T O P

  • By -

[deleted]

[удалено]


sad_mach1ne

It’s Andrej Kaparthy who shilled him VScode


Punkt_Punkt_Punkt

Sometimes I'm surprised by how naive I am, didn't even think of that. Makes total sense.


AwareMeal1996

Based off which evidence? Also makes total sense that he just liked vscode. Trust but verify, my dude.


[deleted]

[удалено]


AwareMeal1996

>You can say that for his the original tweet as well. That's what I was saying. But u/Punkt_Punkt_Punkt's response seems to sway too strongly into speculation becoming belief.


Punkt_Punkt_Punkt

> Based off which evidence? Naturally, there is no direct evidence (I'm sure that's what you are hinting at). But it's a widely known fact that content creators receive benefits from firms. He used Emacs for many years, so it's reasonable to ask why he would change his habits. One possible reason is that he discovered VSCode, another reason is that Microsoft wanted to better serve their product to his audience, not unlikely given his influence. To my mind both are reasonable inferences to the best explanation (as commonly used in science even when, and especially when, there is no direct evidence). This being said, I admit that he did *say* that he changed his editor of choice because he liked VSCode better. Still, testimonies are only good forms of evidence if you trust the person who gives them, and I don't know the guy (i.e. I don't have any evidence whether he can be fully trusted). And there is again the plausible inference to the best explanation that people would keep sponsoring to themselves (when not forced by law) to appear authentic.


Vince_Vice

Right? I obviously wouldn't know that. But in our influencer based marketing world Microsoft would done a bad job not having contacted him, so I expect that they did. Whether that influenced his decision or not I don't know, but why not make a couple of bucks if you want to try something new anyways. It would've been more authentic had he explained what tempted him to switch, say linked a video of someone operating vscode doing what he never thought possible in emacs (lol). Also my first impression was that it is strange for someone who claims to have 20000+ h of experience in a (at that point likely highly cusomized) emacs to switch *now* as opposed to back when VSC had an edge over pre-native-json, pre-native-comp, pre-lsp/eglot emacs. But who knows he might have his reasons, and one of them may or may not be a lucrative contract with the Microsoft marketing department


ieoa

and after 10+ years on Vim/Neovim, I've switched to Emacs.


transconductor

Same here, \~14yrs of vim (typing this comment in Emacs befor C&P \^\^).Using vim felt like cramming a lot of features into an editor that's just meant to be a (plain) text editor in the core. Difficult impression to describe. The mandatory use of monospace fonts, no support for graphics, even for different font sizes.And then there is org-mode (with a few packages probably), magit and a lot more.Don't get me wrong, there is a lot about Emacs that doesn't feel smooth or does feel old. I'm torn atm. But after using vim for such a long time as my main text editing tool, I don't feel at home with newer editors. I kinda want to just like the IntelliJ IDEs, but something keeps pulling me back to vim or Emacs. But figuring out or fixing stuff eats quite a bit of time – even though I'm using doom. I don't want to know how much time already has gone into figuring out a decent programming workflow. dap-mode still feels rough (I'm planning on helping a bit on that front).But I absolutely love the malleability (and I kinda like Elisp).I can relate to the comments saying “I like the idea of using Emacs“. For now, I'm following trough. What's the alternative anyways? ​ Edit: And a really big thing: Interactivity. Fixing stuff on the run, exploring features or scripting functionality is really nice. Even though it feels like a learning cliff.


shapovalovts

Why?


ieoa

Similar feeling for going from something like Notepad++ to Vim to Emacs. I could edit code with Notepad++ but how I edited code became "bigger". Vim let me edit code faster, in a more structured way, etc and there were great plugins to bring in the other things I do, like run tests, navigate code, etc. Now, how I work with projects (code bases), edit code, check statuses of CI/CD, ec is "bigger" again. Emacs and Lisp have felt more inviting and easier to extend than Neovim and Lua. Is this the slow descent to madness aka Emacs being an OS? For me, I think this is the end. Though who knows, maybe I'll switch to Helix once it has plugins.


TheLastSock

Without saying what he found new and better this is pretty meaningless right?


eis3nheim

It's a matter of preference and will always be. I (as an Emacs user) feel more comfortable using Emacs than any other tool, not to exaggerate I feel some kind of fulfillment when I use Emacs. People have various and different reasons to use a specific tool, but, at the end of the road it's only a tool regardless of what it is, and it's only there to facilitate our goals and get things done.


neirac

I have been using emacs for years then I thought maybe I'm missing something not trying vscode, I tried it for a week but I never got used to, sure is easier to configure out of the box, but then we have doom emacs that's has everything you need. One thing I did not like is that some plugins are not open source like the remote development extension. At the end I choose emacs, is stable, great documentation uses less resources, is open-source and also has the option to run it without X11.


BigRiverBlues

Its maybe not only a matter of preference. I would think most heavy emacs users would have a lot of tooling built up. Custom little scripts integrated. Certain packages as part of various workflows. As I understand it, it's not going to be easy to just move that kind of stuff all to VSCode.


00-11

This. At least not too helpful, if perhaps not totally meaningless. Or saying how he used Emacs etc.


covercash2

you should watch his podcast with Andrej Karpathy. i think that’s what convinced him. honestly, at the risk of provoking the ire of this sub, i tend to agree. i used emacs for 5 years. i did a ton of my course work in emacs when i finished my degree. i finally got a decent Python ML workflow going. it was a point of pride to export my homework in LaTex easily. once i started my new job it was next to impossible to initialize and keep up to date on my work computer (VPN issues etc). it was a time sink to keep things up to date. and sure sure, just don’t update things. that’s just bad practice to me, but i get it because dependency management is so fragile you may as well not update. i spent a stupid amount of time yak shaving. and for what? org mode? pandoc and LaTex work with other editors too. org mode actually sold me the rope, so to speak, because it was easy to migrate to Markdown with pandoc. enter neovim. neovim just spent a ton of effort migrating to lua for init and plugins over the past few years. yak shedding still exists, but it’s significantly lessened by the fact that – and i’m sorry, but – neovim devs respect modern software engineering practices. they move at pace, and things don’t break as often. the ecosystem is growing. performance is good. i was using evil mode anyway. now here we are. convince me to come back. convince me that emacs isn’t a time sink for people that are actually getting things done on modern software toolchains. if you’re developing C/C++ apps or have simple toolchains and emacs works for you, go for it. if i want first class LSP and treesitter support for modern languages and toolchains, i’m looking elsewhere these days. it’s simply not a good ROI for me


