51–60 of 179 posts
Pick a real goal you want to accomplish that the thing you want to understand is a good fit for.
Maintain a curious mindset while trying to accomplish the goal.
To frame this in the context of emacs. Just start using it for programming. When you come across something you want it to do, google how do I make emacs .
I know it sounds overly simplistic, but just trust me and try it.
Does anyone have any recommendations for configuring emacs so it's easy to use with a standard MacBook keyboard and a full external keyboard? I used emacs for a couple years on a linux laptop with a full keyboard, and I loved it. Then I got into more teaching than programming, so I moved to some beginner-friendly editors; I wanted to use the same tools I was recommending for my students. Now I'm doing more dev work a…
On an external keyboard, I don't remap because I have a Control key in both corners of the keyboard that I can press with the corner of my palm/the base of my pinky finger.
BTW, did you know many Emacs keys work in standard macOS text views? For an intro and a bunch of details, see " rel="nofollow">http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html> and " rel="nofollow">http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/system-bindings.html>.
Second, I want to recommend the Emacs Lisp tutorial, which I would argue is the best official tutorial for a programming language, full stop. This will teach you a tonne about Emacs which you won't pick up any other way, and you can fill in differences between Spacemacs and vi(m) by the usual expedient of trolling the internet for clues.
Spacemacs[0] is probably the best Emacs configuration for discoverability . Not only do the maintainers rearrange key combinations to be thematically grouped and mnemonically sane, they added/configured a really nice discoverability layer into Emacs. Even after close to a decade of Emacs usage, I learned more about Emacs using Spacemacs for a month than I thought possible. [0] https://www.spacemacs.org/
Saying that as someone using Emacs for at least 20 years: ignore the zealots, get rid of this FOMO and ask yourself if there are 3 things missing from your tools, things that you would like to have a better way of doing. For these things, find someone experienced with Emacs and ask them to show you how they do it. Unless your passion is in going meta and focus on building the tools instead of using them, chances are…
I used TECO to get grades back in the day, on a DEC-10. People used to write BASIC interpreters in TECO for fun. Then I went into the wilderness, where every system I used was uncustomizable. And then DOS, where Turbo C and Brief were kings. Eventually the system I used was Windows, and MS Developer Studio (before Visual Studio) had some macro recording capability. Then I joined a company where everything was just more convenient if you put Linux on your desktop, and for my limited Windows work, one of the Windows ports of Emacs was adequate, and a couple of our brightest were always using Emacs. These were the guys I wanted to emulate so I started using Emacs. But then I branched off and started using Eclipse, because I couldn't get ctags to work well enough with all the C++ code I was working with. Eclipse's remote solution seems to be dead so now I'm using Code.
I don't miss TECO.
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 good start (while reading some emacs related book in parallel).
Then try to experiment with the org mode, this thing alone might get you on the hook to be productive with the tool.
If you like the experience then I suggest you to consider buying ergonomic keyboard like ergodox/maltron/kinesis advantage to improve your typing.
- episode 0: introduction => https://mickael.kerjean.me/2017/03/18/emacs-tutorial-series-...
- episode 1: the basics => https://mickael.kerjean.me/2017/03/19/emacs-tutorial-series-...
- episode 2: org-mode => https://mickael.kerjean.me/2017/03/20/emacs-tutorial-series-...
- episode 3: interesting built in features => https://mickael.kerjean.me/2017/03/21/emacs-tutorial-series-...
- episode 4: installing plugins => https://mickael.kerjean.me/2017/03/22/emacs-tutorial-series-...
- episode 5: extending emacs with elisp => https://mickael.kerjean.me/2017/03/23/emacs-tutorial-series-...
I started out by following basic tutorials, like this one [0], and working my way up. You may want to find a guide to get themes setup, and some rough edges ironed out.
Alternatively, you could dive into distributions. I highly recommend Spacemacs, and have written an article about it [1]. It is a lot of learning especially if you're familiar with vim. The github page is also a great introduction [2]. I would recommend using the develop branch over master, as master tends to be very stale.
I have also heard good things about Doom emacs, another vim style distro.
[0] http://www.jesshamrick.com/2012/09/10/absolute-beginners-gui...
Saying that as someone using Emacs for at least 20 years: ignore the zealots, get rid of this FOMO and ask yourself if there are 3 things missing from your tools, things that you would like to have a better way of doing. For these things, find someone experienced with Emacs and ask them to show you how they do it. Unless your passion is in going meta and focus on building the tools instead of using them, chances are…
My biggest increase in productivity was to stop tweaking and just switch to a mainstream OS and use a mainstream editor using the stock config as much as possible (I only changed a handful of settings). I honestly can't think of anything in my current workflow that is a bottleneck to my productivity; the tools are fast enough that the bottleneck is now my brain and thoughts and tweaking the tools won't fix that.