[HN Gopher] Emacs Timeline
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Emacs Timeline
        
       Author : susam
       Score  : 76 points
       Date   : 2022-07-31 10:56 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (emacs.brause.cc)
 (TXT) w3m dump (emacs.brause.cc)
        
       | mcbuilder wrote:
       | Emacs first public release is as old as I am. It seems that
       | development on GNU Emacs is regaining momentum. I'm glad to be
       | using an editor that's probably going to be around for the rest
       | of my life time.
        
         | dan-robertson wrote:
         | GNU Emacs development does indeed seem to have picked up the
         | pace in the last 5-10 years. And the package archives and
         | development community outside of people working on the core
         | editor seems super vibrant. See, eg, magit,
         | helm/ivy/vertico/..., spacemacs/doom, paredit, eglot, ...
        
       | sys_64738 wrote:
       | No mention of derivatives like Micro Emacs for the Amiga circa.
       | 1985.
        
       | juice_bus wrote:
       | Has anyone here 'adapted' to Emacs after starting out with Visual
       | Studio / Code / etc? I have tried multiple times over the years
       | to give it a shot but it hasn't stuck.
        
         | lotw_dot_site wrote:
         | Isn't the reason why people gravitate to standard utilities
         | such as emacs and vim largely _because_ they simply can 't cope
         | with all of the shiny graphical bloat while they are trying to
         | wrack their brains coming up with some new kind of thing or
         | another? I use vim, and I've spent countless hours of my life
         | trying to write a new kind of vim with it. (See:
         | https://lotw.site/shell, then enter "import fs && vim" at the
         | prompt.)
        
           | umanwizard wrote:
           | Modern GNU Emacs isn't really comparable to vim in this
           | respect, since people use it with tons of bells and whistles.
           | Emacs is probably better described as a "framework for
           | building custom IDEs" than as a "text editor". Yes, vim
           | plugins exist but my impression is that using stock vim with
           | no plugins and only a bit of configuration is much more
           | mainstream than doing a similar thing with emacs.
           | 
           | I'm sure people are out there who just use stock emacs, but
           | I'm not sure why you would do so instead of using something
           | simple like nano.
        
           | _ph_ wrote:
           | I don't mind a good IDE. But that only "works" well, as long
           | as you are working in one single language, day in and out.
           | There have been such times in my life and I was happy with
           | the corresponding IDE (unless it itself was just crap :p).
           | But if you are not so focussed, jumping between languages
           | quicker, or just if you don't have a good IDE at hand for
           | your language, Emacs is your friend :).
        
             | medstrom wrote:
             | These days there is the similarly general-purpose VSCode
             | and competitors, so this particular angle holds no water.
        
               | _ph_ wrote:
               | Sorry, first you should consider your language. "Holds no
               | water" is way to strong, especially as it is absolutely
               | wrong. VSCode is nice but a far cry from the abilities of
               | Emacs. And while it does somewhat support a lot of
               | languages, setting it up for a new language is way more
               | work implementing a complex protocol compared to Emacs.
               | 
               | Maybe it has become better, but for a while I looked into
               | it as it was popular for Go editing. Unfortunately, there
               | is way to much predetermined flow built in, so Emacs
               | makes it the way better Go editor for me. Back then,
               | there was even no key binding for compiling the current
               | file.
               | 
               | And as I said, the language coverage is much worse than
               | Emacs, as it is its hackability.
        
               | comfypotato wrote:
               | To set the tone of my reply: I'm an every-day-all-day
               | Emacs user. I greatly enjoy configuring my Emacs. Your
               | point about "hackability" is spot on. That being said, I
               | think the language "holds no water" is reasonable here.
               | It sounds like you haven't used VSCode in a while. (As a
               | lightweight IDE) it has completely seamless integration
               | with every popular language.
        
         | DMell wrote:
         | I have tried multiple times but always run into a wall feeling
         | as if my learning is hindered by also having to learn my tools.
         | 
         | Im just so comfortable in a JetBrains IDE.
        
