{"slug": "gnu-emacs", "name": "GNU Emacs", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "Extensible, self-documenting text editor built around an Emacs Lisp runtime, from the GNU Project.", "recommenders": 275, "commenters": 460, "warners": 30, "score": 239.043, "rising": -3.64, "first": "2025-11-01", "latest": "2026-10-30", "why": "Loved for decades of stability and deep Elisp extensibility, plus built-in tools like Magit, Org mode and dired and good Vim emulation via evil-mode.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 336, "neutral": 228, "compare": 21, "warn": 43}, "spark": [60, 18, 25, 23, 31, 18, 23, 41, 24, 28, 15, 30], "listed": true, "loved": ["Longevity", "Built-in tools"], "caveat": "No mobile app", "short_quote": "I use an editor-construction kit named \"Emacs\" to build my own Editor, and IDE, and git porcelain, and organizer, and wiki.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "gnu.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Emacs", "GNU Emacs", "eMacs"], "verdict": [{"text": "Loved for decades of stability", "cites": [{"id": 804563520, "item_id": 50285220, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285220", "by": "jjav", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I fully switched from vi to emacs in 1992 and been using it heavily every day since then. So good.", "excerpt": "> I have been using Emacs for more than 30 years now. Other editors have come and gone, Emacs stayed. Parts of my configuration are more than 30 years old. Same here! Aside from the basic unix tools in /[usr]/bin/, there is very little software with the longevity of emacs. I fully switched from vi to emacs in 1992 and been using it heavily every day since then. So good. (The only other program I can think of from tha", "context": "long-time Unix user since the early 1990s", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "vi", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804380112, "item_id": 50273757, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273757", "by": "jwr", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Other editors have come and gone, Emacs stayed.", "excerpt": "I have been using Emacs for more than 30 years now. Other editors have come and gone, Emacs stayed. Parts of my configuration are more than 30 years old. There were better and worse times in Emacs history. Recent times, however, are really good. Emacs is maintained and developed actively and there are many external packages which are impressive. Magit and ghostel are good examples of packages that I use on a daily ba", "context": "30+ year user", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804379441, "item_id": 50273715, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273715", "by": "vr46", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Emacs and Doom + eVil, and am relieved to be back in a nice stable system again", "excerpt": "About two or three months ago I ditched Neovim as all the complicated modern crap wasn't working for me, and instead of reverting to Vim, I switched to Emacs and Doom + eVil, and am relieved to be back in a nice stable system again. I did ask GPT to port over my key commands and shortcuts, which it did, and things are great again!", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "Neovim", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}, {"text": " and deep Elisp extensibility,", "cites": [{"id": 804483776, "item_id": 50280236, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50280236", "by": "Karrot_Kream", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the sheer amount of person-years that have gone into making emacs and elisp a conjoined system makes it a pleasure to use and iterate on", "excerpt": "Elisp is homoiconic and has a strong culture of REPL development, but really the thing that makes elisp so nice is that it has decades of use to iterate on an editor. There's an attempt to do this with Common Lisp that's quite cool, called Lem, but the sheer amount of person-years that have gone into making emacs and elisp a conjoined system makes it a pleasure to use and iterate on. Lem, in comparison, is building u", "context": "", "use_case": "editor customization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 801515728, "item_id": 50094733, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50094733", "by": "antiframe", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "In Emacs I use different faces for comments, tables in literate sections, and code blocks.", "excerpt": "> Wish code editors would support different fonts per semantic region They absolutely do. In Emacs I use different faces for comments, tables in literate sections, and code blocks. I use the same font for all those faces, but different attributes (size, weight, etc). I also have configured different fonts for different unicode code points, so that when I include Cyrillic or Japanese text I can use a font with better ", "context": "", "use_case": "configurable code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Iosevka is an open-source, sans-serif and slab-serif monospace font"}, {"id": 804805025, "item_id": 50300314, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300314", "by": "athrowaway3z", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back", "excerpt": "Having used herdr since its release, the recent 'Emacs is 50' made me decide to go back to it and just vibecode herdr features i use into an emacs package. It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back, but the one thing that might change that is a mobile app.", "context": "", "use_case": "agent management package", "switched_from": "Herdr", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}]}, {"text": " plus built-in tools like Magit, Org mode and dired and good Vim emulation via evil-mode.", "cites": [{"id": 804399056, "item_id": 50274941, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274941", "by": "lopotubez", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Did not realize that everything I was building in my vim configs to make it better was already default in emacs", "excerpt": "My biggest regret in life was that I was introduced to vim before emacs and got really comfortable with it. Did not realize that everything I was building in my vim configs to make it better was already default in emacs i.e dired, compile mode, magit, org mode, etc. If I wasn't able to multiplex with tmux I would have switched to emacs a long time ago.", "context": "Vim user", "use_case": "editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804416640, "item_id": 50276040, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276040", "by": "lukehandcool", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love emacs and have been using it daily for about 5 years now.", "excerpt": "I love emacs and have been using it daily for about 5 years now. Many people have mentioned magit and org mode. I just want to give another shout out to consult.el which is a wonderful way to grep and search through text. Happy birthday emacs!", "context": "", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 802117906, "item_id": 50132369, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50132369", "by": "teddyh", "date": "2026-10-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "When I need to manipulate files in any quantity, I use Emacs and its dired-mode.", "excerpt": "I came to Unix from an MS-DOS background, where I used Norton Commander a lot. I used to keep an older version of NC \u2013 which would fit on a floppy \u2013 with me at all times. But on Unix, I ended up not using any of the clones; not even Midnight Commander, which was a key-for key clone, and should have fit me perfectly. It turns out you, or at least I, just don\u2019t use Unix the same way as I did MS-DOS. When I need to mani", "context": "came to Unix from MS-DOS", "use_case": "bulk file manipulation", "switched_from": "", "story": "The history of development of Norton Commander (2011)"}, {"id": 804556736, "item_id": 50284796, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284796", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Emacs, as it turns out, vims much better than any other concrete vim implementation.", "excerpt": "I don't know how long ago \"your early 30's\" was, but for me this was never a question - I'm a die-hard vimmer, I use vim bindings everywhere. It's practical, why force myself to relearn my typing with every new tool I use if I really don't have to? Emacs, as it turns out, vims much better than any other concrete vim implementation. Even though I did learn some basic Emacs vanilla bindings, I'm still a vimmer. Vimming", "context": "die-hard vimmer", "use_case": "editing with vim bindings", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804497776, "item_id": 50281111, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50281111", "by": "Jtsummers", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Because emacs is better, and I can always use evil-mode if I want the vim bindings", "excerpt": "The only expression I have gotten was something like \"Why not vim?