Comment by coldtea
20 hours ago
>How many developers are using VSCode? How does that number compare with Emacs/Vim?
How many people eat microwave meals? How many eat gourmet Michelin star dishes?
I don't care "how many use VSCode". My argument Emacs/Vim have great, well loved TUIs. And they are used by a huge number of the most respected coders in the industry. Whether a million React jockeys use VSCode doesn't negate this.
>Countless engineers spent many man-hours to develop theories and frameworks for creating GUI for a reason.
Yes, it sells to the masses. Countless food industry scientists aspend many man-hours to develop detrimental ultra-processed crap for a reason too.
The analogy mostly makes a point for snobbishness, but otherwise doesn’t really work. Most people would rather eat meals prepped by a Michelin star cook, but they can only afford microwave meals - whereas EMacs/Vim and VSCode are equally accessible to anyone.
>Most people would rather eat meals prepped by a Michelin star cook,
You'd be surprised. Most people can't eat anything adventurous or out of the junk-food category with some comfort food staples thrown in.
I love emacs but would never compare that with a Michelin meal! On the contrary, emacs is the DIY option that lets you experiment with whatever ingredients you please without judging your choices!
I think their point was about “most popular” not necessarily meaning “better”. I don’t think they meant anything more by it
The vast majority of people don't use the Emacs TUI and it is explicitly recommended to use the GUI.
> My argument Emacs/Vim have great, well loved TUIs.
They... are not great. They provide the absolute bare minimum of an UI.
An UI, even a terminal one, is more than a couple of boxes with text in them. Unfortunately, actual great TUIs more or less died in the 1990s. You can google Turbo Vision for examples.