February 22, 2026
Tomato-free ketchup wars
Show HN: Elecxzy – A lightweight, Lisp-free Emacs-like editor in Electron
Emacs without Lisp? HN roasts this “lightweight” Electron editor
TLDR: Elecxzy is a new Emacs-style editor built with Electron and no Lisp, promising simplicity and speed. Hacker News erupted over the “lightweight” claim and whether Emacs without Lisp makes sense, mixing memes with suggestions for mg/microemacs and cautious support for a personal-itch project.
A new project called Elecxzy just hit Hacker News, promising an Emacs-like editor—same classic key shortcuts, modern look—built on Electron and notably without Lisp, the language Emacs uses for deep customization. It’s in early alpha, Windows-first, and claims to be “lightweight.” That last word? It lit the comments on fire.
Critics pounced, asking how anything built on Electron (a framework known for bundling a whole browser) can be light. One user deadpanned, “Light weight and electron in the same sentence?” while another joked Emacs’ old “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping” meme is now quaint compared to today’s Electron heft. The spiciest burn: “lisp-free emacs is like tomato-free ketchup?”—a gut-punch for purists who say Lisp is the soul of Emacs.
Not everyone came to boo. A few cheered the “scratch your itch” spirit and gave a nod to the creator from Japan, while steering purists toward lean classics like mg or microemacs. Others wished for the opposite: “more Lisp, less JavaScript.” The underlying drama is simple: Elecxzy dangles familiar Emacs vibes with fewer knobs and zero Lisp, but the community is split between “finally, simple!” and “that’s not Emacs at all.” Alpha status and private source only added to the eyebrow-raising spectacle. Read the full pitch here.
Key Points
- •Elecxzy is a Lisp-free, Emacs-inspired text editor built with Electron and React, currently in alpha.
- •It preserves Emacs keybindings and workflows, including window splitting/resizing, isearch, and query-replace.
- •Supports major modes and syntax highlighting for multiple languages, plus real-time Markdown and HTML previews.
- •Uses a Piece Table buffer engine for efficient large-file handling and extensive undo/redo.
- •Windows binaries are available via GitHub Releases; source code is currently private, with commands documented in COMMANDLIST.md.