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Get things done with Emacs

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Re: Get things done with Emacs

#51

Post by d3nj4l »

m4lvin wrote: post #33
d3nj4l wrote: post #31

I really like emacs, and I want to use it. I really loved the way I could mix my thoughts and tasks in org and have an agenda view that shows me a todo list. However, I spend so much time without a computer that it doesn’t make sense for me to use org mode. I’ve tried a mobile app for org mode but it didn’t work as well for me as a task tracker that has a mobile app. How are others in this situation working with org?

Which app did you try? I use Orgzly http://www.orgzly.com/ for getting the agenda on my phone and for small edits. And whenever I want the full experience I run a real emacs on my phone in Termux. For syncing I use Syncthing.

I use iOS so I used Plain Org when it was launched. That was a while ago so I'm not entirely sure why I didn't like it. I can try giving it a spin again, but I stopped using org shortly after so I don't have a good sample to try it with.

Re: Get things done with Emacs

#53

Post by iLemming »

ducktective wrote: post #24
djha-skin wrote: post #23

Richard stallman himself got repetitive strain injury from emacs. So many people have. They tell you to remap the key to caps lock they tell you to use your palm instead of your finger they tell you to get a weird keyboard but at the end of the day it was just poorly designed. Vim is only slightly slower but so much easier on my hands. Yes, I could get emacs evil or spacemacs or whatever but bolting on modality to an…

> Vim is only slightly slower Both vim and neovim (be it in TUI or GUI form) are faster than Emacs. https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/#summary

Arguing that Vim or Neovim run faster than Emacs is like saying that your single-engine sport aircraft moves faster than my best aircraft carrier. An average Emacs user installs and loads a few hundred packages, ranging from Org-mode and version control extensions to PDF tools, and natural language assistants. I bet Vim wouldn't be "faster" if you feed it up with even half of that number of plugins.

Vim and Emacs have different use-cases, philosophies and mechanics. Each has its own pros and cons. There's no point in debating if one has better speed, aesthetics or popularity. I suggest we stop this nonsensical debate of Vim vs. Emacs and instead focus on their strength.

What people very often miss is that both Vim and Emacs are absolutely free. Free to use, free to copy, free to change. And that freedom is worth protecting and worth fighting for. Because no matter how MSFT, JetBrains, et al. paint it - VSCode and IntelliJ are not free products. And not just the money at stake here - the entire ideology and the idea of being a hacker with control over computational power and the tools is something worth protecting. I (just like many others) am so fed up with proprietary services and corporations taking your data hostage. Tired of being locked in and losing control over my data; tired of the status quo, of that infamous: "people don't know what they want..."

I chose Vim & Emacs not because they are technologically superior to VSCode or IntelliJ (even though they are), but because I've seen the other side. I've used Jetbrains' products for many years. I loved them, blindly. Do you know what grants you a huge amount of satisfaction? Not when you see that bug ticket you filed in 2008 gets finally fixed in IntelliJ, fourteen years later (by that time you're already forced to learn how to avoid the workflow leading to that bug).

Satisfaction is what you feel when you learn Emacs to the point that even though you know there's a bug, you've accumulated enough knowledge to sit down and figure out a workaround for it, writing fifty lines of Lisp. That's freedom. That's being a programmer. Choosing to pay for a proprietary product and ecosystem (because it has emojis and pizzzaz) is like jumping into a slow melting pot; willingly checking-in into a mental prison.

Re: Get things done with Emacs

#54

Post by ashton314 »

d3nj4l wrote: post #31

I really like emacs, and I want to use it. I really loved the way I could mix my thoughts and tasks in org and have an agenda view that shows me a todo list. However, I spend so much time without a computer that it doesn’t make sense for me to use org mode. I’ve tried a mobile app for org mode but it didn’t work as well for me as a task tracker that has a mobile app. How are others in this situation working with org?