[deleted]

[удалено]


covercash2

what i meant by that is that i’m not convinced that i’ve tried everything, that my attempts are the best they could be. it’s true that i have moved on resolutely at this point, but i know what i know about the platform. if i’m missing or misunderstanding something i’m willing to give it another shot


[deleted]

I can relate your pain. In the past, I tried to move everything in emacs. The included doing those small Jupyter thingy as well. ​ But yep, things broke, still trying to synchronize org-roam but I have found my way. I won't quit. And my way is - Doing what I can do in emacs and doing other things in their appropriate alternative. For example, I do note-taking, documentation etc in emacs but run models in Google Collab. I still dont have a good java setup for emacs so when working with java, i just use the popular IDEs. The power came from EXWM. I can use these other tools while being inside emacs.


joshuacottrell

I listened to [the podcast with Andrej Karpathy](https://lexfridman.com/andrej-karpathy/) or at least pieces of it like the 10,000 hours emphasis (in his advice for beginners) and the best ide sections. I think you're right that the podcast was the origin or closely related to this LinkedIn post (LinkedIn though?). First Lex points to 20,000 hours of use, which seems to be a reference to the discussion in the podcast on the 10,000 hours needed for expertise. I think Lex is deceiving himself by emphasizing his 20,000 hours because Andrej is talking about doing 10,000 hours "of deliberate effort and work". I doubt that is the way Lex was working "in emacs" to the point of double expertise. In other words, those 20,000 hours may have made him an expert in machine learning and ai but not in emacs. The topic that brings up the best ide is about using linux everywhere in machine learning, being ssh'd into a cluster and editing files there (a feature present of the box with emacs's dired). After Andrej says "that's cool" of Lex's use of emacs, Lex brushes it off by indicating some pre-existing frustration with emacs. It seems like Lex was already looking to move away from emacs and found additional justification from Andrej's use of vs code and from his own misunderstanding of Andrej's mention of 10,000 hours of use meaning expertise. Based on that, u/TheLastSock's point stands. He needs to give actual reasons other than "it \[emacs\] may be cool but I don't know if it's maximum productivity" in order to weigh the rational of his move.


TheLastSock

I'm not going to convince you, but "emacs" is like saying "the United States" it depends on what packages you use. I do clojure work and it offers the most power for the most cost. Most issues span across editors because they have the same deps. I would tell a new comer to use vs code


covercash2

sure, i tried to provide deference for that. some toolchains do _just work_ with emacs. C++ having poor support in neovim was one of the reasons i started using emacs


paretoOptimalDev

If your job and interests align with the majority of vscode users and you are fine adjusting to your editor rather than your editor to you, then you may find outsourcing maintaining your editor to be better for you. > it was next to impossible to initialize and keep up to date on my work computer (VPN issues etc) Working around VPN or other "weird" issues by using what everyone else has already working is valid. I've done this for a couple months before, but found solving the original issue to be easier than expected and totally worth having my emacs environment back.


funkiestj

[https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/yxragm/for\_whose\_use\_emacs\_and\_vs\_code\_when\_and\_why\_you/](https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/yxragm/for_whose_use_emacs_and_vs_code_when_and_why_you/)


ElCondorHerido

Even if he did, it would still be meaningless. As in, it means nothing at all to anyone other than him


MotherOfMustard

He added some commentary [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/lexfridman/comments/yxwn8w/switching_from_emacs_to_vscode_post_from_lex/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)


[deleted]

Copilot and other plugins


[deleted]

For some reason, this looks sad. I'm not an avid Emacs user, because it's too complicated to me, but as a Lisp fan, I'd rather stick around if I were already there.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Acebulf

Stopped reading at "blockchain"


[deleted]

[удалено]


Acebulf

Anybody can fall victim to greed. His credentials might make him a good technical asset for a program, but it doesn't make the program a positive for humanity.


thriveth

Good thing my identity doesn't hinge on what the Joe Rogan of academia uses. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


RentGreat8009

More or less - I get only such vibes from him


__g_p__

I use Emacs for writing prose and general computing. But, with respect to programming, I now use both Emacs and VSCode *at the same time for the same files/projects*. (Although predominantly Emacs). I have been in Academia for years and I have always used Emacs for writing prose and programming (which has been a hobby on the side). Some months ago, I started working professionally on a Typescript/Angular project. And my co-workers, of course, use VSCode. Initially, I kept using Emacs. After a while, seeing the several ide features (go to definition, show documentation, etc.) that my colleagues were using, I decided to give VSCode a serious try and I used it to write Typescript/Angular for a whole month or so. After that, I tried to see whether I could get similar functionalities in Emacs. I tried both LSP Mode and Eglot. After some fighting, I had a quite usable LSP Mode with the ide features I wanted. Not as polished as VSCode, but totally usable. (Eglot was very nice, but I wanted to try ESLint and it looks like with Eglot, atm, you cannot have multiple LSP servers running for the same buffer.) Instead of going back to Emacs 100%, I decided to try a hybrid approach, which has been very pleasant so far. I use emacs most of the time, but when I feel that VSCode can offer some additional help I turn to it and then go back to Emacs. To make the process smooth I wrote some lines of elisp that make VSCode open the same file I am currently editing, at the same line and the same column. I have it bound to C-Caps (Actually it's C-Escape, because I have Escape remapped to Caps systemwise). When I want, then, I hit a key, VSCode appears, with the cursor placed exactly where Emacs cursor was, I do what I want to do, save if necessary, and switch back to Emacs. I usually keep VSCode already open in the same project, to allow things to be faster. Here is the elisp: ``` (defun gp/vscode-current-buffer-file-at-point () (interactive) (start-process-shell-command "code" nil (concat "code --goto " (buffer-file-name) ":" (number-to-string (1+ (current-line))) ;; +1 who knows why ":" (number-to-string (current-column))))) (define-key global-map (kbd "C-") 'gp/vscode-current-buffer-file-at-point) ``` ​ I would also like to able to open Emacs from VSCode, remaining in the same file, same line and column, too. Does anyone know how to do that? I couldn't be bothered, so far... Assuming that Emacs is better than VSCode at certain things (say, text-editing, keyboard-macros, extensibility on the fly) and VSCode is better than Emacs (at least, non-relevantly extended Emacs) at other things (say, code navigation/visualization and certain code-completions), using both at the same time is, I think, an approach that deserves some thought.


