From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: wgreenhouse@riseup.net (W. Greenhouse) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Is Emacs very alive, active and improving? Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 21:09:44 +0000 Message-ID: <87ppsx8quf.fsf@motoko.kusanagi> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1377724228 2869 80.91.229.3 (28 Aug 2013 21:10:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 21:10:28 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Aug 28 23:10:32 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VEn0Z-0005Uy-Ok for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 28 Aug 2013 23:10:31 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:38659 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VEn0Z-0000pu-9g for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 28 Aug 2013 17:10:31 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:39053) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VEn0K-0000ow-6C for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 28 Aug 2013 17:10:21 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VEn0B-0000j4-66 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 28 Aug 2013 17:10:16 -0400 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:46544) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VEn0A-0000id-Vq for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 28 Aug 2013 17:10:07 -0400 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VEn06-00057l-OQ for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 28 Aug 2013 23:10:02 +0200 Original-Received: from 212.7.194.71 ([212.7.194.71]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 28 Aug 2013 23:10:02 +0200 Original-Received: from wgreenhouse by 212.7.194.71 with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 28 Aug 2013 23:10:02 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 54 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 212.7.194.71 User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:3ZmyEBZrK+L36f1bU1RiH/aVhEw= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:93145 Archived-At: Jorge, Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto writes: > http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=emacs editor,eclipse ide > > Since 2004 Eclipse (Emac's primary competiton for my use case) has > lost some 71% of its "trendiness" according to Google. But Emacs has > lost more, dropping from 25 to 4 (84% less). > > Does this Google Trends graph reflect reality? I don't think Google Trends is an accurate measure of how many people are using Emacs, because Emacs is largely self-documenting, not just through the Info manuals but also from the dynamically generated documentation from Elisp programs themselves. So I would expect Emacs users to Google their programming environment far less than editors of other platforms. > I am worried because I have personally met only one other Emacs user > (not counting people I only talked to via the Internet). Of course, > popularity is far from the only criteria, I don't have to obey fashion > (if I did, I wouldn't be using GNU/Linux). But I do want my > development environment to be reasonably active, improving and well > supported. Can I reasonably trust Emacs to be active and improving by > 2018? At least as a LaTeX editor, IDE for C++, Python, Javascript and > Java, and general text editor. > > Thank you for your attention. Sorry for any bad English, I am Brazilian. I think that Emacs is one of very few pieces of software which we can expect will still be active and improving by 2018. This prediction is based on its last 30 years of steady development (40+ if we count the many non-GNU Emacsen). It has a longer development history than most operating systems running people's personal computers, and it continues to evolve, both in terms of user experience as an editor and in terms of extensibility as one of the most popular Lisp runtimes. Some time before 2018 we can hopefully see the fruition of features currently being developed such as integration with the Guile runtime [1] and full concurrency. [2] I think the Emacs developer community is currently experiencing a renaissance. See http://j.mp/emacs2013videos for what some Emacs Lisp developers are working on right now, from the London Emacsconf this year. Footnotes: [1] http://git.hcoop.net/?p=bpt/emacs.git;a=summary [2] http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/lh/emacs/concurrency/files -- Regards, WGG