\" and my response was \"Because emacs is better, and I can always use evil-mode if I want the vim bindings\". Then it gets installed (by me or an admin) and I use it. I can't imagine anyone actually caring, that's pretty petty of them, or lazy based on your other comment about it being too much work for sysadmins.", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}, {"text": " Complaints are rare and scattered:", "cites": [{"id": 804805025, "item_id": 50300314, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300314", "by": "athrowaway3z", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back", "excerpt": "Having used herdr since its release, the recent 'Emacs is 50' made me decide to go back to it and just vibecode herdr features i use into an emacs package. It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back, but the one thing that might change that is a mobile app.", "context": "", "use_case": "agent management package", "switched_from": "Herdr", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}, {"id": 804392384, "item_id": 50274524, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274524", "by": "osener", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This is going to make some custom UI's way easier to make", "excerpt": "Fantastic rundown, thank you! Wow I missed canvas support completely. This is going to make some custom UI's way easier to make compared to the hacks I had to resort to in the past [0] I do hope one day we'd get a new cross platform performant display engine that draws like Zed does for more UI capabilities in Emacs. Neomacs[1] promises this and has some of this but looks like its suffering from never ending scope cr", "context": "", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}, {"text": " one user misses a mobile app, and another wants a more capable display engine.", "cites": [{"id": 804805025, "item_id": 50300314, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300314", "by": "athrowaway3z", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back", "excerpt": "Having used herdr since its release, the recent 'Emacs is 50' made me decide to go back to it and just vibecode herdr features i use into an emacs package. It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back, but the one thing that might change that is a mobile app.", "context": "", "use_case": "agent management package", "switched_from": "Herdr", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}, {"id": 804392384, "item_id": 50274524, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274524", "by": "osener", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This is going to make some custom UI's way easier to make", "excerpt": "Fantastic rundown, thank you! Wow I missed canvas support completely. This is going to make some custom UI's way easier to make compared to the hacks I had to resort to in the past [0] I do hope one day we'd get a new cross platform performant display engine that draws like Zed does for more UI capabilities in Emacs. Neomacs[1] promises this and has some of this but looks like its suffering from never ending scope cr", "context": "", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Longevity", "summary": "Many have used it daily for decades, and it outlasted other editors.", "quotes": [{"id": 804563520, "item_id": 50285220, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285220", "by": "jjav", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I fully switched from vi to emacs in 1992 and been using it heavily every day since then. So good.", "excerpt": "> I have been using Emacs for more than 30 years now. Other editors have come and gone, Emacs stayed. Parts of my configuration are more than 30 years old. Same here! Aside from the basic unix tools in /[usr]/bin/, there is very little software with the longevity of emacs. I fully switched from vi to emacs in 1992 and been using it heavily every day since then. So good. (The only other program I can think of from tha", "context": "long-time Unix user since the early 1990s", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "vi", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804380112, "item_id": 50273757, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273757", "by": "jwr", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Other editors have come and gone, Emacs stayed.", "excerpt": "I have been using Emacs for more than 30 years now. Other editors have come and gone, Emacs stayed. Parts of my configuration are more than 30 years old. There were better and worse times in Emacs history. Recent times, however, are really good. Emacs is maintained and developed actively and there are many external packages which are impressive. Magit and ghostel are good examples of packages that I use on a daily ba", "context": "30+ year user", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804449632, "item_id": 50278102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278102", "by": "kickingvegas", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Been using Emacs for 37 years.", "excerpt": "Been using Emacs for 37 years. Didn't start learning Elisp until 6 years ago. It's never too late. Wrote an Elisp Cheatsheet for Python Programmers, which helped me level up. Perhaps this might as helpful to you. https://kickingvegas.github.io/elisp-for-python/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}, {"label": "Built-in tools", "summary": "Magit, Org mode, dired and consult are singled out as standout tools.", "quotes": [{"id": 804399056, "item_id": 50274941, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274941", "by": "lopotubez", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Did not realize that everything I was building in my vim configs to make it better was already default in emacs", "excerpt": "My biggest regret in life was that I was introduced to vim before emacs and got really comfortable with it. Did not realize that everything I was building in my vim configs to make it better was already default in emacs i.e dired, compile mode, magit, org mode, etc. If I wasn't able to multiplex with tmux I would have switched to emacs a long time ago.", "context": "Vim user", "use_case": "editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804416849, "item_id": 50276053, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276053", "by": "_doctor_love", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Emacs has served me well for more than a decade.", "excerpt": "I am too young to be in the 30 year club but Emacs has served me well for more than a decade. I don't use it as a daily driver anymore but it holds a special place in my heart. Using magit made me believe again that really good software can exist and that there are really great designers still among us. Also super agree that Stallman's original ideas are only ever more increasingly valid. I will generously say that S", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804416640, "item_id": 50276040, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276040", "by": "lukehandcool", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love