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by grumpyprole 19 days ago
VSCode is pretty much this. But with typescript instead of Guile. After 30 years of Emacs, I switched .
3 comments

Pfff... it's like my teenage daughter who's never driven a car brags to her friends how Mazda is better than Toyota, because "she switched".

"Using Emacs" means actively reading, writing, evaluating Lisp code. How many packages have you written? If not too many, I'm afraid, you're only "riding it", not "using" it, just like my daughter has been riding in one car and now in a different one.

There's a huge fundamental gap between Emacs and VSCode. In Emacs, the editor is the Lisp runtime. Every piece of the editor is a live Lisp object you can inspect, redefine, and compose at runtime. There's no boundary between "editor" and "extension" - they're all just functions and variables in the same image. VSCode doesn't offer anything remotely close to that.

Without understanding that gap, there's no understanding of what Emacs actually is. There's no "switching" between Emacs and an editor/IDE. "IDE" is a much smaller category than what Emacs actually is. You switched editors while not realizing you gave up something that isn't an editor.

A bit harsh, but 100% on point. THIS is why emacs is fundamentally different to the core of what emacs is vs all other editors - you’re driving a Mazda, but you’re your own mechanics with that Toyota
Heresy! ;)

I would guess you hadn't done as much emacs yak shaving as some of us other emacs users if the switch to VSCode was a simple one

after 30 years you say this? this cannot be serious.