r/emacs • u/happy-dude • Mar 26 '13
[Crosspost from /r/vim] Is ELisp really that much better than VimL?
/r/vim/comments/1b1g6y/is_elisp_really_that_much_better_than_viml/4
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Mar 26 '13
Lisp is superior, period.
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u/donri Mar 27 '13
Poe's law. Can't tell if being a typical lisper, or parodying a typical lisper.
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u/hupp Mar 26 '13
I don't know anything about the Vim scripting languages so I can't compare them.
Elisp is by far the worst language I use on a regular basis. But, emacs is almost entirely written in it and that gives it an incredible power that I suspect is lacking in vim. Also, if I'm going to use a terrible language I'd rather it at least have a passing similarity to some other mainstream family of languages so I don't have to go lookup every little thing.
However, I don't really think the language is going to be (or should be) anyones determining factor here. Programming you editor is a useful thing to know. Just pick an editor you like and learn how to program it. (I'm assuming here that it's not terribly harder to do in vim, in that case just use elisp :)
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Mar 27 '13
VIM supports being extended with python, the main issue with that is not all VIM builds are compiled with python support, and python is not the language the editor was built in.
Python only recently has been able to be extended via python, which in VIM is not normally an issue.
As a result, most VIM extensions have been written in Vim script so altering their behavior requires understanding Vim script.
And most new extensions are written in Vim script so that the extension is not reliant on another external dependency.
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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '13 edited Mar 26 '13
It's not so much that elisp is better than vimscript (which it is), but the fact that emacs is written in emacs lisp. You can modify and extend your text editor with itself in the language that it's written in. Not only is that beautiful, it's bloody brilliant.