[OT] Emacs, Eclipse, Leo (was Re: IDE

[Eric S. Johansson]

Skip Montanaro wrote:

> Ville> Too bad Emacs seems to lack the development energy these days
> to Ville> match the features of modern IDEs.
> 
> Dilution of the development community by the continued rift between
> the GNU Emacs and XEmacs folks doesn't help...

not to mention they keep insisting on using lisp...

seriously, Emacs has the problem of increasingly large hurdles for its
users.  I've been an Emacs users since 17.something and for many years,
I was carrying around my .Emacs file from place to place like a hobo's
bindlestiff.  but in the past few years I've stopped.  I just use
package defaults and default packages.  It's become too
difficult to keep track of changes, update .emacs and replicate to the
10 or 15 machines (this month) that I'm using.  Additionally, many
packages have become just too obnoxious to configure and use especially
with my limited hand ability. gnus and tramp have been the worst of
recent experience.

I do believe we could make this better by leading the way.  I propose
reworking python mode using python via the Emacs python
extension.  By lowering the barriers to entry, it's possible one could 
rejuvenate development of applications within Emacs.

of course that doesn't solve the problem of propagating configuration 
file changes to billions of machines but that's a different problem for 
a different mailing list.

---eric