Yep, I have 2 kids under 1 so this project is either built with AI or it’s not built. I put that line in because the IDE aspect doesn’t need agent management or anything. Other tools are better for that.
I would still be nice if you stated upfront that this is built with AI. The people who are interested in “no AI features” are likely to also be the ones who do not want something built with AI. It would help to be clear about the project’s stance on the matter.
Then maybe sometimes it's better to take a break and not bend the natural constraints of life for once. I mean, I'm all for easing some of life with automation but it seems that a general trend is emerging where people will just keep on going no matter what, when maybe we should just stop once in a while.
I have been feeling an increasing self-imposed pressure to get more done with AI. Similar to the feeling I get when I play factorio too long. It's like the frontier of possibility has radically shifted and I feel almost guilty for not jumping into it. Tugging at me..
The "Emacs doesn't have a file-tree" is when I stopped short and wondered what this person's background is in IDEs.
My emacs days are 1999 during my "functional or get out" phase, but my .emacs had close to 4000 lines in it, including xterm mouse support, a clone of midnight commander + sftp to a wehbost and deep integration with ctags/cscope/c++filt. There was even a line by line debugger with custom .gdbinit commands - look at the php project's gdbinit[1] if you want an idea of how to walk your own super special data structures.
You can't put Emacs in an IDE comparison and say anything about features without at least one person saying "well, actually".
I eventually switched to vim but that had to do with needing to ssh into 100k+ machines on support rotation & never having emacs on any of them.
Long time ago, in mid-2000-s I tried to switch to Emacs or Vim from Visual Studio.
I wanted to have a simple project file tree as a side panel and multiple editor tabs on the right. I spent a week toying with various elisp scripts, Vim plugins, and digging out information from a then-moribund XEmacs mailing list.
And I couldn't do what I wanted in the end. Nothing worked seamlessly or reliably.
It always could be. Go into vim and type `let g:netrw_liststyle = 3` then `:Vex`. The window size won't be what you want, but is the core idea? Because if it is, you just set the liststyle in your vimrc and have netrw start on load, with proper pane location and width.
That or most people have used NerdTree for a decade
I see, so nothing has actually changed within the last 20 years.
A project tree is NOT a file list. It's a persistent panel that allows you to navigate within the project. It should also integrate with tools like recursive search (so it doesn't recurse into ignored folders like `node_modules`), build tools, code intelligence, and a debugger.
> It's a persistent panel that allows you to navigate within the project.
Trivial to do with netrw. Again, NerdTree is a common alternative
> It should also integrate with tools like recursive search (so it doesn't recurse into ignored folders like `node_modules`)
`:vim /re/ */* +`
Or checkout telescope, FZF, or rg. There's plenty of integrations
> build tools
`:make`, `:grep`, `:compiler`. I mean you can do any terminal command...
Or plugins, dispatch.vim, overseer.nvim, vim-test
> code intelligence
Ctags, or nvim has a LSP so I don't use ctags (or cscope) much anymore. Common plugins are: coc.nvim, ALE, vim-lsp, YouCompleteMe
> debugger
termdebug Is native? Also check nvim-dap (Neovim), vimspector
Most of the plugins listed mostly just make things nicer, not add functionality that doesn't exist. There's a ton of native things I didn't even list.
I'm not saying you have to like it nor that it looks/works the way you like/want/are used to, but you're claiming the functionality doesn't exist and that isn't correct. If it want you argue over style, that's perfectly okay. The reason a lot of us use vim/emacs is because we customize the tools to what works best for us. That's one of their best features! But I haven't seen a single thing VS Code or any GUI IDE can do that I can't do in vim while also using a lot fewer compute resources to accomplish it
I don't know about emacs, but its definitely doable in neovim. I don't know if the built in file explorer suits your needs, but now that nvim has a proper built in plugin manager, it's just one line of config to install neo-tree or something like that.
Yes, with built-in packages there are at least two different ways - speedbar, or Dired in a side window. And what even "out-of-the-box" means? In Emacs-land packages are not like extensions in other editors and IDEs, they more like recipe books. You can collect literally over a thousand of them without ever explicitly loading them until that specific moment that happens once in a decade and you won't ever notice their presence until then. And there are tons and tons of different packages that do the sidebar directory listing - treemacs, dired-sidebar, dired-subtree, direx, ztree, etc. You seriously thought that in 50 effing years nobody, just nobody thought of making a sidebar directory tree that works in Emacs?
