John Carmack: Best programming setup and IDE | Lex Fridman Podcast Clips (feat emacs, vim, etc)

Felt more like ‘feat Visual Studio and etc with a honourable mention of Emacs …being too much work‘ 😁 Well, atleast VS code was not called the new Emacs! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for being gentle on my (self-admittedly) clickbaity title! The video clip was a gentle reminder of that different tools have different strengths and weakenesses.

I think in the end it's up to the individual to assess if someone's doing something simply because it's good for them, or if it's good in general. Some aspects of emacs is overwhelming and even thinking about going to something else seems pretty impossible. Then there are times where things occur in emacs and you even though you can make it happen with lisp, it will be a bit daunting (I truly believe the standard library needs a re-org as far as discoverability and modules). I have thought of moving on from emacs as eventually since languages I'm interested make better and better tools and even though I use some of the nerdtree and dired related stuff, at the end if they have a good way to navigate code with a vim plugin and simple ways to navigate the code base I would be fine.

I love emacs, it has been a key factor in my productivity as a programmer, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. If you want to seek it out for yourself I'm glad to help but there's no way it's the right answer to "hey I'm looking to pick a text editor what would you recommend?"

I think the most valid criticism by Fridman is that Emacs is "work". This is undoubtedly true compared with more mainstream options, but I think what is missed is that in exchange for that work, you have a highly optimised workflow that is *yours* and is an investment in your career and your toolkit in the long term. Your Emacs config evolves and increases in utility over time. You might find it ain't so bad in VSCode, but that's aside from the point really: choosing VSCode is like buying a shirt off a shelf that fits you, Emacs is like getting a shirt tailored. Both are fine, but as someone who has made programming my career and main creative outlet, I would prefer to put the work in.

Quite possibly the least interesting thing Carmack could talk about.

For that question Vim is the answer /s