While I have big respect for neovim, it's performance on big files is actually worse than emacs. I've submitted a bug on that upstream - it gets stuck with disabled TS, LSP, highlighting where vim and emacs chew through without any issues. Emacs has its problems but is actually OK performance-wise, if you avoid the obvious (long lines) and less obvious (custom modelines, fancy pseudo-tabs, etc) pitfalls. Thing is, emacs is constantly improving - 28 is faster than 27, 29 will be again faster and solve the problem with long lines.
> Carefully and slowly making my way through NeoVim in the last 6 or so months now
Emacs has also a ton of stuff included, so that you could carefully and slowly make your way through emacs instead of jumping through distros and complaining. In the end, I am pretty sure that you will not be able to freely configure and alter and neovim distribution, such as LazyVim or AstroVim - they have a rather complex structure.
> and it's much easier to work with and configure
No, it is not - it has poor discoverability, you have to reload it on changing the config file. Configuring emacs is a breeze - you can eval blocks of code, check, eval again - until it sticks. Every function is can be called and inspected. Oh, and have you tried to debug your config code in lua? Tell me how it went.
> Emacs seems to be carried by nostalgia
Emacs is carried by the fact that it is the only editor alive almost completely written and documented in it's extension language.
> No thanks. I actually have a job to do.
Of course you do - why else would you jump between emacs and neovim :)
That you believe your editor obviously can't be expected to deal with long lines shows objectivity isn't a concern. And no, emacs29's performance is still lousy on many long lines corpora in the wild, e.g., long parenthetical expressions. Even the improvement on other corpora is now in jeopardy as today the author has admitted the full fix may not hold up under scrutiny and has proposed a significant degradation.
I'm a lifelong emacser, but even I can see why its extensbility is blessing and curse. Sure it's fun to "mod" a Honda Civic, but ultimately you get a vehicle with two more horsepower over stock, and 2^n - 1 additional points of failure where n is the number of mods. But at least it looks cool.
> That you believe your editor obviously can't be expected to deal with long lines shows objectivity isn't a concern.
It is a known problem, but I can live with it even in the current state. I have a test where I will take an 800 MB csv file an do around 30 mil replacement in an editor. Vim is the fastest with around 10 sec on my machine, emacs chews through in around 30 sec, neovim hangs and we do not want to talk about VSCode/IDEA etc. But in praxis it is not a limitation which hinders my work in any of the mentioned editors, and so are long lines in emacs.
> Sure it's fun to "mod" a Honda Civic, but ultimately you get a vehicle with two more horsepower over stock, and 2^n - 1 additional points of failure where n is the number of mods. But at least it looks cool.
So... don't mode it? Stuff it offers out of the box is pretty solid these days with minimal adjustments, add magit and org on top, with 29 we get eglot and project.el - happy to roll. The way I see it, if tinkering with emacs if fun, then do it and be happy, if not - don't do it and be also happy. No one is forcing you to mod your emacs and if - report this person to police.
But having this possibility to mod it when you need it - well, it is indeed a quite unique and invaluable trait.
> So... don't mode it? Stuff it offers out of the box is pretty solid these days with minimal adjustments
EXTREMELY misleading statement, unless by "minor" you mean "3 days on and off installing and uninstalling and configuring packages", so I had to call you out here.
If I just install Emacs 29 RC I get a useless toy that can't even detect it's in a project and allow me to fuzzy-search a file name inside it while respecting `.gitignore`. Not to mention do a live grep.
So until I can install Emacs and have project features and everything that modern DOOM / Spacemacs / LunarVim / VSCode offer then no, it's not "minor adjustments".
There is nothing misleading about it - this is how I’ve always ran my neovim configs and it did the job - without project management and hundreds of packages. Don’t trick future readers into thinking this kind of yak shaving is necessary and not a personal obsession.
Your snark doesn't make my Emacs run faster but if it makes you feel better, do continue. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I switched editors because my job was suffering because of impossibly slow Emacs, not because I don't value my free time -- of which Emacs wasted plenty. Chose the lesser evil. Not a hard concept to grasp, I hope.
Shame that you felt attacked and figured you have to be nasty but you helped with exactly zero of my concerns, in practical terms.
NeoVim + LunarVim worked for me out of the box. The tweaks I did were entirely cosmetic. That's valuable. So far I spent exactly 5 minutes on functionality in it -- namely TS and LSP installs.
Oh and if I have to debug my editor then the battle is lost anyway. Not sure why you put any value on that at all; if anything, it's a negative value.
> of which Emacs wasted plenty. Chose the lesser evil.
Correction, Emacs did not waste your time. Emacs did not ruin your life, made you unhappy, or failed you. You simply gave up. Please find some inner courage to accept that fact. Math does not become greater, or lesser, or any other kind of evil just because someone fails to understand polynomials, quadratic equations, or calculus.
You're talking about Emacsers as if they fall out of their mother's womb and blindly walk straight into emacs-lisp mode. Many (if not most) discover Emacs years after trying other tools. We choose Emacs for plenty of good, objective, factual reasons. Not because we're emotionally inclined to tinker constantly or because we have Stockholm syndrome or we're afraid of something.
You have made your choice, fine, congratulations. But please don't come to a civil discourse wearing your preacher's mantle just because you think that "you've figured it all out". Trust me, many of us Emacsers have seen both worlds. And you? Much to learn you still have... young padawan.
---
Just a post-scriptum note: I hope you're not carrying some emotional burden associated with Emacs and something one day will inspire you to try it again. I remember, I gave it up multiple times, but something always would make me come back and try again, until one day I decided to stay. And by the way, I'm a die-hard Vimmer. The revelation that Emacs vims better than Vim itself was huge for me. I wish I had discovered that sooner.
> Your snark doesn't make my Emacs run faster but if it makes you feel better, do continue.
Unspecific complains will not let it run faster, indeed.
> I switched editors because my job was suffering because of impossibly slow Emacs, not because I don't value my free time -- of which Emacs wasted plenty. Chose the lesser evil.
The lesser evil would be to start the included profiler and check what is actually slow - you've wasted more time on complaining here, then M-x profiler-start takes. :)
> Shame that you felt attacked and figured you have to be nasty but you helped with exactly zero of my concerns, in practical terms.
I am not paid to support you, and you've started on a niveau where I also do not want to help you. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> NeoVim + LunarVim worked for me out of the box. The tweaks I did were entirely cosmetic.
Oh, LunarVim has its share of bugs, being a complex and fast-developed disto. Since you are not interested in debugging, I am curious what will happen when it breaks - will we see another post with accusations of neovim (another distro you never cared to understand, really) to waste your precious time? :)
> Carefully and slowly making my way through NeoVim in the last 6 or so months now
Emacs has also a ton of stuff included, so that you could carefully and slowly make your way through emacs instead of jumping through distros and complaining. In the end, I am pretty sure that you will not be able to freely configure and alter and neovim distribution, such as LazyVim or AstroVim - they have a rather complex structure.
> and it's much easier to work with and configure
No, it is not - it has poor discoverability, you have to reload it on changing the config file. Configuring emacs is a breeze - you can eval blocks of code, check, eval again - until it sticks. Every function is can be called and inspected. Oh, and have you tried to debug your config code in lua? Tell me how it went.
> Emacs seems to be carried by nostalgia
Emacs is carried by the fact that it is the only editor alive almost completely written and documented in it's extension language.
> No thanks. I actually have a job to do.
Of course you do - why else would you jump between emacs and neovim :)