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Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering

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Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering

#91

Post by jacalata »

epaga wrote: post #37
tunesmith wrote: post #12

I don't know why so many people make the point that hierarchical structures are how the brain works. Graphical structures are how the brain works. The hierarchical structure is how the physical world works (you can't put the same shirt in two closets), and we have an unfortunate habit of trying to force our brain to work the same way, but it's an impedance mismatch. Unless I'm the only one that is frustrated that you…

Totally agree - being able to not only list things from top-to-bottom but more visually seems to work far better for me as well (though I suspect people's brains may work differently?) My love for outlining like in Workflowy or org-mode but my need for more visual-based tools like Scapple or mind-mapping is what led me to scratch my own itch and create Mindscope. It's an attempt to be the best of both worlds. Would l…

I'm a little put off by ipad-only: I want to be able to at least read my data from anywhere. I don't want it gone for a week when my iPad gets run over by a car. I'd also like some non-video content on the website: when I visited the page just now (on Android) I see two videos and an app store link. I'm not going to watch a video on the bus right now so that leaves me with no info at all.

Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering

#92

Post by [deleted] »

epaga wrote: post #37
tunesmith wrote: post #12

I don't know why so many people make the point that hierarchical structures are how the brain works. Graphical structures are how the brain works. The hierarchical structure is how the physical world works (you can't put the same shirt in two closets), and we have an unfortunate habit of trying to force our brain to work the same way, but it's an impedance mismatch. Unless I'm the only one that is frustrated that you…

Totally agree - being able to not only list things from top-to-bottom but more visually seems to work far better for me as well (though I suspect people's brains may work differently?) My love for outlining like in Workflowy or org-mode but my need for more visual-based tools like Scapple or mind-mapping is what led me to scratch my own itch and create Mindscope. It's an attempt to be the best of both worlds. Would l…

[deleted]

Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering

#93

Post by randomstring »

LVB wrote: post #74

The biggest issue I had with org-mode was the sad state of mobile clients. They were all convoluted to set up and, once working, didn't work very well [1]. The experience was much worse that what I've become accustomed to with Todoist, Nirvana, etc. where mobile sync is pretty seamless. Org certainly is interesting and ticks the main boxes for me: outliner/TODO system, open source, text file, etc. With a better mobil…

MobileOrg on iOS is unusable. I got it working, however you cannot edit or add to your org files from your phone. You can only view them. That makes the app useless in my book.

Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering

#95

Post by nandkeypull »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #53
fsiefken wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried evil mode with vi bindings? The good thing of org-mode is that it runs locally and through ssh, but any task outliner tool is useful to organize thoughts or tasks.

evil mode is pretty good, but I find that there's a few rough edges. Also, I can't find a good type-ahead search plugin for picking files like in TextMate, Sublime Text, or (my current preferred tool) the Ctrl-P plugin for Vim [0]. [0] https://github.com/ctrlpvim/ctrlp.vim

My personal favorite for this is find-file-in-project - it's decently fast and is very customizable (https://github.com/technomancy/find-file-in-project).

Some other examples of Ctrl-P replacements for emacs are fiplr, helm-projectile (helm-projectile-find-file), and helm-ls-git.

Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering

#96

Post by nandkeypull »

robertcarter wrote: post #86
Scarbutt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't search hard enough ;) Really, Ctrl-P is joke to anything compared available in Emacs.

Can you provide some examples and/or the name of the packages etc. I've just started emacs and the way I use dired mode is too slow. In terminal I have a bunch of aliases for fast navigation. How do you do this in emacs?

You can have aliases in emacs as well - just use bookmarks. Set a bookmark with C-x r m and jump to a bookmark with C-x r b (I bound this to a "bj" keychord to invoke bookmark-jump faster). If you install ido/helm/ivy, you'll have a quick fuzzy selection mechanism to grab whatever bookmark you want with just a few letters.

Plus you'll want to install a fuzzy file finder like find-file-in-project.

Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering

#97

Post by Jtsummers »

norswap wrote: post #94

I kind of agree. But I just use plain text files with bullets. I haven't seen a compelling argument to justify learning all the concepts and keystrokes of org-mode. I don't need all the bell and whistles. Export to HTML? Why?

If you're already an emacs user (is it supported in other editors?) you can start here and grow as you need it. At least, that's how I've done it. Started with bulleted lists (folding was convenient and really all I made use of). Then expanded to linking within a document and to other documents. My .emacs file auto-loads an index.org file for me, this has links to numerous other documents. Some are little more than scratchpads, one is a list of PDFs. Some of those have become links to org files that link to the pdf and I have notes/annotations in the org file. It's my own wiki.

Export to HTML was useful a couple times, but not something I've used much of. I generated some code samples and used org-babel mode. The HTML view was nice enough to share out to other people.

I'm still barely using any of its features. The compelling thing for me is that when I've wanted a new feature, it was already there 9 times out of 10.

Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering

#98

Post by yoplait_ »

robertcarter wrote: post #86
Scarbutt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't search hard enough ;) Really, Ctrl-P is joke to anything compared available in Emacs.

Can you provide some examples and/or the name of the packages etc. I've just started emacs and the way I use dired mode is too slow. In terminal I have a bunch of aliases for fast navigation. How do you do this in emacs?

you need projectile to create projects (most of the time it's automatically inferred from the VCS) and helm-projectile to jump to any project file with fuzzy lookup.

Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering

#99

Post by hsitz »

wainstead wrote: post #59
lolidaisuki wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't really have much to do with how brain works. Graphical way of arranging stuff is just something you are accustomed to. I find graphical ways of organizing information harder to use and much prefer hierarchical structures.

But arguably you can remember far more with Memory Palaces or the Dominic System.

I don't know about Dominic System, but Memory Palace method is not about analyzing and/or grokking relations between items at all. It's simply a method that helps you remember stuff. Outlining is not about remembering stuff. It's about analyzing, breaking into component parts, understanding relations.

After outlining you will typically "remember" a subject better, but that comes about as a side-benefit of having a better understanding of the subject, not because of some method that simply helps brain recall things.

Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering

#100

Post by discreteevent »

hsitz wrote: post #85
discreteevent wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a mind map which is probably equivalent. There's a lot to be said for using a second dimension. www.drdobbs.com/tools/mind-maps-the-poor-mans-design-tool/240008292

Mind map is not really equivalent unless you restrict connections to rigid hierarchy, but ability to make more flexible connections is part of why you'd choose mind map software over an outliner. FWIW, orgmode does export outlines to Freemind mindmapper (using ox-freemind.el which is part of the org-plus-contrib packaging at Emacs' elpa repository. As some others have said, orgmode does get beyond hierarchical struct…

Freemind is primarily hierarchical but you can easily make non hierarchical links (hyper and visual). Also you can add multiple tags/attributes to nodes
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