emacs and have been using it daily for about 5 years now.", "excerpt": "I love emacs and have been using it daily for about 5 years now. Many people have mentioned magit and org mode. I just want to give another shout out to consult.el which is a wonderful way to grep and search through text. Happy birthday emacs!", "context": "", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}, {"label": "Extensibility", "summary": "Elisp and decades of iteration make it easy to reshape the editor to fit your workflow.", "quotes": [{"id": 804483776, "item_id": 50280236, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50280236", "by": "Karrot_Kream", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the sheer amount of person-years that have gone into making emacs and elisp a conjoined system makes it a pleasure to use and iterate on", "excerpt": "Elisp is homoiconic and has a strong culture of REPL development, but really the thing that makes elisp so nice is that it has decades of use to iterate on an editor. There's an attempt to do this with Common Lisp that's quite cool, called Lem, but the sheer amount of person-years that have gone into making emacs and elisp a conjoined system makes it a pleasure to use and iterate on. Lem, in comparison, is building u", "context": "", "use_case": "editor customization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 801515728, "item_id": 50094733, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50094733", "by": "antiframe", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "In Emacs I use different faces for comments, tables in literate sections, and code blocks.", "excerpt": "> Wish code editors would support different fonts per semantic region They absolutely do. In Emacs I use different faces for comments, tables in literate sections, and code blocks. I use the same font for all those faces, but different attributes (size, weight, etc). I also have configured different fonts for different unicode code points, so that when I include Cyrillic or Japanese text I can use a font with better ", "context": "", "use_case": "configurable code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Iosevka is an open-source, sans-serif and slab-serif monospace font"}, {"id": 804741009, "item_id": 50296313, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50296313", "by": "wilkystyle", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "after almost 20 years of using it to write all sorts of functionality from big to small things", "excerpt": "I definitely agree with this. Literally the only time I use lisp is when working on my Emacs configuration, but after almost 20 years of using it to write all sorts of functionality from big to small things, just having the exposure to lisp has really helped expand my thinking about programming in ways that working with e.g. C, Python, Rust may not have. One last thing on the Vim emulation front: While I'm not a big ", "context": "Emacs user for almost 20 years", "use_case": "editor and customization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}, {"label": "AI workflows", "summary": "Users say AI agents make customizing Emacs and working in it even better.", "quotes": [{"id": 804380112, "item_id": 50273757, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273757", "by": "jwr", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Other editors have come and gone, Emacs stayed.", "excerpt": "I have been using Emacs for more than 30 years now. Other editors have come and gone, Emacs stayed. Parts of my configuration are more than 30 years old. There were better and worse times in Emacs history. Recent times, however, are really good. Emacs is maintained and developed actively and there are many external packages which are impressive. Magit and ghostel are good examples of packages that I use on a daily ba", "context": "30+ year user", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 803674064, "item_id": 50229629, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229629", "by": "Karrot_Kream", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the moment agents became a viable way to develop code I switched back into emacs", "excerpt": "I've been an emacs user for most of my life, before I even went to college. I took a brief (5 years) tour into IDEs for writing code on the job, but the moment agents became a viable way to develop code I switched back into emacs. I love reviewing changes in magit. I'm pretty sure many folks put up with the bloat of IDEs just for the functionality they offered. Now, they're hopping back to emacs, vim, sublime, whatev", "context": "emacs user for most of life", "use_case": "code editing with agents", "switched_from": "IDEs", "story": "We should be more ambitious with the software we build"}, {"id": 804805025, "item_id": 50300314, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300314", "by": "athrowaway3z", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back", "excerpt": "Having used herdr since its release, the recent 'Emacs is 50' made me decide to go back to it and just vibecode herdr features i use into an emacs package. It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back, but the one thing that might change that is a mobile app.", "context": "", "use_case": "agent management package", "switched_from": "Herdr", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}]}, {"label": "Vim emulation", "summary": "Vim users find evil-mode emulates Vim better than other editors.", "quotes": [{"id": 804556736, "item_id": 50284796, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284796", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Emacs, as it turns out, vims much better than any other concrete vim implementation.", "excerpt": "I don't know how long ago \"your early 30's\" was, but for me this was never a question - I'm a die-hard vimmer, I use vim bindings everywhere. It's practical, why force myself to relearn my typing with every new tool I use if I really don't have to? Emacs, as it turns out, vims much better than any other concrete vim implementation. Even though I did learn some basic Emacs vanilla bindings, I'm still a vimmer. Vimming", "context": "die-hard vimmer", "use_case": "editing with vim bindings", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804497776, "item_id": 50281111, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50281111", "by": "Jtsummers", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Because emacs is better, and I can always use evil-mode if I want the vim bindings", "excerpt": "The only expression I have gotten was something like \"Why not vim?\" and my response was \"Because emacs is better, and I can always use evil-mode if I want the vim bindings\". Then it gets installed (by me or an admin) and I use it. I can't imagine anyone actually caring, that's pretty petty of them, or lazy based on your other comment about it being too much work for sysadmins.", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804379441, "item_id": 50273715, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273715", "by": "vr46", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Emacs and Doom + eVil, and am relieved to be back in a nice stable system again", "excerpt": "About two or three months ago I ditched Neovim as all the complicated modern crap wasn't working for me, and instead of reverting to Vim, I switched to Emacs and Doom + eVil, and am relieved to be back in a nice stable system again. I did ask GPT to port over my key commands and shortcuts, which it did, and things are great again!", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "Neovim", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}, {"label": "Recent improvements", "summary": "Native compilation, tree-sitter, canvas support and newcomer presets modernize it.", "quotes": [{"id": 804382688, "item_id": 50273918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273918", "by": "internet_points", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Native compilation is now default, so elisp is much faster than it was out of the box.", "excerpt": "Native compilation is now