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by scombridae 1420 days ago
Emacs won't disappear... the way every "more intuitive" editor will

Adoption rates of intuitive IDEA and Visual Studio, while not quite as old, have long pushed Emacs into niche territory. Emacs hasn't disappeared only in the sense any venerable UNIX utility hasn't.
4 comments
tom_ 1420 days ago
Is this supposed to be some kind of ding? Because it is (if I may be so bold) not a very good one. Like, look at dd! We're still stuck with that stupid shit after nearly 50 years. It doesn't even have POSIX-style command line arguments! 50 years.

"hasn't disappeared only in the sense any venerable UNIX utility hasn't"? "Only" doing a lot of work here! That's the most reassuring "only" I've read all day. I bet you a pound people will still be using Emacs in 2050.

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ataylor284_ 1420 days ago
When I started doing Java, everyone else was using JBuilder. Then Eclipse came along, and JBuilder died. Next, IDEA showed up, and Eclipse started to whither. Don't get me wrong, IDEA is great but IDEs do come and go, and are subject to the fortunes of the company that pushes development.

Though all of that, I have used GNU Emacs, definitely an unconventional choice for Java development. I've occasionally tried the leading IDE, and while it's sometimes been helpful to ramp up on new projects with tools shared with other teammates, the productivity of a comfortable and customized Emacs environment has always drawn me back.

In 10 years, IDEA and VS may or may not be still widespread, but Emacs will definitely still have its niche.

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nequo 1420 days ago
Perhaps, but Atom has already disappeared, and VS Code might, too.

Not to say that you should use Emacs instead of VS Code or anything else. Just that Emacs not disappearing means that your investment to learn it and set it up is more likely to keep yielding returns.

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scombridae 1420 days ago
Atom has already disappeared

If existence is tantamount to corporate sponsorship, then GNU Emacs never existed. It'd take one or two graybeards with too much free time to sustain Atom. Just look at the current Emacs maintainers.

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User23 1420 days ago
> Just look at the current Emacs maintainers.

What do you mean by this? The emacs-devel list looks like a smart and generally well run project.

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hvis 1419 days ago
> It'd take one or two graybeards with too much free time to sustain Atom.

Perhaps. Does Atom have said graybeards? The motivated ones are hard to come by.

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jasonfarnon 1420 days ago
It can be in niche territory and OPs point still stands that it's the only one to stick around. The popular interfaces are a revolving door.
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