alt Hacker NewsI chose the JS ecosystem. Why does the power of Emacs not belong in the browser? These days JS is a powerful enough FP language to do it.
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Because to replicate the power of Emacs, you'd need to throw away a lot of privacy/security in the browser. You'd need to let one tab read the contents of another by default. A change to make your mail reading better may break your banking app (yes, that's a reality with Emacs).
Also, Emacs windows vs tabs. Think of having each tab be a non-overlapping window within the browser window.
Finally, most browsers don't let JS code modify the browser itself. If I suddenly decide I'd like Firefox's menu completely rearranged, I don't think JS will give it to me.
Because you need Lisp. That's the actual "power of Emacs". Emacs is a Lisp-interpreter with a built-in text editor. Everything stems from that. Anyone challenging "the choice" of Lisp as the configuration language for an editor, saying things like: "Why? If X is better - faster, more modern, more popular...", etc., have misunderstanding of what makes Lisp so uniquely powerful.
A specific language is not the point - to implement anything similar to Emacs, you'd need a homoiconic language or at least a language that gives you live, reflective, late-bound image with code-as-data. Without that single aspect tons of things simply and inevitably (as history shows) will get complicated.
Why we have not seen such differentiator with VSCode? Because of their design choices - the extension language and the editor internals live in different worlds behind an API boundary. Emacs essentially has no such boundary. That's the power, and also a consequence of the image + homoiconicity combo.
Nearly 40 years of stuff.
People iterating on a problem space over time is the best way we have found to improve things.
The JS ecosystem is not that old and also attempts to solve hundreds of unrelated problems like running software without peoples consent.
They told me the future would have horrors beyond my comprehension.
But I understand this particular horror. I might even agree... :D
Maybe python can't do it, but I would love to extend my editor (and even browser) using python.
No, the power of the browser belongs in emacs. You're composing the wrong direction!
Anyway aren't you just describing vscode?