default, so elisp is much faster than it was out of the box. Tree-sitter support is quite smooth now, with automatic grammar installation. Apparently very good Android support. Canvas support is in master, people are building all kinds of crazy stuff[0] with this Lots of nice built-in packages like modus themes, eglot, which-key. Editable grep/xref/occur results is also built-in now. New con", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804392384, "item_id": 50274524, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274524", "by": "osener", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This is going to make some custom UI's way easier to make", "excerpt": "Fantastic rundown, thank you! Wow I missed canvas support completely. This is going to make some custom UI's way easier to make compared to the hacks I had to resort to in the past [0] I do hope one day we'd get a new cross platform performant display engine that draws like Zed does for more UI capabilities in Emacs. Neomacs[1] promises this and has some of this but looks like its suffering from never ending scope cr", "context": "", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804525728, "item_id": 50282858, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282858", "by": "Arubis", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Decades later it feels perhaps more relevant than it did the then.", "excerpt": "When I started using emacs it already felt past well-established and perhaps past its prime. Decades later it feels perhaps more relevant than it did the then. The easier-access defaults kits of the mid-2010s got a lot of new user investment, and it feels like the community really ticked up around COVID. Yes, agentic development has us spending a lot of time in harnesses; relevance-wise, things that aren\u2019t an editor ", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "No mobile app", "summary": "One user says only the lack of a mobile app might make them leave.", "quotes": [{"id": 804805025, "item_id": 50300314, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300314", "by": "athrowaway3z", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back", "excerpt": "Having used herdr since its release, the recent 'Emacs is 50' made me decide to go back to it and just vibecode herdr features i use into an emacs package. It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back, but the one thing that might change that is a mobile app.", "context": "", "use_case": "agent management package", "switched_from": "Herdr", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}]}, {"label": "Display engine", "summary": "One user hopes for a faster cross-platform display engine for richer UIs.", "quotes": [{"id": 804392384, "item_id": 50274524, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274524", "by": "osener", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This is going to make some custom UI's way easier to make", "excerpt": "Fantastic rundown, thank you! Wow I missed canvas support completely. This is going to make some custom UI's way easier to make compared to the hacks I had to resort to in the past [0] I do hope one day we'd get a new cross platform performant display engine that draws like Zed does for more UI capabilities in Emacs. Neomacs[1] promises this and has some of this but looks like its suffering from never ending scope cr", "context": "", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}, {"label": "Not for everything", "summary": "A long-time user doubts that doing everything inside Emacs is the best way to work.", "quotes": [{"id": 804419552, "item_id": 50276222, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276222", "by": "tarentel", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use emacs everyday.", "excerpt": "I've been using emacs for ~15 years. I don't now what is considered lean. My init is 343 lines. Probably removing all the comments and junk collected over the years it is likely ~200 that actually does anything useful at this point, I should probably clean up. I use emacs everyday. I get the desire to want to do everything in emacs but I also don't. It is good at what it does, it happens to do other things too but I ", "context": "Emacs user for ~15 years", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}, {"label": "Outside AI harness", "summary": "One user runs an AI harness outside Emacs to use a Claude subscription.", "quotes": [{"id": 804525728, "item_id": 50282858, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282858", "by": "Arubis", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Decades later it feels perhaps more relevant than it did the then.", "excerpt": "When I started using emacs it already felt past well-established and perhaps past its prime. Decades later it feels perhaps more relevant than it did the then. The easier-access defaults kits of the mid-2010s got a lot of new user investment, and it feels like the community really ticked up around COVID. Yes, agentic development has us spending a lot of time in harnesses; relevance-wise, things that aren\u2019t an editor ", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}], "who": [{"by": "wilkystyle", "context": "Emacs user for almost 20 years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50296313", "date": "2026-10-29"}, {"by": "iLemming", "context": "die-hard vimmer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50291657", "date": "2026-10-29"}, {"by": "jjav", "context": "long-time Unix user since the early 1990s", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285220", "date": "2026-10-29"}, {"by": "not2b", "context": "user since the early 80s", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284380", "date": "2026-10-29"}, {"by": "RedCinnabar", "context": "20-year user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282135", "date": "2026-10-28"}, {"by": "Isamu", "context": "user since around 1980", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50277049", "date": "2026-10-28"}, {"by": "tarentel", "context": "Emacs user for ~15 years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276222", "date": "2026-10-28"}, {"by": "lopotubez", "context": "Vim user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274941", "date": "2026-10-28"}, {"by": "jwr", "context": "30+ year user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273757", "date": "2026-10-28"}, {"by": "Karrot_Kream", "context": "emacs user for most of life", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229629", "date": "2026-10-25"}, {"by": "teddyh", "context": "came to Unix from MS-DOS", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50132369", "date": "2026-10-17"}, {"by": "SoftTalker", "context": "Linux user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50081291", "date": "2026-10-14"}], "tags": ["for Vim users", "for AI-assisted coding", "for Git workflows", "for email", "for file management"], "use_cases": ["text editing", "editor", "text editor", "daily editing", "editing", "code editing"], "compared": [{"slug": "vim", "name": "Vim", "co": 95, "switched_from": 5, "switched_to": 5}, {"slug": "visual-studio-code", "name": "Visual Studio Code", "co": 75, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "neovim", "name": "Neovim", "co": 56, "switched_from": 3, "switched_to": 8}, {"slug": "org-mode", "name": "Org mode", "co": 51, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "magit", "name": "Magit", "co": 38, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "doom-emacs", "name": "Doom Emacs", "co": 30, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "claude-code", "name": "Claude Code", "co": 28, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "vi", "name": "vi", "co": 22, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}], "makers": [{"id": 804379120, "item_id": 50273695, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273695", "by": "luqtas", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i'm still happy about how it allowed me to build a really expressive musical tracker", "excerpt": "not big but i'm still happy about how it allowed me to build a really