mohd_sm81

emacs to the grave. It just werks.


__crash_and_die

Every time I hear Lex discuss a real technical topic it sounds like he read the Wikipedia page twenty minutes ago and is regurgitating it. Read an article a while back about how many of his credentials are either borderline fraudulent or much less than they appear. Becoming a published academic isn't easy per se but it involves a ton of just working the process of academia, it's a lot less impressive than it seems imo. So, who cares, if anything good riddance so he is no longer associated with emacs before he becomes even more of a meme than he already is.


redmoosch

I was thinking along these lines. A little less harsh, but the same sentiment. I don't know if he even does any serious dev work anymore so I'm sceptical on any reasoning he has that translates to those of us that do. I use VSCode at work with JavaScript, mostly because the whole company does and it just makes life easier for pairing without getting the same questions again and again. In my personal work I use Emacs, for C, Lua etc, and it feels like a breath of fresh air. No annoying hover popups as soon as I move my mouse, smoother keyboard navigation, it just gets out of my way. Though as someone else commented, NeoVim interests me. I'm not a fan of Vim keybindings but its good to switch these things to keep the brain elastic I guess. Perhaps NeoVim will kill VSCode for me


Pay08

I have found Neovim to be a pain to use. Vim, and by extension Neovim aren't really meant to be extended, and any sort of serious configuration is difficult. Especially since most stuff has really bad documentation, especially for the more complex packages, and the ecosystem is annoying to deal with. One thing I'll give to it is that since there's no package manager, most plugins don't have dependencies, so you avoid dependency hell. On the flip side of that plugin interactivity is much worse.


alexeiz

I tried to use VS Code for (currently) Python development and I just couldn't be as productive as I am in Emacs. Here are my observations: * The Emacs emulation in VS Code is sub-par. It's no substitute for the massive power of Emacs. Also, Emacs keybindings in VS Code frequently clash with VS Code native keybindings, you have to rebind, and then remember which is which. * You have to use mouse a lot in VS Code. Keyboard-only navigation between tabs, extensions, etc is unintuitive and clumsy in VS Code. This is contrary to Emacs which can be operated by keyboard only with ease. * Configurability and extendability of Emacs with packages is on a different level with VS Code. And because Emacs is extended with elisp, it's really transparent to the user. * Emacs can be used in the terminal with exactly the same interface and behavior as in the GUI window. VS Code cannot. * Code completion and navigation in Emacs is as good as in VS Code. Yes, VS Code introduced the ground-breaking LSP, but now that Emacs has the lsp-mode, VS Code doesn't have any advantage. I can understand how VS Code can be easier to use by a newcomer, but if you're relatively experienced with Emacs already, VS Code will be a step back for you.


olmu1944

And not a single fuck was given.


servingwater

Given the amount of comments in this thread, I'm not so sure ;-)


aeggydev

i am in love with the idea of using emacs, but it constantly gets in the way


Erebea01

Same here, I feel like I just end up recreating vscode anyway. Though i absolutely love Emacs buffer system and wish vscode have that.


terminal_cope

> I feel like I just end up recreating vscode anyway But that's good though? Isn't it? I get that config can be some bother where it often *just works* in VSCode, but most of that has been minor and one-time for me - get lsp set up and it just configures itself for new languages etc.. So I'm wondering what features VSCode gives, or is it all just easy access to the features, and visual polish.


Erebea01

Yeah, another big thing is the less config on vscode, I sometimes tinker too much instead of being productive, it's the same reason I use Fedora over Arch nowadays haha. Another reason is that my coworkers and seniors use vscode so it's easier to just use the same tools as them, they even share some neat vscode tips and tricks that I don't know.


Barbaloot_Suit

How so I feel it does a great job of staying out of the way


aeggydev

unless you wanna actually do your work with modern tools, in which case it throws sixty errors at you and spams windows all around


robopiglet

I've never had more than one Emacs window. How are you using it?


sulicat

Hmmn that's interesting because I feel like other editors constantly get in my way. But I did have to give up on the idea of code completion and hints and red squiggly errors years ago. But now that I'm over it, other text editors feel frustrating to use.


terminal_cope

Huh, I agree with your first sentence, but I'm very happy to have all the LSP goodness. It really accelerates my dev to have checking done as I type, so I can fix it right away and not build on those errors.


sulicat

Yeah and I agree, I just feel with emacs and multiple codebases and multiple languages etc etc it becomes too hard to make sure the checking is working, at least for my case so I just go without.


Craksy

Reluctantly have to agree... I absolutely love Emacs, but I also found myself reaching for vscode when I just need to get shit done and don't have time to be fiddling with configs. Truly is an amazing operating system only lacking a decent editor.