         | outworlder wrote:
         | I 'adapted' before VSCode was a thing (we had Sublime,
         | Textmate, etc).
         | 
         | The main issue for most people is that the standard install is
         | pretty barebones in terms of ergonomic enhancements. Sure, the
         | default Emacs install has _way_ more functionality than a
         | VSCode install full of plugins. But it won't have simple things
         | like fuzzy search for commands, buffers, etc.
         | 
         | I'd suggest looking into Spacemacs, or Doom Emacs if you are
         | comfortable with VI. Those will have sane defaults and cut down
         | on the amount of script snippets you have to add considerably.
        
         | ubermonkey wrote:
         | Yeah, I came to it late -- actually, I came to it _after_ my
         | jobs stopped being  "sling code all day."
         | 
         | What brought me to it was Orgmode. I'd TRIED to use emacs
         | before, 20 years ago, in my LAMP-stack days, but it was too
         | easy to use more modern editors (for me, on a Mac, this was a
         | mix of BBEdit and TextMate). The learning curve in emacs is
         | intense.
         | 
         | Then years later, I got sick of the existing to-do software I
         | was using. I changed jobs into a MUCH busier one, and the David
         | Allen / GTD tools like Omnifocus just weren't working for me. I
         | realized what I really really needed was the ability to take
         | notes and intersperse to-do items in the text, and then have
         | some tool that would look at my notes files and show me a
         | dynamic view of the to-dos coming up (or overdue).
         | 
         | I mentioned this desire to a friend, and he said, in so many
         | words, "boy do I have some good news for you, because that
         | exactly describes orgmode."
         | 
         | In adopting orgmode, I find myself using emacs for other tasks,
         | too, including whatever generic coding I end up doing now where
         | it's reasonable to do so (ie, not vba and not interacting with
         | MS SQL Server).
        
         | lkfsfldkjfslk wrote:
         | I think people who stick with it tend to be people who see it
         | as a hobby. If you're just looking to get stuff done VS Code or
         | JetBrains will get you up and running way faster than Emacs,
         | with similar productivity. I stick with Emacs because it's so
         | configurable it can be exactly the way I want it, which I
         | haven't found in other editors.
        
           | sedeki wrote:
           | Sure Emacs is endlessly configurable. But it is too clunky
           | for my taste.
           | 
           | I realize this is sort of like complaining about trivial code
           | style preferences in a code review, rather than looking at
           | what the code at hand is actually doing.
           | 
           | But Emacs just feels too... Old-school. Not in a cool way,
           | but rather in a boring way.
           | 
           | I wish I "figured out" Emacs though.
        
             | wolpoli wrote:
             | Growing up with Windows GUI, I too found many concepts in
             | Emacs are just too different and "old-school".
             | 
             | I wonder if there is an opportunity for a modern, open-
             | source, extendable, programmable text editing environment
             | that uses CUA, Tabs instead of Buffers, and Javascript
             | instead of LISP. Or if it's already too late because VS
             | Code has already taken over the modern, open-source, and
             | extendable parts already?
        
         | kagevf wrote:
         | Using different tools for different types of work / programming
         | is an option.
         | 
         | I started using emacs almost 3 years ago for org mode; a few
         | months later I started programming in Common Lisp. Emacs works
         | very well for those 2 use cases, and I feel like I've adapted
         | well-enough. I still use Visual Studio for C#, and everything
         | else is either vim or vim key-bindings.
        
           | jsyolo wrote:
           | Emacs with evil mode?
        
         | kqr wrote:
         | I have, but it took a very long time. For the most common
         | operations, you can get Emacs to be as convenient as whatever
         | you're coming from, but it takes quite a bit of work and
         | learning if you're new to it. When I transitioned, LSP wasn't a
         | thing either so it had to be configured fresh for every
         | language, pretty much.
         | 
         | What makes it worth it for me is that
         | 
         | (a) Once configured properly, I have a uniform interface to
         | files, regardless of what sort of files they are. This save me
         | time and mental effort.
         | 
         | (b) Emacs is extremely hackable in ways you won't understand
         | for the first year or two, at least. If there's something about
         | its behaviour you don't like, you can run a couple of commands
         | and be taken to the relevant parts of the editor (Lisp) source
         | code. Then you can replace that code (or better, write new code
         | that hooks into it dynamically) with whatever you would like
         | instead.
         | 
         | The latter sounds like a nutty thing to desire, and it's very
         | hard to appreciate it without having used it for a while.
        