expressive musical tracker with micro-tonality implemented by default. partly by Csound score paradigm but we also have an interesting macros, a scale paradigm for adding notes and real-time p-field information [0] https://github.com/luqtas/csound-score-emacs", "context": "", "use_case": "building a music tracker", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 755650369, "item_id": 47228148, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47228148", "by": "girzel", "date": "2026-03-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "many years of Emacs contributions", "excerpt": "Location: Seattle Remote: Remote or hybrid (or in-office if there's a good reason!) Willing to relocate: No LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-abrahamsen-32a8895b/ I am a problem solver, and my main tools are Python and Postgres, though my programming approach is informed by Lisp (many years of Emacs contributions), Prolog (the best kind of mind-bending) and OCaml (which I wish I was writing instead of Python", "context": "", "use_case": "Editor, contributions", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2026)"}, {"id": 743420336, "item_id": 46463771, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46463771", "by": "xlii", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "learned from debugging/optimizing Emacs", "excerpt": "I have a one bit that might be useful that I learned from debugging/optimizing Emacs. macOS' Instruments tool only checks for leaks when it can track allocations and it is limited to ~256 stack depth. For recursive calls or very deep stacks (Emacs) some allocations aren't tracked and only after setting malloc history flags [0] I started seeing some results (and leaks). Another place I'm investigating (for Emacs) is t", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why users cannot create Issues directly (Ghostty)"}, {"id": 734169120, "item_id": 45885570, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45885570", "by": "rwl", "date": "2025-11-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have been working on implementing iCalendar/RFC5545 in Emacs Lisp.", "excerpt": "I have been working on implementing iCalendar/RFC5545 in Emacs Lisp. I recently submitted a large patch and hope it will be merged in the next couple of months: https://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2025-11/msg00115.html This will add an iCalendar library to GNU Emacs, allowing packages in core and third-party packages to work with the format. More on the decisions I made and what I learned here: https://re", "context": "", "use_case": "iCalendar library contributions", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273171", "title": "Emacs Turns 50", "mentions": 29}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48584135", "title": "Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving", "mentions": 23}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45941835", "title": "IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs", "mentions": 23}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45783376", "title": "Ask HN: Where to begin with \"modern\" Emacs?", "mentions": 23}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46021577", "title": "Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good", "mentions": 19}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45832341", "title": "How I am deeply integrating Emacs", "mentions": 19}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 26, "recommend": 60, "warn": 12, "compare": 3}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 18, "neutral": 20, "compare": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 20, "recommend": 25, "warn": 5}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 23, "neutral": 25, "compare": 4, "warn": 5}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 23, "recommend": 31, "compare": 3, "warn": 2}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 18, "recommend": 18, "warn": 2, "compare": 5}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 23, "compare": 3, "neutral": 18, "warn": 4}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 41, "neutral": 25, "warn": 4}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 14, "recommend": 24, "warn": 3, "compare": 1}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 17, "recommend": 28, "warn": 2}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 15, "neutral": 9, "warn": 2, "compare": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 30, "neutral": 13, "warn": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804805025, "item_id": 50300314, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300314", "by": "athrowaway3z", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back", "excerpt": "Having used herdr since its release, the recent 'Emacs is 50' made me decide to go back to it and just vibecode herdr features i use into an emacs package. It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back, but the one thing that might change that is a mobile app.", "context": "", "use_case": "agent management package", "switched_from": "Herdr", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}, {"id": 804741009, "item_id": 50296313, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50296313", "by": "wilkystyle", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "after almost 20 years of using it to write all sorts of functionality from big to small things", "excerpt": "I definitely agree with this. Literally the only time I use lisp is when working on my Emacs configuration, but after almost 20 years of using it to write all sorts of functionality from big to small things, just having the exposure to lisp has really helped expand my thinking about programming in ways that working with e.g. C, Python, Rust may not have. One last thing on the Vim emulation front: While I'm not a big ", "context": "Emacs user for almost 20 years", "use_case": "editor and customization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804666513, "item_id": 50291657, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50291657", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "otherwise, I might have never convinced myself to ever give Emacs a try.", "excerpt": "> Vim implementation quality varies wildly from environment to environment is extremely frustrating to me. I know exactly what you're talking about. I am a die-hard vimmer and used vim plugins in every editor/IDE/browser/shell/multiplexer/WM/etc. I use vim bindings system-wide. I control my music, switch between apps, swap and resize windows - all without lifting a finger from the home-row. I spent almost a decade li", "context": "die-hard vimmer", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "IntelliJ", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804617360, "item_id": 50288585, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50288585", "by": "wilkystyle", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am primarily an Emacs user", "excerpt": "(not the person you are replying to) I am primarily an Emacs user, using the standard key bindings (and a whole bunch of custom bindings and functions I've built on top of it over the decades, ctrl remaped to caps lock and no Emacs pinky so far). But I am also 80% a NeoVim and Vim user for about 15 years now, and I consider myself quite proficient with Vim keybindings. The Emacs emulation is truly incredible, but the", "context": "", "use_case": "editing and general work", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804614544, "item_id": 50288409, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50288409", "by": "excannuk", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm an eMacs guy", "excerpt": "That's not an empty set? I'm an eMacs guy, and I use vi when on the shell", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "NetBSD adds a new text editor called atto"}, {"id": 804563520, "item_id": 50285220, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50285220", "by": "jjav", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I fully switched from vi to emacs in 