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Emacs 26.2 Released

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Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#151

Post by plg »

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!

Most useful things you’ve discovered?

Best resources you’ve used to discover things?

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#152

Post by ElCapitanMarkla »

nsilvestri wrote: post #134
cmehdy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you're already familiar with vim, I've heard good things about Spacemacs: http://spacemacs.org/

I installed spacemacs a couple of weeks ago. I’m enjoying it but I have to keep switching back to sublime to get things done quickly then switching back when I can afford to take time doing things.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#153

Post by RHSeeger »

RHSeeger wrote: post #90
laughingman2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol! Not at all surprised, if you can think of it, there is most probably an emacs plugin for it.

https://xkcd.com/378/

Given the downvote, I guess my intention wasn't clear. I was agreeing that

> if you can think of it, there is most probably an emacs plugin for it.

Anything Ive looked for has been out there, excepting some truly specialized things (fontification for custom file formats)

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#154

Post by Arelius »

zikzak wrote: post #42
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!

I am excited for you but that "journey of discovery" is way, way too addictive for me. I find myself chasing edge case requirements in my config rather than getting work done. To each thier own, of course! I still use Emacs when I ssh into my vps and, if I want primarily on Windows doing dev if Visual Studio, would likely use it for everything (as I did back when I was primarily on UNIX systems). Just writing this ma…

I setup the VS Emacs bindings and then always bind C-X C-E to open current file/line in Emacs from VS. With that I get along pretty well combining VS and Emacs.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#155

Post by tom_ »

teddyh wrote: post #124
8456523 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs's Mac (graphical) interface does that, too, which is not conforming to the environment it is running in. And there is no user option for changing it to a contextual menu containing Cut, Copy, Paste, etc. (I changed it for myself by writing about 100 lines of Emacs Lisp.)

I would guess that’s because IIRC, there’s no official support for Emacs to display native windows in Cocoa, and Emacs is simply using macOS’ X11 compatibility system. If you could fix that behavior so that Emacs behaves more like a native Cocoa application, I see no reason that the Emacs maintainers should reject a patch. Emacs has, as far as I can tell, always strived to use as much of a native system’s interface a…

It does the same thing on Windows. This just appears to be how Emacs behaves.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#156

Post by oska »

mrspeaker wrote: post #114
TypingStuff wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. I recall thinking it was a text editor with inferior key bindings to vim, and with a bunch of unnecessary weirdness. I'm glad I took the time to investigate this discoverable interactive programmatic keyboard-oriented UI platform, that also happens to have a great editor (evil). A uniquely empowering tool for programmers.

I've gone all in, I'm in for life. Emacs has already deprecated at least a dozen apps, web apps, and websites I used to frequent. I'm starting to despise any other software... ...so when does someone teach me the secret handshake?

Mind sharing some examples of what Emacs has deprecated for you?

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#157

Post by nobleach »

kstrauser wrote: post #88
snazz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen this pop up a lot lately—someone who’s been using Emacs or Vim for years and then sees the “new cool” editor and says they’ll be switching to it. I have the same question, since someone who’s used Emacs for that long would surely have “seen the light” already. Maybe they’re yak shaving with the config instead of getting work done? That’s one of the few valid complaints I can think of.

I used Emacs for a couple of decades but switched over to VS Code after a couple of days of playing with it. I love Emacs and the concept of infinite configurability. But as it turns out, I don't actually use most of that flexibility. It's more common that I'll install a package, tweak a couple of knobs, and get on with work. Well, VS Code offers the equivalents of all the Emacs packages that I actually use, and they…

VS Code does not come with magit... and that in and of itself is a great reason to use Emacs. (This is coming from a daily Vim user) There really is nothing like Magit even as a plugin for VSC. VSC's scm mode is what I'd consider "barely passible". You can do stuff with it, but it's tiny/ugly/not very friendly. And that GitLens plugin doesn't really help with staging files/hunks etc... it's more meta info about past commits.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#158

Post by singingfish »

Picked up emacs in 1993 in a unix lab because it was the only thing that remotely made sense on these weird X-Windows systems. Was a good choice because I haven't had to learn anything new since. When I met RMS I thanked him for it.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#159

Post by bitwize »

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…

That's exactly what I say about switching away from Emacs -- the new tools available aren't compelling enough to make me leave what I've been working easily in for 24 years now.

It sounds like you've found something that works. But if you find yourself with a hankering to take a long weekend, lock yourself in a hotel room like John Carmack, and devote that time to really learning Emacs, I encourage you to do so. It should prove quite rewarding.

Re: Emacs 26.2 Released

#160

Post by ajross »

jakeinspace wrote: post #133

I'm so thankful that I stumbled upon emacs in my first year of undergrad. That discovery led me to the wonderful world of Lisp, and really impacted how I view software design and the development process. As a C/C++, Clojure, Verilog/VHDL, and org-mode tool, I can't imagine using anything else. Python is the only use case that I haven't been 100% satisfied with, although I don't think Pycharm or VS code offer anything…

The world is so different now. In my first year of undergrad, you didn't "stumble" on emacs. It was the tool of the demigods that worked on the software you could only read about on usenet. Everyone knew emacs was best, if you could get your admin to install it. It's what we all dreamed of using some day.

So needless to say it was the first thing I tried when I got my shell account. I got stuck in it, couldn't figure anything out, and had to power cycle the terminal before sneaking away sheepishly.

But yeah, emacs is best, and I'm still using it now that I know how to exit.

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