@billstclair there are just too many features I use so often that I miss. But the E is for extensible right? Who really cares whether you hit y or alt-w or p or crl-y?

@Absinthe

Of course. Once you get used to a set of commands, you want it everywhere. Hence my love of the default Emacs command set in text fields on the Mac and my search whenever I install a new Ubuntu for how to do that there (which I haven't done enough times to remember it off the top of my head).

"Emacs originally was an acronym for Editor MACroS." https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/efaq/Origin-of-the-term-Emacs.html

This was the time of FORmula TRANslator and COmmon Business Oriented Language and LISt Processing language.

I like the names of the editors in Magic Six and Seven, two PL1-based languages for the Perkin Elmer machines at the MIT Architecture Machine Group (now the MIT Media Lab) in the 1970s.

Eine Is Not Emacs
Zwei Was Eine Initially

And an Emacs subset made by Mark of the Unicorn (now named just MOTU), which ran under CP/M on Z80 machines in 1982 (and on PDP-11 computers under RT-11, complements of some low-level keyboard input code I gave to them):

Mince Is Not Complete Emacs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINCE

@Absinthe

Err... PL1-based OPERATING SYSTEMS.

@billstclair

O was thinking of "EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Display Editor" https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-paper.html

Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift is what I think of... :) I still use both Emacs keys as well as Vim commands at the same time. and if I do C-Z I am back in emacs mode anyway.

But I use Vim keys in the browser, in Eclipse, in Emacs.. So yes when you get used to a set of commands.

So do you use Hemlock and Cocoa?

@billstclair I do love recursive acronyms because of course GNUs Not Unix.

In 1982 it would still be another 7 years before I would start looking at computers seriously. At which time I would be on IBM mainframe doing COBOL and using Xedit of all things. I am much happier working in AIX and GNU/Linux now.

Hey, I even got Portacle to install, and shift over to Evil and SLY on my chrome book. Not a bad little environment.

@billstclair

Wha? Abomination? Preposterous! It's just different, have you heard of exploring different things? Much fun!
Unless your fingers lost their dexterity, in which case sorry for teasing... though they probably wouldn't have, if you have used vim...

@Absinthe

@namark @billstclair I came into editing with CUA/CAA style editors. I could do all things in Visual Slick Edit which I paid for and used for 20 years. But I have embraced FOSS and with such came Vim which is my serious goto. But I have had a back and forth love affair with Emacs. However, writing lisp just begs for Emacs. Even if I have it working "modally" or "stately" as it were. Funny, even having Evil in place I still like c-c c-f and c-x c-s for opening and saving a file. But ZZ still does the save and exit.

@namark @Absinthe

Heh. All in fun. You learned the editor you learned. I won't engage in a vi vs. emacs war. Not to mention all the new boys on the block.

It does always surprise me, though, that Stallman's editor doesn't install by default in most current distributions of Stallman's operating system, but vi does. Fortunately, for me, it's as far away as "sudo apt install emacs".

It also amazes me that a pretty nice portable assembler (C), with a weird pre-processor (C++), is still the source code for huge parts of the computer ecosystem. But that's an even bigger war.

@billstclair

That kind of wars only exists in the minds of those who wage them. It's funny how you say that you won't engage, while very much engaging. Was that the joke?

C is a terrible portable assembler, it doesn't even have addition with carry or long multiplication. Hopefully C++ would fix it... in another 20 years...

@Absinthe

@namark @billstclair
If it were all about well thought out well designed language we might all be using Ada.

I might take a look at Pharo which is supposed to be a SmallTalk.

Anything, as long as it isn't on the JVM. That's been the irritating thing about Clojure with every little error dumping me a huge java back trace.

@Absinthe @namark

I haven’t used Clojure, and I last used Java in 2006, but your stack trace problem sounds like a bug in Clojure’s debugging tools, showing you the compiled-to language stack, instead of the logical lisp stack.

@billstclair @namark pretty sure that is how it works. I don't remember it being any different before. Reason enough to hate on it :)

@billstclair @namark
As it is, I use all the editors. Well, at least Vim, Emacs, Eclipse, Nano, Kate, Gedit, Geany, Whatever there is in online sessions like REPL.it and Jupyter and so on. I do try to stay away from Semi-Free and most IDEs but when they make sense I use them. Tools is tools. The more you know how to use the more choices you have when presented with a new problem.

I have fed my family for decades with C/C++ also with VB and with T-SQL. I have been foraging into languages now that I haven't had much experience with before. I am seriously loving Python. I am also getting pretty enamored with CommonLisp and learning to hate Clojure. Not sure how I am feeling about Erlang, and Go is iffy. Everyone wants the "perfect" language or "tool" but it's not out there.

I hear 'D' claims to be like C++ Minus the mistakes. And I know people that love,love,love Rust, and at least one guy that thinks Go is the best thing since Betty White.