Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a bit like Vi.
It's really not at all like vi.
It was a dumb pun on the last letter of "emacs" being left off. :P
Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
121–130 of 131 posts
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#122I 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…
Maybe it's just me, but at my grocery store I've seen them stock the same item in multiple places because it makes sense both places. That said, they're a hippie health food place.
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#123I 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…
Maybe it's just me, but at my grocery store I've seen them stock the same item in multiple places because it makes sense both places. That said, they're a hippie health food place.
That is a solution, along the lines of xeroxing your insurance forms to store them in multiple folders in your filing cabinet. It has synch problems, though - if you have to update in one place, you might forget to update the copy. Or in the store, you might run out in one place and not the other, which causes waste of effort.
A step better is how libraries have card catalogs, but a step better than that is online grocery shopping - which definitely does not store their products in a hierarchical database.
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pencil and paper is much better for me for making quick notes to be honest. I actually don't like writing my brain dumps on a computer because it makes it harder for me to think about them. I find that physically using a pencil helps me develop my ideas more because I have to reiterate what I'm writing while writing it. It's definitely a personal preference, maybe it comes from the fact that I always draw things on p…
The problems with paper notes are poor searchability, linking, extracting/copying of data, and portability. But yes, there are advantages to paper, like the ability to easily draw diagrams and link ideas with arrows, etc. On the other hand, if you need that, you could always use something like a Wacom tablet, or maybe some other touch-screen device with a stylus. That would give you the best of both worlds.
Wacom tablet/touch screen+stylus have same problem of poor searchability. (Assuming that you are suggesting "drawing" digitially, as opposed to on paper)
Are there tools that will let the user search "hand drawn" digital image ? One can always use tag like system, which one can't with paper, but then it is extra work, and adding "text" tags is easier when using something like org-mode, or just plain text.
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
I'm not sure exactly what the Ctrl-P does, but that sounds a lot like ido for Emacs.
Ctrl+P is a bit more "fuzzy finder" than ido-mode. It fuzzy finds paths under the current directory (or up to a project root if there is one above your current directory, though this is configurable). You can switch between "find in filename" or "find in path".
I've grown accustomed to it, but it's not the end-all-be-all. For example, I can type exact filenames in some work repos and get matches that are not for the file I'm looking for because the fuzzy finding is too fuzzy and starts hooking in matching from the directory structure in the path.
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problems with paper notes are poor searchability, linking, extracting/copying of data, and portability. But yes, there are advantages to paper, like the ability to easily draw diagrams and link ideas with arrows, etc. On the other hand, if you need that, you could always use something like a Wacom tablet, or maybe some other touch-screen device with a stylus. That would give you the best of both worlds.
Wacom tablet/touch screen+stylus have same problem of poor searchability. (Assuming that you are suggesting "drawing" digitially, as opposed to on paper) Are there tools that will let the user search "hand drawn" digital image ? One can always use tag like system, which one can't with paper, but then it is extra work, and adding "text" tags is easier when using something like org-mode, or just plain text.
I wasn't arguing that digital drawings wre searchable, but that typed text was.
Still, there are ways to make drawing somewhat searchable too.
The (typed) names of the drawings you make are searchable, as are the tags (if you've used any, and you should), and their location on your filesystem. If there's some writing on the same page as the drawing, that's potentially OCR'able, and then searchable. Finally, you could always combine drawings with typed text, wich will be searchable.
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Orgmode supports export to the graphical mind-mapper, Freemind. Graphviz/dot is supported as a language you can use within org documents as part of org-babel functionality, but I don't think there's actually an exporter to graphviz (main use in babel would be to process the dot commands to generate graphviz diagram--e.g., a separate jpeg file--that will then be included as part of an exported org document). As I unde…
Language overloading strikes again... I meant graphical in terms of the data structure, not the UI. In FreeMind, can a child node have multiple parents?
Ahh, yes, in Freemind there is, strictly speaking, only one parent. I think they adopted this restriction because folding/collapsing of nodes is hard to define and/or hard to understand without this restriction, and folding is an important part of helping mind naturally grasp the big "picture".
However, within the visual Freemind diagram it is also possible to create arrows from one node to another that are not part of the main restricted hierarchy. I know some users have created these with the intent of creating multiple parents for a single node. So I would say that although Freemind doesn't support it very well (i.e., it's a hack, not natural like with graphviz), it does support showing visual relationships of single child with multiple parents. (And as far as export to Freemind from orgmode goes, I expect the export could be written to include arrows that are intended to show multiple parents of a single node, although I'm pretty sure it doesn't right now.)
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#128I spent a few months on emacs, mostly so I could experience the magic of org. I didn't get it. It's a super powerful outliner with scripting... Through that experience I rediscovered pen and paper, actually. No scripting, but I can write sideways and sketch things. A pocket sized notebook was the answer for me.
I'm currently using both org-mode and a stack of index cards. I use Emacs a lot, so that could be why I'm sticking with it. org-mode is now solely for note taking. At least for me, it's hard to beat physically crossing something out (or tearing a card in half) after finishing something on my to-do list.
Right? I don't have any science, but I'd wager the amount of dopamine released by crossing out a line on paper is significantly greater than hitting `t` (right?) in org.
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#129What this story and many of the comments herein miss is that org-mode coupled with org-babel is a full-fledged multilanguage literate programming environment. When you have access to the shell, Python (w/ matplotlib for graphs), Clojure, R, etc. right in your org buffer, and can interact between them (and even pass data between cells of different languages), you really do have what Ken Iverson (inventor of APL, Turin…
Very true about folding, and org-babel is amazingly capable. It is great for things like examples, notes, short tutorials, etc.
But, I have never been able to actually make use of the features in any kind of a more complicated setting: I find that too often you really need to have the code in standalone files, for example for batch jobs, running in other environments, sharing, etc. etc., and having code within the .org file really does not mix well with that. Perhaps your workflow somehow resolves that problem?
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#130What this story and many of the comments herein miss is that org-mode coupled with org-babel is a full-fledged multilanguage literate programming environment. When you have access to the shell, Python (w/ matplotlib for graphs), Clojure, R, etc. right in your org buffer, and can interact between them (and even pass data between cells of different languages), you really do have what Ken Iverson (inventor of APL, Turin…
Very true about folding, and org-babel is amazingly capable. It is great for things like examples, notes, short tutorials, etc.
But, I have never been able to actually make use of the features in any kind of a more complicated setting: I find that too often you really need to have the code in standalone files, for example for batch jobs, running in other environments, sharing, etc. etc., and having code within the .org file really does not mix well with that. Perhaps your workflow somehow resolves that problem?