True. You probably mean GNU Emacs and (not so popular right now) XEmacs.
Even I usually prefer to use other Emacs variants for Lisp programming: Fred, Zmacs, LispWorks, CCL, ... I prefer embedded Emacs variants which are written in Common Lisp.
With Lisps without embedded Emacs variants, usually GNU Emacs / SLIME is the best option. I can understand that this is for people used to other editors (like Eclipse, Intellij, Atom, ...) not very tempting.
GNU Emacs is especially used because that's the most widespread programmable editor, which can be extended in Lisp itself. For a non-lisp programmer that's initially not very important.
Yea, I was talking about GNU Emacs + Slime. I'm with y'all that Lisp is an extremely powerful and frankly astonishing piece of engineering. It just seems to cater more to those on the fringes and those willing to put in the work to achieve enlightenment.
I've read a few Lisp books and have written a bit of Lisp code and understand code is data is code, but haven't put in enough time to really reap the rewards. I think my above posts were taken as an insult to the language rather than some observations over several years of playing in the community. One day I hope to join your ranks, but most of my current needs involve needing lots of built in language constructs for data analysis and scientific needs.
No, I think such observations are valid. I mainly tried to add that even for me, a long time Lisp user, GNU Emacs / SLIME is not the primary tool. There are a few groups and a large and visible group is using SBCL + GNU Emacs + SLIME. But there are other groups.
Ah thanks! I recall you work for one of the commercial lisp vendors. I assume you use their IDE environment that is similar to emacs? How do you describe using it?
I don't work for a vendor, but I use commercial and non-commercial Lisps with other editors.
Typically they are simpler to use, better integrated into the platform, have less features (no games, no latex modes, no org mode, ...), have simpler key commands, are multi-threaded, are directly integrated into the running Common Lisp, don't implement all tools as editor buffers, ...
Even I usually prefer to use other Emacs variants for Lisp programming: Fred, Zmacs, LispWorks, CCL, ... I prefer embedded Emacs variants which are written in Common Lisp.
With Lisps without embedded Emacs variants, usually GNU Emacs / SLIME is the best option. I can understand that this is for people used to other editors (like Eclipse, Intellij, Atom, ...) not very tempting.
GNU Emacs is especially used because that's the most widespread programmable editor, which can be extended in Lisp itself. For a non-lisp programmer that's initially not very important.