@jeff.terrell. For example, typical GUI editors have had much more obvious and interactive search/replace features forever. Cmd-Shift-f and I get a dialog to search. In atom, I have a row to limit the search to a folder. I can interactively decide how to construct the search: regex, case-sensitive, etc. I can interact with the results, for example collapse all results with one click and just see file names. I can change the replace value and it shows me what the changed result would be. It’s not that Emacs and VIM, etc don’t have powerful search and replace features, they have more powerful ones than Atom. It’s that with Atom, Textmate, etc, you just do the obvious thing and can see immediately how to do all of things. I’ve spent loads of time in Emacs trying to discover how to do the same thing that is obvious in Atom and the others.

The other thing is tabs. Emacs has Tabbar, but it’s not really there. I like tabs as they are an overview of what I’m working on. I rearrange them often as I am working. I constantly look at them to orient myself. People who don’t use tabs like this will never understand those of us who do and will continue to lecture the rest of us about how we should learn not to use tabs. 😛

Atom has some good concepts and implementations, but many bad ones, too. For example, why are config files lists instead of functions that return lists? It means you have to write all this config you might more easily have programmed. Or write a program to make the list, so now you have a couple steps. Plugin key commands stop all over other plugin’s commands. It’s a mess.

@jamieorc Emacs offers a lot more powerful ways to search, replace and navigate through the code. Although not very obvious for the beginner. For example you can search for a term in a project/file/region/multiple folders, then open the search results in a buffer and edit them to your liking.

when it comes to Tabs - yes, Emacs does not offer very good way to handle that, almost every newbie tries to get tabs in Emacs. As it turned out you don’t really need tabs - they are distracting and then again - Emacs really has a lot better ways to navigate the code

@ag tabs are distracting to you. Did your read what I said about them? It’s a serious bias "that not having tabs is better". I’ve tried both ways many times. I find organizing around tabs to be both my preference and very effective the way I use them. I feel lost and slow when I don’t have them when working in a project. I find this bias that "Emacs really has a lot better ways to navigate the code” incredibly condescending.

All I’m arguing wrt search is that it would be beneficial if there was a find/search/replace in emacs that had more of the obvious features up front without having to dig through a bunch of docs to figure out and then forget a week later. 🙂

I wish I had the time to build the stuff into emacs I’d like. I just don’t. It’s powerful as hell, but a bitch. I think Spacemacs has made huge leaps forward for Emacs.

@jamieorc Trust me - I felt exactly like that and even maybe angrier when I started using Emacs, I needed tabified interface, I needed tree-view, etc. People kept telling me, but I wouldn’t believe. I personally tried many different IDEs and editors, and switching to Emacs didn’t happen for me in a day or weeks. It took me months. I agree - things in Emacs are not so obvious and not very discoverable and hard for the beginners.

There’s a reason so many Vim users have come over to EVIL and Spacemacs—the power of the platform

I’ve used Emacs on and off since 2000.