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Comment by na85 | Hacker News Reader

IntelliSense is pretty good, sure, but emacs is a superior development environment in nearly every other aspect.

I have to disagree. I've tried and failed several times in the past 15 years to start using emacs for software development. Some people seem to grok it, I just don't. Maybe it's some quirk of mental processes - I love vim so it's not like I don't dig obscure unixy tools.

How long does it take to set up Emacs to be as good as IDE? Also, how little effort does it take? Thing about something like VS or IDEA, is that you install it, and all the stuff is already set up. I have deadlines, and for me, tinkering with my editor is very much a hobbyist thing (whereas I'd prefer to be writing actual code in my free time).

Try Spacemacs: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs

...And you get can get autocompletion in Emacs as well, so there's that. Before you ask, I use jedi.

I use emacs with jedi too, but the auto-completion is not so good. For example, if my code is:

   def function1(x):
      variable1 = x+1
      return variable1**2

   def function2(x):
      variable2 = 2*x
      return 5+v...

And I get two auto-completion choices: variable1 and variable2, while only variable2 is logical.

I just tried this example, since anaconda-mode + company (which uses jedi) has been really good for me, it doesn't show variable1 for me.

http://imgur.com/4l6Otvt

I used to use the auto-complete package instead, which in some configs (with ac-source-words-in-buffer or ac-source-words-in-same-mode-buffers in the source list) basically tokenize the buffer and provide autocomplete on all words.

Thank you, I gonna check my settings. This bad autocomplete thing has been a mild annoyance for a while.

Yea, the switch from auto-complete to company mode was annoying to get done right, but was well worth it in terms of accuracy. It also provides function signatures which my old setup didn't. I also switched to using virtualenv mode as well.

I can probably try and dig up the relevant part of my config, but since I'm using prelude as a base now it mostly just works with only a few lines of tweaking in my personal.el -- mostly just virtualenv locations and enabling virtualenv mode with a hook.

I've never used emacs so am completely ignorant. What makes emacs superior? All I know is the speed that can come with keyboard shortcuts.

That, and the fact that it's very easy to extend it with Emacs Lisp. I know that it's possible to write extensions for most of the IDEs or text editors out there, but the degree of customization is higher with emacs, mainly because emacs is basically couple of primitive functions written in C + a lisp interpreter (also written in C) and the rest is written in lisp, so you have access to everything emacs has to offer if you want to customize it.

Its way easier to extend Eclipse by adding one of the plugins.

Emacs has also plugins, and I would argue that it's way easier to write your own plugins for emacs than for eclipse.

I have to admit I come from the opposite side to you. I learnt emacs at University almost 15 years ago and have been using it ever since. I've tried using Eclipse a few times in the past but I never really learnt the 'proper' way to use it and found it utterly uncompelling. I always end up going back to emacs. I write C code mostly though not sure if that is relevant.

I think I'm one of those grumpy set in his way types now so I'm unlikely to change my habits.

How so and what is your experience with both? I've been using VS for a few years now, I used Emacs in college, but I much prefer VS (although I haven't touched Emacs for a long time so I'd like to hear more about what you like about it more).

Does it have good integration with things like Peeking defintion, code lense, Debugging with watch variables/autos, etc?

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