Joining the Church of Emacs • Hacker News Board

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#51

Post by Narishma » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 12:59 PM UTC

eric4smith wrote: post #31

I never got into the eMacs cult. Been always a vim/vi guy. To me, using eMacs is like people in the cult of lisp: “Why isn’t lisp running the world?” (While the code in Java 8 every day) I get it, a few friends of mine actually use eMacs and we remain friends. But bruh, I’m a CLI guy and I like Vim. It’s literally everywhere. Even on my all powerful Mac M1 laptop I still use Vim. No not Mac vim, not Visual Code, not…

Why are you comparing a text editor with a computer?

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#52

Post by agumonkey » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 1:01 PM UTC

frodetb wrote: post #23

With all the devotion on display from so many very clever people, it's hard not to be at least a little curious about Emacs. But I still have something holding me back. On the one hand, the entire environment that I've heard described might be very powerful. But at the same time, it is a whole new system to learn and get into, very specific to itself, on top of the operating system I'm already using. People say you w…

I think the idea that learning emacs will suck all your brain power is a bit false. You can really just use it on the side from time to time and get a feel about it without investing much. It is a large (40+ years show) system, that even old users don't know fully ..

And in a way that's how I use vi, I'm emacs mostly but I play with vi regularly, I stay at the no-plugin level enjoy keyboard golfing :)

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#53

Post by rany_ » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 1:14 PM UTC

how_gauche wrote: post #42

rany_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have made this comment if I knew that. Though I suppose this is still an annoyance for git web interfaces. Thanks for the info!

On GitHub you can add ?w=1 to diff URLs to get the same thing (there's a button for it too?)

I can't find the button. I guess it's a hidden feature

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#54

Post by pvaldes » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 1:54 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #35

pvaldes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is all about muscular memory, so you need to repeat and repeat, and take your time to develop it. Is normal not to grasp it after a few hours using the program. Nobody expects taking one karate class and exit being a master of katas. First emacs kata should include this very simple concepts 1.Opening a file (the easy way) -> extra simple. Type "emacs /path/to/my-file" in a terminal. If a file with this name does not…

Yes, except the keystroke to "close a file" is C-x k (for kill buffer). Like you said, muscle memory. It's not surprising that you didn't remember the exact name of the keystroke because normally, you just do it.

Ctl-x k when you have more than one file opened. Ctl-x C is faster and more easy in this particular case.

Hum, I see. I stand corrected. It seems that all this time I was typing Ctl-x Ctl-C instead. I never use copy in emacs

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#55

Post by seanw444 » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

JackMorgan wrote: post #48

donatj wrote: post #28

I’ve always been a vi/vim guy, it’s not a religious thing, it’s just a decently powerful editor available on most servers I managed to kind of get my head around enough to be productive. I find the weird holy war between the two strange and kind of a turn off.

I tend to think Vim is the best editor, and Emacs is the best OS. So I use Vim inside Emacs with Evil mode.

I think most people do. Spacemacs and Doom Emacs agree.

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#56

Post by dan-g » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

michaelcampbell wrote: post #43

eric4smith wrote: post #31

I never got into the eMacs cult. Been always a vim/vi guy. To me, using eMacs is like people in the cult of lisp: “Why isn’t lisp running the world?” (While the code in Java 8 every day) I get it, a few friends of mine actually use eMacs and we remain friends. But bruh, I’m a CLI guy and I like Vim. It’s literally everywhere. Even on my all powerful Mac M1 laptop I still use Vim. No not Mac vim, not Visual Code, not…

> eMacs "emacs"

iOS auto-corrects Emacs to eMacs, probably because of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMac

(Fond memories of that computer!)

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#57

Post by comfypotato » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

olivierestsage wrote: post #27

Emacs is great all-around, but I would use it if it literally only had org-mode as a feature. That thing has saved my bacon.

I have accomplished things in my life that literally would not have happened without it. Before org mode I had never been able to find a task management workflow that kept me particularly productive. Just the basic outline features of org mode (with the list functionality to spice things up) has allowed me to comfortably know I'm on top of the important tasks in my life. I'm learning more about TODOs, priorities, the agenda, etc., and it keeps getting better and better.

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#58

Post by comfypotato » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

frodetb wrote: post #23

With all the devotion on display from so many very clever people, it's hard not to be at least a little curious about Emacs. But I still have something holding me back. On the one hand, the entire environment that I've heard described might be very powerful. But at the same time, it is a whole new system to learn and get into, very specific to itself, on top of the operating system I'm already using. People say you w…

I learned the basics for org mode. I invested a bit of time to learn one small corner of the default emacs ecosystem, and every second was worth it. Since then, I've continued to explore its use as a text editor (and it keeps getting better and better). There's a bit of a learning curve for just the basics, and it's understandable that you don't want to deal with that. Just the basics can go a long way with org mode, though.

With org mode, everything is plain text. This should go a long way to easing your worries about getting stuck in a groove. Lots of folks take notes in markdown. It's the same kind of thing.

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#59

Post by nequo » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

kramerger wrote: post #32

eric4smith wrote: post #31

I never got into the eMacs cult. Been always a vim/vi guy. To me, using eMacs is like people in the cult of lisp: “Why isn’t lisp running the world?” (While the code in Java 8 every day) I get it, a few friends of mine actually use eMacs and we remain friends. But bruh, I’m a CLI guy and I like Vim. It’s literally everywhere. Even on my all powerful Mac M1 laptop I still use Vim. No not Mac vim, not Visual Code, not…

This is like a Scientologist criticizing Jehovahs Witness :) Okay, since this is HN and not Reddit let me make this post a bit more useful: has anyone tried "mg"? It is an openbsd (?) project that is similar to Emacs on a first glance but even lighter than barebone vim. It is what I use for remote editing instead of vi and nano. https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-current/man1/mg.1

Is it a very different experience from `emacs -nw -Q`?

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#60

Post by themadturk » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 6:25 PM UTC

What scares me is trying to set up Emacs on Windows. I use Mac at home, iDevices everywhere, and Windows at work. I've heard too many stories about poor performance on Windows, as well as perceived difficulties (at least on my part) getting emacs and emacserver and all that set up on Windows. I want to like it; I just don't have the time or energy.