Lem editor
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 21 of 56 text editors by recommenders
Recommended as a modern, Emacs-like editor written in Common Lisp, appealing to Lisp users. Critics note it is less polished, with weak mouse support, a webview dependency and some install problems.
Recommended as a modern, Emacs-like editor written in Common Lisp, appealing to Lisp users. Critics note it is less polished, with weak mouse support, a webview dependency and some install problems.
27 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Written in Common Lisp
“The reason I recommend Lem is because CL is a general purpose programming language.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “EmacsConf 2025” “There's an attempt to do this with Common Lisp that's quite cool, called Lem”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Emacs Turns 50” “Lisp all the way down apart from the native bits of the rendering layers.”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “NEO Emacs – GPU-Accelerated Emacs Powered by Rust” - Comment from 22 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Elecxzy – A lightweight, Lisp-free Emacs-like editor in Electron”
- Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “Mine, an IDE for Coalton and Common Lisp”
- Comment from 24 May 2026 in “My I3-Emacs Integration”
- Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Emacs Is a Lispboard”
- Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “EmacsConf 2025”
Emacs alternative with familiar feel
“It's very impressive and usable for its age and I can see why some people see it as a better Emacs.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “EmacsConf 2025” “something like lem is probably more amenable to that refactoring/restructuring than GNU emacs”
Comment from 24 May 2026 in “My I3-Emacs Integration” “Lem is great and I'm happy there's finally something out there to challenge Emacs' hegemony”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Emacs Is a Lispboard” - Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs”
- Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “Mine, an IDE for Coalton and Common Lisp”
- Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving”
Solid, readable codebase
“Was also really good at analyzing the lem codebase as well.”
Comment from 15 Mar 2026 in “SBCL Fibers – Lightweight Cooperative Threads” “which was easy thanks to Lem's quality code base”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Extensibility: The "100% Lisp" Fallacy” “it looks like a very solid foundation”
Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs” Fast, snappy performance
“The WebKit UI is actually snappier and more performant than the previous SDL2 one.”
Comment from 24 Jul 2026 in “Emacs Is a Lispboard” “it's way more performant than GNU Emacs”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Install problems on some systems
“I tried the latest nightly release AppImage on Fedora 43 and got a nice undefined symbol error”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Extensibility: The "100% Lisp" Fallacy” “I tried installing Lem on Windows and I couldn't get it to work.”
Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “Mine, an IDE for Coalton and Common Lisp” Webview renderer dependency
“I am suspicious about the dependency of Lem on Webkit”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Emacs Is a Lispboard” “until they decided to adopt a webview renderer”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Emacs Is a Lispboard” High barrier to entry
“I also considered lem, but the barrier also seems much higher.”
Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “The Emacs Widget Library: A Critique and Case Study” “the barrier also seems much higher”
Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “The Emacs Widget Library: A Critique and Case Study”
Other text editors people recommend
The four most recommended other text editors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zed | 700 | 430 | 62% | 13 | 6 mo57 owners | — |
| GNU Emacs | 648 | 207 | 76% | 13 | 20 yrs158 owners | Approved |
| Vim | 513 | 127 | 80% | 13 | 20 yrs55 owners | Approved |
| Visual Studio Code | 485 | 547 | 47% | 12 | 2 yrs13 owners | — |
| Lem editorThis page | 18 | 9 | 67% | 12 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 43 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“There's an attempt to do this with Common Lisp that's quite cool, called Lem”
“I've never gotten lem to display anything readable in a browser tab over 2 tries separated by 6 months.”
“long term Lem is probably the move”
“Lisp all the way down apart from the native bits of the rendering layers.”
“Lem's been steadily developing over the past few years and slowly been adding users”
“The WebKit UI is actually snappier and more performant than the previous SDL2 one.”
“There's very little I miss when I use lem, TBH.”
“Lem is great and I'm happy there's finally something out there to challenge Emacs' hegemony”
“until they decided to adopt a webview renderer”
“works fairly fine if you don't need mouse support”
“I am suspicious about the dependency of Lem on Webkit”
“because of the richer CommonLisp ecosystem compared to Elisp one”
“not vibe coded btw, even better!”
“it can replace LazyVim for me now”
“it's way more performant than GNU Emacs”
“lately I use lem more than I do GNU emacs”
“under-engineered UI frameworks”
“something like lem is probably more amenable to that refactoring/restructuring than GNU emacs”
“Sounds like you want Lem. Though it's common lisp instead of guile.”
“I wanted to avoid Emacs so I discovered Lem”
“I tried installing Lem on Windows and I couldn't get it to work.”
“Lem is still too Emacs-like.”
“If Lisp developers want a better editor and IDE they can support Lem.”
“messy things like Lem that never really worked very well for me”
“Of Lem with SBCL+Quicklisp:”
“Was also really good at analyzing the lem codebase as well.”
“its main proposition is that the whole thing is written in Common Lisp”
“the barrier also seems much higher”
“I also considered lem, but the barrier also seems much higher.”
“which was easy thanks to Lem's quality code base”
“I tried the latest nightly release AppImage on Fedora 43 and got a nice undefined symbol error”
“it has daily multi-platform binaries”
“The reason I recommend Lem is because CL is a general purpose programming language.”
“It's very impressive and usable for its age and I can see why some people see it as a better Emacs.”
“will learn CL in order to adopt Lem”
“looks promising, I'll try it out and compare with Emacs”
“Lem looks great and I wish we all could simply move there”
“Lem is a modern editor that has the Emacs Nature.”
“it looks like a very solid foundation”
“I have a hope for the Common Lisp based Lem.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.