Re: Emacs's popularity

["Lennart Borgman" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 12:40 AM, Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Lennart Borgman" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 11:28 PM, Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>> But Vim is not only installed; it's really used a lot. In Debian Vim has
>>>>> always been a bit more popular than Emacs but in the first half of 2007
>>>>> Vim really got popular (around Vim 7.1 and Debian 4.0 release). This
>>>>> "used actively" graph compares vim-common, emacs21-bin-common and
>>>>> emacs22-bin-common packages:
>>>>>
>>>>>    http://preview.tinyurl.com/5thmmx
>>>>
>>>> That is a bit strange since the vi emulator Viper in Emacs is now so good.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Not strange at all Lennart, Why would someone run the Emacs OS to run
>>> emulated vim  when they can run the real thing in 100th of the
>>> footprint?
>>
>> Exactly why do you think the footprint matter?
>
> Are you serious?

Well, yes. I did not even mention that you greatly exaggerated the
footprint differences.

> Memory usage, start speed, response, and all thinks linked.

I actually do not think those are the problem. A barebone Emacs starts
up very fast.

But start up time may still be a trouble when doing small editing. Of
course if you know about Emacs client/server that is not a problem in
most cases (though someone gave an example with su that would not work
in this case).

> And with the boom in netbooks and OSen on USB sticks, emacs finds itself
> more and more pushed into that "heavy dinosaur" category. I'm not saying
> I *agree* with it, just those are my observations.

I checked my Emacs+EmacsW32 directory tree. It is about 160 MB. I am
planning to buy a netbook with about 160 GB disk. And hopefully 2 GB
memory.

> Personally I detest Vi and clones.
>