I worked with in the Unix world used vi and its clones. Few used
> emacs. Those that did were very dedicated and strong supporters, but
> they certainly weren't in the majority - not anywhere I worked at
> least. I don't think emacs is ever going to be what wold be called a
> popular editor. 

I would agree there in general. But not with all. Popularity is needed
to maintain a degree of "uptodatedness" if I might coin a phrase. We are
lucky that a lot of the more commonly used things in emacs were
developed a long time ago and are merely maintained now. Yes there are
some great things coming through too. Lennart's nxhtml is a great
improvement for example. That in itself will be responsible for keeping a
LOT of people in emacs I daresay. Even then some of the features of
modern IDE editors does make one drool at times ....

>
> With respect to it dying, I do't think the facts support the
> claim. Emacs continues to see steady development. It remains stable and
> powerful and still has a very dedicated following. In fact, I suspect
> emacs is seeing more new development in recent years than it saw for
> much of the 90s. The various forums, such as this newgroup seems to get
> a respectable number of posts and I've not seen any great decline over
> the last 10 years. The many new enhancements currently available ini

Usenet as an indicator is not always the best. There is a core
difference between forums and usenet. And even a cursory glance at emacs
group here shows the same core names and few new ones. I agree with the
previous poster who, despite being a long term user, knows personally
almost no one else who uses it. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? I
dont know. But one thing is for sure - Emacs is a minority editor in
comparison with a lot of others. A lucky minority!

> emacs 23, such as support for anti-aliased fonts, utf-8, improved
> internationalisation, GTK based interface, built-in support for GPG,
> dbus, json, svg graphics, new modes etc don't make me feel like its a
> project thats about to die. While some may find criticism for its
> development model, it should also be noted that although improvements

I saw that post - while not overly familiar with it, there does seem to
be some issues with it for various people. my experience tells me that
is normal for any long term project where certain procedures are
entrenched for historical rather than efficiency reasons. There is
always a new breed chipping at the established foundations of any
project.

> are always possible, its a model that has worked for a very long time -
> a lot longer than the many other open source and free software projects
> that have been cited in this thread. 

Flag waving is great and I agree with you. This does not mean, however,
that emacs is not losing ground. I think it is. And hardly surprising
since the competition is so much greater. Its only to be expected. You
even mention yourself below how people can use Emacs until the other
editors catch up and exceed it in various areas like Java.

>
> I would also be very wary regarding any effort to make emacs
> 'popular'. All too often, popularity is obtained by appealing to the
> lowest common denominator. Emacs has traditionally been focused on the
> needs of developers and I think that is still where the focus should
> be. 

Totally agree. So long as one does not fall foul of the commonly found
"elitist" factor in SW - making sensible defaults, for example, does not
make it "lowest common denominator". Experts can easily replace these
"low brow" settings. It is not so easy for a new user to install them.

Possibly I am new enough back into the emacs fold to remember the pain
and sorrow involved in getting back up to speed in emacs. It's not
easy. It is, however, addictive ....

>
> One of the advantages that emacs has is in the fact it can easily be
> customized to suit new environments. I remember when I started doing
> java when java was new. At the time, there wasn't a decent editor for
> working in Java. One of the very first and possibly the best was JDE,
> the emacs java development environment. Now there are numerous editors
> that are ideal for working with java and to some extent, JDE may seem a
> bit antiquated or limited in comparison. However, the point to note is

Yes. Falling behind. Ditto for C++/C where things like refactoring, api
help, auto completion are all generally not as good as in things like
(yuck) eclipse. But you mention that later with CEDET.

> that it was one of the first really good environments available on
> multiple platforms and provided a good solution while more powerful
> java
> development environments were being implemented and refined. I have
> been

You make it sound like you only like emacs because it fills a gap until
other things "eclipse" it ... (excuse my pun). This is in itself an
indicator of a view that you might have without realising it - "good old
emacs - it'll do I suppose but for sure something will do it properly
soon enough". Personally I resist the urge to use other editors no
matter what they offer..

> lucky enough not to have to do any java development for nearly 10 years
> now, so I can't really say how JDE compares, but I suspect it looks
> somewhat primitive to developers used to existing purpose built
> environments. However, this is often a theme with emacs - in the end,
> it
> may not have the best available development environment for your fav
> language, but generally, it will be one of the first and I suspect
> often, many of the more sophisticated environments used what emacs did
> as inspiration. Other fine examples of this can be seen in modes like

Yes..

> SLIME, which is still the best environment I've used for lisp and is
> as

One would probably expect elisp and LISP support to be good in emacs.

> good as any of the commercial environments. Now, I'm using it with
> clojure - as yet, there is no other environment for working with clojure
> which comes even close.
>
> I would therefor suggest that rather than spend time and effort trying
> to make emacs more popular or attempting to find some miracle formular
> consisting of terminology changes, manual updates, new defaults etc,
> time would be better spent on improving packages that can help create
> really high quality development environments. For example, the CEDET
> project and semantic, parsers for different languages, etc are likely to
> do a lot more to ensure emacs' continued development and existance. Such
> packages and modes are non-trivial and take considerable effort, but
> hold the promise of really great things. There are no simple things that
> can be done that will achieve much and I would suggest even minor
> contributions to significant projects like CEDET will provide far more
> benefit than anything else.

This I totally agree with. My few encounters with CEDET have been
promising but I never really got autocompletion working properly!

Interesting post and I look forward to further discussion.

>
> peace,
>
> Tim

-- 
 important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the 
satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation 
of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday.  ~Dennis Gabor, 
Innovations:  Scientific, Technological and Social, 1970