Over at the Emacs subreddit, tdavey asks if we’re living in the golden age of Emacs. He’s an unlikely person to be asking this question because he’s not a developer or scientist. He is, to use his words, “an ordinary business-type who values Emacs mainly for Org.” Still, he’s a long time user (11 years) so his is an informed opinion.
The TL;DR is that he believes Emacs is “growing and innovating at a very healthy clip.” It’s a position that I’ve often advanced and, indeed, tdavey quotes Irreal as saying that Emacs is at the forefront of editor/IDE development. We agree that the Emacs ecosystem is healthy and robust, and that Emacs really is at the forefront of editor/IDE development.
But is this the Golden Age of Emacs? I don’t know. Certainly it’s a good time for Emacs and to be an Emacs user. I’ve felt for sometime that Emacs is losing mindshare to Vim but felt that was a shift in what people wanted: a really great, fast, efficient editor or an extensible framework that can encompass your entire workflow. I understand that.
What I don’t understand is Emacs losing mindshare to things like VS Code. It’s really just a pale imitation of Emacs but with glitz and bling. I don’t understand what VS Code offers (yeah, yeah, LSP) that Emacs doesn’t do better.
Still, as I always say, use whatever editor works for you. One thing for sure, if you’re an Emacs user, this is a good time to be one.