All of us Emacs nerds are familiar with Neal Stephenon’s essay In the Beginning…Was the Command Line, in which he describes Emacs as the thermonuclear word processor. A couple of years ago, he did a podcast with Lex Fridman in which he expands on his remarks and comments on the longevity of Emacs.
Fridman asked him if he thought that Emacs would still be around in, say, a hundred years. Stephenon’s answer invoked the John Henry legend where in the end, Henry was unable to keep up with the steam hammer. Stephenson says that Microsoft and Apple are pouring so much money and effort into VS Code and XCode that eventually Emacs won’t be able to keep up.
I don’t think that XCode is an issue in this discussion. It’s not primarily a text editor and is, in any even, very specific to the Apple universe. VS Code, on the other hand, can certainly be said to be an Emacs competitor. I don’t think it’s as powerful or full featured as Emacs but it does have a lot of money and power behind it. Whether Microsoft itself will survive for a hundred years and if they do whether they’ll find it economically advantageous to continue supporting VS Code are open questions.
I think that technology 100 years from now will look so different from what we have today that virtually no technology we have now will be extant. That will probably include Emacs. On the other hand, Emacs has been defying the odds for a long time and may surprise us all. What do you think?