[coldtea]

>I wouldn't call what you describe fragile. It sounds more like a typical learning experience. You did something, Emacs obeyed and then you who didn't like what you just did

That's the definition of fragile.

The famous "You're holding it wrong", even sounds benign compared to "it's just a learning experience".

[Kessler83]

No, the definition of fragile is that if you use something in a wrong way, it breaks. But Emacs doesn't break. It obeys and keeps running.

With your reasoning, all software that gives you a choice, anything that can be configured, all programming languages etc. etc., become fragile, because as soon as someone says "I did this but I didn't like the result," your case has been proved. In other words, it is a circular definition.

Anyway, I didn't mean learning experience in a condescending way. The user I answered indicated himself that he was learning---and we all are, when it comes to Emacs.

[AlexCoventry]

I just tried changing the font through the menubar (Options -> Set Default Font) and wound up with a font which was unreadable, due to being only a couple of pixels high. I never use the menubar, so I'm insulated from that kind of issue (and I'm running bleeding-edge emacs, so it could be a transient bug), but I could see it being a showstopper for new users.

[AJRF]

emacs users just live in another world entirely, this whole interaction I find typical of users who evangelize for emacs, and for some reason those users can never see the error of their thinking.

You sound like a zealot for thinking a settings menu breaking when trying to change a setting is acceptable.

[Kessler83]

Don't mean to come off like a zealot. To me, it sounds like the user accessed a show/hide-function in the graphical interface while using the mouse, and then didn't know how to bring it back (Control-Right Click or menu-bar-mode). The mistake and the ability to hide the menu-bar are both super common in any application and don't make Emacs fragile. Instructions for how to hide/un-hide stuff are in the manual.

I think people are just kidding themselves when they arrive at the conclusion that a program like Emacs---which is super mature, has a huge user base amongst very picky programmers and has survived in fierce competition for 45 years---is somehow fundamentally flawed, fragile etc. Of course it isn't. But it might not be your thing, and that's fine.

[AJRF]

I use emacs daily and have done for 5+ years now. Even with that, It's undeniable that it makes some tragic choices that keep it from being popular in the modern day.

You see every few years a project to modernize emacs and get wider mindshare among developer community, and they always fail due to some stubborn choices due to stalwarts not admitting when they are wrong.

I have more faith in VSCode sticking around for the next 10 years than I do Emacs.

[Koshkin]

I am sure emacs will be alive and well in 20 years. (8MB and constantly swapping and all…)

[natrys]

> I have more faith in VSCode sticking around for the next 10 years than I do Emacs.

I mean, almost everyone is confident about that too. And rightfully so because, VSCode actually has real corporate backing. People are being actually paid to develop it and sometimes plugins for it, so it would be a surprise if it didn't pan out. Nobody is getting paid to work on Emacs, or third party elisp libraries. It has always been individual hackers doing the bits that interests them. I don't want to come across like anybody owes Emacs anything. But I think in forums people sometimes take the reverse for granted, like Emacs owes anyone anything. Or that the people who actually bother to do voluntary work share the same vision of modernity as them, so it's a failure of some sort when that isn't exactly delivered.

> You see every few years a project to modernize emacs and get wider mindshare among developer community, and they always fail due to some stubborn choices due to stalwarts not admitting when they are wrong.

I think this is a mischaracterisation. Because, firstly you don't actually need the approval of the "stalwarts" to modernise it. Doom Emacs is making a name of its own just fine. The other thing is, Emacs is old. Most of the old vanguards aren't actively involved in Emacs development any more. Most of the "stalwarts" now weren't even around for most of the mistakes, why would you attribute things to vanity when it was not current stalwarts personally who were responsible for most of the design goals?

Browsing emacs-devel, it's clear that the real problem is acute lack of manpower. Only a fraction of Emacs users do bug reports, and then only a tiny fraction of them do actually get involved in fixing things. Which means the maintainers are always facing an uphill battle, who by the way don't have domain expertise or historical understanding of why things are the way they are, any more than you or I do, in many of the situations. Compared to that, VSCode is only a few years old, there are probably engineers who are familiar with the entire codebase, from conception to now.

That said, it has always been more or less like this. Emacs will be fine in its own way, because it will always attract certain sort of hackers. So sure, in terms of "mindshare" and "percentage of users", Emacs will keep free falling, specially now that software development itself has become way more pervasive. It might continue to get more out of touch with "modernity". However, as someone who has been in Emacs community for 7 years now, I believe the ecosystem is only getting more and more vibrant each year than the one before, in absolute terms (more mailing list or other forum activities, more landmark features, more new and high quality third party libraries etc.).

[jimmyvalmer]

> like Emacs owes anyone anything.

The vast majority of users get their emacs from the Linux distributions, who in turn get it from the GNU people. To the extent they've monopolized that distribution channel, the maintainers owe us something. They alone can revive emacs's fortunes, or squander its good name by failing to keep with the times.

[tharne]

> emacs users just live in another world entirely, this whole interaction I find typical of users who evangelize for emacs

It's not that emacs users "live in another world entirely", it's that some things a very difficult to explain to folks who don't have first-hand experience of those things. Try describing what minus 20 degrees Celsius feels like to someone who's spent their entire life in Florida, or Brazil. You can't really, it has to be experienced to be understood.

It's no different with emacs. Emacs doesn't really make any sense until you use it for a while, then all of sudden you "get it" and don't want to use anything else.

[jimmyvalmer]

> You can't really, it has to be experienced to be understood.

No, I'm pretty sure everyone knows what fragile software feels like. Disclaimer: I've been using fragile emacs as long as most HN users have been alive.

[bmitc]

It's surprising to me why people think the "you just don't get it, man" defense or marketing point will ever work.

[tharne]

It wasn't a "defense", so much as a statement of fact. I enjoy using emacs, but I don't go around trying to get the whole world to use it. I know that emacs occupies a very specific niche and is not for everyone. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about how much market share emacs has, it has enough to keep marching on, and that's about the extent of my concern.

But the point remains. You can't really understand emacs (or a lot of other things for that matter) in the abstract, you have to use it. So use it or don't, but you can't really offer meaningful criticism without have it used it a fair amount. There are plenty of warts on emacs, any emacs veteran (which I'm certainly not) will freely acknowledge that. But it does seem that most criticisms of emacs come from folks who haven't used it much.

[nawgz]

> With your reasoning, all software that gives you a choice, anything that can be configured, all programming languages etc. etc., become fragile, because as soon as someone says "I did this but I didn't like the result," your case has been proved

That's not at all true. It's called "validation" and "error handling". What kind of farce are you getting at? You unironically think a text editor that lets you break its settings panel by trying to use the settings panel normally isn't fragile?

Edited to remove cheapshot at parent comment

[nawgz]

I am quite annoyed at downvotes that don't challenge my assertion. Any UI which allows you to directly compromise the environment to the point of requiring a fresh install is the very definition of fragile. I understand that HN is strongly biased against UI development and undervalues the domain, believing instead that tools only accessible to experts are fine, but I think this is an extremely user-hostile POV and to advocate for tools to have this level of footgun built into A FONT MENU is comically sloppy. I can only imagine the comments if someone did this in JS, yet because it's emacs? No comments, only downvotes

[danielvaughn]

I'm on the fence about this one, because tools for consumers are a bit different than tools for technologists. Yes UX matters for us as well, but there's a commonly accepted belief that initial-difficulty-of-use is worth the eventual efficiency gains that the tool offers. I've never gotten into Emacs but I believe devs when they say it makes them hyper-productive.