The Golden Age of Emacs

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.

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