1992 and been using it heavily every day since then. So good.", "excerpt": "> I have been using Emacs for more than 30 years now. Other editors have come and gone, Emacs stayed. Parts of my configuration are more than 30 years old. Same here! Aside from the basic unix tools in /[usr]/bin/, there is very little software with the longevity of emacs. I fully switched from vi to emacs in 1992 and been using it heavily every day since then. So good. (The only other program I can think of from tha", "context": "long-time Unix user since the early 1990s", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "vi", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804556736, "item_id": 50284796, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284796", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Emacs, as it turns out, vims much better than any other concrete vim implementation.", "excerpt": "I don't know how long ago \"your early 30's\" was, but for me this was never a question - I'm a die-hard vimmer, I use vim bindings everywhere. It's practical, why force myself to relearn my typing with every new tool I use if I really don't have to? Emacs, as it turns out, vims much better than any other concrete vim implementation. Even though I did learn some basic Emacs vanilla bindings, I'm still a vimmer. Vimming", "context": "die-hard vimmer", "use_case": "editing with vim bindings", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804554832, "item_id": 50284677, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284677", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you can't just ignore forty years of package development", "excerpt": "> someone has made the wrong editor choice Just the other day I made this comment on the topic of \"nvim vs emacs\", I think it fits here well: > editor choice shouldn't be treated like soccer or religion Oh, I wish there was a choice here. I've been vimming since 2010, the idea of vim modality is an excellent, practical, beautiful model. It's a fantastic idea and the ideas do port. That's why I've used vim-bindings in", "context": "vimmer since 2010", "use_case": "Lisp REPL and editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804550080, "item_id": 50284380, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284380", "by": "not2b", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "shortly after switch to GNU Emacs when it was first released in 1985", "excerpt": "I've been using Emacs since the early 80s, first Gosling's Emacs and shortly after switch to GNU Emacs when it was first released in 1985. In college we had a DEC-10 system and I used Teco on that one.", "context": "user since the early 80s", "use_case": "editing", "switched_from": "Gosling Emacs", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804525728, "item_id": 50282858, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282858", "by": "Arubis", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Decades later it feels perhaps more relevant than it did the then.", "excerpt": "When I started using emacs it already felt past well-established and perhaps past its prime. Decades later it feels perhaps more relevant than it did the then. The easier-access defaults kits of the mid-2010s got a lot of new user investment, and it feels like the community really ticked up around COVID. Yes, agentic development has us spending a lot of time in harnesses; relevance-wise, things that aren\u2019t an editor ", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804523664, "item_id": 50282729, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282729", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Blaming Emacs for that is blaming the UI for the engine.", "excerpt": "> Will probably die Did anyone ever tell you how badly you suck at prophecies? This unfalsifiable prediction has enormously bad track record: people have called Emacs dead since the 90s, through XEmacs, through every IDE wave since, through Atom, Sublime, nvim, VSCode, Zed, etc. I'm sure \"Anti-AI core community\" drinking themselves to oblivion and chugging anti-depressants seeing how many packages for AI integration ", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804514160, "item_id": 50282135, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282135", "by": "RedCinnabar", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You\u2019re the best thing that happened in the computing world.", "excerpt": "I programmed in Emacs in a myriad of different languages, I used it to write my thesis, to write my homework and later to grade them. I\u2019ve used it to publish countless blog articles, wiki pages and technical documents. I read that I was hired at my first job from en email received inside Emacs, I\u2019ve used it to send countless emails to colleagues, employers and business partners. I planned both my personal and profess", "context": "20-year user", "use_case": "programming, writing, email, planning", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804497776, "item_id": 50281111, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50281111", "by": "Jtsummers", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Because emacs is better, and I can always use evil-mode if I want the vim bindings", "excerpt": "The only expression I have gotten was something like \"Why not vim?\" and my response was \"Because emacs is better, and I can always use evil-mode if I want the vim bindings\". Then it gets installed (by me or an admin) and I use it. I can't imagine anyone actually caring, that's pretty petty of them, or lazy based on your other comment about it being too much work for sysadmins.", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804494448, "item_id": 50280903, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50280903", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm reading this thread in Emacs.", "excerpt": "It absolutely is. Consider this. I'm reading this thread in Emacs. Why? Am I obsessed with it? What's the point? Well, I can easily read not just the thread but also the article posted while ignoring all the fluff - graphics, banners, ads, etc. - to extract a piece of plain text. I can also just ignore every conversation - sometimes, posted urls are more valuable than what people blabber and fight about. Imagine havi", "context": "", "use_case": "reading HN and extracting URLs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804483776, "item_id": 50280236, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50280236", "by": "Karrot_Kream", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the sheer amount of person-years that have gone into making emacs and elisp a conjoined system makes it a pleasure to use and iterate on", "excerpt": "Elisp is homoiconic and has a strong culture of REPL development, but really the thing that makes elisp so nice is that it has decades of use to iterate on an editor. There's an attempt to do this with Common Lisp that's quite cool, called Lem, but the sheer amount of person-years that have gone into making emacs and elisp a conjoined system makes it a pleasure to use and iterate on. Lem, in comparison, is building u", "context": "", "use_case": "editor customization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804449713, "item_id": 50278107, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278107", "by": "ashton314", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If you're feeling curious at trying Emacs out for the first time", "excerpt": "If you're feeling curious at trying Emacs out for the first time (or just want to see what's new in the past decade or so), may I humbly suggest you take a look at my starter config: https://codeberg.org/ashton314/emacs-bedrock When I first started using Emacs, my dad gave me his config. (Yes, I actually experienced https://xkcd.com/297/ irl.) A few years ago a friend of mine asked for some help getting a simpler Ema", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804449632, "item_id": 50278102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278102", "by": "kickingvegas", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Been