> Nothing worked seamlessly or reliably.
Skill issue. You. You couldn't figure it out. And then decided it can't be done, period. Brilliant.
Yeah, speedbar and dired are built-in. Speedbar by default still opens in a new frame I think, but in emacs 31 there’s a config option to make it open in a side window without any additional tweaking needed.
It also incorrectly says that Emacs has no mouse support. When you first open Emacs the default buffer has clickable links in it, it's impossible to miss the fact that Emacs has mouse support if you ever even open it.
Plenty of easy configs for them too. Lazyvim has been pretty batteries included and easy to modify for me and I'm definitely the type that did not read much of the docs
He said the same about vim, but did everyone forget about netrw? Here, go into vim and type `:Ex`. You can also have mouse support. (Netrw can also do trees if you don't like the format, go look at `g:netrw_liststyle`)
My friend on eMacs say something similar, but you don't really need as many plugins as people typically use. There's lots of native ways to do things. It's totally fine to prefer NerdTree over the native netrw but it's not like you can't do file exploring. Hell, I use fzf most times (`:GFiles`). But what I don't like is when people confidently say "x can't do y" when it can. I'll give people a break if it requires plugins or complicated commands, but native ones? It just shows ignorance.
While we're on the topic, stop using Esc, use <C-[>. You don't need Esc. And type `set -o vi` into bash/zsh. It's still worth learning your tools. You'll find lots of solutions to problems that only exist because of ignorance. Maybe those solutions are better, but the bigger problem seems to be ignorance. It's fine to be ignorant too! There's a shit ton of docs, no one expects you to read it all. But it's a good place to start
Making these kinds of AI projects with fancy READMEs give you a veneer of authority, but the lack of earned wisdom tends to stick out once a few people glance at it.
> toast is for the developer who wants to stay in their terminal without spending hours getting it up to snuff.
I need a terminal that just works. If it doesn't work out of the box with sensible defaults, it is indeed not up to snuff, and therefore thrown away immediately.
> We need something like Emacs, but a well designed Emacs.
Wow. This is brilliant. Nobody ever. Not once. Not even theoretically. Nobody in 50 years of Emacs' existence ever tried that. Not a single programmer ever said this or attempted to do this. With exception of insignificant fools such as XEmacs, Zmacs, Hemlock, Climacs, Edwin, JEmacs, Yi, Lem, Guile Emacs, Remacs, emacs-ng, and the eleven thousand config frameworks that were going to fix it from the inside. I salute your effort, and may the spirit of your burned tokens please the digital gods and may they accept your sacrifice. Godspeed.
Buddy, I did. I did. And I can rant for a quite a while for why the opinions there have jack squat of sound reasoning. On [almost] every single point there.
What I love about Vim and Emacs is that they taught me humility. I am grateful to my younger self for forcing me to learn them, deeply. They cut my enormously inflated hubris down to size, and I believe they made me not only a better programmer but a better person. I won't tell you to try that path, because that would sound patronizing, and would undo this entire paragraph.
I have a script that changes the background colour of my terminal based on whatever directory or server I'm in. That's enough beauty for me, I do believe there is such a thing as over configuring and defaults are very powerful.
This seems like all those UI designers who have a crack at redoing Wikipedia and then fail miserably because they just plaster whatever trend on top of something that is universally good.
I don't understand the trend of forcing everything into terminals. It's needlessly constraining and it's much more work that just using Qt (or any other UI framework).
For me it’s that why do I need another application open? I have my coding agents in the terminal, I should also be able to traverse and read a codebase in the terminal as well
I have so much shit now that I have custom workspaces to deal with because "repository" has stopped being the correct boundary to think about software development (for me). It would be great if _any_ decent editor would support these, especially Zed.
I'm really happy that we live in a world in which people who don't know how to use the tools they have (and can't be bothered to find out) can use a coding agent to make their own tool that does what they want the way they want it to!
I'm really sad that those people keep releasing those tools to other people via cookie-cutter websites filled with misinformation instead of just enjoying them privately.