Beorg (https://beorg.app/) 100% for me. (iOS only) Amazing agenda—even shows you events from your Reminders and iCloud calendars as well. (Configurable)

Re: Get things done with Emacs

#55

Post by iLemming »

djha-skin wrote: post #23

Richard stallman himself got repetitive strain injury from emacs. So many people have. They tell you to remap the key to caps lock they tell you to use your palm instead of your finger they tell you to get a weird keyboard but at the end of the day it was just poorly designed. Vim is only slightly slower but so much easier on my hands. Yes, I could get emacs evil or spacemacs or whatever but bolting on modality to an…

> but bolting on modality to an editor that was never meant for it

Frankly, I don't even know what you're talking about. Modality is all over Emacs. It was there even before Evil. Some extensions even use modality completely differently - not like in Vim.

As an avid, hard-die Vimmer, I tend to agree when people say "there's no such thing as Vim-emulation", it's either Vim/Neovim or something half-baked.

But Emacs is an utterly different beast here. Emacs can and does vim better than Vim and Neovim. Anyone who argues differently perhaps has never gotten deep enough in either of those muds.

Re: Get things done with Emacs

#56

Post by Narishma »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #17

Side comment about the presentation on the blog. Looks like old type-written page, with color. Very clean style, very readable. I like it. The CSS style sheet has the author's name on it, so I guess it is their work. Good job!

It was hard to read for me due to low contrast.

Re: Get things done with Emacs

#57

Post by aleks224 »

djha-skin wrote: post #23

Richard stallman himself got repetitive strain injury from emacs. So many people have. They tell you to remap the key to caps lock they tell you to use your palm instead of your finger they tell you to get a weird keyboard but at the end of the day it was just poorly designed. Vim is only slightly slower but so much easier on my hands. Yes, I could get emacs evil or spacemacs or whatever but bolting on modality to an…

> Richard stallman himself got repetitive strain injury from emacs

Is this really true? Some notes at https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html indicate it was a different type of strain injury, unrelated to ctrl/meta key:

> In the mid 90s I had bad hand pain, so bad that most of the day I could only type with one finger. The FSF hired typists for me part of the day, and part of the day I tolerated the pain. After a few years I found out that this was due to the hard keys of my keyboard. I switched to a keyboard with lighter key pressure and the problem mostly went away.

> My problem was not carpal tunnel syndrome: I avoid that by keeping my wrists pretty straight as I type. There are several kinds of hand injuries that can be caused by repetitive stress; don't assume you have the one you heard of.

Re: Get things done with Emacs

#58

Post by Scarbutt »

ashton314 wrote: post #54
d3nj4l wrote: post #31

I really like emacs, and I want to use it. I really loved the way I could mix my thoughts and tasks in org and have an agenda view that shows me a todo list. However, I spend so much time without a computer that it doesn’t make sense for me to use org mode. I’ve tried a mobile app for org mode but it didn’t work as well for me as a task tracker that has a mobile app. How are others in this situation working with org?

Beorg ( https://beorg.app/ ) 100% for me. (iOS only) Amazing agenda—even shows you events from your Reminders and iCloud calendars as well. (Configurable)

Another iOS one is: https://plainorg.com/

Re: Get things done with Emacs

#59

Post by 3836293648 »

zasdffaa wrote: post #49
b3morales wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you have a flourishing Anti-library: https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antili... > Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there.

> Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. izzit me or is that total garbage? The only information of value is that which you can use, if it's in a book you've never read it's effectively nonexistent. I get text books to stuff them into my cranium, not have them sit around as handy doorstops. Might as well leave them in the bookshop until you need them. They're just as unread and you have cash in your pocke…

The information is more useful once read, but once you know it you don't need the book any more

Re: Get things done with Emacs

#60

Post by sigzero »

iLemming wrote: post #55
djha-skin wrote: post #23

Richard stallman himself got repetitive strain injury from emacs. So many people have. They tell you to remap the key to caps lock they tell you to use your palm instead of your finger they tell you to get a weird keyboard but at the end of the day it was just poorly designed. Vim is only slightly slower but so much easier on my hands. Yes, I could get emacs evil or spacemacs or whatever but bolting on modality to an…

> but bolting on modality to an editor that was never meant for it Frankly, I don't even know what you're talking about. Modality is all over Emacs. It was there even before Evil. Some extensions even use modality completely differently - not like in Vim. As an avid, hard-die Vimmer, I tend to agree when people say "there's no such thing as Vim-emulation", it's either Vim/Neovim or something half-baked. But Emacs is…

Emacs is not a "better vim than vim". That's just absurd.
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