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Comment by skydhash

4 days ago

They also don’t bother to announce a Vim or Emacs one either. VS Code provides good default and most people don’t care about editor fluency. Which is why they keep using it.

>>They also don’t bother to announce a Vim or Emacs one either.

vim has a universal and in many ways a eternal use case. You have to edit a file at some point on a server, be it a self hosted or even on ec2. Thats kind of the only real use case for vim.

In these days of AI assisted coding, no one really 'edits' code. A lot of editor short cuts and fluency related concepts kind of in many ways are not relevant in this paradigm.

The thing is vscode just works, like just works, for nearly all the usecases. In case of emacs, learning it and mastering it takes lots of time in ones career. In case of vscode you don't have to do this, you can straight away work on the project that you want to get done.

emacs is some what like a massive distraction from the actual task you want to achieve. Instead of writing code to build a project, you have to first write code to make emacs work, then use emacs to write the project code. In vscode you just write project code.

  • I don't know if you're trolling or not, but there's one thing that VSCode and nearly all other "normal" editors don't have and I want: Non-tied Windows (pane) and buffers (opened files). One of my most used layout is one main window and two smaller ones. Layout like this are my mental frame, but what I actually want to look at may vary at any moment. It may be a test result, a git diff, or going down a reference link. It's like a moodboard instead of a stack of paper you can only look at one at a times.

    Emacs and Vim has this built-in. Other editors kinda have that, but it's clunky. I can suffer IDE because they provide a lot more than editing.

    > Instead of writing code to build a project, you have to first write code to make emacs work, then use emacs to write the project code

    That's only done once. It's like adjusting the mirrors and seats of a car. Once it's comfortable, you don't have to touch it. Using VS Code feels like borrowing a car with a very limited range of adjustments. Why is the explorer on the left and the terminal at the bottom? Why are they always there?

  • Have you even ever watched someone experienced using Emacs or you're making assumptions on your (I suppose limited experience)?

    The "distraction" framing assumes everyone has the same preferences and working style, I for one find VSCode (and IDEs in general) massively distracting from productively solving many tasks. No, it's not "a skill" issue - I have used InteliJ every single day for almost a decade, diving into some profoundly advanced and non-documented features, and I do open VSCode from time to time.

    I feel your argument conflates initial learning curve with ongoing productivity, and assumes VSCode's approach is universally optimal rather than just different.

    • >>Have you even ever watched someone experienced using Emacs or you're making assumptions on your (I suppose limited experience)?

      I am one of those experienced Emacs users myself. Wrote more stuff in Emacs and even vim than most devs today will even write code over their careers.

      Its just vscode now does simply too many things out of the box, you obviously can recreate that in Emacs, but its a pointless exercise. Time consuming, and distracts your from your real job. My job is to write code, not build emacs to write code.

      I totally stopped using Org-mode, because Google docs do it way better.

      At some point you have to move on. For some people like that point arrived a little early.

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