           | acmdas wrote:
           | Agree wholeheartedly with your (a) and (b), and would add:
           | 
           | (c) Emacs won't disappear after a few years (where "few" can
           | mean decades if your career lasts that long - mine ran from
           | 1967 to 2011 and I still use emacs daily) the way virtually
           | every (or maybe every) "more intuitive" editor/environment
           | will, given time. Your investment in learning it will really
           | pay off.
        
             | scombridae wrote:
             | _Emacs won 't disappear... the way every "more intuitive"
             | editor will_
             | 
             | Adoption rates of intuitive IDEA and Visual Studio, while
             | not quite as old, have long pushed Emacs into niche
             | territory. Emacs hasn't disappeared only in the sense any
             | venerable UNIX utility hasn't.
        
         | p4bl0 wrote:
         | I switched from TextMate to Emacs 15 years ago. Nowadays I'm
         | slowly switching to Kate :).
        
         | mplanchard wrote:
         | Yes, I switched over after using vim for a few years, then
         | JetBrains, then VSCode. Being already familiar with vim
         | keybindings, doom emacs provided a nice on-ramp, much simpler
         | than spacemacs IMO, which I tried a year or two earlier.
         | 
         | For me the key was starting small. Initially I just used emacs
         | for org-mode, then for magit, and then finally for programming.
         | Now I have a hard time imagining using something else.
        
         | fmakunbound wrote:
         | Yeah I adopted it after exploring other languages after
         | learning to program in Turbo Pascal 5. Bit later I started
         | using it for mail and news (Gnus) and other things.
         | 
         | It's a life time tool that grows with you.
        
         | hvis wrote:
         | I've worked with Visual Studio, and Eclipse, and NetBeans for a
         | few years.
         | 
         | Then tried Emacs while learning Clojure, and after a few to and
         | fro, stuck with it.
         | 
         | This was before Visual Studio Code (or Atom) became a thing,
         | though.
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | Kind of, almost by force. I was trying out Linux back in 1995,
         | coming from Windows. Going from Windows to Linux back then was
         | a bit like switching from a brand new economy sedan to one of
         | those cars built out of scrap by Immortan Joe and his War Boys.
         | Everything was so janky and cobbled together, but extremely
         | powerful, it seemed, compared to what you left behind. It would
         | be close to another year before some German Amigaheads put
         | together the first Linux desktop worth taking seriously -- KDE.
         | 
         | So when I programmed on Windows, I used an IDE -- typically
         | Borland C++ or Microsoft Visual C++. When I wanted to program
         | for Linux -- ???
         | 
         | There was no equivalent. I had to use my old-school Unix skills
         | and write the code in a text editor, then use the compiler and
         | make to put it all together in an executable. I started with --
         | pico, was it? But a friend told me Emacs was really great and
         | _the_ editor to use if you 're a programmer. I'd heard the name
         | Emacs from Micro Emacs on the Amiga, but apparently this was
         | big boy Emacs.
         | 
         | It came with Slackware, so I fired it up. And holy crap. It
         | seemed unspeakably powerful and live-codable. I would only get
         | a sense for its true power over years of working with it -- to
         | code, to write HTML pages and stories. It had a web browser,
         | email client, and IRC client. It had _games_! All written in
         | Emacs Lisp. Blew my damn mind at the time.
         | 
         | The skill ceiling for Emacs is tremendously high, it's not
         | something you will pick up easily. But for me it was well worth
         | learning. I won't call myself proficient in it, but I can do
         | things with it and shape it to my exact needs in ways Visual
         | Studio (Code) can't match, live, as I use it. To me it's worth
         | its weight in gold.
        
