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Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors

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Re: Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors

#51

Post by ehudla »

leephillips wrote: post #25
stiff wrote: post #19

In common understanding of emacs, its use of lisp recieves perhaps too much attention, while its overall wonderful architecture is underappreciated. Emacs isnt just an editor with embedded lisp, its more a vm for bootstrapping editors. You could do an emacs with python, but the hard part is providing an environment where the extensions dont interfere with the user input loop, with buffer redisplay etc., while still s…

"The emacs buffer-based async handling of external processes is a masterpiece of software engineering, much better than things like unix pipes." This sounds intriguing. Do you have a pointer to something I could read that might expand on what you're saying here? (Aside from the emacs source.) Amusing coincidence: the only Pratchet book I've read is The Fifth Elephant .

The classic Emacs architecture paper: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-paper.html

Re: Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors

#52

Post by lewaldman »

leephillips wrote: post #39
stiff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will try to explain. When I came to emacs as a user, a "buffer" seemed just a weird way of saying "tab" without displaying actual tabs. The word choice only started making more sense once I wrote non-trivial amounts of emacslisp. The buffer is the fundamental emacs data structure, like the file is the fundamental unix data structure, so it's really important to understand it well. The definition is really simple: a…

Thanks for taking the trouble to write all this (when all I asked for was a link). It gives a good flavor of what you're talking about. I used to read network news inside of emacs, using a mode called gnus, decades ago, and before I switched to vim. That's probably an example of a complex application that could be written within emacs because of the architecture that you describe. This extensibility is tempting me to…

Former VIm user... Current Emacs user.

IMHO, Evil Mode makes to use emacs doable OTOH, the fact that there are so much extensions and possibilities under the hood makes to use emacs mandatory! :P

Re: Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors

#53

Post by ZaneA »

codygman wrote: post #49
leephillips wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for taking the trouble to write all this (when all I asked for was a link). It gives a good flavor of what you're talking about. I used to read network news inside of emacs, using a mode called gnus, decades ago, and before I switched to vim. That's probably an example of a complex application that could be written within emacs because of the architecture that you describe. This extensibility is tempting me to…

I've been using emacs for a while (after vim for 6, 7... 8 years?) and have recently been looking at evil. I can't seem to find any really comprehensive tutorials for Evil mode, though I haven't put a lot of work towards it.

The great thing about evil is you can enable it in your .emacs and it mostly just works. But even better, because this is Emacs the vi layer is also easily extendable. Here's an example of adding other operators (adding `mit`, `mit>` etc): https://github.com/ZaneA/Dotfiles/blob/1858a02de25e25de20e96...

Re: Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors

#54

Post by ScottBurson »

etfb wrote: post #12
FatalBaboon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably tried to make a common point: do not give the solution. For a given specific issue, the most you should give is pointers. For the function that solves your problem saves the day but knowing how to find any when needed solves a lifetime of problems. Pointers help to put you on the right track so you're not discouraged.

I was asking all the right questions -- is this possible, what hooks should I consider, what should I take into account to make sure that the stuff I add doesn't stamp all over other stuff. I'm a programmer with thirty years experience and twenty years with Emacs; I know this stuff. Basically, they shut me down. The thing I was asking was contrary to the whole philosophy of Emacs. I had, they assured me, no right to…

What was it you wanted to do? I'm not an Emacs internals expert, but you've got me curious :-)

Re: Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors

#55

Post by ttuominen »

dbalan wrote: post #31

one thing I struggle with emacs is that I can't find a place which documents the emacs way of doing things. Emacs has multitude of features, there are just too many to master, yet even to know that they exist. One example would be rectangle select http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Rec... , I absolutely love them - but till one of colleague introduced them to me, I had no idea they existed.

I've found emacs-fu useful. http://emacs-fu.blogspot.fi/

Re: Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors

#56

Post by aetherson »

I'll take issue with this claim: "Work environments are a very personal thing. They exist to serve only one person: you. Me-me-me is a winning attitude when dealing with your environment."

I think it's considerably more important to have a (basically good) work environment in which your colleagues can sit down and use fluently than to have one that's absolutely optimized to your individual tastes.

Re: Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors

#57

Post by zem »

terhechte wrote: post #41
thirdtruck wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to recommend reading more Pratchett. :) I bought a couple more novels last week and couldn't help but finish one ( Equal Rites ) less than twenty four hours later.

I've read more than 20 Pratchett books (I think I didn't read the last 2-3) and there're two absolutely great books among them: - Nightwatch: Great idea, fantastically written - Going Postal: Great book for everybody who reads HN. Great characters, storyline, and fantasy meets hacking.

my top two as well! third is probably "men at arms"

Re: Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors

#59

Post by al2o3cr »

actsasbuffoon wrote: post #18
FatalBaboon wrote: post #2

Emacs is one of those things everybody knows is good, but few take the time to learn. Over the years I've learnt quite a few languages, and what strikes me is that they're all so very alike. You find the same features with slight syntactic changes. At the end of the day, what really makes a difference is not which language you chose but what tools you are using. Do you have to memorize every important method or are t…

> Over the years I've learnt quite a few languages, and what strikes me is that they're all so very alike. I used to think this as well, then I learned some Prolog. For those who aren't familiar with it, Prolog is a logic programming language (as opposed to imperative and functional languages). Instead of telling Prolog how to solve a problem, you give it a set of facts and tell it what you want to know. Prolog takes…

+1 on the lambda calculus stuff. Here's a related talk about deriving the Y combinator in Ruby by Jim Weirich:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FITJMJjASUs

(skip to about 28:00 if you're impatient)

There are additional versions of this same presentation circulating with the code in Javascript and (I believe) Clojure. Full disclosure: Jim is a co-worker of mine.

Re: Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors

#60

Post by agumonkey »

FatalBaboon wrote: post #2

Emacs is one of those things everybody knows is good, but few take the time to learn. Over the years I've learnt quite a few languages, and what strikes me is that they're all so very alike. You find the same features with slight syntactic changes. At the end of the day, what really makes a difference is not which language you chose but what tools you are using. Do you have to memorize every important method or are t…

Two thing that I found lacking for less-than-good hackers like me :

  - idiomatic (minor|major) mode organization (I found a book and a pdf which are old and might not represent the best way to do so)

  - at emacs conf, jwiegley showed some old and tiny extensions (edebug, redshank) part of his workflow. Very interesting to discover dark corners of the large emacs extensions space and how people solve problems their way.
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