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by skydhash 523 days ago
> I'm arguing that it's successful because any of its users can trivially hack something on top of it and distribute it

Emacs and Vim are way easier to extend.

1 comments

Vimscript and elisp suck, but Lua isn't bad despite being 1-indexed.

But in terms of access, JS wins hands down.

You may not like the languages, but it's way easier to add a new feature to these editors than doing the same in VSC. Especially extending a plugin.
I think with out a working definition of "easy/hard" it's all hand-waving.

From a documentation, examples, accessibility, tooling, and number of people you can get help from, JS wins.

What other metrics should we consider when comparing, API complexity, LOC for average plugins, google results?

I think if we had a reasonable baseline for comparison, it would be helpful.

> From a documentation, examples, accessibility, tooling, and number of people you can get help from, JS wins

Maybe as a general purpose language, but for this specific comparison (extending editors). Elisp and Emacs wins. Vimscript is not the best plugin language, but the interation process is way better than VSC.