I apologize for my ignorance in asking this question but is Emacs considered an IDE? I thought that was a term reserved for large, graphical editors like IntelliJ, Eclipse, or Visual Studio.
I apologize for my ignorance in asking this question but is Emacs considered an IDE? I thought that was a term reserved for large, graphical editors like IntelliJ, Eclipse, or Visual Studio.
Emacs is practically an operating system (the vim joke being that it lacks a good editor). With git integration through magit, LSP server for language integration, and Projectile for project management, it very much acts like an IDE.
Emacs as PID 1
Emacs standing alone on a Linux Kernel
https://web.archive.org/web/20200110131523/http://www.inform...
> the vim joke being that it lacks a good editor
That joke was dumb from the beginning and has fallen into complete irrelevance years ago - Emacs actually can and does vim better than Vim, GVim, and Neovim, or any vim plugins for other IDEs. I'm saying this with a confidence of a die-hard, experienced vimmer.
It has a great editor - evil-mode!
Emacs arguably is the only one of the true meaning of "Integrated Development Environment" perhaps more thoroughly than any other editor. When we break down what IDE really means - integrated, development, and environment - Emacs excels in each dimension: it deeply integrates every tool and workflow through its unified Elisp ecosystem rather than merely bundling separate applications;
I can start extending it on every possible dimension without even having to write any code into a file - I can open a scratch buffer, write some Elisp and evaluate it in-place.
What else can provide a complete environment where one can code, debug, manage version control, read documentation, run terminals, manage projects (I search through Jira in Emacs), and even handle email or browse the web without ever leaving the editor? I'm reading this thread and typing this comment in Emacs, btw.
While modern "IDE"s like IntelliJ or VS Code offer polished, pre-configured experiences for specific languages, Emacs takes integration to a philosophical level where everything shares the same keybindings, configuration language, and conceptual model, making it less of an application that integrates other tools and more of a platform where all tools become native citizens of a unified computing environment.
Queue the old adage ... "Emacs is a great operating system, what it needs is a good editor."
I'm not sure there is a rigid enough definition of IDE to say whether Emacs qualifies or not. I think it does by virtue of its extensibility, but I could definitely see a legit argument that it's merely an editor because it doesn't have a lot of the tooling of something more modern. I think what you consider to be an IDE (IntelliJ, VS, etc) is something that didn't exist until modern GUIs. Prior to that, terminal based things like Emacs (or LSE on VMS) were the closest analog.
> Emacs doesn't have a lot of the tooling of something more modern
Define "more modern"? Language servers, Git integration, refactoring tools, debugging? Emacs has all of those. Sure, VSCode and IntelliJ give you this stuff out of the box, but they can't match Emacs features like editing the same file in multiple ways at once (indirect buffers), instantly checking what any key does, or changing any behavior on the spot. What looks "outdated" about Emacs is actually its openness - while other IDEs hide everything behind pretty buttons, Emacs lets you see and change how everything works. You actually own your tools instead of just using them. In that way, Emacs isn't just modern - it's timeless.
I realize my definition is purely subjective in that I deal with Visual Studio and VS Code almost exclusively and that the VS Code team is instant that they make an editor and not IDE. For me an IDE has graphical tools for building UIs and other workflow items as well as language-specific compilers and tools built in. Like I said, subjective based on my experience (and my experience doesn't include Emacs).
Emacs is a text environment (which can also display images). It can also launch process and have IPC built in. So everything that works with text can be brought into emacs. And often, the only advantages of GUI is animation and aesthetics (to appeal to beginner). Text interfaces can be more productive.
> which can also display images
Not only that - it supports PDFs (I annotate the books and papers in it), SVGs, variable fonts, emojis, even spreadsheets - yup, you can do Excel-like calculations; there are built-in browsers, etc. Besides, you can control music and video playback - useful when watching videos and taking notes, you can extract video transcripts, etc. etc. There even exists (albeit quite primitive) a video editor for Emacs.
"Cue"
A pro tip - add a clause in your LLM prompt to randomly misspell words, so people can't blame you for an aislopper. :)
Well, I'd rather call it a PDE (Personal Development Environment)[0]. A term coined in the Neovim community that is pretty apt for Emacs too. Emacs can be pretty minimalist or maximalist depending on your preference, and it can be configured to have IDE-like features, though presented in a different way sometimes.
Honestly, the big barrier to entry for Emacs is finding the time to configure it to your liking. The best way is to use it along with your IDE and existing tooling, slowly integrating Emacs into your workflow piece by piece and tinkering with it when you have a bit of time but always with a goal in mind i.e. window (pane in modern vernacular) management, showing symbol documentation in a hoverbox, adding spell checking to comments or inline git blame.
And sure, there are lots of bits that you need to get used to at first, how copy and paste works out of the box without CUA-mode for one, but they're that big of a deal after a short while as some people make them out to be.
I'll say this though, Emacs is like tiling window management, you either love it and extol its virtues everywhere or you look at its proponents like aliens from another galaxy.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMVIJhC9Veg
Emacs is an IDE construction kit.
(Among other things)
By which I mean you can make your IDE with it, but it's not an out of the box thing, and it'll be bespoke and unique for you.
With LSP and treemacs and company mode, it's a pretty decent IDE. It just requires you to get all the pieces set up the way you want.
It's not an IDE: it's a religion.
What? Emacs is in fact a digital anarchism - complete opposite of religion. It's Kropotkin¹ with parentheses - mutual aid through package sharing, no central authority (even RMS can't dictate your config), and every user autonomously creating their own means of production. The 'religion' rhetoric is just subversive humor disguising a radical experiment in computational self-governance.
Where IDEs impose hierarchical workflows, Emacs says 'no gods, no masters, only defun' It's not a cathedral or a bazaar - it's an infinite commune where every buffer is a consensus decision you make with yourself.
——
¹ - Peter Kropotkin was a Russian aristocrat who said "fuck nobility" and became one of anarchism's main theorists.
Emacs is large and graphical. I'm not sure why the myth persists that Emacs is the same category of thing as vim; it's really not.
Well similarly opposite "myth" persists that Emacs (unlike Vim) is a non-modal editor. It really is a modal one.
Well it is already a "graphical" editor. And I would say out of the box it isn't an IDE, but with a couple of common packages added (say a file tree, terminal, code completion, LSP) it looks pretty much identical to any commercial IDE.
It is if you want it to be. I believe Emacs had one of the first GUIs for gdb (GNU Debugger) so it's always been possible. But it's as much or as little as you want it to be really.
an IDE is just what the name says, an integrated development environment. Emacs has robust support for managing projects, compilation, you can debug programs from Emacs including graphically, Magit is exceptional for version control, it's got built-in LSP support now with Eglot, and so on.
So if you want it to be, yes and with a lot of support out of the box these days.
I think its just using claude code terminology of "IDE integration" . not implying that emacs is an IDE.