         | afry1 wrote:
         | I have indeed! This is my first year of using Emacs. Previously
         | I was using VS Code, and before that Atom, and before that
         | Sublime.
         | 
         | Two things which have contributed to my success: - The System
         | Crafters YT channel. David has an amazing tutorial series where
         | you build a config file from scratch. I followed along, and it
         | both gave me a very functional Emacs config and taught me
         | enough about Emacs to get out of trouble when I goof up:
         | https://www.youtube.com/c/SystemCrafters - Not being afraid to
         | go back to other editors/IDEs for a while, or even rely on
         | other editors for some tasks. Learning Emacs is tough enough as
         | it is, but when you're a working programmer and you're on the
         | clock for getting something done, it's extra tough to tolerate
         | the slowdown from all those 1000 little things that you haven't
         | gotten comfortable with, or features which were present in your
         | previous editor but aren't yet present in your Emacs config. In
         | past lives I would have just rage-quit and given up on Emacs,
         | but I tried to be gentle with myself this time and take breaks
         | from Emacs when I need to, and it has been a winning strategy.
         | 
         | Never going back.
        
         | _ph_ wrote:
         | I have. I had used various IDEs, from Turbo Pascal over Borland
         | C++ and Visuaol Basic, the last being jBuilder. When Borland
         | refused to give me an upgrade deal to the next version after I
         | had bought jBuilder 1.0, I had enough anger to really dig into
         | emacs and to learn to use it and the back then really great JDE
         | package for Java development. Since then I have mostly stuck to
         | Emacs for my coding. Sometimes I still would use an IDE, for
         | Java coding you really can't avoid intelliJ :), but most of the
         | time it is just Emacs.
         | 
         | Once you have the keybindings in your brain, you will struggle
         | with other editors. And the main advantage of Emacs for me is:
         | I can edit really everything editable, and will find a nice
         | environment. Most IDEs are limited one or few languages and
         | outside of that, you are out of luck.
         | 
         | Having support for everything I edit and seamlessly between
         | languages, many of which don't have "IDEs", ist hard to beat. I
         | avoid Java these days, but take SLIME as a really great Common
         | Lisp IDE, or from quite early on good Go support, and many
         | more. And in all of the modes, C-c C-c will either compile the
         | file or evaluate the function under the cursor. And I can edit
         | all those languages not only with the same tool, but within the
         | same session. In one Emacs, you can edit them all side-by-side.
        
         | truncate wrote:
         | I learned programming in various IDEs. Visual C++ 6,
         | Code::Blocks etc ... Moved to Vim somehow when learning Linux,
         | and eventually Emacs because I was programming a lot in Racket
         | and it was just nicer there. This all predates Visual Studio
         | Code.
         | 
         | The thing is you won't feel any benefit of using Vim/Emacs over
         | Visual Studio Code unless you put LOT OF TIME configuring it. I
         | didn't use any of the configuration framework like Spacemacs,
         | and built my config over the years (adapted bunch of stuff from
         | Centaur Emacs as it was super simple to copy things from
         | there). But once you get it, it almost feels like an extension
         | of you which I never feel on the other IDEs. And now with LSP
         | clients on Emacs, bunch of basic things for programmning almost
         | work out of box, it has never been easier.
         | 
         | I've a feeling you can probably get there by configuring Visual
         | Studio Code too, but it does feel as inviting to be hacked as
         | say Emacs.
        
           | p4bl0 wrote:
           | > unless you put LOT OF TIME configuring it
           | 
           | I don't think this is true. What is true is that by putting a
           | lot of time into fine tuning your own Emacs you learn to
           | master Emacs.
           | 
           | But then, once you master it, you can use it almost vanilla,
           | and still be as efficient and productive.
           | 
           | I've spent years customizing my init.el file and even wrote
           | minor and major modes and a few custom packages. At some
           | point my Emacs was loading almost a thousand lines of
           | personal elisp code.
           | 
           | Then I decided to try to slim down my config and started
           | fresh. I used M-x customize for a few things (I did
           | everything manually before) and have a small -- maybe 20
           | lines? -- init.el file and that's it.
           | 
           | It still rocks and I'm still very proficient with it.
           | 
           | Now I'm trying to go further and switching to Kate. It's a
           | fun ride but a bit hard at time and has lead be to become a
           | small contributor to the project to improve both Kate and the
           | underlying KTextEditor :). I'm kind of rediscovering the fun
           | I had configuring my Emacs 15 years back ^^.
        
