Clojurians Log v2
spacemacs 2025-10-25
I regularly consider other options -- but think it's mostly because some other people whose work I admire also maintain their own curated emacs configs -- i.e. an urge towards an imitative geek flex. And then decide (as a middle-aged middle manager who spends more time than I'd like in meetings and doc and code review) that my limited discretionary time would be better spent improving my Clojure fu than tweaking emacs config when spacemacs is working fine for me. I'm vim keybindings all the way, but org mode and literate programming will keep me in emacs til I die.
I switched to Doom long ago, and found it to be both more stable and more useful than Spacemacs.
I like to keep things up to date and found that harder with spacemacs. I found myself diffing my spacemacs config to check for config updates. I don't seem to have to do that with doom emacs.
Can you elaborate on things? I am curious to know if something can be improved
As Spacemacs uses Melpa packages, it always has the option to download the latest versions
The Spacemacs template config rarely changes in my experience, only adding configs if useful for a new release of Emacs or optimisation.
SPC f e D key binding opens a diff of the Spacemacs temple config and your own config, so it was always easy to check
Memory is a bit foggy, maybe the template config does not change as much as it used to? But I remember when it did, it was on the painstaking side to compare. It is something that I don't seem to need to bother with on doom emacs.
There were a few template enhancements I've applied to my config today, but these are over the course of 2 years 🤣 I had forgotten how awesome Emacs Ediff is... so simple to use and apply changes.
My tendency to update often might have been part of the issue!
That's why its called the bleeding edge... 🩸
Ha! Death by a thousand upgrades...
I still enjoy using Spacemacs for an Emacs config. Spacemacs is still a very active project. I get a few hundred people view Practicalli Spacemacs book every day. I did give Doom Emacs a quick spin, but I found no benefit for my Emacs workflow. Trying to switch to the key Doom Emacs bindings slowed me down too much. Then Doom Linux broke badly after an update, which I never managed to fix. That did put me off. I found Neovim a better alternative than using Doom Emacs.
I noticed an interesting phenomenon where vimmers who try Emacs via Doom always bounce back, while Space users have a better overall experience, just worse marketing
FYI: In this Clojurians Slack community, there are 278 members in the Doom Linux topic and 670 members in this Spacemacs topic. These figures suggest most people are still using Spacemacs and/or less than half of the Clojurians using Spacemacs decided to try Doom Linux. Or people never left a channel they joined after that channel stopped being relevant to them 🤣
@jr0cket love the optimism. That being said, your blog is one of the only comprehensive pieces on that editor out there imo, and... didnt you move to a different editor yourself lolcry .
It is possible to use 2 different editors 😁 Or 3 editors, as I also use VS Code and VSpacemacs, the live pairing tool is excellent. NOTE: One of the reasons I run a Clojure REPL on the command line is that it allows me to connect any editor. Yes, my Spacemacs book is far more comprehensive than my Neovim book, as I have used Spacemacs successfully (and enjoyably) for over a decade. I use Emacs on commercial coding projects, especially when there is a significant sized code base or a heavy refactor is required. For writing and general editing I use Neovim, as I have a much simpler workflow. I appreciate the fast typing & response of Neovim. There are advantages & constraints for every editor. I also use 2 different Linux distributions and desktop environment and set key mappings the same (and sometimes also have to use MacOS for work 🤣 )
Only two? ;)
Joking aside -- running multiple distros and OSes is a great way of keeping yourself honest with reproducible build environments, if you care about that sort of thing. I'm on linux/sway most of the time, but keep MacOS and Windows laptops downstairs so I'm forced to see how the other half (or 9/10ths) lives if I want to poke at something after hours.
Thanks mate!
do you have a link to your blog handy @jr0cket?
@simon800 I believe you are looking for https://practical.li/spacemacs which has a fairly comprehensive guide to using Emacs for Clojure development. There are some pages and key bindings specific to Spacemacs, but the large majority of the book is relevant to any config (assuming similar plugins are used) All the Practicalli books can be found at https://practical.li under the book name and the blog is at https://practical.li/blog and there is also a journal witch has all the (sometimes random) things I am working on or researching, or things that pop into my head 🤣