We're all Doomed!
Just a quickie!
I spent most of 2017 getting used to Spacemacs, even though thoroughly enjoyed
the novel experience, as the year progressed I did start to realize that this
still wasn’t optimal. I didn’t want to switch out Evil (which is awesome), nor
to begin rolling my own config (I’ve got no time for that). Yet the elephant in
the room gradually got more apparent. With its enormous configuration, layers of
abstractions, nuclear power plan included, Spacemacs does feel like it’s doing
too much. It’s an amazing piece of software, but I didn’t find the performance I
was after and (possibly worse) started feel a bit too removed from vanilla
Emacs.
Always on the lookout for ways of improving my workflow, I found rumors of this
other curated Emacs configuration with the ominous name of
Doom:
A bit unsure of what exactly would set it apart from Spacemacs, I did decide
to give it a try nonetheless. It is obviously a much smaller configuration1, and
most likely has a much smaller user-base. But just having a look at the projects
README.md and the accompanying screenshot got me curious.
What a performance!
Wheras Spacemacs felt clunky and slow, Doom feels snappy and responsive. The
configuration, being mostly maintained and driven by a single developer, is a
lot more opinionated. This also gives a much more unified experience though, and
the editor really feels state of the art without any sign of the decades old
software underneath.
But definitely not stable…
I don’t know what’s with these Emacs config maintainers, but they never seem
to be able to keep their master branches up to date. For Doom, at the time
of writing, there’s no point trying anything other than develop. That being
said; this guy’s a machine, churning out new features, responding to user
feedback within minutes, and generally being polite and helpful when approached.
If you want your editor to be solid as a rock, then Doom might not be what
you’re after, at least not now. But if you need up-to-date plugins2, a great
curated set of custom commands and macros, then Doom could be the config for
you.
Sold, for now.
I won’t ever say I’ve found my ultimate, never-ever-gonna-change-again setup.
But this is starting to feel pretty darn close. I can’t say I spend much time
reminiscing about my days using Vim though3.
We’ll see how long this new venture lasts. It’s been two blazingly fast months already though!
