Re: "Why is emacs so square?"

[Po Lu]

조성빈 <address@hidden> writes:


> Emacs Lisp as a language and the standard library (the Emacs API) is
> different. For example, the fact that functions and variables have their
> own namespaces is a part of the language, and the functions
> self-insert-command or bury-buffer are parts of the API.

Do buffer-local variables count as part of the language, or part of the
API? What about text properties in strings? File-local variables?
Primitives like `record_unwind_protect_excursion`? Or how the bytecode
interpreter has a plethora of primitives that only make sense within
Emacs.

And I would consider `self-insert-command' part of Emacs Lisp the
language, since it is implemented as a subr in C code.

> You can call them as a whole Emacs Lisp, but that doesn’t mean that
> it’s more easier/simple than VSCode. Yes, Emacs Lisp isn’t a complex
> language like C++, but for outsiders that have never used Lisp, it’s
> hard to approach.

It's not hard to approach at all.  The easy trick is to treat it as an
editor macro language, instead of a Lisp dialect.
> Regardless, Emacs can’t stop using Emacs Lisp, so Emacs needs to be the
> reason for users to use Emacs Lisp, not backwards. And that means that
> Emacs should have a great onboarding experience (which is currently not true)
> with various packages for so many languages and productivity tools (which is
> IMHO true considering all of the packages in GitHub).

Emacs Lisp (more precisely, the first-class extensiblity) is one of the
main reasons to choose Emacs, and the onboarding experience is exactly
what we're talking about.

> I know, I should report it, but I find that macOS/Windows is considered a
> second-platform here, and I didn't want to take my time writing reports just
> to get no feedback. I’ll try to report some today.

macOS/Windows are considered second-class platforms, when it comes to
features: features not available on free operating systems will not be
available on non-free systems.  macOS/Windows are not second-class
platforms, when it comes to fixing bugs not present on free operating
systems.

> (TBF, I remember trying to report them, searching for duplicates, and
> I saw some
> bug report on the exact same issue I was experiencing. I didn’t know how to
> subscribe, so I just thought that it might get fixed.)

Hm, you can always M-x report-emacs-bug