Re: Really dumb LISP question.

Paul Donnelly wrote:
Tetrahedral Quartz <t.quartz@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

Paul Donnelly wrote:
Such as a REPL, or another source file?
Or a navigation aid.

It's a clean interface. Very little screen space is wasted by things
that aren't what I'm working on, and everything takes place in buffers,
which largely use a consistent set of commands. Emacs isn't my perfect
environment, but it's got the right design principles. The kind of
design that produces one of your “modern” IDEs is just insanity, based
on habit rather than clear thinking. Of *course* toolbars and tabs and
menus and tree views and panes and panes and panes are the way to make a
program. That's how everyone else does it, right?
It is if your users prefer to be able to see where they are and where
they're going/can go. If they prefer flying on instruments only,
esp. in a dense fog bank near terrain, then I guess emacs is for
them. :)

If their code is a dense fog bank near terrain, I think they have bigger
problems then their choice of text editor!

I don't think he meant the code was a dense fog bank near terrain. I think he meant the code was the terrain, and having to use instruments in a dense fog bank is what using a text editor instead of an ide is like. My own metaphor would probably have been looking at the codebase through a keyhole with no way to see (let alone navigate using) an overview, but it really amounts to expressing the same feeling in different ways.

Even keeping a dired buffer on the side emacs makes me feel like I can see the trees, but I can't see the forest. Especially when I work on java projects, because of all the different packages and java mandating a different directory for each one. Using a normal IDE lets me have a visual tree of the project's sources at left, and I can find things in it very very quickly, much quicker than by messing around in an emacs dired buffer, or typing in paths directly and possibly making a mistake doing so. With anything OO it's even better since a normal IDE can have that left pane show a class hierarchy instead, or similarly. It's a browser optimized for finding parts of a code base instead of a browser merely optimized for the more generic case of finding files on a filesystem.

So my preference is for a regular old IDE, and I use emacs (or, yuck, maybe even resort to vim) only if I have to remote edit over ssh for some reason.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: effective emacs
    ... Emacs deals pretty well with proportional fonts in general. ... a few commands, and to eliminate most hotkeys altogether. ... some point of time, hotkey sequences get ingrained, and then they are ... were built on top of a more flexible buffer type. ...
    (comp.emacs)
  • Re: IDE for C++: KDevelop vs Emacs vs Other
    ... > via Emacs's simpler interface. ... You're using Emacs as an IDE, ... In fact, Prolog *always* seemed easier and more, well, ...
    (comp.os.linux.development.apps)
  • Re: Great SWT Program
    ... And the emacs term "buffer" is not identical to this. ... Emacs generally doesn't care about your own standard. ... launching "flashlight" is still carrying a concealed gun. ...
    (comp.lang.java.programmer)
  • Re: Is there a way to do this?
    ... in the emacs group, because it involves Lisp). ... another emacs buffer to save it for ... I know emacs can access the lisp symbol table through slime ... (defun foo () ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Great SWT Program
    ... functionality I'll use a *real* IDE like Eclipse. ... emacs, but eclipse is also a vastly superior IDE with, particularly, a ... then I don't need the app to be able to do ... Running it 1000 times in a loop makes this especially visible. ...
    (comp.lang.java.programmer)