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Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

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Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#151

Post by cjauvin »

jwr wrote: post #119
kabdib wrote: post #17

Emacs user here, it's been my go-to editor for about 40 years. I have a few customizations, not many. My .emacs file is 63 lines long, doesn't include any other files, and mostly just tweaks some key bindings and turns off features that I don't like. The only modes I use are built-in ones (e.g., C-mode, auto-wrapping text mode, etc.). I can't write elisp without a reference manual, and I think that's okay. I suggest:…

This advice is fine for the first year or so, but afterwards I would start trying out various packages and customizations. There are packages that can make your experience much better (projectile, swiper, ace-window, ace-jump, move-border, eyebrowse, winner, color-identifier-mode, off the top of my init.el). And, of course, if you do any programming at all, you should install magit immediately. It is the best git exp…

Typical Emacs user experience: sees a list of packages some other user likes, picks one with a name he finds intriguing (in my case eyebrowse), checks it, finds it cool, adopts it (possibly for a long time).

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#152

Post by olivierestsage »

asiachick wrote: post #123
vpEfljFL wrote: post #57

As you mentioned you're comfortable with vi, Spacemacs probably should be a good start although I think it kind of overloaded. Doom emacs should be a better/lighter option to start with till you ready to create your own edition. I suggest don't go full inside but start slowly incorporating emacs into your workflow. If you write code then using emacs only for git via magit for the first couple of weeks should be a goo…

If org mode is it then plenty of other editors have org mode https://packagecontrol.io/packages/orgmode https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=tootone.... https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode

Although these are great, it's worth noting that they don't even come close to the functionality offered in Emacs org-mode.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#153

Post by rashkov »

Highly recommend spacemacs. Solid documentation, fantastic evil-mode integration, well organized key bindings and a config file that makes sense.

If you like trying new programming languages then all you do is add it to the layers list, and it’ll install recommended packages for that language. It’s nice to have that ready for you to use so you don’t waste time researching which packages go with which language. Then you just hit “space-M” and you see everything you need to work with that language. Read the README.md for that layer or even dive into its code if you want to know how it works.

I don’t think I could have moved from Vim to emacs without spacemacs and will be forever grateful for that.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#154

Post by randomcarbloke »

jalopy wrote: post #141
randomcarbloke wrote: post #132

You cannot grok it without first trying to live inside it. It can be treated as an editor, and as your workflow slowly adjusts you will find yourself writing a mental wishlist. Realising that wishlist is where Emacs shines among other editors/IDEs/applications. It is a headspace/workspace and imo the programming equivalent of BASB. I for example use it because I want nothing to pull me from my workflow, so I have she…

>shells, repls, notebooks, filesystem browser, internet browser, rss, and a slew of other utilities tiled, something akin to a Bloomberg terminal, even spotify if I need music Could you describe each of the specific packages you use to accomplish all this? I'd love to add more tools.

Certainly: Shell: EShell, Term, (inferior) Shell

Repl (these will depend on what language you're using): usually I just run this within a shell, dedicated to the task (Mx rename-buffer) but there are specific shells for this like Python-shell.

Notebook: EIN, can be a pain to set up, requires you to run a notebook server, best done headlessly of course.

Filesystem browser: Neotree is the best I've found but there are other decent ones.

Internet browser: EWW is fine, some sites will better in mobile format, some in simple format if available.

RSS: Elfeed

Spotify: Helm

Have flirted with BitlBee for Discord and WhatsApp but think it is deprecated for the latter.

Most of the above are available with the default install. Additionally there are modes and such that make life easier like SLIME, MultipleCursors, WindowPurpose etc. Some settings will need to be fiddled with to get Elfeed updating when you want it to, I mean it's never as simple as installing a package as I'm sure you know, but once up and running it's fantastic.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#155

Post by lunias »

I'd start w/ Vanilla Emacs and then look at Doom Emacs. I recently switched away from Spacemacs (kinda slow IMO).

https://ethanaa.com/blog/switching-to-doom-emacs/

I wouldn't worry too much about elisp until you're at least intermediate. I've used Emacs for 10+ years and I next to no custom config that I've found indispensable.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#156

Post by kwoff »

In the mid-90s I started using emacs just because a classmate mentioned it (previously we'd used whatever was on VMS; I think this was around when I discovered Unix). A few years later in grad school, I was in the computer lab one evening and the sysadmin came in, sat down beside me and showed me how to really use emacs, and I was enlightened. ;) No, but seriously, I don't really remember what he even showed me (though I think one thing was dired), but having a guru give you a few tips is, at least in my experience, a great way to at least open your mind to learning more.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#158

Post by donio »

zozbot234 wrote: post #37
h91wka wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another positive side effect of limiting customization to reasonable levels. Default Emacs shortcuts are hidden everywhere. Most importantly, bash understands them, as well as many other REPLs (erlang, ghci, julia, ...). Developing muscle memory for the default Emacs allows one to use many tools much more efficiently.

Default Emacs shortcuts are bad for RSI. Even the original author of Emacs has had to cut down pretty dramatically on their coding activity, due to getting "Emacs pinky" and other RSI problems.

That's true for traditional keyboards and layouts. A keyboard with a thumb cluster that puts ctrl and meta under your thumbs makes all the difference.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#159

Post by alexhutcheson »

boulos wrote: post #76
kabdib wrote: post #17

Emacs user here, it's been my go-to editor for about 40 years. I have a few customizations, not many. My .emacs file is 63 lines long, doesn't include any other files, and mostly just tweaks some key bindings and turns off features that I don't like. The only modes I use are built-in ones (e.g., C-mode, auto-wrapping text mode, etc.). I can't write elisp without a reference manual, and I think that's okay. I suggest:…

What’s emacs --version say for you? My main complaint from using a Mac laptop for so long is that I often had to download some .el packages, that are basically unnecessary with more recent emacs updates. Other than that, I’ve also got a fairly simple .emacs file modulo a few project specific “let me make this a macro for this terrible manual process I need to do”.

FYI - the Emacs binary that's bundled with pre-Catalina versions of macOS (as /usr/bin/emacs) is 22.1, which is an ancient version from 2007. Apple kept that version because it's the last one that was released as GPLv2, and they've avoided bundling anything that's licensed GPLv3. This is the same reason that macOS includes an ancient version of Bash, and why they're switching to zsh as the default login shell.

Because it's so old, no one bothers to maintain compatibility with it anymore, and almost all modern elisp will break in some way if it's loaded in 22.1. Somewhat fortunately, it seems like Apple has removed this emacs binary from Catalina, so it won't be an issue on future versions of macOS.

To get a modern Emacs: https://emacsformacosx.com/ has binary builds of the official Emacs releases, with some additional scripts that let you launch it from Launchpad, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#160

Post by downerending »

shermanmccoy wrote: post #101
downerending wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also seconding. Vanilla emacs is already extremely powerful, and if you're doing real work, you'll end up having to use hosts that don't have all of your wonderful enhancements installed. It's good to know vanilla emacs. Beyond that, add language modes for anything you need that's not already included. If you use 'git', 'magit' is very nice. Beyond that, helm is interesting, though very large and kind of mind-blowing…

Linux kernel developers would not want to use the third option on your list.

magit? Why not?
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