GNU Emacs Reviews & Product Details

Emacs can do literally anything if you're determined to push past its initial learning curve. I use mine for development, shell access, and most important, for Org Mode, an organizational add-on that I use with the Getting Things Done system to turn Emacs into my personal task organizer.

I'm always finding new uses for it, and Org Mode in particular has been a true lifesaver in terms of keeping me organized. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's got an initial learning curve, and the available learning resources for Emacs are not great. Reference documentation is not the same thing as learning resources, and a lot of the time, if you want to go with vanilla Emacs, you're doing a lot of looking at ancient forum posts from days gone by.

That's why I eventually went with Spacemacs, an Emacs distribution that has helped me along considerably. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Emacs has been around forever. It is extremely extensible. Anything you can do, you can probably do in Emacs. The old joke was that Emacs had everything but the kitchen sink, so emacstool's icon was a kitchen sink. I like that it is consistent and I've been using it so long my fingers know their way around it. I can do pretty much anything anyone can do with their fancy IDEs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's a little on the clunky side. You can tell it was written back in the days of the glass TTY. Sometimes it is painful to get support for your latest snazzy tool/language. You know you can, but you might have to do some hunting around and customization to get it to work/look the way you want it. It's not... polished. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Fully-configurable. You can configure anything - Theme, sytnax highlighter, checker, menu options, keyboard shortcuts.

Cross-platform and consistent experience. I have a github repository with .emacs.d for emacs configuration accessible on any operation system.

Active and expert community. emacs community is supportive and experienced. emacs is older than me, so are many emacs developers. :) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

A steep learning curve at the beginning. In fact, I gave up emacs twice before I fell in love with it the third time and decided to commit to it for the foreseeable future. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's extremelly configurable, and extensible Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The learning curve grows very slow in the beginning. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Extensibility. You can make Emacs do almost anything. Work in any language. Use it as a markdown note-taking tool. Develop entire applications for console, gui, or web. Even plays games. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Plugin repositories could stand to be a little more consistent, and you had better get acquainted with common Lisp. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The rich functionality.

The user interface.

Ability to add custom functions to by writing scripts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is nothing to dislike about gnu emacs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Customizability

Power

Flexibility

Configurability Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The initial learning curve is high. You have to remember a lot of commands and at times will be discouraging when you are coming from an IDE like environment. You need to use key board a lot compared to vim. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It does not consume many computational resources and all the configuration is stored on just one file. Furthermore, it allows extreme customization through the Lisp language. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It has to be said that its graphical user interface might be improved Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

flexible, minimal, extensive, works in terminal Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes complicated, I good package management Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that emacs comes on my Mac along with vim and nano. I had an easier time getting used to it over vim or nano, though I do use nano on occasion. I personally find it more user friendly for me. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Like any other command line text editor, it takes a little getting used to. Otherwise, I don't have too many issues with emacs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Emacs is basically a fully programming language with a build in text editor, customizable to the bones; itself emacs has one of the most loyal and active community on the free software world Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

the learning curve is the most remarkable issue with emacs, Lisp itself is a quite paradigm breaker for any newcomer Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

All are command based, which means you click the keys and the result immediately show/update to you. You do not need scroll the screen. Multiple windows support, even can open for same file in different locations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Quite old. Not see major or new features update. For me, different search pattern support, multiple windows opened for different searchings is important for me. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is the most expansive software. Language support and navigation support superb Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Key combinations not easy for fingers. Memory usage higher than other editors. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is extremely versatile, and usable both in GUI and ncurses (console) mode. It is the only other tool (other being IPython) that I can use from a screen session. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Perhaps I could learn how to use an IDE emacs package, which would make GNU emacs much more useful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The flexibility of the editor. I'm using it for almost everything during my work day. There is support for every programming languages I tried (though with various degrees of support). Emacs is a live programming environment, I greatly enjoy to be able to evaluate my code and in the editor and get feedback in live. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Emacs lisp isn't really a good programming language. I enjoy Lisp in general but Elisp isn't at the level of Common Lisp or scheme (depending on your religion), it is painful to do some simple things. Also, the standard library can be overwhelming as it is using a lot of quite terms unique to Emacs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is lightweight, both in terms of GUI usability and computing resources. It can be used as a terminal or a windowed application in most of desktop platforms.

But what brings it to excellence is how easily extensible Emacs is. The concept of mode allow getting syntax highlighting and shortcuts for most of the languages and text file formats used today, the user just have to use its great package system to fetch the language mode plugin. Besides, there are solutions such us Spacemacs or Prelude with pre-sets including most useful packages and customisations, providing a fully productive IDE solution out-of-the-box. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Emacs-LIPS is not the most expressive flavour of LISP. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Customizability. Configurability. The power given to the user. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The initial learning curve. It may seem daunting at first, but eases with time.

Also, the huge software. Sure it has a server client architecture, but even that could do good with additional improvements. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Emacs is the one of the best text editor and it's free. It's powerful and customizable. Unlike many other editors, you could use emacs most of the systems. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Steep learning curve. You can be lost with too many packages. Keyboard shortcuts could be rather non-intuitive for some. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Emacs is infinitely configurable and extensible. I have been using it for over 20 years and I am still learning new things every day. It is a joy to use and to learn about it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Because the configuration is done in Emacs Lisp, its learning curve can be quite daunting, particularly for complex configuration or customization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Built in commands for traversing through the long code.

Complete package for downloading and installing extensions including great performance Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Average user interface

Complex for beginners need to know editing commands,opening files

Having indentation problems ,omitting lines when copy/paste text or code Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Emacs is great! It has a lot of powerful and useful features. As a programmer, it allows me to work easier and faster, on several files at the same time. But other jobs can love it too! It also has tons of plugins to enhance its functionnality, you can even write your own!! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

When using a lot of packages, there can be incompatibility between them and that can be annoying, especially when key bindings are in conflict.

Emacs is not really AZERTY-friendly.

And, it is not good looking at all if you think it is a flaw. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

1. Extensibility

2. Help

3. No-mouse environment

4. In no time you can make Emacs 'your own Emacs'

5. You can replace almost every single software on your computer with Emacs, one at a time

6. Emacs is style! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is nothing to dislike about Emacs for it is one of the essential software a computer should have. I'm do not like Vim, neither am I a fan of Notepad++, so Emacs is everything for me. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the fact that this editor doesn't lag and leaves a good impression with it's quick functionality. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I don't really think there is something to dislike about it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The amount of customization that you can do in emacs really gives you the ability to make it your own. With community plugins readily available and supported for countless languages and frameworks it is hard to ignore. The built in package manager is very useful. The community around emacs is mature and often is able to help you when you run into any problems. This editor is old, but has gone through decades of improvement by thousands of engineers which has left it in a really good state. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Onboarding for emacs is challenging at first, but the built in tutorial offers a soft landing. Once out of the tutorial it just takes practice and time to become comfortable with it. It is a little daunting when you first get going as there is so much you can do that figuring out first steps can be difficult. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Quickly develop elegant macros and keybindings Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Overhead for less tech-savvy users, cumbersome font configuration Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.