             | truncate wrote:
             | Isn't fine tuning ~= spending time configuring? How much
             | configuration and fine tuning you need is subjective. I
             | personally don't like using it vanilla, particularly if I'm
             | working on a big codebase.
             | 
             | I love all those fancy modes and they are all part of my
             | workflow -- ivy, ivy-ripgrep , magit, lsp (for
             | autocompletion, code navigation), diff-highlight,
             | perspective, swiper, flycheck, projectile etc etc. I like
             | to figure out keybindings, that work for me over long term.
             | You also don't want to make it feel bloated, overwhelming,
             | and slow meanwhile. Without all these, it is just good for
             | doing quick edits.
             | 
             | In the end I want to be productive with the codebases I
             | work with. There was a time, pre-LSP and native-comp when
             | Emacs was getting super slow, and I was ready to jump ship
             | to VSCode, plainly because I wasn't feeling
             | productive/efficient with Emacs anymore.
             | 
             | Edit: to give further context. When you install LSP, it may
             | or may not be as per your taste. For me, I don't like bunch
             | of UI stuff it adds like breadcrumbs, doc popups, sidebars.
             | So you'd spend sometime finding the right config to
             | disable. Now multiply this with bunch of other packages you
             | like, figuring out right set of keybindings that are
             | intuitive and easy, it all takes a bit of time IMO.
        
           | _ph_ wrote:
           | I have to disagree with this a bit. I try to keep my emacs
           | file pretty minimal, like 20 lines of customizations like
           | fonts and a few flags, the rest mostly just requiring
           | additional packages and a very few custom functions.
        
         | gamekathu wrote:
         | Yes, it is my second year running with Emacs after ditching
         | VSCode. While I miss the remote editing capability of VSCode,
         | working on a shared HPC cluster made me finally use Emacs.
         | Nowadays, I have shifted most of my workflows in Emacs,
         | especially using Org mode, and I believe it should stick for
         | the next several years.
        
           | bryanlarsen wrote:
           | Emacs has TRAMP for remote editing, although I'm not sure how
           | that compares to VSCode's capability.
        
             | karthink wrote:
             | > I'm not sure how that compares to VSCode's capability.
             | 
             | Not favorably. Perhaps there's a magic combination of SSH
             | and Tramp settings that can make the experience lag free,
             | but I can't find it. VSCode's remote editing was setup-free
             | and close to seamless when I tried it.
             | 
             | Tramp has support for many, many more remote protocols
             | though.
        
               | dan-robertson wrote:
               | I suspect good ssh support is just so much more necessary
               | for vscode than it was for Emacs when tramp was
               | developed. I do think tramp was also full of generality
               | towards things that are very uncommon these days (various
               | different protocols, ssh workarounds, baud rates, ...)
        
           | hibbelig wrote:
           | How does Tramp in Emacs compare to VSCode remote editing?
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | Barrin92 wrote:
         | Yes. I started programming in ~ca 2010 when I went to uni and
         | we mostly programmed in Java with Netbeans, so using Emacs
         | wasn't exactly natural for me. The worst thing is the
         | keybindings which don't conform remotely to anything modern.
         | 
         | I think the biggest issue is that people are simply intimidated
         | by learning Emacs from the bottom up _themselves_. It has an
         | incredibly extensive tutorial baked in. It 's almost completely
         | self-referential which distinguishes it from most stuff people
         | engage with today. And that's the crucial part I think because
         | if you start copying other people's configs around or just ask
         | stackoverflow I think you're not going to have a good time.
         | Emacs for me was the first complex thing where I basically
         | could have turned the internet off and just look at it myself.
         | 
         | I honestly credit Emacs with no less than curing me of a weird
         | learned helplessness I got from my awful education that threw
         | tools at me where I had no hope of understanding what they do.
        
