Why Isn't Emacs More Popular?

there has been a debate going on in the emacs community for a few months now that emacs really lags behind so many other text editors and popularity despite the fact that emacs is such a fantastic and unique piece of software maybe one of the most powerful pieces of software ever designed why isn't emags more popular why does vm for example probably have 10 times the users that emacs does and i'm certain that them probably does have at least 10 times the users of emacs why is that why do text editors like vs code and sublime text probably have 100 times the users of the max and this has been brought up within the emacs community and they're starting to debate it they're wondering is it time to maybe make some changes with emacs redesign a few things maybe think about coming out with better defaults something that's more attractive more appealing to the new user more appealing to the masses so what got me thinking about this today was i came across this article over at lwn.net this is by jonathan corbett he mentions that the emacs community is starting to go over this discussion again and the reason he says again is because again this has been going on for a few months because originally back in may there was a thread started within the emacs community about some of the defaults and maybe changing some things to again bring emacs i guess into the 21st century to make it more modern when we talk about making it look more modern let me switch to the desktop here and i'm going to launch a terminal i'm going to launch emacs with just a plain vanilla configuration this is what emacs looks like out of the box you know just a white background and some dark text it's usually black text the comments are red and you know these icons these are not the default icons i'm using the breeze icon set the default icons are actually quite unattractive though in vanilla emacs you do have a menu system that's very confusing because it tries to cover most everything you could possibly do in emacs which there's a ton of stuff you can do in emacs and infinite possibilities and it's just tough and then to get any kind of help from information if you read at the bottom it looks like i could type this particular key chord to get some help information about how to use a gnu emacs it's just it's not meant to be for the masses right this is something for power users emacs is supposed to be a blank canvas it's basically an e-lisp environment where you have to write a config file in e-lisp you have to write your own text editor so it's extremely powerful but it's for the extreme power user it's not really meant for everybody some people within the emacs community have put forth these questions like well maybe it's the ui that's the problem for one thing that blinding white background most modern text editors now ship with a dark mode usually on by default but if it's not default they at least have a very easy dark mode to get to very quickly some people have mentioned licensing issues as far as people contributing to emacs maybe holding it back some people have mentioned things like more default plugins plugins that are enabled by default some people have mentioned that hey the key bindings the key chords for emacs are not what most people expect and that's holding it back when somebody's that's used to other text editors especially other text editors in microsoft windows for example they first launch emacs and want to do a copy and paste ctrl c does not copy ctrl v does not paste and some people have put forth that hey just changing those key bindings the copy and paste key bindings could attract more users to emacs i'm not sure if i agree with that the other thing the problem with that is why would emacs which is 40 years old this piece of software is actually 40 year more than 40 years old it dates back why would emacs change its key bindings to mimic what the newer text editors are doing why didn't the new text editors use the key bindings that emacs has been using all along why does emacs need to change to their key bindings so i don't i don't think it's a key binding problem i think the idea that emacs not having a modern interface quote modern interface that that's holding it back i don't know because vim doesn't have a modern interface vim is not a gui application at all so it obviously doesn't have a modern interface you have to run them in the terminal so definitely not a modern interface vim probably has 10 times the users as emacs so the interface you know not being modern that's not holding them back so i don't think it's holding emacs back either so i'm not one of those that think you know just redesigning vmax making everything look pretty is all of a sudden gonna make people use it i don't think that's the problem i think the problem here is that not every piece of software is meant to be popular why do people think that every piece of software out there has to be popular it has to be new user friendly it has to be easy to get into who made that decision because emacs again it's the strange beast because of how it's set up it's a completely blank canvas there's nothing to it at all by default you have to program your own piece of software your own text editor it doesn't even have to be a text editor you can do anything inside of emacs whatever you write in elipse whatever you make emacs do for you you can make it happen but that's not new user friendly right writing your own piece of software is not new user friendly and it never will be but that's okay that's not what emacs is about you know it's a piece of software that requires some technical knowledge some mastery and you can't dumb that down you have to have all of this knowledge to make emacs do what you want to do for you but you can't just give that knowledge to people you just can't give it to them for free right they have to invest the time into it and nothing is given to you you have to earn it really and i know that sounds kind of snobbish elitist but that's the way some things are i think that's the way things are with emacs that's the way other pieces of software like this too vim is very much like this as well it's not just an emax problem i mean vm is more popular than emacs but i think the reason vim is more popular than emacs is because vm is already on most unix-like operating systems anyway vim is already there so more people kind of fall into them where emacs is usually not a default already installed but vim is not easy to get into i don't think linux well let's talk about this i don't think the linux operating system good news linux i don't think that's easy to get into and a lot of people have this same exact debate with linux we need to dumb it down we need to make the install you know super simple and then when the user interface comes up you know the desktop environment it needs to be dumbed down don't give people a whole lot of options just a few big buttons on the screen you know think the gnome interface you know that's that's what we need to give to people because if you give them too much power to do what they want to do you know it will scare them away it'll scare the noob away and he'll go back to windows and maybe they're right but is that such a bad thing i mean i want linux to be more popular i want free software to be more popular but not every piece of free software is meant to be popular and if linux all it ever has is that this two to three percent market share that we currently have that's okay that's that's not a bad thing it doesn't mean linux is bad that it's a bad piece of software it just means linux has two to three percent of the desktop market share that's all that means i don't want to ever see pieces of software like linux or vim or in this case emacs ever fundamentally change what they're doing to appeal to users that probably are not going to use that software anyway no matter the changes they make and if you dumb it down to the point where some of these users would use that piece of software all the users that used to use your software are simply going to leave you so i i don't think that the emacs community i don't understand why they're debating this there's nothing wrong with emacs that's been going on for more than four decades emacs will probably be around another four decades why does it need to be popular i understand you want your pieces of software that you love and that you use on a daily basis to always be there but i don't think emacs is in any danger of development ever ceasing there's too many people involved in it and just because it's not as popular as vs code what does that matter you know it's not a there's too much tribalism when it comes to these pieces of software i don't care how many people i don't care if i'm the only person left on the planet using emacs i'll still use emacs the same thing with linux i don't care if it has two percent market share 20 market share or if just a couple hundred people use it you know if i'm gonna use it it's what i like is what i'm gonna use too many people get wrapped up in the numbers now before i go i want to thank a few special people i want to thank michael gabe corbini and mitchell devon friend arch 5530 akami chuck claudio dylan george kell of devils louis paul scott and willie these guys they are the producers of the show they are my highest-earned patrons over on patreon i want to thank each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen all these names you're seeing on the screen these are all my supporters over on patreon because this channel is supported by you guys the community if you'd like to support my work look for distrotube over on patreon alright guys peace

