I don’t care in which language my editor is written in. From the user perspective, what sets it apart from the plethora of available and more mature editors?
All these things materially impact how interested I am in using and contributing to the project.
So Emacs' staying power is due to being written in LISP ?!
My argument is that Rust is certainly going to remain relevant for the next 20 years or so. When this project is no longer maintained, it probably won't be because Rust is no longer being developed, and it probably won't be because nobody writes Rust around.
If Lapce were written in something like Zig or Crystal, I wouldn't feel so certain about that. (Not a knock to Zig or Crystal.)
Just that Emacs was written almost a half century ago, and is still thriving despite being written in a language (LISP) that is basically obsolete.
> My argument is that Rust is certainly going to remain relevant for the next 20 years or so
Maybe, maybe not. Look at how quickly Perl (so promising to begin with) disappeared to be replaced by Python. Many new languages have tried, and continue to try, to replace C++ as a better alternative, and I'm sure the next 20 years will see more popup too. Is Rust the one?
If the likelihood of being around in 20 years with a still up-to-date library/tool ecosystem was the main decision making factor, then Java would probably be a safer bet.
Yes, this is true. I still stand by my point that the longevity of a language has implications for the longevity of most projects. It's a probabilistic statement with exceptions, and Emacs is exceptional.
It's also worth noting that Emacs is written in Emacs Lisp, a language which is regularly updated.
> Look at how quickly Perl (so promising to begin with) disappeared to be replaced by Python.
Don't get me wrong, Rust's longevity is a guess. It's in the Linux kernel now, so that gives me hope that learning Rust is paying off.
Cargo is fantastically nicer to use than most other languages tooling. If I'm wrong, then that means something even nicer than cargo is around, which would be very nice indeed.
> If the likelihood of being around in 20 years ... was the main decision making factor, then Java would probably be a safer bet.
This is true, but the premise doesn't hold. The longevity isn't the main decision making factor. No decision is even being made, and you're arguing against a point nobody is making.
Please refer to my original comment: I'm only listing reasons why I like knowing something is written in Rust.
“Irrelevant” is a very strong statement. It claims no effect at all. A single example does not justify the claim. You need at least some statistical evidence to support that claim.
For your last question, yes I do. I sometimes take over the abandoned project to maintain it too. Some open source users never contribute in any way, some do. I’m not sure why there’s a need to dismiss the existence of the latter kind of users. No one is claiming all users should be like that.
The big lie of open source is "you have the source, so you can extend it and fix bugs yourself". Of course in theory (with enough expertise and motivation) you can do these, but in practice most open source users don't contribute to the project, so the language it is written in is entirely irrelevant.
When was the last time (if ever) you submitted a bug fix (not a report) for an open source tool you are using, let alone joined the project as a contributor?!
- Designed from the beginning to support an extension API with a richness comparable to VS Code's (unlike Sublime, Jetbrains etc)
- Presumably aiming to put performance as a higher priority than is usual
Sure you do. If I offered you a version of your current editor in the Befunge programming language, you'd rightly decline!
Programming languages aren't just all "basically the same".
Programming language choice, communicates something because programming languages have values.
Would you prefer a text editor written in Ruby or one written in Python?
This relates to a favorite article of mine:
It's not what programming languages do, it's what they shepherd you to.
https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/03/its-not-what-program...
To tie in one of the article's examples:
> Perl shepherds you into using regexps
If you believe that regexes are hard to debug and overly complex, you might resist a text editor written in perl because it's likely that regexes are used everywhere (even when they shouldn't be).
That said, I can totally see why it would matter to some people why language something is written in: you may want to study or contribute to an editor and you may prefer to focus on your preferred language