I have recently approached the world of Emacs, which I find great… The problem though is that I feel I’m wasting too much time trying to have it running in order to do the real work (and I’ve seen, there are several memes about it), so I was wondering what are the must-have extensions to quickly fire something functional (similar to vscode… Don’t make me get back to that please) for development.

By the way, I’ve seen several configurations scattered around the web, and something tells me that I’ve ended up in another anarchic realm (which is, something I both hate and love), as if that of distros -being the same except for one thing- wasn’t enough.

Of interest are: Python, Go, Bash, Clojure, Elixir, yaml (Docker, Terraform, Ansible), json, csv

I would also appreciate the general must-have extensions, currently I’m getting lost navigating Doom Emacs and Melpa packages.

Thank you!

  • sinsworth@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I really don’t think there is a single must-have package out there. One of the best coders I know has been using vanilla Emacs for 20+ years with, in their own words, just a few lines of config. Also, for anything additional you might want in an IDE there are almost certainly multiple options available.

    That all said, you are unlikely to arrive at your perfect config in anything near zero time unless you happen to miraculously find a distro that’s somehow configured exactly as you’d like right out of the box. I can’t really speak for any of the distros as I haven’t used them, but if you choose the vanilla route (which might also help you to not get overwhelmed with config options right away), I’d recommend starting by adding options which are either included with Emacs (e.g. Eglot for LSP integration), or integrate well with Emacs’ existing facilities (e.g. Corfu for completion), and then moving on to the other options only if you find them unsuitable.

    • emoarmy@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      I think I have to disagree, if they want things that work and are full-featured out of the box - then the community packages like lsp-mode and Company and Swiper are much better alternatives 🤷🏼

      • sinsworth@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        Interesting, I’ve had the exact opposite experience, so maybe both or our view points are at least somewhat anecdotal.