           | digdugdirk wrote:
           | Interesting perspective. What were you doing during the
           | initial semi-helpless "why-does-this-hurt-so-much" phase of
           | your emacs journey?
           | 
           | I find that people who take a slower long-term approach tend
           | to be the ones that have a good experience. The moment
           | someone really "needs" to get something done with emacs is
           | usually when they shelve it for something more intuitive or
           | more powerful out of the box.
        
         | WoodenChair wrote:
         | I only tried once about 15 years ago (from GUI IDEs/editors)
         | and it didn't appeal to me. Now with GitHub Copilot and the
         | like I think the use of command-line editors will further
         | diminish for generalized programming tasks, although they will
         | always have a place in system administration.
        
           | mplanchard wrote:
           | Realistically, there's not much emacs can't do, including
           | integrating with copilot[1]. I think it's niche isn't system
           | administration, but people who have the time, energy, and
           | interest to really invest in their tools. Its configurability
           | is second to none, and it's not going anywhere. Emacs will
           | still be around long after vscode is forgotten, and it's nice
           | to know that the time I spend learning my editor won't go to
           | waste when some big corp decides to up and leave, or the
           | programming zeitgeist moves on to the shiny new thing.
           | 
           | [1]: https://github.com/zerolfx/copilot.el
        
             | scombridae wrote:
             | _Emacs will still be around long after vscode is forgotten_
             | 
             | Neither antecedent (vscode dies) nor consequent (emacs
             | survives) is at all assured.
        
               | umanwizard wrote:
               | Nothing lasts forever, but Emacs has enough momentum
               | behind it that I'd be shocked if it dies within our
               | lifetime (assuming there's no general collapse of
               | technological civilization, of course). Even if the FSF
               | were to become defunct, enough people care about Emacs
               | and are involved with it that somebody will continue
               | developing it.
               | 
               | VSCode's development is so totally dominated by one
               | company that it's hard to imagine it continuing to go
               | strong if they decided to discontinue it (Cf. the fate of
               | Atom).
        
               | mplanchard wrote:
               | True! I guess there's only one way to find out.
        
               | acmdas wrote:
               | History rather suggests that both antecedents will occur,
               | assured or not. MS isn't known for keeping tools around
               | for decades.
        
               | samatman wrote:
               | Visual C++ turns 30 next February.
               | 
               | So maybe there's an exception for tools with Visual in
               | the name.
               | 
               | And all of Office.
        
         | rayiner wrote:
         | I started with visual studio in the late 1990s. Didn't try
         | Emacs until 2005 when I started using SLIME for Common Lisp.
         | Committed myself to doing some projects in Common Lisp, and
         | insofar as SLIME is head and shoulders better than anything
         | else for that, it forced me to learn the environment.
         | 
         | After leaving programming entirely for a decade I can back to
         | Emacs recently when I discovered pdf-tools and Org mode. Took
         | only a bit of time to get reacclimatize this time. It's all
         | muscle memory. You just have to force yourself to do real work
         | with it so you exercise the muscles.
        
         | Hammershaft wrote:
         | I also bounced off multiple times but have now been happily
         | using it for 2 years. I really reccomend trying Doom Emacs and
         | learning the default VIM modal editing. Doom comes with sane
         | defaults and very simple configuration presets for every
         | language out of the box. Learning modal editing pays off
         | quickly.
         | 
         | https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | dannyobrien wrote:
         | To fail to answer your question, I've been a vim (then neovim)
         | user for twenty years or so, and moved to emacs in the last
         | couple of years.(initially because of a desire to have a
         | searchable/configurable email client, then I stayed because of
         | org-mode.).
         | 
         | I did not move from Code -- but I had an interesting
         | interaction with my son recently, who is a Code user. I was
         | showing him my org-agenda set up. He noted that it was weird to
         | organize your life in the app you use to edit code. I do see
         | his point!
        
