Emacs is going to die! =( [was Re: Emacs + python (Was Re: python is going to die! =()

[Ville Vainio]

>>>>> "David" == David Rush <kumoyuki at gmail.com> writes:

    David> Ville Vainio <ville at spammers.com> wrote in message news:<du7fz5a8tte.fsf_-_ at lehtori.cc.tut.fi>...
    >> That's the whole problem with emacs - lack of resources. Nobody
    >> bothers do anything "seriously". 

    David> And they do in the Eclipse world? Bah. I've just spent two

The results might not be ideal, but the effort seems to be serious;
corporate money is being poured into it. I'm aware that corporate
money is being poured into emacs customization as well, but at least
w/ eclipse the corporations know about it ;-).

    David> to come to terms with Eclipse. I couldn't even how to
    David> figure out how to get brace-matching to work for a
    David> scripting language that is not supported by the default
    David> distribution.

Me neither. Perhaps this is something to be brought up w/ pydev
people.


    David> It's not because Lisp-heads like to think different. It's
    David> because Lisp allows you to think differently. Programming
    David> for Emacs though is a bit of a different animal from most
    David> programming because of the basic data model. When the goal

As far as the emacs data model goes - it's remarkably similar to the
Python data model, and I don't really see any reason why emacs should
be in elisp (apart from inertia).


    >> Eclipse will no doubt take over. 

    David> I do see the possibility, but the Eclipse community is
    David> going to have to more eagerly embrace the non-Java world.

Indeed. I think we just need to give it some time. As it stands, the
potential for the passing of time to actually amounting to something
seems much better for Eclipse than it appears to be for Emacs.


    >> Emacs might need a fresh start, but it's hardly likely; most
    >> probably a new project would be seen as further dillution of
    >> already scarce emacs resources.

    David> The big problem is backward compatibility with the *huge*
    David> base of existing elisp code.

I guess the legacy code just needs to be dropped, translated or
"emulated". Translation doesn't seem entirely impossible, at least for
the bulk of code that is written in "standard" fashion (w/o excessive
use of macros and whatnot). A lot of the elisp codebase is not
necessary for normal use anyway.

    >> Luckily we emacs fans still have hope in eclipse - 

    David> How? I'm feeling awfully let down that the appearance of
    David> the Eclipse community does not seem to match the reality.

That happened to me too. My hope was rekindled when I tried the recent
PyDev and saw that CDT got code compention working in C++. And some
other things. Eclipse needs to do a lot of growing up, but at least it
seems to *want* to grow up - unlike the grumpy old grandad that emacs
has become.

I bumped into this on #emacs; emacs users might find it interesting:

http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca/opinions/editors.html

-- 
Ville Vainio   http://tinyurl.com/2prnb