Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Emacs 26.2 Released

lists.gnu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 278 posts

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#141

Post by bitwize »

Ah, Emacs -- the king of editors. IDEs come and go, but I've found nothing that has yet convinced me to leave the editor that got me started in Linux development during the 90s, in which I've done all of my best work ever since. Yes, I've tried VSCode -- several times. The difference between Emacs and VSCode is that one is an extensible editor, the other was built from the ground up to be shaped and morphed to match your workflow, no matter what that may be. Emacs Lisp is an always-on, instantaneous-feedback, comprehensive extension language -- and it's a Lisp, even if a flawed one. Emacs is also self-documenting and self-debugging, making extending it an easy part of using it. If you type M-. on any Elisp identifier, you will be taken straight to its definition -- even for C-implemented primitives of the Lisp VM (provided you have the Emacs sources and Emacs knows where they live). Emacs is thus open source in a more concretely real way than most open source software -- it makes examinjng its own source easy and even inviting.

The way things are going, I figure either Emacs will die or I will before I stop using it. I guess I'm a set-in-my-ways old-timer. So be it.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#142

Post by csdreamer7 »

bbbobbb wrote: post #48

I wish I spent time learning how to use Emacs in the past to a degree where customizing my installation was faster than learning something else. As I stand now, it seems really hard to justify to invest time into it when the benefits over using something very easy to work with (like JetBrains IDEs for Java or VS Code for Python) sound marginal. I know experts can fly around in it and it looks amazing. Having a single…

I used to feel the same way about Atom.

However, Atom has always had issues. Snippets are very limited due to design issues. Now a days I keep getting random js errors and the syntax highlighting stops working below a line I was working on.

Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub likely will hurt future community development of plugins since new programmers will assume the worst and develop for VSCode or move on.

Atom showed me how useful/important having an editor I could easily customize is. And the two above shows me how important having an editor with a strong independent community is. I am trying Emacs, but it is a struggle and Spacemacs keeps having random issues (and feels slower than Atom). So right now I am learning Vim with Vundle.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#143

Post by zelly »

bbbobbb wrote: post #48

I wish I spent time learning how to use Emacs in the past to a degree where customizing my installation was faster than learning something else. As I stand now, it seems really hard to justify to invest time into it when the benefits over using something very easy to work with (like JetBrains IDEs for Java or VS Code for Python) sound marginal. I know experts can fly around in it and it looks amazing. Having a single…

At this point honestly it's an objectively worse decision to not use modern IDEs. (It's not a matter of taste anymore.) IDEs have gotten really good. If you only use Emacs or vim, you're literally putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage.

All the avante garde language extensions (Rust, D, etc.) support VS Code better than Emacs now. VS Code is where all the new ideas are tried first.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#144

Post by signa11 »

mrspeaker wrote: post #35
jes wrote: post #8

I have been using GNU Emacs since the late 1980s. It has been my life's editor, so to speak. At 59 1/2, it seems unlikely that I will ever switch to another editor. It's served me well. I am grateful to the hackers that created it.

I only just understood Emacs about a year ago, despite being a nerd for at least 30 years. I like to think I don't have too many regrets in life - but I'm kicking myself for not realizing what Emacs was way back then - or at any of the times I've tried it out in the past (writing it off as "a text editor")! Never too late though, and on the plus side I've now got decades of hidden Emacs goodies still to discover!

may you please share your wisdom and insight here ? thank you kindly!

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#145

Post by na85 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #3

I'm really happy to see Emacs move faster, and especially the integration of package management since version 25. The old beast is still kicking! For what it's worth, I've actually been using on macOS the Mituharu branch [1], available in MacPorts as "emacs-mac-app". This version adds the [s]essential[/s] smooth-scrolling feature, and just in general seems to be slightly better integrated into macOS (except that it d…

All I need is a way to call elisp functions from the touch bar.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#146

Post by juststeve »

jes wrote: post #24
agumonkey wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what kind of programs get to follow you for so many decades.

For me, the only software that I have used consistently since that era (~1981 or so) would be UNIX and the C programming language. And to be honest, I don't write that much straight C anymore.

What language do you write now?

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#147

Post by davidw »

jes wrote: post #8

I have been using GNU Emacs since the late 1980s. It has been my life's editor, so to speak. At 59 1/2, it seems unlikely that I will ever switch to another editor. It's served me well. I am grateful to the hackers that created it.

Yeah, Emacs is one of the things I'm still using 20+ years on. Not a lot else I'm still using from those days.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#148

Post by Symbiote »

cmehdy wrote: post #129
mrspeaker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only just understood Emacs about a year ago, despite being a nerd for at least 30 years. I like to think I don't have too many regrets in life - but I'm kicking myself for not realizing what Emacs was way back then - or at any of the times I've tried it out in the past (writing it off as "a text editor")! Never too late though, and on the plus side I've now got decades of hidden Emacs goodies still to discover!

Any suggestions to pick it up without wanting to give up due to convoluted shortcuts?

1. Swap your control and caps lock keys, or if you never use caps lock set it to an additional control key. I think this is useful regardless of whether you use Emacs or not.

It's also a good idea to use opposing hands when using modifier keys. To press control-H, you would use the left control with your left hand, and the H with your right hand. Again, this is true regardless of using Emacs (it applies just the same to typing capital letters with the shift keys).

2. Load Emacs.

3. Press Control-H, then press T. This loads the Emacs tutorial. It should take about 10-15 minutes to run though.

If you use Bash/Zsh or Mac OS, the basic cursor movement in the very first section of the tutorial can also be used in the Bash/Zsh shell, and in many Mac OS textboxes as alternatives to the Home/End/PgUp keys etc.

4. Read the manual section on macros [1]. I don't know so many emacs-level-10-wizard level commands, but making a macro saves me a lot of time and thought at least once a week.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ke...

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#149

Post by AceJohnny2 »

smsx wrote: post #121
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Font rendering. Worth double-checking, but I think that's one area Mituharu's is better than standard Emacs. I definitely recall some font rendering issues with some past version. As for your other points, they aren't resolved. FWIW, I work around them: > The server mode compatibility I just have one long-running Emacs session. I have some colleagues who have experimented with using a launchd LaunchAgent to start…

If you haven't seen it before, you might be interested in something like chunkwm[1], a tiling window manager for MacOS. I've been using it for a couple of years now and its been fantastic and works almost exactly like a linux-based tiling wm. [1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/chunkwm

Thanks! I've eyed chunkwm, but was put off by its externalized keyboard-shortcut system. skhd scares me a bit, and I figure that since chunkwm is macOS only, it should be handling its shortcuts itself rather than abstract it out.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#150

Post by kwoff »

emacsvimlover wrote: post #112
jes wrote: post #8

I have been using GNU Emacs since the late 1980s. It has been my life's editor, so to speak. At 59 1/2, it seems unlikely that I will ever switch to another editor. It's served me well. I am grateful to the hackers that created it.

Can you give the n00b's any tips on how to master emacs while keeping it interesting?

If you can find someone who's mastered emacs to show you around, I think that would be a good start. I was fortunate in the mid-90's that such a person sat with me in a computer lab and showed me how much more powerful emacs was than I'd understood till that point.
Post reply on HN