Channel: DistroTube

Views: 19,831

Rating: 4.8252034 out of 5

Keywords: open source, emacs (software), gnu emacs, software development, emacs tutorial, doom emacs, text editor, vim (software), linux, gnu linux, emacs vs vim, emacs vs vscode, emacs vs atom, emacs vs sublime, free software, user friendly software, make emacs, make emacs look better, make emacs beautiful, make emacs modern, modern ui design, emacs power user, emacs user interface

Id: NCYwVbiV4fw

Length: 10min 9sec (609 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/rgrau]

It's funny to see his videos from 1 year ago till now, how he started being a vim user trying out emacs because part of the audience asked for an emacs test run.

As time goes by, he keeps doing more and more emacs videos, a bit more excited about emacs, and making less naming mistakes on emacs lexicon and trivia, but still saying he prefers vim.

Then, he ditches emacs altogether because bloat and because vim editing is what he likes, and the "do one thing" unix motto.

But after a few weeks he's back on emacs, showing magit, and org, and everything, more and more excited when he talks about emacs.

I loved seeing his evolution, which is something many of us went through. I guess now he's already "one of us".

It's great emacs has these few converts with a lot of reach on youtube. Getting more people into our thing.

[u/fzmad]

But Emacs out of the box doesn't look like emacs -Q. By default it shows the splash screen with links to tutorial, guided tour and the manual.

[u/spudlyo]

I've enjoyed many of DT's vidoes, but I couldn't make it all the way through this one. I didn't like the way he described Emacs as "blank canvas" and the suggestion that you have to "write your own text editor" in Elisp. This makes it sound like you're responsible for coding up all the editor primitives yourself, which couldn't be farther from the truth. I also feel like talk like that could lead some folks to think that Emacs can't do anything out of the box.

But beyond that, this video was just 10 minutes of DT extemporaneously speaking, about how some software isn't for everyone, and how popularity and mass appeal shouldn't always be considered important goals. Not his best content.