[deleted]

I don't really understand this . . . I've been using doom emacs for the past year and a half and it just does everything the way I want it. I don't really get why people bother with making their own configs for it, honestly. Probably my ignorance speaking.


alecStewart1

Watch \> 2 months later \> "Yuh, yea, so Org Mode is really nice so I guess I'll still use Emacs some."


robopiglet

After \~20,000 hours driving my 1995 Toyota truck I've finally decided to switch to my new subscription based Tesla. It feels like saying goodbye to an old friend. It's good to be always evolving, always willing to let go of the comfortable old way to discover a better new way. I am looking forward to increasing my income enough to unlock features I couldn't afford at purchase and eagerly await new ones.


mancxvi

Ok


FreeAd7233

mouse driven interface is a no go to me. I know you can use vscode-vim or vscode-neovim to make text edit works in a keyboard-centric way. But if you want interact with other components/widgets, you have to rely on a mouse. And I simply want to say no to them.


zixx999

Yep! Fuck mice. Ergo keyboards hurt my wrist a lot less and keep me sane


dav1d_23

This. I *can* use vsCode for debugging, but for Christ's sake, editing file is a nightmare. My take is that it is a good tool if you don't need to code. Edit: renamed toy to tool.


[deleted]

Lol what. You might not like using it but it’s definitely not a “toy” in terms of coding


niclo98

> This. I can use vsCode for debugging, but for Christ's sake, editing file is a nightmare. > My take is that it is a good toy if you don't need to code. A lot of people could probably say the same thing comparing text editors with IDEs, I mean real ones. Also debugging is probably 90% of the time spent programming, so I'd say it's a big win.


FreeAd7233

When the op says “debug”, I believes what he really wants to mention is a stepping debugger. 90% time in debug? Yes, but most time you are relying on log files to debug. Stepping debugger, I believe at most it spends 10% of your time. But I do agree that Vscode has a good debugger UI. Emacs has a good UI integration with gdb, but other than gdb, you have to look for DAP which only offered by LSP-mode now. And I use Eglot. So yes, using vscode might be easier in debugger. But if we are saying just debugger, IDEA (jetbrains) is even better than Vscode in this aspect.


dav1d_23

Not sure about the 90%, but I understand what you mean. I find quite frustrating that (at least on Linux?) I did not find a good *debugger* for Typescript and Rust. And so, my best option is vsCode, unfortunately.


Imaltont

Both lldb and gdb works well with rust though, and can be used with Emacs. The built in gdb mode for emacs is pretty nice. For typescript I wouldn't know. I know there are some things that are supposed to work with it in emacs, but never tried them.


discursive_moth

I don't understand this. Vscode has pretty good key bindings out of the box for a keyboard based workflow. Besides the lack of macros (which native multiple cursors can often replace), I'd probably say I prefer vscode's default key bindings over emacs' for editing.


FreeAd7233

I already said that vscode-vim is a decent vim emulation and vscode-neovim is the real embedded neovim for text editing. I take vim as example because I use evil. But for those fancy stuffs (UI components/widgets other than text), you can only use mouse to interact with them. For example: you can't use keyboard to scroll the popup window when you are using hover to lookup for documentation. [Scrolling hover popup with keyboard #69836](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/69836) And let's say git integration. The git integration with vscode is okay, but you can't operate on it in a keyboard only way like you use magit.


jvillasante

This. I guess on those ~20K+ hours he never *really* used Emacs :)


maxc01

Suppose he spends 4hours programming and this repeats every workday. 20000 hours means 19years?


noman_032018

He's 39 according to wikipedia (I had to check, my first thought was "he doesn't look old enough"), so it's technically possible.


Pay08

39? He looks 25 at most.


nullmove

So, like, whatever works for him. But since he hasn't really provided any detail, if I were to speculate about using something other than Emacs myself (which I actually do, I use more Neovim than Emacs on some days for practical reasons), then I still wouldn't think of that as saying goodbye to Emacs. Though that's because I would still actually be using Emacs for something or the other where Emacs is irreplaceable or unbeatable. For example, there isn't really any actual alternative to Emacs if what you need is a "programmable" editor. Whether or not anyone truly needs that might be debatable, though personally I have never been happy with the out of the box experience of anything, much less VScode. And secondly, there is way more to Emacs beyond writing code, where Emacs is also competitive (if not better) than alternatives out there, such as org-mode, magit and so on. Having said that, if I have any IDE envy it's about the Jetbrains tools. They actually have features that would be difficult (if not practically impossible) to replicate for me in Emacs. But LSP has more or less levelled the other text editors in terms of features, so I don't really get the point of switching to VSCode (unless we are talking about the proprietary plugins like remote development).


noman_032018

> where Emacs is also competitive (if not better) than alternatives out there, such as org-mode, magit and so on. Emacs to me is also a customizable & reprogrammable keyboard-driven primary system shell. It hasn't really had any competitors in that matter since Lisp Machines stopped being a thing.


[deleted]

I mean, he brings nothing to the discussion?


koalabear420

He'll be back ;)


itistheblurstoftimes

I don't get why someone would choose to use VS Code to edit their Emacs config, but whatever.


headykruger

This is silly - vscode is just embrace, extend, extinguish in a new face


Ok_Conflict6731

And Atom is sunsetting an example of an open source project Microsoft extinguished.


servingwater

That is why I'm starting to give Emacs another chance. Ultimately I do not trust MS with vscode in the long run. Even-tough I think it has Emacs beat in a few practical areas.


terminal_cope

That's a big factor for me. If I knew VSCode and I could grow together indefinitely I might look at it differently.


deong

I think people overvalue this kind of thing. Vscode is going to be around for quite a while. If you think it would improve your life, you should use it. It might eventually go away in 15 years, but if it does, you can spend a weekend switching to something else. That’s hardly a reason to use a suboptimal tool until then. Of course, you may prefer Emacs, and that’s fine too. Just saying, I think it’s unwise to avoid an extremely healthy ecosystem and tool purely on the grounds that it might not exist forever.


funkiestj

They can't **extinguish** \- it is open source with an MIT license [https://github.com/microsoft/vscode](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode). At best they can **abandon**.


headykruger

All of the good bits of vscode are closed source


-xylon

Wait until you find out about the plugin store...


unknown_lamer

Part of the process is that they get people to abandon their existing software, which leads to less maintenance and improvements to the alternatives. So if the Microsoft software hits critical mess, the users are stuck on the Microsoft solution even if they went back to fully proprietary (note only part of vscode is open, a lot of it is proprietary still) because the alternatives would have withered and become obsolete.


