Why Does Elisp Suck

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Elisp vs Other Lisps / Languages

  • Many argue Elisp “doesn’t suck”; it’s a pragmatic, Maclisp-influenced Lisp that’s good enough for scripting an editor.
  • Others see it as dated compared to Common Lisp, Scheme, or Clojure, wishing for namespaces, better concurrency, and modern language features.
  • Some say the real pain is not Elisp itself but needing to learn a special-purpose Lisp just to script Emacs.

Emacs Architecture and Data Model

  • Several comments claim the Emacs data model and decades of accreted APIs are the real problem: global mutable state, opaque behavior, and confusing terminology (“windows”, buffers, TRAMP, etc.).
  • Debugging often requires understanding multiple interacting extensions plus Emacs internals, which is seen as a barrier to entry.
  • Others counter that global state is a feature: Emacs is designed to make all internal state inspectable and modifiable.

Threads, Concurrency, Performance

  • A recurring theme: Emacs’ historical lack of true multithreading.
  • Critics note that long-running Elisp blocks the UI; they point to older Lisp systems where multiple REPLs and tools ran concurrently.
  • Defenders argue threading adds complexity and Emacs already has workable async models: external processes, sentinels, timers, while-no-input, limited threads, and native compilation.
  • There’s disagreement on whether richer concurrency is essential or an overcomplication.

Alternative Emacs-like Editors / Rewrites

  • Ideas discussed: a new Emacs on GNU Guile and wlroots; rewriting C parts in Common Lisp; projects like Lem, Nyxt, Cedar.
  • Some praise Lem (Common Lisp, graphical, multithreaded) but note giving up the Elisp ecosystem is hard.
  • VS Code, Zed, Helix, and Neovim are discussed as competitors or complements, but many see none as true Emacs replacements yet.

Language Quirks and Ergonomics

  • Complaints: heavy use of global state, late arrival of lexical scoping, clunky regex syntax (mitigated by the rx DSL), and ad‑hoc, stateful APIs like match data.
  • Libraries like dash.el, s.el, ht.el, and higher-level frameworks (e.g., transient, eieio) are cited as making modern Elisp more pleasant, if also more complex.

Overall Sentiment

  • Split between those who see Elisp/Emacs as aging, messy, and hard to modernize, and those who view it as still the best live-hacking, tool-building environment, with unparalleled integration and mature packages like Magit and org-mode.