           | Jtsummers wrote:
           | > He noted that it was weird to organize your life in the app
           | you use to edit code. I do see his point!
           | 
           | Only if you think of it as an "app", which often carries a
           | connotation of singular or narrowly constrained purpose. I
           | open an app to get directions, I open an app to see my email,
           | I open an app to send a message, I open an app to check my
           | grocery list.
           | 
           | Emacs isn't an _app_ , it's a system. Is it also weird that
           | we use the same systems (Linux, Windows, macOS) to code and
           | organize our lives and to host a variety of limited purpose
           | apps?
        
           | eftychis wrote:
           | I like to see this as, you write code in/via the tool you
           | trust to organize your life.
           | 
           | But I do like your son's is a good perspective to think upon
           | -- and all claims/questions deducing from it.
        
           | jcpst wrote:
           | Mhm, evil and org-mode brought me to emacs. I generate
           | documentation, presentations, embed little scripts to
           | transform org-tables, and use ledger-mode. I don't even use
           | it for coding projects anymore.
        
         | dan-robertson wrote:
         | I used to use visual studio and I think I maybe also learned
         | some very basic vim (arrow keys, i, dd, p, :wq) to do some
         | remote sysadmin type things. I wanted to learn Common Lisp
         | which, at the time, meant having to learn Emacs too. And then I
         | was more interested in things outside of windows and Emacs
         | stuck. (Also the calculator in it is amazing).
         | 
         | Funnily, I also work for a company where many people use Emacs
         | (it was the only editor with good support for our tools for a
         | long time - you can even order lunch from it - new hires were
         | encouraged to use it, even non-software engineers when they
         | needed to interact with the Linux side of things) which I think
         | is pretty uncommon. There was definitely a time 10 years or so
         | ago when vim seemed to have massive popularity online and
         | everything else seemed to fly under the radar.
        
       | intrasight wrote:
       | I started with Gosmacs back in 1984 at CMU. Time does fly.
        
         | caboteria wrote:
         | I'm curious whether you are still an emacs user. I'm a relative
         | emacs noob, having started using it around the turn of the
         | century, and I can't imagine how much time I would have wasted
         | learning the editor of the moment over and over.
        
           | dilap wrote:
           | Otoh, how much time have you wasted customizing your editor?
           | I know it's a lot for me! :-)
           | 
           | It's sort of a palette cleanser. "Ehhh, I don't feel like
           | working what I'm supposed to be working on, I think there's
           | this urgent emacs feature I should figure out..."
        
         | convolvatron wrote:
         | I started with zmacs in '87. it seemed so old and such an
         | established part of the canon even then - I can hardly believe
         | it was just a baby, and that I'm still using it as a daily
         | driver 35 years later.
        
       | ordu wrote:
       | Nice. But `content-type: text/plain` makes html to be shown as a
       | text. Not a big difference, because mostly it is a one big `pre`,
       | but nevertheless.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | We've changed the URL from
         | https://depp.brause.cc/brause.cc/emacs/timeline.html and it
         | seems to be working now.
        
       | gumby wrote:
       | I think the first entry should include Eugene Cicarelli's TECO
       | init file which was the base of the others.
       | 
       | The 0th entry should be the addition of "^R MODE" to TECO, which
       | was the interactive display editing mode for what was previously
       | just a text mode editor like Multics qed or its descendant,
       | Unix's ed. I believe ^R mode (an MIT extension) was around '75.
       | 
       | But this is second hand as I was quite late to the party, not
       | encountering Emacs until 1978.
        
         | ajross wrote:
         | Agreed. Does anyone know if there are sources retained anywhere
         | for any of that stuff?
         | 
         | IIRC I went digging around the simh ITS packages (hard to do
         | since it's an alien filesystem image, not exactly a consumable
         | tarball) and couldn't find it.
        
       | forgotpwd16 wrote:
       | Although updated in GNU Emacs side, SXEmacs shows recent version
       | to be 22.1.16 (06-may-16) whereas 22.1.17 (02-sep-20) has been
       | released.
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-03 23:00 UTC)