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Mastering Emacs

masteringemacs.org

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Re: Mastering Emacs

#71
post #19
post #15

It's crazy that here in 2023, Emacs is still the absolute beast when it comes to developer productivity. I had a colleague review one of my workflows the other week and after a minute or so he said "Whoa, I would have been in 5 different tools by now". If you're not into Emacs, I suggest you give it a whirl. For most development, nothing else will get you close to the joy and productivity that a well configured Emacs…

can you give an example of such workflow?

In addition things other people have mentioned, like magit, I would add org-capture as a good example. Let's say I'm busy at work in a buffer and a thought comes to mind: "I could refactor that other module using this code". Instead of doing it immediately and breaking my flow, I press C-c c, select "todo", type "refactor that other module", perhaps add a tag, a category etc. then C-c C-c and it's filed away.

What's really important about all of this is, it's all Emacs. Every magit buffer, every org-capture buffer, it's all just Emacs buffers and they're all configured the way you like. If you need to do a regexp find and replace while you're capturing a note, you can. If you make a typo in a note, in a commit message, in an email or anything else, it's spell checked and you can correct it with the same key you always do. This integration is the real magic.

Re: Mastering Emacs

#72
post #31
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The availability of vim in some systems is not reliable. Often only either vi or nano is available. Containers may not have even that (not that it's a good practice to edit files inside containers. It's just for experiments). Emacs meanwhile, has tramp. It lets you edit files remotely and transparently - even inside Kubernetes pods. And you still get to use all your Emacs customization.

Someone who uses vim daily will surely not struggle with vi.

You say that, I remember when my team lead was managing a Solaris box and he asked me to take a look as Vim was not working correctly. So I moseyed over and turns out it was Vi instead of Vim. He got confused by c$ not deleting everything to the end of the line.

Re: Mastering Emacs

#73
post #15

It's crazy that here in 2023, Emacs is still the absolute beast when it comes to developer productivity. I had a colleague review one of my workflows the other week and after a minute or so he said "Whoa, I would have been in 5 different tools by now". If you're not into Emacs, I suggest you give it a whirl. For most development, nothing else will get you close to the joy and productivity that a well configured Emacs…

> "Whoa, I would have been in 5 different tools by now".

And those 5 tools would likely beat Emacs in their individual area.

At the end it's all a tradeoff between low fringe with somewhat good enough performance, or high fringe for stellar performance. Sometimes you need it, sometimes not.

Re: Mastering Emacs

#74
post #15

It's crazy that here in 2023, Emacs is still the absolute beast when it comes to developer productivity. I had a colleague review one of my workflows the other week and after a minute or so he said "Whoa, I would have been in 5 different tools by now". If you're not into Emacs, I suggest you give it a whirl. For most development, nothing else will get you close to the joy and productivity that a well configured Emacs…

> "Whoa, I would have been in 5 different tools by now". And those 5 tools would likely beat Emacs in their individual area. At the end it's all a tradeoff between low fringe with somewhat good enough performance, or high fringe for stellar performance. Sometimes you need it, sometimes not.

Examples please?

Re: Mastering Emacs

#75
any updates regarding neoemacs?

for me the appeal of emacs is that it is so very cyberpunk and that it makes me feel like a hacker. seriously. also reducing the tool set appeals to my natural inclination towards minimalism.

Re: Mastering Emacs

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep trying VS Code, but I hate how when I split the screen three wide ("splits") it wants to open "editors" in each of the columns, even if it's the same file. I want a "buffer" like Emacs has that can be called up into any of the "splits" without reopening the file. I disable the tabs display, but when I visit a file in each of the three columns (i.e. what in Emacs would be calling a buffer into a window) I end u…

While Emacs is opinionated in its own way, it is extremely configurable, programmable, modifiable, customizable to ones needs. I guess it will take a long long time, until vscode is as modifiable as Emacs, if ever. And maybe that is not vscode's goal anyway.

It isn't.

VS Code's goal is to get the low-effort 30% of devs who want something that will just work right out of the box, while providing enough functionality/customization to attract a significant fraction of the remaining 70%. And given that, it's pretty good.

But I'm skeptical it will ever be as good for someone who does want to make the investment in something like Emacs.

Re: Mastering Emacs

#77
post #32

I saw people (in their 30s) using emacs for almost everything. Coding, reading mails, organizing their todos and so on. It was impressive to see their workflow. The only thing which hold me back to really learn it, were the stories about repetitive strain injuries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36718793

> The only thing which hold me back to really learn it, were the stories about repetitive strain injuries

Without wanting to be a troll, that's exactly what happened to me within 3 days after switching to emacs.. So I reluctantly terminated my emacs experiment early and switched back to vim..

Re: Mastering Emacs

#78
post #47

I don't see why people are still using 1970s-era IDEs in 2023. Sure, it's a joke that emacs and vim users are at loggerheads, but name me one user of either who isn't a graybeard at this point. And specifically a graybeard who refuses to use more modern tools.

I'm a 22yo front end dev with (neo)vim as my primary editor. I'm not missing anything from Vscode.

So I'm a long-time Emacs user who tried Vim for a year a while back. What do you like about Neovim?

Re: Mastering Emacs

#79
I will take the time to master Emacs when Emacs comes to meet me in the middle, and adopts what has been the industry-standard UI for a third of a century: CUA.

I would love someone to do an Emacs distro which integrated ErgoEmacs into it from the beginning: https://ergoemacs.github.io/

No, CUA-mode is not enough.

Re: Mastering Emacs

#80
post #15

It's crazy that here in 2023, Emacs is still the absolute beast when it comes to developer productivity. I had a colleague review one of my workflows the other week and after a minute or so he said "Whoa, I would have been in 5 different tools by now". If you're not into Emacs, I suggest you give it a whirl. For most development, nothing else will get you close to the joy and productivity that a well configured Emacs…

a huge part of it I will say is antithesis to current state of programming. Emacs is literally a live elisp interpreter with everything in global scope. You literally replace parts of the application in runtime.
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