Still useful after all these years.
Emacs is utilized as one of the primary text editors available for global use across our remote build servers. This allows engineers to …
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What is GNU Emacs?
GNU Emacs is described as a free extensible and customizable text editor for the Lisp programming language.
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What is GNU Emacs?
GNU Emacs Technical Details
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| Mobile Application | No |
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January 18, 2020
Still useful after all these years.
Emacs is utilized as one of the primary text editors available for global use across our remote build servers. This allows engineers to modify files on a system with a familiar interface that they can access on their own local computer. Emacs is adept at language recognition and highlights syntax in a meaningful way. It also allows users to set their own custom configurations for their user profile and is expandable via installation packages.
- Fast
- Syntax highlighting
- Shortcuts are not standard.
- Sometimes certain key combinations puts it into an unfamiliar state.
- Emacs is free to use.
- Most firmware and electrical engineers are familiar with Emacs making it easy to set up new employees to immediately start working.
Emacs can be easier to use than Vim as it is more similar to modern text editors. Its graphical interface is also better than anything Vim has to offer. Emacs also has better syntax highlighting and recognition of coding languages. Interestingly, Emacs handles clipboard copy and pasting into other programs a lot better than Vim does. Overall, if you know how to use Emacs, it is often preferred over Vim.
December 12, 2019
GNU Emacs - Swiss army knife of organization and text tools.
I use GNU Emacs as my primary text editor, as well as an organization tool for project tracking and to-dos as well as scheduling and planning. It is also used for taking notes and recording bits of information for easy retrieval later. I also use it for searching and parsing multiple large log files for troubleshooting.
- GNU Emacs is a text editor that can do almost anything that you want to do with it. It is fairly easy to extend the functionality using Emacs Lisp with a large library available.
- It can be easily customized using themes as well as custom code to change the look and feel as well as how everything works.
- There is a bit of a learning curve for Emacs. In order to use it most efficiently, it takes a little time to learn the Emacs way, as well as learning the keyboard commands for everything. Many things can be done from the menu, but the keyboard is really most efficient.
- Customizing and extending Emacs is done with Emacs Lisp. While very flexible, Lisp is a bit different programming language than many people are used to.
- Emacs is free software, there is no cost at all.
- It has helped tremendously in situations where many, or large, log files need to be searched.
- Notepad++ and OneNote
While Notepad++ is a very capable editor, it is not nearly as customizable and extendable as GNU Emacs.
Microsoft OneNote is a nice, easy-to-use note-taking and organization tool. Its advantages are that it is GUI based, and it is easy to embed images, audio, and other media. If it doesn't do exactly what you want, or work how you want it to, you cannot change it. Emacs (and Org-mode for Emacs) can be easily modified and extended to do exactly what you want as well as work exactly how you want it to.
Microsoft OneNote is a nice, easy-to-use note-taking and organization tool. Its advantages are that it is GUI based, and it is easy to embed images, audio, and other media. If it doesn't do exactly what you want, or work how you want it to, you cannot change it. Emacs (and Org-mode for Emacs) can be easily modified and extended to do exactly what you want as well as work exactly how you want it to.
June 22, 2019
Emacs, everything you need but the kitchen sink!
As far as I know, I'm the only user of Gnu Emacs at Lendio. I use it daily in my work as a DevOps engineering team lead and individual contributor. Emacs is an editor, but also more than just an editor. It is a way of life. You can do pretty much anything in Emacs. I use it for editing files, both in my local filesystem and on remote systems using the Tramp subsystem. Emacs is well integrated with tools such as ssh and sudo, and allows me to edit files on remote systems in a privileged manner. I also routinely use Emacs's integrations with our source code management system (we use Git). The Ediff function is extremely useful when comparing between versions of a given file. As for the business problems that it helps with, Emacs provides IDE functionality in an extensible fashion at zero cost. It is a great tool!
- Emacs is exceptionally good at editing files. The various modes available allow customization of things like indentation, color schemes, etc. when editing different types of files.
- Tramp mode in Emacs allows transparent editing of files on remote systems, including using sudo for access to secured files. As far as I know, no other tool does this as well.
- Emacs's integration with Git is very useful when it comes to determining what changed and when. Git plugs into Emacs's generic SCM functionality, which means you get a ton of features for free, including Ediff for change management (so you can see what changed between two revisions of a file).
- Integration with my web browser through the Edit with Emacs Chrome extension allows me to use a full editor when composing a post on a web page. This allows me to run various tools (such as spell checker, etc.) when composing on a web page in a text area.
- Emacs is old, so it's a little crufty and not too easy to pick up and start using. There is a community package called Spacemacs that simplifies a lot of things that you do with Emacs. It is probably better suited to beginners.
- Sometimes, the choices that were made to integrate certain functionality change the basic models for that functionality. This is seen primarily in the version control system support, where multiple version control systems are supported and "unified" to a standard Emacs-y way of doing things. This can be confusing to the new user not familiar with the Emacs way.
- Emacs has, as its foundation, a lisp interpreter. This means that the extension language for Emacs is emacs-lisp. Some people find lisp hard to understand and have difficulties writing Emacs extension code, or understanding existing code.
- Overall, the ROI of Emacs has stemmed around its nature as a free, open source product. Usability is high, so when you use it you are more productive, but if you are unfamiliar with it, you will be less productive to start.
- Emacs is more than just an IDE. It includes IDE-like functionality, but it is really much more than an IDE.
- Emacs makes it easy for me to work in my environment, in a fashion to which I have become accustomed over the last 30+ years. It is more suited to the professional who has used it before.
I have used several different IDEs and editors, but I keep coming back to Emacs. I guess my fingers are wired for Emacs and I find that I can do pretty much anything in the tool that I can with other tools. Some other tools are more polished, but are specific to certain languages (Java, Python, etc.) where Emacs is totally generic and works with everything. If you find something that Emacs doesn't work with, you can always write your own support for it!
April 12, 2019
Emacs for all your editing needs
Emacs isn't used universally at my place of work, though it's one of the better options for editors readily available to us. Certain teams use it depending on their needs, and some use others for theirs. There are no restrictions or requirements as to what editor we use. The business problem it solves is just having a good editor that can be counted on for large and small scale use.
- Readily available: Emacs is available on almost all operating systems. You can use it for free, and even use it for remote editing. It has a nice desktop application that anyone can use, even the ordinary user.
- Lightweight application: Although it hasn't always been, Emacs is now a very lightweight, efficient editor that isn't going to demand much CPU power. This can be crucial for large-scale applications.
- Easy learning curve: for complex editors, Emacs is one of the easier to get a handle on. There's good documentation, and an easy layout that makes figuring out how it works much easier than others.
- Initial startup time: not that it matters greatly, but Emacs can take a while on initial startup. But since it only happens once, it's not a huge deal.
- Discovery of features: there are a lot of features to Emacs! But finding what all Emacs can do can take you some time. You'll still find new features on occasion even as a seasoned user.
- Organization: Emacs makes it easy to keep our projects organized, which is always important. It helps you have cleaner, more efficient code.
- Efficiency: Since Emacs is so customizable and programmable, we've found it helps increase our efficiency by utilizing macros or programmed features!
- Productivity: Because of the high efficiency of using Emacs, our productivity has boosted. I'd expect to find the same after beginning use of Emacs elsewhere
Of course, Vim is a good contender for comparison as well, so I'll include it. I find Emacs much easier to learn, which will help speed up productivity for newer users. It seems much faster than VIM and VSCode, especially under load. It's highly highly customizable, in ways other editors don't stack up against. Its lack of bloat also is a nice addition to a great product.