using Emacs for 37 years.", "excerpt": "Been using Emacs for 37 years. Didn't start learning Elisp until 6 years ago. It's never too late. Wrote an Elisp Cheatsheet for Python Programmers, which helped me level up. Perhaps this might as helpful to you. https://kickingvegas.github.io/elisp-for-python/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804449456, "item_id": 50278091, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278091", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Of course\u00b9, but I warn you - it may feel massive", "excerpt": "Of course\u00b9, but I warn you - it may feel massive, I do tons of (at first) seemingly weird stuff. Like OCRing images in my clipboard (which is now a separate package\u00b2) --- \u00b9 https://github.com/agzam/.emacs.d \u00b2 https://github.com/agzam/clipimg.el", "context": "", "use_case": "editor configuration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804441760, "item_id": 50277610, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50277610", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I grokked display-buffer-alist and never had any problems since.", "excerpt": "I grokked display-buffer-alist and never had any problems since. With any other editor or IDE (and I used more than a few), it never occurred to me to even want to do anything complex with window placement. There are things I would love to see getting improved in Emacs, but managing windows and frames is not the one.", "context": "", "use_case": "window and frame management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804434208, "item_id": 50277138, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50277138", "by": "amitp", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "which makes it even more valuable to do more things in emacs", "excerpt": "And with llm-buddy [1] everything I type in emacs gets sent to an LLM, which makes it even more valuable to do more things in emacs. [1] https://github.com/ahyatt/llm-buddy", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804432784, "item_id": 50277049, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50277049", "by": "Isamu", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "And I used Emacs (on Linux) this morning.", "excerpt": "I started using the original TECO based Emacs on TOPS-20 at CMU in maybe 1980, so much better than the line editor of the time. And I used Emacs (on Linux) this morning. Let me know if you remember the DEC20 and the dreaded \u201cnot running\u201d message that happened to everyone in the room when it went down. Also interested if you remember Gosling Emacs, the first rewrite for Unix. James Gosling of Java fame.", "context": "user since around 1980", "use_case": "editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804419552, "item_id": 50276222, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276222", "by": "tarentel", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use emacs everyday.", "excerpt": "I've been using emacs for ~15 years. I don't now what is considered lean. My init is 343 lines. Probably removing all the comments and junk collected over the years it is likely ~200 that actually does anything useful at this point, I should probably clean up. I use emacs everyday. I get the desire to want to do everything in emacs but I also don't. It is good at what it does, it happens to do other things too but I ", "context": "Emacs user for ~15 years", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804416849, "item_id": 50276053, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276053", "by": "_doctor_love", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Emacs has served me well for more than a decade.", "excerpt": "I am too young to be in the 30 year club but Emacs has served me well for more than a decade. I don't use it as a daily driver anymore but it holds a special place in my heart. Using magit made me believe again that really good software can exist and that there are really great designers still among us. Also super agree that Stallman's original ideas are only ever more increasingly valid. I will generously say that S", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804416640, "item_id": 50276040, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276040", "by": "lukehandcool", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love emacs and have been using it daily for about 5 years now.", "excerpt": "I love emacs and have been using it daily for about 5 years now. Many people have mentioned magit and org mode. I just want to give another shout out to consult.el which is a wonderful way to grep and search through text. Happy birthday emacs!", "context": "", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804399056, "item_id": 50274941, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274941", "by": "lopotubez", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Did not realize that everything I was building in my vim configs to make it better was already default in emacs", "excerpt": "My biggest regret in life was that I was introduced to vim before emacs and got really comfortable with it. Did not realize that everything I was building in my vim configs to make it better was already default in emacs i.e dired, compile mode, magit, org mode, etc. If I wasn't able to multiplex with tmux I would have switched to emacs a long time ago.", "context": "Vim user", "use_case": "editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804394576, "item_id": 50274661, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274661", "by": "schoen", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "now Emacs is an efficient, parsimonious choice by comparison", "excerpt": "It's kind of striking how that joke post about ed (from 1991) presented Emacs as extremely resource-wasteful https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html but I guess trends elsewhere were so keen on adding abstractions that now Emacs is an efficient, parsimonious choice by comparison.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804392384, "item_id": 50274524, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274524", "by": "osener", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This is going to make some custom UI's way easier to make", "excerpt": "Fantastic rundown, thank you! Wow I missed canvas support completely. This is going to make some custom UI's way easier to make compared to the hacks I had to resort to in the past [0] I do hope one day we'd get a new cross platform performant display engine that draws like Zed does for more UI capabilities in Emacs. Neomacs[1] promises this and has some of this but looks like its suffering from never ending scope cr", "context": "", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804382688, "item_id": 50273918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273918", "by": "internet_points", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Native compilation is now default, so elisp is much faster than it was out of the box.", "excerpt": "Native compilation is now default, so elisp is much faster than it was out of the box. Tree-sitter support is quite smooth now, with automatic grammar installation. Apparently very good Android support. Canvas support is in master, people are building all kinds of crazy stuff[0] with this Lots of nice built-in packages like modus themes, eglot, which-key. Editable grep/xref/occur results is also built-in now. New con", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804380112, "item_id": 50273757, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273757", "by": "jwr", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Other editors have come and gone, Emacs stayed.", "excerpt": "I have been using Emacs for more than 30 years now. Other editors have come and gone, Emacs stayed. Parts of my configuration are more than 30 years old. There were better and worse times in Emacs history. Recent times, however, are really good. Emacs is maintained and developed actively and there are many external packages which are impressive. Magit and ghostel are good