> I'm really sad that those people keep releasing those tools to other people via cookie-cutter websites filled with misinformation instead of just enjoying them privately
Why would that make you really sad? If something scratches your itch, it might scratch someone else's, too. It's kind of like blogging for yourself when you solve an issue.
> I'm really happy that we live in a world in which people who don't know how to use the tools
It's not a happy world. It's dystopian. I really don't like how unskilled people get confidence for creating novelty using AI and then dare to put themselves on a pedestal next to bona fide creators. It is robbing them of trust and authenticity.
My neighbor, who barely survived through high school, happily begged me to buy her book: "I created something very special to me. I'm asking my friends to support me by ordering my book. There is a lot of useful information inside based on years of research and observations, and months of putting everything together." I knew it would be complete and utter bullshit, yet I was curious. I ordered "the book". It is chock-full of misspelled words and the substance is just pure garbage. It's a waste of human potential, it's a waste of resources, but hey, now we have yet another fucking "author". Terrific.
64 comments
[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 27.9 ms ] threadIdk the point of my comment but I feel you.
My emacs days are 1999 during my "functional or get out" phase, but my .emacs had close to 4000 lines in it, including xterm mouse support, a clone of midnight commander + sftp to a wehbost and deep integration with ctags/cscope/c++filt. There was even a line by line debugger with custom .gdbinit commands - look at the php project's gdbinit[1] if you want an idea of how to walk your own super special data structures.
You can't put Emacs in an IDE comparison and say anything about features without at least one person saying "well, actually".
I eventually switched to vim but that had to do with needing to ssh into 100k+ machines on support rotation & never having emacs on any of them.
[1] - https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/master/.gdbinit
Long time ago, in mid-2000-s I tried to switch to Emacs or Vim from Visual Studio.
I wanted to have a simple project file tree as a side panel and multiple editor tabs on the right. I spent a week toying with various elisp scripts, Vim plugins, and digging out information from a then-moribund XEmacs mailing list.
And I couldn't do what I wanted in the end. Nothing worked seamlessly or reliably.
Can this be done out-of-the-box now?
Or use any of the various file tree packages in [M]ELPA
That or most people have used NerdTree for a decade
A project tree is NOT a file list. It's a persistent panel that allows you to navigate within the project. It should also integrate with tools like recursive search (so it doesn't recurse into ignored folders like `node_modules`), build tools, code intelligence, and a debugger.
Or checkout telescope, FZF, or rg. There's plenty of integrations
`:make`, `:grep`, `:compiler`. I mean you can do any terminal command...Or plugins, dispatch.vim, overseer.nvim, vim-test
Ctags, or nvim has a LSP so I don't use ctags (or cscope) much anymore. Common plugins are: coc.nvim, ALE, vim-lsp, YouCompleteMe termdebug Is native? Also check nvim-dap (Neovim), vimspectorMost of the plugins listed mostly just make things nicer, not add functionality that doesn't exist. There's a ton of native things I didn't even list.
I'm not saying you have to like it nor that it looks/works the way you like/want/are used to, but you're claiming the functionality doesn't exist and that isn't correct. If it want you argue over style, that's perfectly okay. The reason a lot of us use vim/emacs is because we customize the tools to what works best for us. That's one of their best features! But I haven't seen a single thing VS Code or any GUI IDE can do that I can't do in vim while also using a lot fewer compute resources to accomplish it
Instead of a coherent IDE, you have a lot of semi-broken pieces that don't work well together.
And that's also why projects like this one are really helpful.
Yes, with built-in packages there are at least two different ways - speedbar, or Dired in a side window. And what even "out-of-the-box" means? In Emacs-land packages are not like extensions in other editors and IDEs, they more like recipe books. You can collect literally over a thousand of them without ever explicitly loading them until that specific moment that happens once in a decade and you won't ever notice their presence until then. And there are tons and tons of different packages that do the sidebar directory listing - treemacs, dired-sidebar, dired-subtree, direx, ztree, etc. You seriously thought that in 50 effing years nobody, just nobody thought of making a sidebar directory tree that works in Emacs?
> Nothing worked seamlessly or reliably.
Skill issue. You. You couldn't figure it out. And then decided it can't be done, period. Brilliant.
