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Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

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Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#101

Post by ernst_klim »

lame88 wrote: post #99

So, emacs is a platform for text-based programs to do things that i already have other stable, reliable, and familiar programs to accomplish. I’m not sold. I need a better value proposition before i feel sold to spend my time climbing that learning curve.

>text-based programs

Not text based, it has buttons, widgets, can embed pictures and graphics.

>reliable, and familiar programs to accomplish

In emacs these bits of code are integrated, so I could, for example, save an IRC chat as buffer, edit it, and send a e-mail. Or open an interactive REPL of maxima, for example, copy result to latex having embedded previews for formulas, and then compile it to pdf (and preview in emacs).

Different parts could be combined in any possible way with elisp code. You can easily call any email-related or rfeed-related function from your code at any time.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#102

Post by mcshicks »

JohnStrangeII wrote: post #20

I'm using Emacs for my daily tasks, both writing and programming. One question I have to more experienced Emacs users: Can you recommend an email client? It needs to be able to display html mails. Currently, I use claws-mail and am fairly happy with it, except for the search. I've got about 30,000 mails in the inbox and full-text searching them takes too long. Is there a way to transition my claws-mail folders to Ema…

For email I like mu4e. I set it up to use Imap it is a bit slow to load up. I had the same fears about losing email, I just created an additional gmail account and forwarded, played around with it till I wasn't concerned anymore.

For orgmode I like this website

http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html

You don't have to do everything, I just started adding pieces of his .emacs file one at a time until I was happy with way it worked. Very nice if you want to do GTD type open task reviews on a recurring basis.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#103

Post by co_dh »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #88
aldanor wrote: post #13

Being a vim guy myself, I only use Emacs (Spacemacs, to be precise, so as to get rid of all those a-x a-y a-z a-m-s-x type shortcuts and replace them with something ergonomic) as a git client - because Magit is the best git client out there. I’ve tried using Spacemacs as a main editor for a while, but it’s too much of a mess, and if anything goes wrong (and it often does) you’re stuck with obscure lisp tracebacks, th…

kak ?

kakoune

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#105

Post by sdegutis »

RaycatRakittra wrote: post #18

I love Emacs. For all of its warts, "historical reasons", and vestigal features, it is the editor that really opened my eyes to alternative ways to do introspection and programming, in general. I want to believe the friction comes if you try to "fix" Emacs too early. You kinda have to conform to the Emacs way when learning it and leave all of your assumptions at the door. I see a lot of people who come to Emacs from…

I had a similar path to Emacs: became really proficient with Vim, avoided Emacs since everyone I knew hated it, saw someone doing things with incredible speed and efficiency in Emacs at Enova (hi Kyle) that I had never imagined could be done, tried Emacs myself, and spent weeks customizing it to become extremely fast with rapid development in Clojure using CIDER.

But now that I do vanilla front-end dev, I have found VS Code to give me nearly all the same productivity I had before, but with practically no configuration, and in an editor that actually has reasonable per-pixel scrolling. (Emacs added per-pixel scrolling in 2017 but still got it wrong somehow.)

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#106

Post by overgard »

rbanffy wrote: post #3

The way I see it, there are two major approaches to IDEs - Extendable text editors (of which Emacs is the best example) and Visual Studio knock offs. There is no right or wrong answer, but I like the Emacs way.

I'd say the two approaches are:

- Editors that prioritize text operations

- Editors that prioritize AST structure operations

IDEs are the latter.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#107

Post by MarcScott »

JohnStrangeII wrote: post #20

I'm using Emacs for my daily tasks, both writing and programming. One question I have to more experienced Emacs users: Can you recommend an email client? It needs to be able to display html mails. Currently, I use claws-mail and am fairly happy with it, except for the search. I've got about 30,000 mails in the inbox and full-text searching them takes too long. Is there a way to transition my claws-mail folders to Ema…

I use mu4e. No better way of ripping through emails and getting down to inbox zero. When there's an email I need to action I can very quickly turn it into an org-mode task, and then archive it, knowing the task will contain a link to the email body. I rarely have more than 10 emails in my inbox.

Org-mode is like a Swiss army knife. I honestly started using it, unaware of the whole GTD functionality. I was using it as an alternative to markdown, as it allowed me to use CSS with the exported HTML. Then I learned of the GTD aspect and started using that as well. Now I have my init file written in org-mode using babel to drag out the lisp.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#108

Post by rbanffy »

coldtea wrote: post #16
rbanffy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visual Studio-like IDEs are a dead end. There is little revenue opportunity in them and a huge downside in losing relevance in the overall developer mindshare. How many of us would be using a Microsoft IDE/text editor if it were not for VS Code?

The millions that use and will continue to use Visual Studio?

Visual Studio is great for developing on Windows software that'll run on Windows or XBox.

Feels like a dead end to me. The ecosystem has colossal inertia, but it's easy to see the lack of future.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#109

Post by boustrophedon »

sdegutis wrote: post #105
RaycatRakittra wrote: post #18

I love Emacs. For all of its warts, "historical reasons", and vestigal features, it is the editor that really opened my eyes to alternative ways to do introspection and programming, in general. I want to believe the friction comes if you try to "fix" Emacs too early. You kinda have to conform to the Emacs way when learning it and leave all of your assumptions at the door. I see a lot of people who come to Emacs from…

I had a similar path to Emacs: became really proficient with Vim, avoided Emacs since everyone I knew hated it, saw someone doing things with incredible speed and efficiency in Emacs at Enova (hi Kyle) that I had never imagined could be done, tried Emacs myself, and spent weeks customizing it to become extremely fast with rapid development in Clojure using CIDER. But now that I do vanilla front-end dev, I have found…

What is the utility of per-pixel scrolling in a text editor?

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#110

Post by dmitriid »

rbanffy wrote: post #108
coldtea wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The millions that use and will continue to use Visual Studio?

Visual Studio is great for developing on Windows software that'll run on Windows or XBox. Feels like a dead end to me. The ecosystem has colossal inertia, but it's easy to see the lack of future.

So, you propose to give up on Visual Studio because in 20 or so years maybe Windows and XBox won’t exist? Or?...

Also, speaking of IDEs. There are also Jetbrains’ IDEs and XCode. Can’t speak for XCode, but IDEA offers capabilities that Emacs can’t even begin to approach.

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