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Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

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Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#41

Post by kovek »

cyberbanjo wrote: post #36
hvgk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely I feel I wasted my time learning emacs and moved to vim eventually. I also only religiously use a subset of vim functionality which is fulfilled by most of the vi equivalent editors. This turned into a massive advantage for me as I spent most of my career dotting around random Unix and Linux machines doing admin work. Vi derivative is always there and the muscle memory was ready to go. One of the key thing…

FWIW if I can ssh I can use emacs tramp to edit remotely, if there's latency lag, it seems similar to using local editor.

I really like to use code-server instead

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#42

Post by inetsee »

I love emacs because of org-mode. I have sometimes wondered whether emacs can do something I have often wanted. I write poetry. If you write with pencil on paper the edit marks (line through, move text, insert) let you see the evolution of a work. It's hard to get the same effect with a text editor. After reading this web post I went searching for "emacs edit history" and I discovered "undo-tree". This is a perfect functionality for my use case, and another reason for me to love emacs.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#43

Post by cmroanirgo »

dotancohen wrote: post #18
baby wrote: post #2

I’m wondering if a vscode in the terminal could ever exist.

That's like wondering if elephants could ever roam the depths of the oceans. If they did, they would no longer be elephants. What specific features of vscode would you like to see in a terminal editor?

About 15yrs ago I had a nice vim vs vstudio competition with a friend. It started with "look what vim can do"... block select, block indent, bookmarks, etc Vstudio (& now /vscode) can do too. Vim was always slower (mainly bc the guy wasn't seasoned by 10yrs of it) to figure it out. The interesting thing is that vstudio has the same abilities, but for the really arcane stuff (which vim users take as why it's better), can be done too, but just more keystrokes. Lots of the everyday stuff is often the same or fewer keystrokes than vim. And you can always write a macro for edge cases.

So to me, the "win" of vstudio is the tiny command pallete that is used & the shortcuts are displayed in menus. (& everyone mentions the difficult hill to climb to learn emacs or vim by comparison).

The thing which will never work in terminal is ctrl-c and ctrl-v. (Macos covers this nicely by using cmd-... tho). It's a shame.

I actually use le editor in terminal, but am rather cramped using it. I consider learning vim or emacs once every few years... and go... nah, no thanks.

Eg. There are a few comments above about region undo. In vstudio it sounds ugly, but it's trivially easy. Press and hold undo (ctrl-z) and let key repeat until the block appears as you want. Select it, copy. Press and hold redo. Select area. Paste.

Tastes are different.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#44

Post by Mikeb85 »

Honestly, I never really had that much love for Emacs until relatively recently. I've always dabbled due to it generally having good support for most languages (including esoteric ones) but recently I got into it a lot more due to the fact that many of the new-ish OSS editors but Emacs has always been there and likely will always be there.

A few years back I got into Atom quite a bit since it checked all the boxes: extensible, open source, and it was very nice. Then VSCode killed it. And it seems more and more that VSCode is taking over, all the while inserting more proprietary code to the point where half the 'big' plugins don't work on Codium, only the proprietary MS distribution.

So I got back into Emacs but really worked on my environment. Stopped dabbling and started just forcing myself to use it. And it's honestly amazing. It checks off every box available in VSCode and more. And it's nice knowing that it'll always be there. I'm not against proprietary software per-se, but I definitely don't have a lot of trust in Microsoft.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#45

Post by ripe »

For people who ask, "why use text-only editors like vim or Emacs, when I can use a full GUI IDE?":

One of the reasons I haven't seen mentioned much is: I'm a touch typist, and I hate having to switch between mouse and keyboard! I have to take my attention off the screen. Slows me down. Disturbs my concentration.

With Emacs, I can work for hours without ever having to hunt for the mouse, or without even having a mouse plugged in. That's particularly nice for using my Ubuntu laptop on a lap desk, leaning back in my armchair. The best mouse is no mouse at all.

Yes, I know many IDEs have shortcut keys for some commands, but the basic assumption with GUI applications is that you have a mouse. Even if you learn the shortcuts, somehow you always end up having to use the mouse for some common task, e.g., to select a paragraph. That's why I never got to like a GUI IDE, despite having had to use Eclipse for years.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#46

Post by stinos »

Perhaps not the right thread, but: is there anything like 'follow mode' in other editors like Sublime Text/VSCode/Visual Studio editor? I'm now emulating that with e.g. 'new view into file' followed by manually scrolling. Having that autoamtic can be really handy.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#47

Post by jb1991 »

Amazing that I have not used emacs in years but I wanted to see this artist mode with my own eyes, so I opened it and was surprised I could still remember how to get all around with the m-x commands... my muscle memory even remembered the combo to exit emacs correctly, and even as I type this, I couldn't tell you what that key combo is! It's all in my finger muscles' memory. Incredible.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#48

Post by jb1991 »

dotancohen wrote: post #16
animal_spirits wrote: post #11

Sometimes I wish I initially spent my time learning emacs. Vim has been great to me. I don't value programming workflows as much as I used to so I'm not going through that steep learning curve again

> Sometimes I wish I initially spent my time learning emacs. Vim has been great to me. Try SpaceMacs, or even just Evil. I've found that Emacs (the text editor environment) and VIM (the language for interfacing with a text editor environment) skillsets are actually complimentary and together form a terrific text editor.

And if you like modal editing but want to stick to a more emacs-centric interaction, there is God mode which I eventually found to be better than evil if you are working solely within emacs.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#49

Post by lawn »

ripe wrote: post #45

For people who ask, "why use text-only editors like vim or Emacs, when I can use a full GUI IDE?": One of the reasons I haven't seen mentioned much is: I'm a touch typist, and I hate having to switch between mouse and keyboard! I have to take my attention off the screen. Slows me down. Disturbs my concentration. With Emacs, I can work for hours without ever having to hunt for the mouse, or without even having a mouse…

I find it amazing how common it is for programmers to not be touch typists (I mean typing without looking at the keys). Like, isn't that something you pick up by the sheer amount of keyboard time?

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#50

Post by [deleted] »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #43
dotancohen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like wondering if elephants could ever roam the depths of the oceans. If they did, they would no longer be elephants. What specific features of vscode would you like to see in a terminal editor?

About 15yrs ago I had a nice vim vs vstudio competition with a friend. It started with "look what vim can do"... block select, block indent, bookmarks, etc Vstudio (& now /vscode) can do too. Vim was always slower (mainly bc the guy wasn't seasoned by 10yrs of it) to figure it out. The interesting thing is that vstudio has the same abilities, but for the really arcane stuff (which vim users take as why it's better),…

[deleted]
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