[u/Willy_Fred]

Because as a basic editor Emacs isn't anything special, and most people don't need all the bells and whistles. Not hating Emacs, but this is true. VIM has a different take on the text editor than most, so it attracts people who like that.

[u/meatmechdriver]

I get the most grief from coworkers because emacs is 'old', or they've read the xkcd comics etc. that joke about emacs being over bloated. Most of them haven't used emacs at all or opened it once in college and only learned to hit c-x c-c to exit.

[u/ishan9299]

Also watch xah lee's rants.

[u/-xylon]

The Emacs and Vim userbase is the same, but the majority of these users prefer vim because they think emacs is slow (?) and vim is less bloated because "does one thing right". Because the first reason was true in the past, it attracted a bigger userbase and that critical mass helps newcomers to decide for vim (because the bigger the community the easier usually is to find resources for it).

In my case I went Visual Studio -> Emacs -> Spacemacs -> Sublime Text -> Doom emacs -> VSCode -> Spacemacs (not changing lol... except for maybe Doom/Vanilla again if I ever want to do things more my way).

[u/[deleted]]

It's always been the learning curve that's kept me from switching. I have a lot of respect for Emacs and all the cool things I've seen people do with it, but right now I can't justify sitting down and taking the time to become proficient at using and customizing it. Maybe I could try one of the fancy "distributions" like spacemacs.

[u/redback-spider]

I disagree with him mostly about 1 thing, keybindings, no you don't have to cater to MS Notepad audiences and use their shortcuts. Vim shows that you don't need that. But that does not mean that you can have shitty unergonomic keybindings. Vim Keybindings are not perfect, there is also to some degree the Pinky-Problem with vim:

http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/vi_esc_syndrome.html

But a modal mode is generally more productive than a nonmodal mode.

So you have a trade of, a modal system needs some learning curve but afterwards you get more productive and have to press less buttons, and hold less buttons, like Ctrl, and you often can use keys close to your home rows (letters). You don't need key chords.

But what is the philosophy and the advantages of the Emacs keybindings?

1. optimised for physicial keyboards that don't exist anymore:

http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/i/lisp-machine-keyboard-2-left.jpg

Ctrl and alt was basically shifted Escape was bigger and closser to the home row.

Now compare 1 example copy 1 line:

Windows / notepad: Pos1 + shift-end + Ctrl-c

Vim : yy

Emacs: C-S-backspace + C-y

Not only is it weird to first have to cut /kill the line and then paste/ yank it, but it's not much better than windows shortcuts, and if it's not better than windows shortcuts, why deviate and make it harder for beginners, I get that you don't have to cater to beginners if that has a big price but what is the price? Both are shitty unergonomic shortuts.

But this basic editing shortcuts are not the worst, the really messed up thing about the system is this endless C-x C-c C-t C-y 5 shortcuts. Give me a break.

The argument is often rememberability, so this t stands then maybe for some command with that starts with the letter t, but A are keychords (holding keys) horrible for your hands, especially in bad positions like the Ctrl key where you use the weakest finger spread it and then hold the key, also typnig C-x C-c just to prefix a mode specific shortcut is such a "verbose" or unergonomic way and creates without any need very long shortcuts, just not limiting all commands to C-x and C-c as prefix would create much much more producitive shortcuts.

So Emacs is meant tho have a producitive environment, modal keybindings are more productive so why not use it by default, or if that is absolutely not acceptable by people activate cua-mode by default, that would still be better than this crap 1980 keyboard specific shortcuts, that were written for different keyboard.

It's nearly like somebody took the task "let's find the most unergonomic shortcuts that could be possible" and a natural result would be emacs shortcuts.

Now I could say I can help myself with hacking shit together, yeah but even with my xah-fly-keys there I have to manually reconfigure a ton to get any new mode even emacs internal modes usable, like org-agenda, magit, gnus, calc all needs lots of tweeking to make it usable.

And if keybindings literally make people sick and give em RSI:

https://postlight.com/insights/protect-the-pinky-an-rsi-sufferers-story

you maybe should reconsider them, maybe not risks thousends of people health should have a higher responsibility in software projects than writing new Code of Conducts so that nobody give unwanted virtual hugs...

Btw the copy-line question is even so complicated in emacs that there is a stackoverflow article about it:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/88399/how-do-i-duplicate-a-whole-line-in-emacs

And the top voted solution is this horrible shortcut:

C-a C-SPACE C-n M-w C-y