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Mastering Emacs

masteringemacs.org

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Re: Mastering Emacs

#91

Post by Wildgoose »

samuell wrote: post #20

Anybody who read it? Is it any good? (I'm a Vim user, but have sometimes half-pondered the thought of getting into Emacs, (using evil-mode of course), for the org-mode & co)

I've read it and I recommend it.

I recommend you simply make an alphabetic list of various Emacs commands.

You will see the correspondence between many of the commands depending on the modifier (Ctrl, Alt, Ctrl-Alt, etc.) that is used.

Listing Control then Alt (Meta) we have: A - Beginning of Line, Beginning of Sentence; B - Back one Character, Back one Word; D - Delete Character, Delete Word; E - End of Line, End of Sentence; F - Forward one Character, Forward one Word.

and so on.

Most of the letters chosen are mnemonic so they are easy to remember.

Once you have memorised the standard Control and Alt letter combinations, plus a few more such as \, (space), and / and you will find the commands just "fit". They are "in your fingers".

They are also usable on the command-line, bash defaults to using Emacs editing commands as well.

Re: Mastering Emacs

#92

Post by AlanYx »

samuell wrote: post #20

Anybody who read it? Is it any good? (I'm a Vim user, but have sometimes half-pondered the thought of getting into Emacs, (using evil-mode of course), for the org-mode & co)

It's very well-written and I recommend it, but just be aware that despite the "mastering" in the title it's not meant to be a deep-dive into Emacs. (The author provides a lot of great additional content on his website if you want to go deeper into really mastering emacs.)

Re: Mastering Emacs

#93

Post by agency »

samuell wrote: post #20

Anybody who read it? Is it any good? (I'm a Vim user, but have sometimes half-pondered the thought of getting into Emacs, (using evil-mode of course), for the org-mode & co)

I've been slowly building up a fresh emacs config and feel like I'm getting close to it being able to be my daily driver. I found Mastering Emacs to be a very useful resource though not a perfect fit for me for a couple of reasons:

1. Like you, I am coming from vim (or using vim bindings in any editor I use). evil-mode is great but the book is focused on vanilla emacs movements and text manipulation and so there's good chunk of the book devoted to that which wasn't applicable to me. 2. This is more of a nit, but I do get a general tone that the book sees having to use elisp as a kind of drawback. Maybe I'm reading too much into that, and it is certainly still the case that you will have to do a lot of configuration to get a setup that works for you. But for me my interest in lisp is part of what makes me interested in emacs so I wish it didn't shy away from it as much.

That said I still found it overall worthwhile for understanding the building blocks and terminology. Also now is a great time to play around with a fresh emacs install. The 29 release has a bunch of goodies that make it easier to build towards and IDE-like experience with many out-of-the box pieces. It comes with a language server (LSP) client, native tree-sitter integration, and a nice declarative package management system that doesn't require any third-party deps (though you can swap the underlying engine to a third-party one if you need the extra features)

Re: Mastering Emacs

#94

Post by daedalus_j »

onehair wrote: post #82
lbj wrote: 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…

> that a well configured Emacs can Well, that's the real issue for me. I spent a month an a half working on "configuring" NeoVim. I got it to a somewhat ready to use state for my usual workflows. But I still had a big pile of tasks in my backlog to actually get it finally 100% mine. Then I discovered Helix, which doesn't need any configuration, no plugins to play around with. Builtin LSP, Builtin Fuzzy Finding of fil…

I'll admit I didn't look into it, but Helix sounds like something like LunarVim (https://www.lunarvim.org/)

Personally I much prefer that the editor NOT ship with something like that by default, especially when it's so easy to set up. I have several different vim config I use, including a pretty bare-bones one for headless systems, and I much prefer the ability to customize something very specifically.

Build tools that can compose together, rather than a single do-it-all tool. That is the power of the low level editors vs IDE's.

Re: Mastering Emacs

#95

Post by Otek »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #50
ak_111 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you give an example of such workflow?

I would say magit as an example. Single key presses for most actions. I often have that situation, when I share my screen and perform some commits and then people ask me whether I already commited X. I then think something like: "Uh, but I just did that, in front of your eyes." but then I remember the other workflow involving the normal command line or some clicky-gui kind of tool, that is just slower and is what oth…

> Then the pain I get, when I see people closing their vscode, just to reopen it in another directory > Then the pain I see others have, when juggling a high number of editor tabs in intellij or vscode, instead of buffers that exist and can be switched to using keyboard shortcuts. I lost faith in tabs for code editors.

That my biggest beef with VScode and IntelliJ. Why on earth I can’t have multiple projects open and switch between them as fast as in Emacs / Vim with Tmux Other than that I could somewhat live with modern editor, but I’m switching constantly between 5 different projects and VSCode solution to have single workspace makes navigation an awful experience

Re: Mastering Emacs

#96

Post by KolenCh »

sleiben wrote: 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

This is (1) not a problem unique to eMacs and also (2) not originated from it.

(2 means eMacs specific, 1 means general. Sorry slightly confusing.)

Eg (1) macOS by default shares some eMacs key bindings.

(2) It is not originated from it because initially those keys aren't where they are now.

Solutions are

1. Remap the keys to solve (2) 2. Programmable keyboard (for every key bindings) to solve (1)

Re: Mastering Emacs

#97

Post by flylikeabanana »

KolenCh wrote: post #96
sleiben wrote: 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

This is (1) not a problem unique to eMacs and also (2) not originated from it. (2 means eMacs specific, 1 means general. Sorry slightly confusing.) Eg (1) macOS by default shares some eMacs key bindings. (2) It is not originated from it because initially those keys aren't where they are now. Solutions are 1. Remap the keys to solve (2) 2. Programmable keyboard (for every key bindings) to solve (1)

Nit: It's a proper noun "Emacs" unless you're maybe referring to the executable "emacs", but at any rate the eMac was a computer sold by Apple in the education sector, and eMacs is the plural of that. Your iOS device is likely autocorrecting to that spelling, because to Apple, what else could you possibly be referring to?

Re: Mastering Emacs

#98

Post by natsucks »

sleiben wrote: 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 native bindings are...not great. Personally i use xah-fly-keys, but evil (vim) keybindings are popular.

Re: Mastering Emacs

#99

Post by natsucks »

psunavy03 wrote: post #4

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'll take this banter. it's fun. long live emacs.

Re: Mastering Emacs

#100

Post by tmtvl »

sleiben wrote: 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

In 2018 I switched from Vim (used for 5 years) to Emacs and I have no complaints about RSI/CT. It may be because I also learned to properly type with Dvorak at the same time. Unlike most Vim switchers I don't use Evil because modal editing just doesn't work for me. I always find myself having to change mode to do something and half the time the mode change doesn't take and shenanigans occur.
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