> toast is for the developer who wants to stay in their terminal without spending hours getting it up to snuff.
I think he knows you can get anything you want in emacs/vim. The pitch is that toast is batteries-included.
My friend on eMacs say something similar, but you don't really need as many plugins as people typically use. There's lots of native ways to do things. It's totally fine to prefer NerdTree over the native netrw but it's not like you can't do file exploring. Hell, I use fzf most times (`:GFiles`). But what I don't like is when people confidently say "x can't do y" when it can. I'll give people a break if it requires plugins or complicated commands, but native ones? It just shows ignorance.
While we're on the topic, stop using Esc, use <C-[>. You don't need Esc. And type `set -o vi` into bash/zsh. It's still worth learning your tools. You'll find lots of solutions to problems that only exist because of ignorance. Maybe those solutions are better, but the bigger problem seems to be ignorance. It's fine to be ignorant too! There's a shit ton of docs, no one expects you to read it all. But it's a good place to start
But most people don't know about <C-[>, which works across your terminal, It isn't just a vim thing.
> Sees "Claude"
Now almost 90% of projects on GitHub including existing projects are now slop or are adding slop.
Many projects are getting contaminated with AI, and even Linux is getting contaminated with this.
There is a list of projects that have non-slop alternatives one can use instead.
https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/open-slopware
"github.com/yourusername/toast/internal/components/breadcrumbs" "github.com/yourusername/toast/internal/components/closedialog" "github.com/yourusername/toast/internal/components/commandpalette" "github.com/yourusername/toast/internal/components/editor"
I need a terminal that just works. If it doesn't work out of the box with sensible defaults, it is indeed not up to snuff, and therefore thrown away immediately.
I just made a bash script that shells into the container (or starts it if it is not already running) and in there everything is set up.
Christ.
To me, it's just yet another bland low-contrast dark mode interface.
Also, vim has mouse support. Probably shouldn't use a clanker to write your readme if you're not going to take the time to do a basic fact check.
I wrote this article a while back on how to build a great terminal editor that's better than Emacs and VIM [1], you might find it interesting!
[1] https://gist.github.com/taoeffect/086220456e736cceb30d68834d...
Wow. This is brilliant. Nobody ever. Not once. Not even theoretically. Nobody in 50 years of Emacs' existence ever tried that. Not a single programmer ever said this or attempted to do this. With exception of insignificant fools such as XEmacs, Zmacs, Hemlock, Climacs, Edwin, JEmacs, Yi, Lem, Guile Emacs, Remacs, emacs-ng, and the eleven thousand config frameworks that were going to fix it from the inside. I salute your effort, and may the spirit of your burned tokens please the digital gods and may they accept your sacrifice. Godspeed.
What I love about Vim and Emacs is that they taught me humility. I am grateful to my younger self for forcing me to learn them, deeply. They cut my enormously inflated hubris down to size, and I believe they made me not only a better programmer but a better person. I won't tell you to try that path, because that would sound patronizing, and would undo this entire paragraph.
This seems like all those UI designers who have a crack at redoing Wikipedia and then fail miserably because they just plaster whatever trend on top of something that is universally good.
I have so much shit now that I have custom workspaces to deal with because "repository" has stopped being the correct boundary to think about software development (for me). It would be great if _any_ decent editor would support these, especially Zed.
I'm really sad that those people keep releasing those tools to other people via cookie-cutter websites filled with misinformation instead of just enjoying them privately.
Why would that make you really sad? If something scratches your itch, it might scratch someone else's, too. It's kind of like blogging for yourself when you solve an issue.
It's not a happy world. It's dystopian. I really don't like how unskilled people get confidence for creating novelty using AI and then dare to put themselves on a pedestal next to bona fide creators. It is robbing them of trust and authenticity.
My neighbor, who barely survived through high school, happily begged me to buy her book: "I created something very special to me. I'm asking my friends to support me by ordering my book. There is a lot of useful information inside based on years of research and observations, and months of putting everything together." I knew it would be complete and utter bullshit, yet I was curious. I ordered "the book". It is chock-full of misspelled words and the substance is just pure garbage. It's a waste of human potential, it's a waste of resources, but hey, now we have yet another fucking "author". Terrific.