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Comment by cemerick | Hacker News Reader

The language I use to build software with is precious to me. It's capabilities are often key to what I can do, how I can express myself.

The editor I use to write code is a commodity. Will switching to emacs help me write better software? Solve harder problems? No, it'll help me sling text faster -- which, unless you're doing fairly pedestrian things, is the least interesting, least common thing you should be doing each day.

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It isn't really about slinging text faster, it is about editing code faster, freeing up more cycles for thinking. A great editor experience, whatever that means for you, can certainly help you write better software, and can give you more time to think about those harder problems. It reminds me of that tired old adage that you spend a third of your life asleep so you should have a comfy bed - you spend a lot of time in your editor, so it should be comfy. This isn't an argument for emacs or any other specific editor, but against the idea that your editor is a commodity not worth consideration.

Commodities are worth consideration, just not maximal optimization when there are switching costs involved. My core point was, editing code isn't the bottleneck in building quality software efficiently, so optimizing that process beyond a certain point is premature and wasteful.

Emacs is more than just slinging text. If you spend time in emacs you probably have it configured so that you rarely ever need to get out of emacs to get almost anything done. This doesn't happen over night though, your emacs config slowly evolves into something better than just a text editor.

Emacs is important in expressing myself. I use it more than any programming language, and also outside the context of programming. It's a rich computer in its own right, in many ways better than the underlying one.

Like Clojure, it's a friendly parasite on the underlying platform. Both are part of my programming experience; and both are invisible for most of my software's users.

But I agree, Emacs is tough to learn (especially if there isn't other emacs user nearby) and is a barrier to entry for anything which depends on it. And the emacs experience could be much improved. I don't know why it hasn't been far exceeded in nearly all ways.

I'm not the standard user of emacs, but as an arts student in university, I have to write a lot of papers. I write, using LaTeX in emacs, and it has dramatically increased the speed in which I can write. More important is probably the editing portion of it. I don't have to worry about fooling around with font sizes and formatting, that if I make this bold it might make the rest, etc. all those little annoyances that come with a large word processor. I just want to write. Emacs lets me do that.

Of course, I'm not comparing emacs to vim, but to something like Word. I plan to learn vim in the next few months.

"Will switching to emacs help me write better software? Solve harder problems?"

It will HELP you write better software, yes. Solve harder problems? It will help you solve harder problems FASTER maybe.

Indeed. Typing in the actual program text is both the least important task and the most important task. The program text is not what solves your problem, but without the program text, you don't have something you can actually run.

Spending less time dealing with the program text is a great way to be able to spend more time thinking or tinkering. A good text editor facilitates this.

(And of course, Emacs is more than an editor.)

Brian (the post's author) cited a year before he was proficient in emacs. I spent two months with it myself once, with nothing but frustration to show for it, so I can believe him on that front.

That's a huge opportunity cost, when I know I can get the job done efficiently using far more pleasant tools that I already know. Those that want to promote emacs need to come up with real, tangible benefits that I'll be able to realize that will reliably offset that cost and then some. Rainbow parens aren't going to cut it. (That's an honest challenge, FWIW, despite the seasoning of snark. ;-))

Nobody wants to promote Emacs. The users are just so happy that they feel the need to share the experience.

Example: I have an expensive keyboard imported from Japan. When I tell people about it (and let them try it), they order one immediately or they come up with some reason why they don't like it and then want to have an argument? But I don't care! I'm not in the business of selling keyboards, I'm just a happy user. Buy one, don't buy one, it's all the same with me.

Emacs is the same way. Everything I've needed in Emacs I've written myself. Other like-minded people have written other things I like. More users would mean more extensions, but it doesn't really matter, there are already enough. So if you want to use Notepad, knock yourself out. It's your life.

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