examples of packages that I use on a daily ba", "context": "30+ year user", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804379441, "item_id": 50273715, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273715", "by": "vr46", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Emacs and Doom + eVil, and am relieved to be back in a nice stable system again", "excerpt": "About two or three months ago I ditched Neovim as all the complicated modern crap wasn't working for me, and instead of reverting to Vim, I switched to Emacs and Doom + eVil, and am relieved to be back in a nice stable system again. I did ask GPT to port over my key commands and shortcuts, which it did, and things are great again!", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "Neovim", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 803674064, "item_id": 50229629, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229629", "by": "Karrot_Kream", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the moment agents became a viable way to develop code I switched back into emacs", "excerpt": "I've been an emacs user for most of my life, before I even went to college. I took a brief (5 years) tour into IDEs for writing code on the job, but the moment agents became a viable way to develop code I switched back into emacs. I love reviewing changes in magit. I'm pretty sure many folks put up with the bloat of IDEs just for the functionality they offered. Now, they're hopping back to emacs, vim, sublime, whatev", "context": "emacs user for most of life", "use_case": "code editing with agents", "switched_from": "IDEs", "story": "We should be more ambitious with the software we build"}, {"id": 802512305, "item_id": 50157019, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50157019", "by": "kccqzy", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Oh yeah. I actually use Forge[0] on my Linux desktop machine at home which allows me to customize the keyboard shortcuts for tiling and managing OS windows. Unfortunately I still have to use macOS and Windows at work, so universal OS window management isn\u2019t a solved problem. I\u2019m happy enough that I can run Emacs everywhere and have consistent keybindings inside Emacs though. [0]: https://extensions.gnome.org/extensio", "context": "", "use_case": "consistent keybindings everywhere", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tmux and Claude Code: Sessions, Send-Keys, and the Ceiling"}, {"id": 802500257, "item_id": 50156266, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50156266", "by": "kccqzy", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Inside Emacs I use winum mode", "excerpt": "Inside Emacs I use winum mode and I can\u2019t go back to directional moves like up/down/left/right any more.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tmux and Claude Code: Sessions, Send-Keys, and the Ceiling"}, {"id": 802117906, "item_id": 50132369, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50132369", "by": "teddyh", "date": "2026-10-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "When I need to manipulate files in any quantity, I use Emacs and its dired-mode.", "excerpt": "I came to Unix from an MS-DOS background, where I used Norton Commander a lot. I used to keep an older version of NC \u2013 which would fit on a floppy \u2013 with me at all times. But on Unix, I ended up not using any of the clones; not even Midnight Commander, which was a key-for key clone, and should have fit me perfectly. It turns out you, or at least I, just don\u2019t use Unix the same way as I did MS-DOS. When I need to mani", "context": "came to Unix from MS-DOS", "use_case": "bulk file manipulation", "switched_from": "", "story": "The history of development of Norton Commander (2011)"}, {"id": 801845172, "item_id": 50115323, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50115323", "by": "GeneralMaximus", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "as malleable as Emacs", "excerpt": "These numbers make a lot of sense to me. When the November 2025 coding agent inflection point happened, the first thing I did was to solve all the niggling little problems I have with the software I use on the daily. Think shell scripts, Alfred workflows, Elisp functions, and Obsidian plugins. Claude Code/Codex has made my entire macOS environment as malleable as Emacs. That\u2019s huge! Everyday automation continues to b", "context": "", "use_case": "extensible editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI is driving a boom in modestly successful software projects"}, {"id": 801543712, "item_id": 50096482, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50096482", "by": "arialdomartini", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have a key emitting \u201cforall\u201d which Emacs then displays as \u2200.", "excerpt": "When I program or I write maths I see and think of -> >>= <*> etc as a single, semantically meaningful symbols. Not only do I use a ligature for them, but I make my keyboard to use one single key. For the same reason I have a key emitting \u201cforall\u201d which Emacs then displays as \u2200.", "context": "", "use_case": "code and math editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Iosevka is an open-source, sans-serif and slab-serif monospace font"}, {"id": 801515728, "item_id": 50094733, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50094733", "by": "antiframe", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "In Emacs I use different faces for comments, tables in literate sections, and code blocks.", "excerpt": "> Wish code editors would support different fonts per semantic region They absolutely do. In Emacs I use different faces for comments, tables in literate sections, and code blocks. I use the same font for all those faces, but different attributes (size, weight, etc). I also have configured different fonts for different unicode code points, so that when I include Cyrillic or Japanese text I can use a font with better ", "context": "", "use_case": "configurable code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Iosevka is an open-source, sans-serif and slab-serif monospace font"}, {"id": 801489905, "item_id": 50093119, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50093119", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "That's why I use telega.el in Emacs.", "excerpt": "That's why I use telega.el in Emacs. Even if it has thousand vulnerabilities, nobody really cares, except the other three people on the planet who also use it. That's what I call \"security by obscurity\"... lol", "context": "", "use_case": "host for Telegram client", "switched_from": "", "story": "Telegram Desktop vulnerability allowed any user's file to be stolen"}, {"id": 801300960, "item_id": 50081310, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50081310", "by": "Avicebron", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "used Emacs for almost two decades now", "excerpt": "I've worked in C, used Emacs for almost two decades now, and work(ed) on plenty of SQL. We're tired, older. You either were part of the cohort who rode the wave of 150K starting salaries out of college or a bootcamp 15-20 years ago or not. And if you were, you now have graduated to making upwards of that and displacing locals out of their small rural communities because the economy is bad there and you can. Or you we", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Where has creativity in software gone?"}, {"id": 801300656, "item_id": 50081291, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50081291", "by": "SoftTalker", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "On linux I read my mail in emacs, and use notmuch for searching/indexing. It's amazing.", "excerpt": "On linux I read my mail in emacs, and use notmuch for searching/indexing. It's amazing. On the go I use a web browser on my phone for gmail or outlook. No apps. I try to minimize doing email on my phone because it's so awkward to type.", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "reading email on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Thunderbird for iOS"}]}