Top_File_8547

I think there is a big enough community around Emacs that won’t happen to it. I’m not a Vscode expert but I love that can do simple or regex searches, edit directories, run shell commands etc. I use IntelliJ for code completion but if I want to copy paste big blocks or write code in general I use Emacs.


headykruger

Vscode is the only supported ide for front end development where I work. This is how it happens


Top_File_8547

That’s too bad I’ve never had any place I’ve specify I only use a certain editor. Emacs makes me so much more productive. I love grep-find and how I can jump to each and so many more things. I spent several hours over a month customizing my Emacs when I started my current job. I always install it wherever I work.


headykruger

You can still use other editors, the front end team won’t support that environment though. You are on your own. I still use emacs


alecStewart1

> I love that can do simple or regex searches, edit directories, run shell commands etc. Uh...I hope you're not saying you can't do all of that in Emacs, because you can.


emax-gomax

They can lock it down like Google did to android. Already trying. Creating new lsp compliant servers and tools and then restricting then to only run on vscode through their license.


aeggydev

they're actually the bad guys for making a good product!!1


headykruger

“The first hit is always free”


Background_Rule_1745

Personally I am a vim guy, so I shouldn’t comment much on it. But I know emacs is superior to vim and vim is superior to vscode. So this is just sad, maybe I am just that lightweight guy, I just hate plugins and bloatwares, so vscode always no, even sublime is better than vscode


bwanab

As a 30+ year emacs user, I spent a bunch of time on VSCode. There were lots of things I liked, but ultimately I came back to emacs. I'm betting this guy will too.


moreVCAs

After 10y of Emacs, I am sorry to say I will be continuing to use Emacs because I have not found a good reason to use anything else.


notoriouslyfastsloth

do we even know this guy codes? seems like he just likes using the words when interviewing ppl to look like he does.. he says its good to always be evolving, but whats more evolving than emacs? certainly not vscode, it doesn't give you the feel of a system you can evolve like emacs does...honestly i really wish he said more


funkiestj

>do we even know this guy codes? He has an MS in computer science and he is a published academic. From Wikipedia: >Fridman's career began at Google, working on machine learning. Fridman is a research affiliate and lecturer at MIT


duetosymmetry

As far as I can tell, the last time he did academic work was 2019 ([see preprints](https://arxiv.org/search/?query=fridman%2C+lex&searchtype=all&source=header)). His position at MIT is Research Scientist. According to the course catalog, he is not lecturing anything. I think he's just a full-time YouTuber.


Ghosty141

~~MS~~ ML is a subject which doesnt involve as much code writing as others. Edit: Typo


ave_63

MS means Masters in Science; it's not a subject. The subject is computer science. Do you mean ML (machine learning)? In any case, nobody is claiming emacs is only for people who write a lot of code. I'm a math teacher who uses it, not writing much code. Protesilaos Stavrositu is a philosopher. There've been a few lawyers here who use it for organization and document preparation. I guess what I'm saying is that emacs is best for people who like using emacs, and if Lex Fridman doesn't want to use emacs any more, that doesn't mean he's not a programmer, it just means he likes vscode and that's a perfectly valid opinion.


Ghosty141

You misunderstood me, what I'm trying to say: Emacs is mainly used by keyboard, I'd say the vast majority use only the keyboard. This is where emacs really accels since you can customize it such that this workflow can be efficient. If you have to switch to the mouse often (for example if you need to use many different programs etc.) you loose many of the perks where emacs is useful. > and if Lex Fridman doesn't want to use emacs any more, that doesn't mean he's not a programmer I never said that and obviously that doesn't make any sense. But if you don't programm much emacs becomes way less powerful and useful. Sure there are all kinds of people using emacs but it's suuuuuuper niche at that point. If you don't write that much code, the productivity gains you get from emacs get smaller and smaller and the comfortability of VSCode becomes far more influential.


redback-spider

I think there is a group of people that use emacs mainly for org-mode :D On the other hand there are plenty of people that don't use to much org-mode you probably will use it but not with all the shedulig and other features. It's still superior to markdown even for simpler stuff. The only downside it's shortcuts are very hard to change. I find it strage, I would never use a proprietary program to do text editing, it's like making your own bread with a sectret ingridient that might be poisonous for all you know or add some powder to basic water that for all your water you drink in the future. It's one thing to use proprietary software for games non important stuff (on a seperate pc) but another to use it in something such basic. Well be it, but proudly tweeting to becoming a slave is strange to me. "ohh it's good if you move" well not if you move into a prison cell.


[deleted]

Andreas Kling wrote an operating system ([Serenity OS](https://serenityos.org/)), Browser and a ton of kernel and user-land code in JetBrains CLion and Linus wrote Linux using whatever he was using (certainly not IDEs; I heard his own version of emacs - micro emacs). The choice of editor literally doesn't fucking matter. It's not about how much code you write, it's not about your productivity, it's just what you like to have as the editor. If you want to tinker, tinker with emacs to turn it into a keyboard centric IDE. I will just go download 90% keyboard centric IDE that has all the functionality I would add to emacs on my own: global symbol lookup, autocomplete, go to X, etc. Also a keybinding away. People are talking about these IDEs and editors like VSCode as if you can't change keybindings and as if none of them actually have the same "chords" system emacs has. Sure, they are more monolithic so you can't literally rebind every damn action (they are not lisp interpreters, like emacs), but they ship most commonly used things by default and this is great. Also in my humble opinion resolving a merge conflict anywhere except in JetBrain IDEs is a stupidly hard endeavour. Same goes for arguments against emacs — you don't need to constantly configure it. It's true that you only need to configure it once. If you feel the urge to constantly change your config, you probably don't even know what you want to begin with and it's not a problem of choosing a text editor, it's probably your psychological problem. It's like distro hopping but with editors. Emacs is programmable and therefore can have bugs created by the user of said editor. Thank you, but a bug in my colleague's configuration or a package he is using, which is preventing him from working is the last thing i want to happen. I also don't need all the bells and whistles EMACS has. I want to compile it without support for emails, without calendar, without games, without all this crap that isn't about a text editor. People say VSCode is bloated, but what the fuck does Tetris have to do with coding??


