Live data from Hacker News

Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

two-wrongs.com

121–130 of 136 posts

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#121

I used Emacs for 15 years. I've been off of Emacs for about 5-6 years now and I won't ever go back. Here's why: 1. Refactoring. The refactorings in IntelliJ are amazing. Amazing. The ability to say (yeah, this class is now called Foo instead of Bar) and have everything automatically changed is outstanding. This is a basic example of course but you can also do things like remove a function parameter, and also do thing…

Java is more like assembly language programming at this point in software history.

You shouldn't be editing Java with any editor, let alone emacs.

This is because if you are using 3 frameworks, and 30 classes with DI and reflection, just to post a json to a http end point, you should be using an IDE to handle that kind of madness.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#122

I bookmarked this. I have been using Emacs since I bought a manual around 1980, but, the article mentioned a few packages I didn’t know about.

This happens all the time to me.

The other day, I found my old hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy infocom image (interactive fiction) and it turns out someone wrote some elisp that lets you play it in emacs.

(that said, elisp isn't a very expressive language for me, python is my favorite language right now)

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#123
post #65

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…

> One question I have to more experienced Emacs users: Can you recommend an email client? Contrary opinion from an experienced Emacs user (parts of my init.el are older than many users in this forum): I used to be a fan of Gnus, but then noticed that dragging attachments into E-mails is such a productivity booster than I switched to Mail and haven't looked back. If you are on a Mac, the combination of seamless drag&d…

Interesting. One of the reasons I switched to mutt (well, neomutt) is that it is faster for me to work with attachements from a cli. This is mostly due to tab completion, which for commonly accessed locations is practically muscle memory. Takes me forever to to click my way there.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#124
post #121

I used Emacs for 15 years. I've been off of Emacs for about 5-6 years now and I won't ever go back. Here's why: 1. Refactoring. The refactorings in IntelliJ are amazing. Amazing. The ability to say (yeah, this class is now called Foo instead of Bar) and have everything automatically changed is outstanding. This is a basic example of course but you can also do things like remove a function parameter, and also do thing…

Java is more like assembly language programming at this point in software history. You shouldn't be editing Java with any editor, let alone emacs. This is because if you are using 3 frameworks, and 30 classes with DI and reflection, just to post a json to a http end point, you should be using an IDE to handle that kind of madness.

That's more of an architecture problem rather than an intrinsic characteristic of Java though. I'm not a fan of the language, but I think the latest versions added some nifty features that make working with the language not as bad as it used to be.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#125
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spacemacs is better about this, it shows possible continuations while you issue the command. Not to mention that vim keybindings are much saner. This being said, I've abandoned Spacemacs for VSCode (with amVim). I feel really diety about this, but at least "jump to definition/declaration" in C++ works like it should.

Have you tried https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-mode which works with C++ ?

Thanks, but I finally managed to get CLion to work with the compilation database I manually generate from a Rube Goldberg build system I use at work, so I might just stick with that.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#126

I've been a vim guy for 5 years now. And last month I tried to switch to emacs. But it just didn't feel natural for the following reasons: 1. My usual coding session would involve Vim+Tmux, on trying the same with emacs. I was seeing some lag(although small, but noticeable). 2. I am very used to the key strokes "g-d, g-D" in vim to quickly move around calls/declarations of functions. For that emacs makes use of Ctags…

Regarding your first point, do you mean that you try running emacs inside a tmux inside a terminal? If that is the case, I would recommend not doing that. The emacs gui will give you more colours, images, thinner window borders, better keyboard shortcuts (eg a difference between C-m and RET), mouse controls (if you ever want them), as well as potentially less lag. The analog to the vim-in-tmux workflow is to instead…

[deleted]

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have already given up Visual Studio because none of my work is intended to run only on Windows and Xbox.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In some mysterious psychological way that I don't fully understand, per-pixel scrolling helps me to mentally keep my place significantly faster and easier than per-line scrolling.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#129
post #119
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You execute the org-babel-load-file function in your real init.el, while keeping almost all of your config in that org file.

Mostly this article, in addition to hearing about how good emacs is from various others, I want to try emacs. On that note, what you're saying sounds really useful - my .vimrc file is organized by folds to due to it's size. However, as a ~30min old emacs user, I have no idea how do do what you said. For example, is there a way to 'org-babel-load-file' when I open my init.el? When I try it by pressing M-x org-babel-lo…

This is the line in my .init file:

    (org-babel-load-file "/path/to/config/emacsconfig.org")

Here's a snippet of the org file:

    * Behavior
    ** Make Unique Buffer Names
    
    When two files of the same names are open, make the buffer names nicer.
    
    #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
      (require 'uniquify)
      (setq uniquify-buffer-name-style 'reverse)
      (setq uniquify-separator "/")
      (setq uniquify-after-kill-buffer-p t)
      (setq uniquify-ignore-buffers-re "^\\*")
    #+END_SRC
    
    
    ** Prevent Shell Prompt from going to the bottom of buffer
    #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
      ;; Prevent shell prompt from always going to the bottom of the window!
      (remove-hook 'comint-output-filter-functions
                   'comint-postoutput-scroll-to-bottom)
    #+END_SRC
If you think entering #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp is tedious, put the following in your config:

    *** Emacs Template for Source Code Blocks
    
    I just type \n?\n") 
         org-structure-template-alist))
    #+END_SRC
As the comment describes, now in any org file, at the beginning of a line, type "<se" and hit TAB, and it will expand it for you.

Re: Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)

#130
post #19

No thanks. I've had several bouts of trying to learn emacs throughout my life. It isn't necessary to list all the benefits, sure, there's a lot. Yes, I get it's "extensible" and you can write little elisp programs to do just what you want. Here's the obstacle: Motor skills. It just takes way to long to first memorize reams of commands and then to train your fingers to issue those commands effortlessly. In the meantim…

I had a similar experience to yours until I realized that the extensible part also means you don't need to use the builtin commands and shortcuts. I have been using emacs for 10 years (used vim for about 12 before that, using emacs with evil-mode now) and, to this day, I have to google 'how to quit emacs' when I am faced with a vanilla emacs :) I just feel it's "my" editor more than any other editor I've ever used. e…

How to quit vanilla emacs: select “Quit” under the File menu.

If you’re using macOS, you can also select “Quit Emacs” under the application “Emacs” menu, like every other macOS app.

If that wasn’t an option for you, very likely you’re not in vanilla emacs, or you’re in a particularly ancient emacs (which happens, but is as easily avoidable as using vim, VS, Sublime, etc.)

Post reply on HN