Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Emacs as IDE vs. extensible platform

  • One camp argues Emacs is frustrating compared to modern IDEs: no bundled LSP servers or working full-text search on Windows, and no “project‑aware autocomplete” out of the box.
  • Others counter that LSP servers are too heavy and version-specific to bundle; a better default would be integrated installers and hints, not shipping every server.
  • Several commenters stress that Emacs is not, and shouldn’t try to be, a “modern IDE.” It’s an Emacs Lisp VM / text-interface platform whose editor is just one application.
  • The “batteries included” idea is disputed: some say Emacs is more “batteries available,” with starter kits (e.g. Doom) filling the turnkey IDE niche.

Platform and OS support (Windows/macOS/Linux)

  • Windows users complain about broken grep-find and missing POSIX tools; others say this is really a Windows ecosystem problem and Emacs can be configured to use alternative tools.
  • There’s a long, heated subthread about Emacs on macOS: one side cites FSF policy and historical neglect (emoji, Cocoa issues, reliance on forks) as evidence of second/third‑class status.
  • The opposing side focuses on current reality: on macOS it’s now straightforward to install a good Emacs build, often easier than on some Linux distros, and day‑to‑day use is fine.
  • A practical macOS pain point mentioned is tree‑sitter version mismatches in packaged builds, which made language parsers hard to use until newer Emacs versions.

Search, LSP, and external tools

  • Emacs has long had grep/find integration, but depends on external commands; many users prefer faster tools like ag or ripgrep and customize Emacs around them.
  • Some show elaborate project-specific search setups (file-type prioritization, exclusions) as examples of Emacs’s flexibility.
  • LSP installation is described as trivial for most languages via package managers, with Java called out as an exception where Emacs+LSP is weak compared to dedicated IDEs.

Emacs philosophy, power, and culture

  • Fans emphasize Emacs’s introspection and live hackability: you can jump to command definitions (Elisp or C), redefine behavior on the fly, and even advise third‑party integrations in a few lines.
  • For some, Emacs becomes a “text home”: controlling browsers, shells, video, screenshots, OCR, remote systems, and even games from one programmable environment.
  • Skeptics see some of this as cleverness for its own sake, asking for concrete use cases and questioning whether such power is necessary “when we’re here to edit text.”
  • Several personal stories describe Emacs as life‑changing (e.g., org‑mode making a complex manuscript possible), while others tried it seriously and amicably returned to Vim/IDEs, keeping only a few habits.

Reception of the essay itself

  • Some readers find the essay increasingly esoteric, even unsettling, with dense metaphor and stream‑of‑consciousness style.
  • Others call it exhilarating, nostalgic, and deeply resonant, especially for those who lived the 1990s/early‑2000s hacker internet and already have strong feelings—positive or negative—about Emacs.