[lmedinas]

I love Emacs (it was my main editor in the last 20 years) but i can't justify anymore to use it due to lack of modern feature, ease of use and maintenance of the .emacs files. Maybe i'm getting too old to constant exercise my memory or to tinker configuration files. Nowadays i just use VSCode and occasionally nvim.

[massysett]

You can use M-x customize to pick configuration options from a menu.

[derekzhouzhen]

> maintenance of the .emacs files

What maintenance? I have not changed a single line of my .emacs file for 3 years.

[rurban]

I have to admit, I added a couple of lines since 1995. About 10 or so

[lmedinas]

if your .emacs has 10 LOC it makes it definitely easy. My .emacs is ±360 LOC.

[rvdginste]

I am a long-time Emacs user and used to maintain my own config, but I switched to Doom Emacs [1] a year ago. Doom Emacs is like a pre-packaged/pre-configured emacs distro. You still need to configure the features that you want to use, but it's a lot easier (and faster) than having to do everything from scratch, and definitely if you already have some emacs background anyway. For me, it makes the newer, more advanced, features more accessible. Since switching, I started to use Emacs more again.

[1] https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs

[lmedinas]

i tried Doom Emacs and the first thing that turned me down was the VI bindings, which i disabled right after install. But yeah it does the whole configuration nightmare more easy to maintain.

[jackcviers3]

Modern features:

1. lsp-mode/eglot

2. package management

3. treesitter grammars

4. Portability - win/linux/mac/unix/android

5. Graphical User Interface - you can browse the web and watch YouTube in Emacs. Customize has buttons, forms, menus.

6. Treemacs/Treeview/speedbar: you know the multipanel view in Intellij or the project explorer in Intellij/vscod? Yeah, that.

7. Actual macros and function definitions, without needing to post them as an extension.

8. Interactive repl.

9. 5 different terminal emulators built-in.

10. Automated fuzzy everything with helm-M-x and helm. Exactly like Command-p in vscode.

11. github, gitlab integration with magit.

12. Copilot, tabnine, and chatGPT integration.

13. Hundreds of themes.

14. We've had shareable, secure remote collaboration for over a decade with wemux.

15. Use any ttf.

16. Mouse editing and command binding.

17. Use every build tool with projectile-compile-project.

18. Refactoring with lsp.

19. Autocompletion and jump to source.

20. Session save and restoration with desktop-save.

21. Slack integration.

22. Debugger with dap-mode.

23. Individual test only runs with dap and avy-lens.

24. blame with.magit-blame.

25. Pixel scrolling.

25. Transparency with seethru.

28. Rest client with variables and session storage (like postman, but free).

29. Browse compressed files as if they are normal directories and save to them.

30. Containerized deployment via flatpak.

31. Docker, docker-compose integration, kubernetes, aws, datadog, Azure integrations...

All of this fits in around 500 lones of copy_paste/cloneable emacs configuration, most of which is use-package declarations. Nary a defun or global-bind-key in sight, and because emacs is a full elisp ide, and it is actually executable code, it's debuggable on launch, unlike myriads of json files.

I'm trying to think of anything else that can possibly be interpreted as 'modern' from a ux standpoint. I certainly can't think of a feature that Intellij has that emacs doesn't that is core to the ide experience. And most of my emacs tools are better than the vscode version of them, at least in terms of invasion into the editor buffer or integration with the editor ux.

The one thing that's not modern is the standard copy and paste commands, but that's super easy to customize. I guess you can't drag and drop buffer frame borders in multiple buffer layouts if you hide scrollbars, and the message buffer isn't resizable...

[shadowgovt]

But vscode has basically all of it out of the box. Maybe after installing one or two extensions, which it recommends for you and you can install via a GUI.

As someone who uses emacs most often: VSCode is shaped a lot more closely to a modern aesthetic by default. If you've been following along with emacs all this time and keep up to date with the latest changes, you can easily accrete the configuration to make your emacs look like a modern tool, but it doesn't start configured that way.

[agumonkey]

postmodern features: [e]lisp metalevel customization

[nequo]

What modern feature is Emacs missing?

[wiz21c]

- fast loading (vscode loads much faster on my computer; specially if I have a lot of open files)

- code "peek" (that little windows is super useful)

- good integration with debugger (again, vscode kills it here). For example: how to look a at a numpy array in emacs (in vscode there's a data viewer for that)

- robust LSP (for example, when I complete a formatting string f"{... on a big file, emacs simply becomes unresponsive for a minute or so (it's much quicker ona powerful computer though); pylance is simply superior on edge cases.

But although I'm a long time emacs user, there's one thngs where VSCode is much better, it's discoverability. I've learned much of what I need in 2-3 weeks, without ever looking at a manual.

Note: I'm a regular emacs user since since about 10 years (I came for the freedom, stayed for the community). I'm using VSCode since about a year.

I'll be happy to ear a way to make my emacs better.

[worthless-trash]

I feel the comment was bait.

[submeta]

In the same boat. Still like it a lot, but I started using VS Code for serious coding. But unpopular opinion here. So expect to get downvoted a lot.

Edit:

The unpopular opinion is to say that one has stopped tinkering with Emacs for hours and started using a tool like VS Code or intelliJ to do actual coding work.

[User23]

IntelliJ is lightyears ahead of VS Code or any other LSP using editor including Emacs for what it’s good at, namely working with Java in complex ways.

I will use IntelliJ or Eclipse over Emacs or VS Code for Java development any day. But having used both VS Code and Doom Emacs for other development, the latter is quicker, more featureful, and more discoverable, just as easy to configure, and more extensible.

[anta40]

I think "tinkering for hours" is overstated. My vim/neovim and emacs setup usually take no less than 30 minutes (including installing favourite plugins/packages). Then I can use them to get my work done.

Well, I'm not that obsessed with tweaking every bits, though. When I'm using vim/emacs, I never intend to configure them into IntelliJ replacement.

[jeltz]

VS Code is extremely popular here do I have no idea what you are talking about.