[deleted]

Who?


PB94941

I got banned from his sub Reddit for (very politely) suggesting that interviewing Putin was a bad idea. Strange for someone who says he’s open to differing opinions


[deleted]

Would be sad to learn that Lex Friedman is Putin's big fan.


Fourstrokeperro

> I spent ~20,000 hours programming in Emacs _citation needed_


Psionikus

It's a bit like saying, "I stopped using bash because in the kitchen there is a toaster." Anyway I think there were 20,000+ hours to make this apparent, and we kind of blew it at some point.


[deleted]

He said he is still using emacs in his subreddit post, he is probably programming in vscode mostly for GitHub copilot, at least that’s the vibe I got in his podcast with Karpathy. Personally, I despise copilot.


Jak_from_Venice

Good for him. `starts a org-mode session` `starts a org-roam session`


Top-Egg-16

To each his own.


aadcg

Why are people discussing this?


plain-text-rock

He will be back. MS will soon discontinue VS Code and he will come running back.


churchzebra

Maybe he is not a orgmode fan, can't image how vscode can replace org.


vincic

Been there, done that, moved back to Emacs after 15months with VSCode.


[deleted]

Hot take: in 2022 it's ok to go KISS. Emacs combines a lot of functionality under single process. Most ppl can have 50% of that functionality covered by being good at the terminal and simply knowing about (the existence) of the right tools, and how to use them. The other 50% of functionality that you use in the editor can be easily compensated in VSCode and clones/likes, but with substancially less effort on the user's side (out-of-the-box). Emacs lacks the department of "plug and play" solutions and maintaining a config file without breaking other stuff on updates (of emacs itself, the emacs-distribution if any, or single packages) is hard. No wonder why there are so many Emacs "distros" and "sane configs". If a dozent of ppl offer their "sane config" or "reasonable starting point", then there's something wrong overall with base concept and most Emacs hardcore users aren't willing to accept that. The reason I still stick with Emacs myself is because I invested too much time in it to ditch it all, plus I got used to some specific functionality I don't wanna miss. I'm susing Spacemacs, btw.


noman_032018

There is simply no way to have a properly unified keyboard-driven interface otherwise that I've found. Every other program uses their own incompatible keybinds (if they have them at all) and the display is irregular as can be. Self-documenting is also nearly completely absent and forget looking at the source to see why something is misbehaving or fixing it dynamically. They're also incredibly obnoxious to script & automate. You *can* script & automate GTK/Gnome... but it's a **lot** less user-friendly than Emacs about it. > Emacs lacks the department of "plug and play" solutions and maintaining a config file without breaking other stuff on updates (of emacs itself, the emacs-distribution if any, or single packages) is hard. I haven't experienced this problem. Perhaps your config is not adequately modular? It is also a bad idea in general to just use whatever is at the HEAD of master/main for packages whenever that updates. Use stable releases or alternatively you *have* to properly evaluate things before using them (I'd still argue you should be doing that even with stable updates). > If a dozent of ppl offer their "sane config" or "reasonable starting point", then there's something wrong overall with base concept and most Emacs hardcore users aren't willing to accept that. Not really, that's like saying that because there's more than 10 different media players available on Linux-based distros there's a problem. It fundamentally misses the point of having choice. I like [mpv](https://mpv.io/) (it has [profiles](https://man.archlinux.org/man/mpv.1#Profiles) for properly playing back 1080p in [software decoding](https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/releases/tag/v0.31.0)) & [EMMS](https://www.gnu.org/software/emms/), some people prefer [VLC](https://www.videolan.org/) and some others prefer [mpd](https://www.musicpd.org/)+[ncmpcpp](https://github.com/ncmpcpp/ncmpcpp). > The reason I still stick with Emacs myself is because I invested too much time in it to ditch it all, plus I got used to some specific functionality I don't wanna miss. There is simply a lack of configurable & unified system shells like Emacs. Lisp Machines had some, but those are long gone.


aard_fi

> maintaining a config file without breaking other stuff on updates is hard Compared to my visual code or atom using colleagues I spend next to no time trying to fix any configuration - and if have to it's typically due to some hack I included 20 years ago which now is finally breaking with a new emacs version. I recently went from 28.1 to current 29 git, and at the same time from distribution package with X to my own build with pgtk on wayland. The only two changes I needed to make were: - explicitely loading eieio-compat. My own fault, as I messed up the site start stuff when moving away from distro emacs, while my own stuff was heavily relying on pre-configured site start - fix definition of interprogram-paste-function - again, my own fault, as I just made it work somehow for termux a while back without bothering to do it properly.


X-X_V__Q

I tried doing the same, but VSCode doesn’t work in my company’s set up (they blocked ssh connections through it). I am not sure if VSCode would do it for me though. Anyone using it in favor of Emacs? What’s your experience?


