[pjmlp]

> You name it, Emacs can handle it.

- Graphics tooling.

- GUI designer

- Semantic refactoring

- Graphic visualization of CSS modes

- Integration of JavaScript frameworks with code-completion support and two way editing between CSS, HTML and JavaScript code

- Graphical visualization of data structures in debugger

- Graphical support of heap data and threads in debugger

- ...

[alkonaut]

Most important in my book: an IDE should be a simple batteries included experience. Something tweakable like eclipse or emacs is fine, but I want it tweaked. I don't want to tell my editor where it can find my compiler or what language I'm using. I want to install, type in a syntax highlighted and auto-completed hello world program, and have it run. Plenty of IDE's do this, for example variations of eclipse/netbeans/idea and of course VS.

[TeMPOraL]

I agree. Emacs was historically a little weak on that side; if there are language-specific preconfigured bundles, they're usually out of date.

Fortunately, with the recent inclusion of a decent module manager in Emacs 24, one could hope people will start making preconfigured Emacs "distros" for particular use cases.

[TeMPOraL]

- Graphics tooling - to some extent, yes. You can even edit videos with Emacs.

- GUI designer - not really, but you're likely to be using a framework-specific GUI builder anyway. Then again, if you really wanted it, you could probably twist the artist-mode hard enough to draw mockups in it and save them as XML descriptions.

- Semantic refactoring - CEDET.

- Graphic visualization of CSS modes - Rainbow Mode, or just open a frikkin' browser.

- Integration of JavaScript frameworks with code-completion support and two way editing between CSS, HTML and JavaScript code - not sure what you mean by "two-way editing" here, but you have code completion, CSS/HTML/JS support, and - as I mentioned - a way to push all of this back and forth between Emacs and a browser.

- Graphical visualization of data structures in debugger - depending on how complex you want to be, but for most practical uses the answer is "yes, Emacs handles it"

- Graphical support of heap data and threads in debugger - again, if by "graphical support" you mean trees, not bubble-graphs and pretty pictures, then yes

- ... - type it up, M-x eval buffer, and carry on.

[pjmlp]

I have been an avid Emacs user between 1996 and 2005 when working on UNIX systems. At the same time, I have used lots of different IDEs across multiple OS and languages, starting with Turbo Pascal 4.0.

In no way is Emacs a match for what modern IDEs are capable of.

Your list just shows lack of understanding in what they are capable of.

Nowadays Emacs is just when I cannot make use of an IDE.

[TeMPOraL]

It's been almost ten years from 2005. Have you looked at Emacs since then? It's still being developed and improved.

Anyway; you asked if Emacs can handle this and that, I provided examples. I don't see how my list reflects on any kind of understanding apart from knowing my package ecosystem and how to use Google.

Would you mind sharing what do you think in particular sucks at Emacs compared to an IDE you use, that you have tested on both to come to this conclusion?