# GNU Emacs 648 Hacker News commenters recommended GNU Emacs and 207 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 20 years (158 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Long-time users praise Emacs as a deeply programmable Lisp environment you can reshape endlessly, with excellent built-in help, but it takes heavy configuration and its defaults feel dated. ## Why people recommend it - Extreme customization through Elisp (8 comments): "I have been using emacs for the past couple of years. Started because I wanted to try out org mode and stayed for the extreme flexibility it offers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858168)) "It's the closest environment I've used to where the friction between "I wish my editor could do " and actually having the feature almost disappears." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45835741)) "There's something about hacking in elisp on the editor that you're using to do the hacking, that just makes me fall in love with programming again." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340604)) - Self-documenting live help system (3 comments): "the built-in help commands are still useful because they're naturally tied to (and organized by) the core code entities that power Emacs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48588232)) "The thing that makes it really self documenting is that these help commands reflect the live environment at the moment you use it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48592131)) "Emacs' self-documenting nature makes it significantly easier to understand what certain actions do and how certain options work." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45835038)) - Many buffers and files onscreen (4 comments): "Outside of Emacs (and possibly vim) with the ability to have dozens of ephemeral buffers open to modify their output I don't imagine they will be very useful." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46909059)) "Emacs’ natural frame splitting and buffer selecting/switching commands are good enough if you dont display more than four buffers at a time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253813)) "There just isn't anything like the old editors, built in the 80x24 terminal era, for getting huge swathes of code on your screen at once." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48584824)) - Powerful editing features and packages (4 comments): "Multiple cursors, iedit, re-builder/visual-regex, editable occur, AST-based editing are just some of the features I use regularly in Emacs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49036649)) "Emacs with native-compilation, tree-sitter and LSP support (and stuff like Magit and ripgrep integration too) makes it really amazing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48592392)) "tools, particularly packages in Emacs, but also for VS Code and other IDEs, that make navigating nested s-expressions a breeze" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49412438)) ## What people warn about - Needs heavy configuration to modernize (4 comments): "Emacs is not modern, to achieve the functionality of a modern editor/ide, with all the lessons/research done since the 70/80's it's going to take a huge amount of configuring." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45786303)) "a piece of software that lets you get in situations where some portion of your "just create" time becomes "managing my custom emacs, please don't break"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45836851)) "Infinite configurability and expandability (plus the lack of a "blessed set" standard that people actually like enough to use out-of-the-box)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49532281)) - Dated, sloppy user experience (3 comments): "even the GUI version of it is mostly just looking like a terminal, not really taking advantage of the potential of graphical elements" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47818970)) "It's extremely embarrassing how sloppy the emacs experience has gotten in the last thirty years relative to other environments." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47331929)) "Emacs isn't ready for the masses. Broken defaults, and a brittle experience once features are made working is standard." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49472049)) - Mediocre at each individual task (2 comments): "I use Emacs still because it's astoundingly mediocre at all things that I use it for; but always mediocre and never terrible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504380)) "It isn't the best code editor. It isn't the best note taker. It isn't the best document writer. It isn't even a good lisp." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49483195)) - Awkward keyboard shortcuts (2 comments): "I don't like that aspect of emacs, but if you are a heavy-duty editor user it becomes difficult to arrange a consistent set of emacs shortcuts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48476756)) "any classic control key assignments, like those of vi or those of emacs, are far from optimal on a non-standard keyboard layout" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757927)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Zed](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zed.md): 700 recommend - [Vim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vim.md): 513 recommend - [Visual Studio Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio-code.md): 485 recommend - [Neovim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/neovim.md): 295 recommend - [VS Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vs-code.md): 273 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "GNU Emacs", https://hackerapproved.com/p/emacs/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).