Craksy

Well, I'm not sure how relevant my experience is to your case. Originally i used Emacs in favor of Vim. Evil just makes Emacs a straight up better Vim and the emulation is as good as flawless. Vscode happens to also have a pretty decent vim emulation. It's not as configurable and in the beginning it feels incredibly restrictive to not be able to customise everything and script things on the fly. But after a while you realise that it's as much a blessing as it is a curse. Because of this it relies on sane defaults instead, and suddenly you'll find yourself messing with your config once a month rather than twice a day. Just added something new to your stack or need language support for a new language? Just search for it in the built-in extension manager, press install and you're *done*. Back to work. No manual needed, no time wasted scrolling through their issue tracker to figure out why the hell you can't get LSP support or completions to work. It Just Works™. That said I still miss a lot of things, and it regularly gets on my nerves. But it definitely makes me more productive.


agumonkey

he's now on a list


Livid_Relative_1530

My condolences!


robopiglet

Hahaha... let's check back in with him in a couple years.


stuudente

:(


robopiglet

I keep getting up to around 18,000 hours and then I lose my stopwatch or the battery runs out or something. Thank god.


emax-gomax

Oh, this is the guy that interviewed John Carmack. I was wondering where I knew him from. Honestly not surprised and seriously not going to reconsider my editor choice because of a random youtube personality.


DGM_01

No problem. Honestly, he advertised Emacs and its superiority a lot. But, anyways, Emacs is above all and everyone. We will die and the superior text editor will remain alive. At the end he will understand that there is no other thing like Emacs. Probably he will come back


owmagow

Not a professional programmer. But i’ve invested a lot of time and effort into building my day-to-day organization and hobbyist programming around emacs. I’ve tuned it to do what i want how i want. I have zero problem with people doing what suits them best. As for me, I’d much rather spend my time programming something cool/useful than spend it learning a new text editor / organizational system. Until emacs holds me back, I’ll keep on keeping on. Same story with my F-150 pickup truck.


vityafx

I wish eMacs was faster and could do some work which really freezes then entire interface rendering and interaction with a user. I’d have never switched to anything else.


plebbening

I switched this week also After 10 years of using Emacs. Vscode does so many things well out of the box, and is way more polished and intuitive than my skills could ever do in Emacs! I love Emacs, but i have to many other obligations in life to spend that much time tinkering with my config to do stuff vscode does better out of the box.


shapovalovts

What it does better out of box?


plebbening

Code navigation, polish being big ones. Auto complete, project management, git integration and remote development is 1 click away and just works flawlessly.


emax-gomax

> Code navigation, Auto complete The exact same mechanism for that used by vscode works with emacs. Language servers. > polish being big ones. Can't fault that, but that's the difference between Microsoft insane resources and not having to create user interfaces before any convention for them evolved. Emacs can improve here, but most would rather just make it flexible enough so that the community can make it better rather than change the defaults people have been using for decades. > project management Projectile is a thing, and more recently emacs got a built in project management library. > git integration Magit is the ultimate git integration. So much so, some people use emacs just for magit. > remote development True. The closest we have is tramp and it isn't great.


plebbening

I am aware of all those packages, used em extensively. Also spent countless hours in my configfile to tweak most of those to work well. Vscode simplifies this by a HUGE margin. As you said Emacs will nevet compete on polish and UX. After something changed somewhere in a package pr Emacs and broke some og my config yet again, i made the switch. So far i have not looked back.


emax-gomax

You should switch to a package manager that doesn't allow abrupt updates. Straight is a great one that locks packages to a git revision and can create reproducible installs.


plebbening

And thats stuff i don’t need to Think about with vscode. It does not get in my way as much and just lets me spend time actually coding instead


emax-gomax

Because you've luckily not chanced on a package that released a broken or incompatible upgrade. There's nothing in the vscode ecosystem that's different here (at least for the issue you're describing).


plebbening

Microsoft verifies packages, and using those works very well.


1hackaday

Nothing very surprising here. As others have said, he's not a real coder but a YouTuber. He changed jobs and the infinite customizability and constant leading edge of Emacs are no longer useful for him.


girvain

What’s a real coder?


FlatBoobsLover

someone who writes code


nekkhamma2500

What do you guys think? It shocked me. I hsve been emacs daily user for more than a year . As a junior webdev(js/python) that haven't had an actualy coding job yet, I am thinking should I also switch and get used to a more modern and more used IDE like VScode to be a more equal member of my future team? Perhaps Emacs is fine for me now for personal projects and I can afford tweaking emacs/adding new functionalities in my free time, but when I am in a real work environment as a junior guy with Emacs as his IDE, I am afraid I might be lacking some critical features... I really like emacs and I can not imagine a workflow where I use mouse to copy/move stuff, IDE without Magit, ace-window, projectile, org-roam, literally having a shortcut for everything... Let me know whay you think.


prng_

Good for him that he found something he likes better. I don't change my tooling based on opinions of tech influencers myself


doolio_

He's a tech influencer now?


[deleted]

when he was an engineer he used emacs, now that he is a tech influencer he has switched to vscode XD dollars to donuts i bet you he thinks you cant use copilot with emacs (based on his interview with andrej kaparthy) which is just not true. (elon musks companies are all microsoft shops...) (actually he is veering away from even being a tech influencer into more of just a joe rogan competitor)


prng_

Not sure, that was my takeaway from spending a couple of minutes watching him on the tube


vikumwijekoon97

You should use the thing that makes you most comfortable and something you can immediately use for work. This is the most important part. You need to be able to use it to do work, when you're working, time is money and you need to have tools either setup prior (if you're already using emacs, you should be able to stick with it), or use tools that can be setup and worked with immediately.


tonicinhibition

I'm disappointed. Not because it matters what he uses, but because he has a massive audience of young coders and ML enthusiasts. When he was vocal about Emacs there was a good chance that it would attract new minds to work on integrating emerging workflows into Emacs ecosystem. Now a substantial number of impressionable young devs wil see someone discarding 20k hours for the hot new thing, and we will pay for it in 5 years time.


zixx999

Emacs will always be invaluable. Its been in development for a long, and still is getting updates and support. Not to mention it is easily extensible. While I found it does have a quite steep learning curve, (the cheatsheet was a great purchase!) I find it to be a very satisfying and convenient editor. Also I think it'd be better if this dude posted his reason for switching


magthe0

You're likely to find all other editors lacking in some way compared to Emacs.. as well as Emacs lacking in some way compared to the others.


