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Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

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Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#141

Post by jalopy »

randomcarbloke wrote: post #132

You cannot grok it without first trying to live inside it. It can be treated as an editor, and as your workflow slowly adjusts you will find yourself writing a mental wishlist. Realising that wishlist is where Emacs shines among other editors/IDEs/applications. It is a headspace/workspace and imo the programming equivalent of BASB. I for example use it because I want nothing to pull me from my workflow, so I have she…

>shells, repls, notebooks, filesystem browser, internet browser, rss, and a slew of other utilities tiled, something akin to a Bloomberg terminal, even spotify if I need music

Could you describe each of the specific packages you use to accomplish all this? I'd love to add more tools.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#142

Post by nvarsj »

It's a great time to get into Emacs. The community is growing because of great projects like Spacemacs and Doom Emacs which let you get a fully working environment up very quickly, with good defaults.

I personally would recommend doom-emacs (https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs) which has an easy to understand codebase.

Now as you use it, you'll inevitably run into bumps or things you want to change. This is where you start to learn. In doom you can just press `SPC h a` to search up anything you could want (`SPC h` will show you all possible help options). Discoverability in Emacs is amazing, and puts all other editors to shame.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#143

Post by augustk »

smg wrote: post #41

The biggest difference between Emacs and any other editor is that instead of thinking about Emacs as an editor you need to think of Emacs as a programable workflow enabler. Using Emacs without learning Elisp is like carrying a bike on your shoulders instead of riding it. Once you get to the place where you can confidently write Elisp to solve your problems, you will miss Emacs deeply when you have to use any other ap…

This is also the biggest problem I have with Emacs. When I used it I spent too much time configuring things, something which distracted me from solving real problems. Now I use a much simpler editor which is not so configurable so I can focus on other things.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#144

Post by Myrmornis »

My answer is to embrace the challenge of learning Emacs Lisp and using it. Personally I think Emacs makes most sense for those who think learning and using some elisp sounds fun/interesting. What I’m not sure about is what to recommend for learning it. I remember finding it non-obvious how to learn it.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#145

Post by kbp »

User23 wrote: post #87
downerending wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also seconding. Vanilla emacs is already extremely powerful, and if you're doing real work, you'll end up having to use hosts that don't have all of your wonderful enhancements installed. It's good to know vanilla emacs. Beyond that, add language modes for anything you need that's not already included. If you use 'git', 'magit' is very nice. Beyond that, helm is interesting, though very large and kind of mind-blowing…

> Also seconding. Vanilla emacs is already extremely powerful, and if you're doing real work, you'll end up having to use hosts that don't have all of your wonderful enhancements installed. It's good to know vanilla emacs. I wonder if I'm weird, but I use a highly customized Emacs on my dev machine, but if I have to ssh into a host and edit something I just use vi there. The correct answer to vi or emacs has always b…

You can also ssh in via Emacs with Tramp, and use your highly customised Emacs to edit remotely.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#146

Post by b3n »

jwr wrote: post #119
kabdib wrote: post #17

Emacs user here, it's been my go-to editor for about 40 years. I have a few customizations, not many. My .emacs file is 63 lines long, doesn't include any other files, and mostly just tweaks some key bindings and turns off features that I don't like. The only modes I use are built-in ones (e.g., C-mode, auto-wrapping text mode, etc.). I can't write elisp without a reference manual, and I think that's okay. I suggest:…

This advice is fine for the first year or so, but afterwards I would start trying out various packages and customizations. There are packages that can make your experience much better (projectile, swiper, ace-window, ace-jump, move-border, eyebrowse, winner, color-identifier-mode, off the top of my init.el). And, of course, if you do any programming at all, you should install magit immediately. It is the best git exp…

In case you weren't aware, winner-mode is now part of Emacs, and as far as I can tell the Emacs 27 tab-bar-mode makes eyebrowse redundant. For me project.el that ships with Emacs is enough for my project needs.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#147

Post by m463 »

asiachick wrote: post #112

I'll probably be the nay sayer around here but I don't find emacs all that special. I've used for maybe 18 months at various points in my life, entire projects in emacs. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing. I've written extensions in elisp. Used keyboard macros. Split windows, etc. etc. etc. What am I missing? Those features exist in every editor I've used since about 1988. They're all scriptable and customizable, at…

M-x pong

emacs works on every platform I've ever used, and tramp lets you access everything/anytihing else. I have one set of startup files that has grown over the years.

Anything that can't work, doesn't work, works poorly can be tweaked adjusted rewritten or replaced.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#148

Post by m463 »

neonscribe wrote: post #21

https://emacsformacosx.com/ is a very good port to MacOS. One advantage of Emacs on MacOS is that the Command key is not part of the traditional Emacs key bindings. This port uses Option for Meta and supports most of the usual MacOS Command key shortcuts, so you can use the familiar MacOS keys as well as the official Emacs key bindings.

I agree with everything you've said. I used to use Xquarts and xemacs but then that became available for a quick download.

I will mention cmd-c / cmd-w is still an anomaly. I sometimes capitalize stuff or close windows.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#149

Post by shanavasm »

smitty1e wrote: post #78
kalium_xyz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have doom which is just evil and not space centric AFAIK

Doom has good reviews AFAICT

I switched to doom from spacemacs and quite happy with it. Lot more easier to tweak that spacemacs.

Re: Ask HN: Resources to grok Emacs and use it well?

#150

Post by namelosw »

smg wrote: post #41

The biggest difference between Emacs and any other editor is that instead of thinking about Emacs as an editor you need to think of Emacs as a programable workflow enabler. Using Emacs without learning Elisp is like carrying a bike on your shoulders instead of riding it. Once you get to the place where you can confidently write Elisp to solve your problems, you will miss Emacs deeply when you have to use any other ap…

I'm fine to tweak some Elisp code but not fully enjoy it as Scheme or Common Lisp. It's really an awkward language despite the fact it's a Lisp, and I really like Lisp.

Oh, how I wish it would be completely re-written with other dialects... Although there are many attempts, they are far from polished compared to Emacs itself.

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