Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

karthinks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 228 posts

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#121

Post by arkaic »

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…

On your last point, in terms of absolute speed, pointing your mouse to the paragraph and dragging to highlight is usually faster than the fussiness of multiple key presses and/or chord combos needed from a full keyboard setup. That is, unless you've macro'd a custom single key shortcut for just that particular action

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#122

Post by epolanski »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #75
lawn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not that old (30's) but we were forced into learning how to touch-type throughout grade-school. Pretty much any white-collar work requires it. Getting through university basically requires it (even humanities courses; good luck writing long essays without it). It's shocking that anyone who went through school in a developed country can't touch-type.

Which developed countries have courses in school to learn touch typing?

I have never, ever heard about it.

Edit: by touch typing I mean having your index fingers on fj and from there using ALL keys without ever leaving the starting position, and yes that includes shift, alt and control and special characters.

I know very few people who are really touch typists (I am a proficient one), and I don't believe for a second people are taught touch typings, it's a skill that requires consistent training.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#123

Post by arkaic »

arkaic wrote: post #121
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…

On your last point, in terms of absolute speed, pointing your mouse to the paragraph and dragging to highlight is usually faster than the fussiness of multiple key presses and/or chord combos needed from a full keyboard setup. That is, unless you've macro'd a custom single key shortcut for just that particular action

+ and basically I would generalize this across to all the common actions people typically use that are often easier with a mouse. And can even be faster, even with the extra hand travel to the mouse.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#124

Post by epolanski »

justinhj wrote: post #15

Great to see lists like these. I’m a long time Emacs user and recently learned to use neovim. I made the same mistake many new Emacs users make in that I installed a lot of plugins at once and lost control of the editor. Only by installing packages incrementally after you have discovered a real need, can you keep mentally on top of what your editor is capable of.

I second this, I started with spacemacs, and then reinstalled clean emacs to get a good grasp of it.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#125

Post by gpderetta »

epolanski wrote: post #122
Mikeb85 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not that old (30's) but we were forced into learning how to touch-type throughout grade-school. Pretty much any white-collar work requires it. Getting through university basically requires it (even humanities courses; good luck writing long essays without it). It's shocking that anyone who went through school in a developed country can't touch-type.

Which developed countries have courses in school to learn touch typing? I have never, ever heard about it. Edit: by touch typing I mean having your index fingers on fj and from there using ALL keys without ever leaving the starting position, and yes that includes shift, alt and control and special characters. I know very few people who are really touch typists (I am a proficient one), and I don't believe for a second…

I learned touch typing as an exchange student in an US high school in the late '90s.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#126

Post by Mikeb85 »

epolanski wrote: post #122
Mikeb85 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not that old (30's) but we were forced into learning how to touch-type throughout grade-school. Pretty much any white-collar work requires it. Getting through university basically requires it (even humanities courses; good luck writing long essays without it). It's shocking that anyone who went through school in a developed country can't touch-type.

Which developed countries have courses in school to learn touch typing? I have never, ever heard about it. Edit: by touch typing I mean having your index fingers on fj and from there using ALL keys without ever leaving the starting position, and yes that includes shift, alt and control and special characters. I know very few people who are really touch typists (I am a proficient one), and I don't believe for a second…

Well I grew up in Canada. We had generic 'computer lab' classes (don't remember which subject it was associated with for most of those years) from kindergarten to grade 12. Touch typing was definitely drilled into our brains throughout.

And of course it's not a 'course'. 'Reading' and 'writing' weren't courses, but you learn them regardless. It's too basic to be a course. It's just stuff we learned.

Edit - the format for schooling here is for the first 6/7 years you have a single teacher all day long. That teacher teaches you every subject. And that included several trips to the computer lab per week. The next 6 years of schooling had 'courses' split up by teacher and time slots, but again, computer lab time in some of those courses. There was also a required course called 'CALM' (Career and life management I think) which included a very strong computer lab component. There were also CS-ish electives (equivalent to shop classes) where you learned CS, albeit at a very basic level. And this was during an era where most people didn't have computers at home... So computer labs were always open after school hours.

Edit 2 - Anyhow, a lil random. But being able to touch-type at a specific speed on a test program was required to pass CALM and it was required for high-school graduation. Some kids could pass and then forget it all, but in general the entire schooling system here involves computers enough that most people can touch-type.

Edit 3 - My partner had a similar educational upbringing, despite being born under communism. Hell, she can touch-type multiple keyboard layouts (for other languages) on a US keyboard despite not being technically inclined...

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#127

Post by the_only_law »

epolanski wrote: post #122
Mikeb85 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not that old (30's) but we were forced into learning how to touch-type throughout grade-school. Pretty much any white-collar work requires it. Getting through university basically requires it (even humanities courses; good luck writing long essays without it). It's shocking that anyone who went through school in a developed country can't touch-type.

Which developed countries have courses in school to learn touch typing? I have never, ever heard about it. Edit: by touch typing I mean having your index fingers on fj and from there using ALL keys without ever leaving the starting position, and yes that includes shift, alt and control and special characters. I know very few people who are really touch typists (I am a proficient one), and I don't believe for a second…

It was included as part of the curriculum in certain classes I had in middle school.

As with most things in my education, most people including myself just put in minimal effort, to get the grade (which touch typing didn’t really effect, as it was not part of any homework, quizzes, tests, etc.) and after a few years you never had to see it again.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#128

Post by tikhonj »

arkaic wrote: post #121
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…

On your last point, in terms of absolute speed, pointing your mouse to the paragraph and dragging to highlight is usually faster than the fussiness of multiple key presses and/or chord combos needed from a full keyboard setup. That is, unless you've macro'd a custom single key shortcut for just that particular action

Emacs has a standard shortcut for moving around in terms of paragraphs, so you don't need to customize anything. It's these semantic(ish) movement commands that really let keyboard navigation shine—moving around in terms of paragraphs, code blocks, matching delimiters is not only productive but also combines well with other commands and keyboard macros, which makes a lot of repetitive things easy to automate in Emacs but difficult anywhere else.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#129

Post by bombcar »

epolanski wrote: post #122
Mikeb85 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not that old (30's) but we were forced into learning how to touch-type throughout grade-school. Pretty much any white-collar work requires it. Getting through university basically requires it (even humanities courses; good luck writing long essays without it). It's shocking that anyone who went through school in a developed country can't touch-type.

Which developed countries have courses in school to learn touch typing? I have never, ever heard about it. Edit: by touch typing I mean having your index fingers on fj and from there using ALL keys without ever leaving the starting position, and yes that includes shift, alt and control and special characters. I know very few people who are really touch typists (I am a proficient one), and I don't believe for a second…

It was called “computer class” but most of it was touch typing (you had to type with a cardboard box over your hands).

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#130

Post by convolvatron »

xhevahir wrote: post #101
convolvatron wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately I can only really work for long stretches on a kinesis split keyboard - with the modifiers all the on the thumb. if they would finally make a bluetooth one maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

I just got an email about a 20% off sale they're having, and I was tempted. Still expensive, though, seeing as how there's so many new ergonomic designs available from smaller companies.

also - they aren't really that great I hate to say. after a couple decades of using them I still get the firmware confused by excessive modifier usage and have to jam on all the keys to get it back again (spend a while with a support engineer trying to make it reproducible. they did try, that was something)

the keys don't actually last all that long. they will sell you a new flex/key assembly for the left or the right side though - which is nice...oh yeah, and the function keys stop working pretty quick if you actually use them.

but its so much more comfortable and speedy

Post reply on HN