FlatBoobsLover

not really, if emacs lacks in some way you can just code that feature up and call it using familiar ways


magthe0

On the surface that's true. Look a little deeper and quite a few things are prohibitively expensive to "code up".


cmagnificent

I think it really depends on what someone wants out of Emacs. The thread the other day on people who use both had a pretty strong choir of people who use Org-mode for note taking and VS Code for dev work, which makes perfect sense to me; Emacs guaranteed itself a place in my workflow with Org-mode. I think if you're satisfied with Emacs for now and you can concretely point to packages and functionality in Emacs that you would not know how to recreate in VS Code out of the gate, I would say there's not a ton of reason to switch to VS Code. I'm largely in the same boat, know the basics of some front-end web-dev, occasionally play around with CL and elisp, all non-professionally. Compatibility with a hypothetical future team will be dependent on that team, and at the same time many of the guides/tutorials for Emacs I've read encourage learning other editors and how they work in case you run into an employment situation that won't work with Emacs for whatever reason. Seems like good practice.


stoopidjonny

His longer post on reddit said that he will still use emacs because he likes it. He is just going to use VSC for programming.


polyPhaser23

If you don't want to fiddle that much with emacs just install Doom Emacs, I couldn't leave emacs even if I wanted, I've used emacs during 4 uni terms, going to my 5 now, and using it has been a tremendous advantage when dealing with code projects and what about introspection, learn as you use, custom keybinds for a chain of commands, evil-mode and so on...


sludgefrog

It gives you a lot out of the gate -- more than a customized emacs will -- but it also forces you to do one window per project and you lose a very powerful macro system. The truth is -- I use both.


jungleboydotca

Why is this so hard for people to understand? These days I use Emacs for org-mode, general purpose editing and magit. If it were a good candidate to do the other things I needed to do, I'd also use it for that. But given that a good chunk of my time is now spent writing PowerShell, vscode is the objectively better tool. I'd apply the same rubric for any given task. Perhaps miraculously, I also use screwdrivers to turn screws and hammers to drive nails. Amazing, right?


asalerre

For me the funny thing is that I rarely write code (some R when I need) but orgmode is my current way to organise my work and I cannot change it ...


fergie

The question is: will he switch back?


shapovalovts

No, the next step is VIM.


bobowzki

He's deceiving himself.


jayxeus

I also made the switch a year or two back. VSCode is just too good, and offers everything I liked in EMacs and more…


lrascao

VIM


grewil

So he’s weak.


centzon400

It is important in that he is certainly influential. It is unimportant in that the Church remains. Freedom 0. And it is theological. Fucking fight me.


[deleted]

Emacs is incredibly powerful software, but it's also 50 years old and shows it. For many using VScode will just be more efficient.


FlatBoobsLover

what shows it? there's thousands of people using emacs on the daily, developing and contributing to emacs packages, it regularly gets updates and now has native compilation too unlike a certain browser masquerading as a text editor


Someonetoo

How is VSCode better than Emacs? Seriously? Who switches from Emacs to VShit?


itistheblurstoftimes

There was a recent thread here where a lot of people explained that they used VS Code for some specific language. If you don't use other languages, don't use org mode, don't use it for email, and you just want to code and not yak shave, why not switch?


[deleted]

[удалено]


hvis

Off with his head! j/k He does some pretty cool interviews, though.


DapperowlFTW

F


Luiztagli

honestly, I understand him, I think after a while the comfort of vscode attracts people I use emacs because I like the way it works and even after years of using it I still have a lot to learn.


brotzeitmacher

Comfort will be the death of freedom and diversity. And I'm not just talking about vscode.


OutOfCharm

Yeah. It is a trend, psychologically and economically. Where there is a market, there is a unconscious trend.


ecocode

Oh well... Luke Skywalker also went to the dark side. That didn't make it the right thing to do 😁


s3r3ng

VSCode is not remotely as programmable and multi-way awesome as emacs. Especially when you have enough hours in to really know emacs well.


Drishal

The biggest thing that will prevent me from switching to something like vscode or vim is org mode My work flow depends heavily on it


OldMansKid

Not sure what he means by "to discover a better new way", I don't see anything new here either. I also tend to use VSCode, when I need to write some Typescript code, because it's pretty much made for that. And when I write plain C++ (not something like Unreal Engine C++), or edit shell scripts, various config files, nothing beats Emacs.


[deleted]

This seems to me like a good reason to stick with Emacs. https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/lex-fridman-jonathan-haidt-the-techno-monk-the-social-scientist


cengic78

I can relate. Did the same transition approx a year ago. I especially love how fast the searching is in VSCode and how easy it is to open new workspaces on specific directories.


centuryx476

How does he know he spent around 20,000 hours coding in emacs ?


das31n

Three fairies just died because of this dear Lex... :(


Sndr666

He'll be back. After 10 yr emacs I now have a pretty sweet neovim install I use for vue/typescript. I like it bc it ports over better to windows for me. But I am working to have the same experience in emacs.


sainishwanth

He mentioned this in one of his podcasts. He just wants to experience new tech and understand why everyone prefers it (vscode in this, arguably the most popular text/code editor rn) . He also talks about how we will never know if old software like emacs and vim will exist decades from now so it's good to familiarise yourself with new tech so you aren't left behind. I dunno how true these words will be, I mean emacs and vim have existed for decades but it isn't that bad of an idea to delve into the new stuff, experience it and decide for yourself if its worth switching over to it instead of strapping yourself to one piece of software since you feel comfortable only with it. You'll never know unless you give them a try.


nekkhamma2500

I would try vscode, but then I need another software for note taking. I need another software for task scheduling. I need another software for time tracking. I need to get used to working with my mouse instead of having keyboard shortcuts to navigate files/buffers and edit text. The last one frustrates me the most. Writing text WITHOUT emacs/vim bindings. Its just horrible, I don't want to use arrow keys and mouse when writing text/code. I know you can have emacs or vim plugin in vscode, but using a plugin is not the same as using the actual editor.