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How I am deeply integrating Emacs

joshblais.com

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Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#21

Post by skydhash »

nine_k wrote: post #5
sim04ful wrote: post #4

The more I learn about emacs the more I feel we took the wrong fork on road in terms of the desktop metaphor decades ago.

Emacs is great for people who are fine tinkering with their tools, and adjusting them to their needs and tastes. Emacs improves my quality of life quite a bit. A lot of people hate that, they want a tool that has all relevant to their tasks front and center, all irrelevant invisible or nonexistent, and zero options to tinker with. It should just work, and preferably never change. A middle ground are the browsers that…

> they want a tool that has all relevant to their tasks front and center, all irrelevant invisible or nonexistent

That is Emacs. You just have to drag the relevant up first and push down the irrelevant.

The thing is in Emacs, most utilities don’t want to presume how you would want some feature. Even if they do have defaults, they are suggestions at most. Instead of getting a tools that you have to learn and conform too, you get the template/idea/inital_version of a tool, and you make it your own

And there’s the whole idea of integrating stuff instead of isolated utilities.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#22

Post by positron26 »

sim04ful wrote: post #4

The more I learn about emacs the more I feel we took the wrong fork on road in terms of the desktop metaphor decades ago.

Emacs took a wrong fork in its own metaphor. At length, being able to take code and libraries between production and the editor would be a game changer. While Elisp has design features that make sense, in the tradeoffs, I think it lost to every other lisp with a general purpose programming ecosystem.

I have a hope for the Common Lisp based Lem. All we need is to coordinate enough signal for potential users to feel it's the right time for their actions. Go star Lem https://github.com/lem-project/lem

I feel the same way about org mode. Nice. Can I use it on a team? Get real. I'd like more embedded data functionality in markdown. It's not XML, and that's good. Org is just weird. AFAIK it's still trying to figure out inline data embedding, so the embedding isn't even that strong. Doing something like exporting with a CSS class around a specific word probably uses some awkward literal syntax instead.

There are consequences to the monastic culture around Emacs. It's really good at holding itself in place. If you don't buy that tradeoff, you need to keep shopping.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#23

Post by timonoko »

fhd2 wrote: post #14
sim04ful wrote: post #4

The more I learn about emacs the more I feel we took the wrong fork on road in terms of the desktop metaphor decades ago.

For me, the power of Emacs is mainly that I can do everything with the keyboard, which is not only much faster, but also - to me - much more enjoyable than going through visual menus with the mouse. For someone not good with the keyboard, it's probably a nightmare. I suppose it's good for power users and terrible for casual users, and I don't know if there's any way to really build one user interface that works equal…

You can do everything with mouse (or touchscreen). Lets start with these:

  (xterm-mouse-mode 1)
  (global-set-key (kbd "") 'scroll-up-command)
  (global-set-key (kbd "") 'scroll-down-command) 
  (global-set-key (kbd "") 'scroll-up-command)
  (global-set-key (kbd "") 'scroll-down-command)

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#25

Post by skydhash »

raverbashing wrote: post #12
sim04ful wrote: post #4

The more I learn about emacs the more I feel we took the wrong fork on road in terms of the desktop metaphor decades ago.

The more I learn about emacs the more I'm happy I never joined the cult Don't waste my time with 70s "ergonomics" (if it can even be called that) The comparisons with art seem almost to the point of offense to me. You're not building art, you're just building another yet plugin for emacs to do what other people do in maybe 5% less efficient ways but won't spend 2 days automating it

Emacs don’t have plugins. Emacs only have a small C core (kernel) that handles very low level details. Everything else is lisp code split into packages (libraries and utilities). And being a lisp means you can alter and redefine any symbol you want.

The thing is that, there’s enough packages built-in and by third-party, you never really write your own. My whole config is pretty much setting options and linking packages together.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#26

Post by skydhash »

voidUpdate wrote: post #24

I keep hearing about emacs and how awesome it is, is there a good resource for a complete beginner who is familiar with programming but not necessarily editors like vim or emacs, just to get started?

The book “Mastering Emacs” is nice. But both programs have tutorials builtin and extensive documentation. There’s also various youtube walkthrough videos for features.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#27

Post by sonnig »

voidUpdate wrote: post #24

I keep hearing about emacs and how awesome it is, is there a good resource for a complete beginner who is familiar with programming but not necessarily editors like vim or emacs, just to get started?

I strongly recommend the book "Mastering Emacs" by Mickey P. You will need some patience as well, I recommend going slow and steady for a week at least using the book, with a vanilla/standard Emacs install.

It took me about 2 weeks to get productive at first (this was in 2018), and now I use Emacs every day for a wide variety of tasks (programming and notes, mostly).

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#28

Post by piokoch »

fhd2 wrote: post #14
sim04ful wrote: post #4

The more I learn about emacs the more I feel we took the wrong fork on road in terms of the desktop metaphor decades ago.

For me, the power of Emacs is mainly that I can do everything with the keyboard, which is not only much faster, but also - to me - much more enjoyable than going through visual menus with the mouse. For someone not good with the keyboard, it's probably a nightmare. I suppose it's good for power users and terrible for casual users, and I don't know if there's any way to really build one user interface that works equal…

Believe or not, you can go 100% keyboard-only even on Windows. I had a friend, Win server admin (big Microsoft fun), who wasn't using mouse at all.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#29

Post by ngc6677 »

voidUpdate wrote: post #24

I keep hearing about emacs and how awesome it is, is there a good resource for a complete beginner who is familiar with programming but not necessarily editors like vim or emacs, just to get started?

A good way to get straight in, is to download `emacs`, open it, and follow the built in "Emacs Tutorial" (click the link on the first page that is shown). It brings a new user through the concepts of the editor, how to move around, do some of the most usual actions, and get familiar with its vocabulary.

At first, it is also a good practice not to install any package, and use the built-in capabilities (`magit` and `org-mode` are now part of the default installation) for a while, the time to discover what comes with the "factory defaults".

Also, for some inspirations, watching videos from `System Crafters, Howard Abrams, Emacs Rocks` to see how some people use it.

It can take a while to get used to everything, or to install packages and customize it to what other editors comes with by default, but the reward is worth.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#30

Post by signa11 »

voidUpdate wrote: post #24

I keep hearing about emacs and how awesome it is, is there a good resource for a complete beginner who is familiar with programming but not necessarily editors like vim or emacs, just to get started?

i would heartily recommend micky-petersen's : Mastering Emacs (https://www.masteringemacs.org/about)
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