My Guitar and Emacs

A few years ago i bought an expensive guitar. I played it for maybe 2 months and one of the strings started producing some ringing. The guitar came with a 5 year warranty. I took it to the shop, they tried to fix it but failed and offered me a new one. I readily accepted the exchange. A few months down the line even this guitar had some issues with ringing here and there. You'd be surprised to know that they again gave me a new one. Now, onto my third guitar. I started getting a bit better at playing by now (I had already been playing for years but didn't practice everyday until I invested in this guitar) and started understanding some technical details about the guitar, servicing it myself and also some just non technical things. I also saw the guitar Willie Nelson plays (it literally has a gouged hole in it and honestly most people who don't know it would chuck it in garbage). I realized that it's a guitar, it's made of wood and in a certain sense is alive. It's not going to be perfect but it's my Guitar. I know how to make it work. I practice on it everyday and I know how to manage those little details. You see where I'm going with this? I moved to Emacs a month ago. Objectively, it might be the worse choice compared to my setup on VSCode but it's my editor. Sure they'd be some jank and some small errors and bugs I can't fix but I can always service it myself. I can always make it better. I'd learn with it and grow with it.

> Objectively, it might be the worse choice That's not what objective means.

It is... The code completion and debugging for my rjsx setup just works on VSCode. After a month I've only just gotten the code completion to be exactly the same and I can't get the debugger for rjsx to be as good as VSCode because the latest one is incompatible with Emacs. It'd at least be months if not a year and if at all someone gets it to work with Emacs or I might have to try and learn and see what I can do myself. But no, the fact remains, feature for feature, as it stands right now VSCode is the objectively better choice for my development workflow.

Based on your subjective opinion of what constitutes "better" or "worse". You can support your opinion with objective facts ("just works" and speculation about dev time not among them. ), but there is no objective measurement of "better" or "worse". Instead of doubling down, you could rephrase your claim to be more specific and convincing. That would do more work than leaning on the presumption of objectivity.

If emacs would be guitar you would get it for free but it would be totally ugly and on the first glance incredibly hard to play. Plus it would have quirky features like a hidden string on the back you can play with your belly button. (see artist mode) Then over time you bolt everything you can find onto that guitar. Now it sounds incredibly good and it's looking astonishing. But you can only play it slowly.

Anyone knows how to get native compilation working for my guitar? I want to increase my tempo

Some assembly required

Emacs works better than vscode ever did or does for me. So yes, as /u/nv-elisp pointed out; it's completely subjective.

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I'd rather have janky freedom than flawless shackles.

Couldn't agree more.

See... Of course to an extent everything is subjective. Let's take an extreme example: a Ferrari vs a Honda Civic. Now most people here would say the Ferrari is objectively a better car. I'm sure the civic gives better fuel economy and sure someone might even prefer to drive the civic even if given free choice but as far as features on a vehicle are concerned the Ferrari can do everything the civic can and then some. So, for my particular development workflow the debugger on VSCode does EVERYTHING the debugger on Emacs can and then some. There's not one feature that the Emacs debugger has that the VSCode one doesn't but the reverse is not true. See where I'm going with this?

In the car example emacs is both the civic and the ferrari as well as the zastava and the lada and the tesla and the rav. Point being, emacs can do everything

Why is it so hard for the Emacs community to accept somethings sometimes. For rjsx Emacs runs the chrome debugger that's deprecated and at least a year old at this point. Vscode has an inbuilt js debugger which is the cool new thing. Can Emacs in theory run it? Yes Would it run it a year or two down the line? Perhaps Does it? BIG PHAT NO. So yeah for my use case of debugging react apps vscode is objectively better right now and that's what I use for debugging but I code on Emacs now.

> Why is it so hard for the Emacs community to accept somethings sometimes. You answered your own question friend: > Can Emacs in theory run it? Yes

I see where you’re going. It totally makes. And i think your initial guitar metaphor and self maintenance thing makes total sense and is very similar to how i think about it.

If you're convinced that vscode is objectively better you'd be daft not to go ahead and use it. The problem is you still don't know what objectively means.

Is the price of a Ferrari better or worse than the price of a Civic?

Heh, you can have both. I'd say, at this point, my Emacs setup is better than my then-VSCode setup (used to be an avid user until a few years ago - even made some VSCode extensions)

It's enabled by default, just get a faster machine.

[While my Emacs gently weeps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJDJs9dumZI)

Naw man. Get a faster user.

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The point is objectively it is better. Subjectively, it's not. Emotions are subjective. Features are not subjective. If vscode debugger can do absolutely everything that Emacs debugger can and still has features that the Emacs one doesn't, it's objectively better. The problem here is that your subjective opinion of Emacs is so high that you can't accept that there are cases where it is edged out by other software.

> a hidden string on the back you can play with your belly button this destroyed me haha : )