alt Hacker News> I would rather chew glass
So, you're making assumptions even without ever trying? You just decided it's hard/time consuming/worthless even though you have "never heard" about it?
> I have been using emacs for 20 years
Yeah, well. Like I said: Emacs is first and foremost a Lisp interpreter, "using Emacs" actually means dealing with Lisp. To what extent - it's everyone's own choice. I have seen too many stories of people like you - "using" it for decades and then abandoning it for VSCode or other things, without even realizing what they've given up.
It only takes just a bit of knowing the basics of Elisp to get the genuine Emacs experience, otherwise, you're just riding the car, not driving it.
> I don't have time to fuck around
That is a big misconception. Prolific Emacs users don't waste time ricing their setup just for the sake of it. They apply Lisp to meet their needs. My own work demands certain changes every single day - I have to move between different projects, in different PLs, dissimilar teams; I poke into various APIs; consume data in all sorts of formats; build prototypes, every time with different scope and requirements; analyze huge sets of data; search through documents, hop between different hosts, etc. I can only imagine how miserable my life would've been without my Lisp tools, where Emacs invariably takes the center stage.
It seems like you lack the notion of what it's like to literally shape your tools for your needs as they evolve. It's like having an entire pottery workshop at your disposal, but choosing to only pick up the already finished, dried pieces. Seriously, don't be daft - hook up an AI assistant to your config, the possibilities are virtually endless. It could be just about anything - any small annoyance that you may decide to improve in your workflow. I wish I had developed this "emacs/hacker mindset" where I don't even think twice, if something feels suboptimal - I'd try to automate it. I'd just start typing some Elisp in my scratch buffer. These days, it has gotten even simpler than that - I'd just type a prompt.
>You just decided it's hard/time consuming/worthless even though you have "never heard" about it?
You must mave misread what I wrote, because you're conflating two different statements.
>I have to move between different projects, in different PLs, dissimilar teams; I poke into various APIs; consume data in all sorts of formats
None of this requires elisp beyond the use-package incantations to install a given mode, which is only done a single time.
>It seems like you lack the notion of what it's like to literally shape your tools for your needs as they evolve.
My needs are already mostly satisfied by emacs. It is excellent at editing and composing text out of the box already. I have language servers for auto-completion. I have syntax highlighting. If I am mangling a text file I use the build in transient macro recording feature.
The editor itself is almost never the bottleneck in my work. Elisp is so unpleasant that I have zero desire to hack around in it for fun.