Re: Is Elisp really that slow?

[Ergus]

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 04:26:26AM +0200, �scar Fuentes wrote:
> Jean-Christophe Helary <brandelune@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > > On May 17, 2019, at 5:50, �scar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es> wrote:
> > >
> > > > so we need to offer some advantage on the first
> > > > try over the others to keep the users.
> > >
> > > Emacs provides some advantages, but they are not apparent until you
> > > experience them. That's a problem for people grown on a culture of
> > > instant gratification. Emacs appeals to certain type of users who
> > > understand that gains require efforts.
> >
> > I find that comment extremely condescending.
> >
> > If "instant gratification" means finding a common ground on which one
> > can get started right away, then I'm all for it.
>
> "Instant gratification" means wanting things that require no learning
> nor practicing nor understanding to be effectively used *right* *now*.

The vim phenomenon is the prove that our problem is not "Instant
gratification". Vim made many changes in the interface to make all the
commands more coherent or shorter. And removed the errors existing in vi
even when some people used them as features. There is an interesting
article about that.

Of course there were complains. There are always complains.

> It would be doubleplusgood if Emacs could be one of those things but,
> alas, it is obvious that text editors still are on the class of things
> that require certain effort to be used effectively. Maybe Emacs requires
> a bit more effort at the beginning, but it pays off... at least on text
> manipulation tasks.
The problem comes when people needs to configure everything because the
defaults are terrible, they rely on some packages and then they can't use
another machine (because emacs is not there, or does not have their
configuration). So the effort invested and the training, confines them
and worth nothing outside their machine.
> > Considering the state of affairs, emacs seems first to appeal to
> > people who want to give priority to free software, at the *cost* of
> > ease of use.
>
> From 1985 to 2010 (give or take a few years and discounting Java and
> some other modern language) Emacs was the best programmer's editor on
> the "by hackers, for hackers" category. I suppose that most current
> users come from that period.
Agree. But future is coming.
> > Access to free software should never be the sole privilege of "users
> > who understand that gains require efforts". Quite the opposite.
>
> Free Software is not a factor *today*, because most competitors are Free
> Software too. Even Visual Studio Code is MIT-licensed.
I will no go in the free vs open source here. But no, most of the
editors are open source, not free. 
> OTOH, we have the vim phenomenon. An "old thing" which is way more
> peculiar than Emacs, but with a growing user base. Those who point out
> the dificulties of new users to copy and paste or to save text to a file
> with Emacs, should ponder how vim has no problem requiring training for
> doing the most basic thing a text editor is supposed to do.
Vim is actually my starting point. It is the only editor that worth to
compare with emacs.

It is easy to explain and I have refereed to this in many maaaaany other
emails:

1) vim is there in all the GNU/Linux distros.

2) It works the same in all the systems, in all the languages, even the
default color themes are better by default.

3) The keybinds (apart from the insert-escape) are easier, more
ergonomic and logically composable.

4) It is extremely responsive and fast to open-close workflows. No
lagging, or delays, no server configuration needed.

5) The important editing commands are usually only 1 key far. We can
make a simple comparison:

Move forward: C-n -> j
Move forward 3 lines: M-3 C-n -> 3j (look sparsity in the keyboard)
Copy 3 lines and return to point position:
C-SPC C-SPC C-a C-SPC M-3 M-w C-u C-SPC C-u C-SPC -> 3yy

Plus:
hjkl are way more ergonomic than what we have (you can type them
with one hand, while the other types the prefix, but they are also
together, so going 3 lines up 5 letters left is way faster and easier) 

Plus:
In vim the user can enter complete lines/commands/functions:

:e file
:8,10 s/search/replace/g

which is more intuitive and familiar for terminal users. And those
commands are also composable.

Plus:
There are no conflicts with the modified inputs and the terminals, so
they have more keybindings to use.

6) They do one thing and do it well. Editing functionalities have
priority (for example column indicator or line numbers were added very
long time ago.) 

7) I understand it is also much simpler than emacs in functionalities,
but that is a benefit from the maintenance and update point of
view. They don't need to maintain an interpreter, their own language, a
graphical and a terminal interface, different modes for every
programming language, wrapper functions for terminal commands like grep
(or version control functionalities) a browser, file manager, a server
interface and client, a network infrastructure... This also means that
the number of programmers and expert fields they need to maintain all
the code is also smaller.

Let me say:

I am NOT making apology of vim, I am just pointing how are they doing
and why they success more with a "worst product" because it is not a
mystery.

I should also highlight that emacs can do (almost) all this: (spacemacs,
evil-mode) or in its own way: (ergoemacs, god-mode, hydra) but we still
enforce the old way. And we don't promote enough some packages and
functionalities that are not imported, but created exclusively for emacs
and could make the difference (like avy).

> Maybe, just maybe, having "kill & yank" instead "copy & paste" is not
> the cause of Emacs' lack of appeal to the new generations.

It is one more.