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points by noufalibrahim 1 day ago | 0 comments

The so called editor wars seem to be over and emacs has lost. I've been involved with it since the early 2000s and it's still my primary editor. I feel that the users have reduced into a smaller but more dedicated/passionate group which is probably for the best.

[–] TFNA 1 day ago

You apparently missed the explosion in Emacs activity in the 2010s. I, too, remember using Emacs in the early millennium and feeling like a partisan of one powerful but nevertheless unpopular editor, with an uncertain future. But once the Mastering Emacs blog, Org-Mode, and Sacha Chua came along, suddenly there were so many new packages to install and tips for one's own config, and things like the pure-gtk build brought UI improvements going beyond merely look and feel.

In the early millennium, I as a Emacs user had hardly anyone to actually talk about Emacs with, even on nerd hangouts like Slashdot or the dedicated Freenode channel. Since the 2010s, one can make oneself practically a whole social life around Emacs.

[–] noufalibrahim 23 hours ago

Very interesting. I was very active on Freenode#Emacs. The Emacswiki and all of those resources. I jumped onto and heavily got into org when I first came across it in the early 2010s I think.

But you're right, it looks like Emacs went on strongly but I fell off the bandwagon.

[–] internet_points 20 hours ago

libera#emacs tends to have around 8-900 users connected (maybe more when the US is awake, probably not everyone uses a bouncer). Both reddit and mailing list are quite active too.