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Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

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Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#21

Post by lgessler »

na85 wrote: post #13
lgessler wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone wrote an open source clone of Emacs that adopted some sane defaults, modern UI conventions, and dropped all the political BS it could be so much better. Worthy of mention, of course, is Spacemacs[1], which made Emacs approachable to me, someone who hadn't used much beyond Notepad++ and Eclipse before then. [1]: https://www.spacemacs.org/

To me, the existence of spacemacs and doom and others are an indictment of Emacs' poor out of the box experience.

I don't disagree. I greatly appreciate Emacs now that I know (5% or less of) it, but I don't think I could have gotten here if Spacemacs hadn't provided sane defaults for packages and keybindings.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#22

Post by bjr11 »

_ofdw wrote: post #7
Rerarom wrote: post #2

I don't use emacs. I use text files to organise myself but I use notepad++ to edit them. I have tried to learn emacs a couple of times but I am really unmotivated - don't see any case where it would help me. I am afraid I'm missing something.

I say this as an avid emacs user: Emacs has a real problem in that it's very powerful but the, let's say, spiritual leader of the project (Stallman) is so wildly divorced from the real world because of his personal choices that he really has no idea what makes a compelling UX vs what makes a complete mess of arcane incantations. On top of that, the documentation is only suitable as a reference for someone who already…

You are asking others to make something that you want that they don't want and not giving them anything in exchange (money, time, code). Then saying "ALAS" I wont make these changes myself only complain on the internet about them. These vague wondrous changes will make Emacs a "household name".

1) Who cares about being a household name. Vain goals serve no one 2) You didn't specify one actionable change.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#23

Post by taeric »

_ofdw wrote: post #7
Rerarom wrote: post #2

I don't use emacs. I use text files to organise myself but I use notepad++ to edit them. I have tried to learn emacs a couple of times but I am really unmotivated - don't see any case where it would help me. I am afraid I'm missing something.

I say this as an avid emacs user: Emacs has a real problem in that it's very powerful but the, let's say, spiritual leader of the project (Stallman) is so wildly divorced from the real world because of his personal choices that he really has no idea what makes a compelling UX vs what makes a complete mess of arcane incantations. On top of that, the documentation is only suitable as a reference for someone who already…

If all you think it needs are sensible defaults, try just bending said defaults.

I'm somewhat curious what choices of Stallman's you think are holding it back. Feels more alive to me than it has ever felt. And that branch that is using gcc to compile elisp is a delight.

I concede I expect there are choices made that could be bad; but I suspect most of the choices people think matter, don't. Which is why i highlight the compiling elisp branch. A complete rewrite would not have had as much of an impact. And, frankly, I feel elisp is easily as good of a language as any proposed choice. Better than most.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#24

Post by saagarjha »

lgessler wrote: post #20
nsl73 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a software developer, that commonly talks about software development with a diverse group of software developers. I’ve never had a conversation with a software developer where they didn’t know what vim or emacs are.

I just suspect that people here on HN are coming from the upper portions of the software developer spectrum in terms of experience, aptitude, enthusiasm, and training--there are plenty of other people in the world who do software development but lack some of those things. For my own part, I graduated with a bachelors in computer science having only heard Emacs mentioned once in a course (at the beginning of the secon…

Anyone that knows what vi is almost certainly knows what emacs is.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#25

Post by taeric »

bananamerica wrote: post #4
Rerarom wrote: post #2

I don't use emacs. I use text files to organise myself but I use notepad++ to edit them. I have tried to learn emacs a couple of times but I am really unmotivated - don't see any case where it would help me. I am afraid I'm missing something.

Emacs is great, but use whatever you want. Of course you’ll be missing on something but that’s true for a lot of things.

Worth underscoring that you are always missing something. You don't dodge that bullet by using emacs, just pick what you want to miss.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#27

Post by totetsu »

Rerarom wrote: post #2

I don't use emacs. I use text files to organise myself but I use notepad++ to edit them. I have tried to learn emacs a couple of times but I am really unmotivated - don't see any case where it would help me. I am afraid I'm missing something.

I only really use emacs for Org mode and Org mode extensions. It wasn't too hard to learn just enough emacs for that. The motivation comes from how fast and convenient org mode is as a journal and a static site generator, compared to other tools, and having all my documents in plain text for future proofing.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#28

Post by totetsu »

saagarjha wrote: post #24
lgessler wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just suspect that people here on HN are coming from the upper portions of the software developer spectrum in terms of experience, aptitude, enthusiasm, and training--there are plenty of other people in the world who do software development but lack some of those things. For my own part, I graduated with a bachelors in computer science having only heard Emacs mentioned once in a course (at the beginning of the secon…

Anyone that knows what vi is almost certainly knows what emacs is.

I'd say there is a fair few beginner Linux users who have followed a tutorial on OMGUbuntu or stackexchange who know of VI but will never hear of emacs.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#29

Post by na85 »

bjr11 wrote: post #22
_ofdw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say this as an avid emacs user: Emacs has a real problem in that it's very powerful but the, let's say, spiritual leader of the project (Stallman) is so wildly divorced from the real world because of his personal choices that he really has no idea what makes a compelling UX vs what makes a complete mess of arcane incantations. On top of that, the documentation is only suitable as a reference for someone who already…

You are asking others to make something that you want that they don't want and not giving them anything in exchange (money, time, code). Then saying "ALAS" I wont make these changes myself only complain on the internet about them. These vague wondrous changes will make Emacs a "household name". 1) Who cares about being a household name. Vain goals serve no one 2) You didn't specify one actionable change.

>You are asking others to make something that you want that they don't want and not giving them anything in exchange (money, time, code).

Please quote where I asked anyone to do anything. I merely explained why emacs is not popular and why in my opinion it will never be.

This is sad to me because I quite like emacs, and if I had the capacity to fork it I would.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#30

Post by jonfw »

na85 wrote: post #13
lgessler wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone wrote an open source clone of Emacs that adopted some sane defaults, modern UI conventions, and dropped all the political BS it could be so much better. Worthy of mention, of course, is Spacemacs[1], which made Emacs approachable to me, someone who hadn't used much beyond Notepad++ and Eclipse before then. [1]: https://www.spacemacs.org/

To me, the existence of spacemacs and doom and others are an indictment of Emacs' poor out of the box experience.

That's the makings of great open source software- you have something very lightweight and unopiniated at the core, and distributions can pack all of the features and opinion they want on top of that to target more specific use cases. This allows you to keep the opinion downstream of the core project, so changes by people with different opinions can still find their way upstream.

Linux and Kubernetes are structured the same way- nobody is using that out of box on it's own

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