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Emacs, naked

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Re: Emacs, naked

#161
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I grew frustrated trying to edit Haskell in Emacs; there are a bunch of half-baked modes out there. What's wrong with the normal haskell-mode? https://github.com/haskell/haskell-mode (interestingly another commentator here claims that Emacs' Haskell indentation is superior to VIM's https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7111521 ) > It's not great at doing version control [...] Have you tried magit? It's probably the…

> What's wrong with the normal haskell-mode? The indentation doesn't work well. It gets the indentation right maybe 80% of the time, but missing it 20% of the time is a big deal when you have to deal with the "tab-cycle." I spent so much time fiddling with indentation that I turned off auto indentation...and Emacs without mode-based auto indentation is much worse than Vim with manual indentation. I also had problems…

[deleted]

Re: Emacs, naked

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's wrong with the normal haskell-mode? The indentation doesn't work well. It gets the indentation right maybe 80% of the time, but missing it 20% of the time is a big deal when you have to deal with the "tab-cycle." I spent so much time fiddling with indentation that I turned off auto indentation...and Emacs without mode-based auto indentation is much worse than Vim with manual indentation. I also had problems…

I see where you're coming from here. But my conclusion was that Emacs with Evil is just as good an editor as Vim. And as a bonus I get the complete customizability of Emacs. So when you say "I will pick Vim since it's the better editor," what Vim features in particular (beyond modeful editing, which Evil provides) make you say that?

>(beyond modeful editing, which Evil provides)

This is exactly my point. The Emacs mentality is that Emacs can do everything...it can even be Vim. Why should I do that when I can just use Vim? Maybe Emacs can do anything, but it doesn't do anything well unless you've got a dynamite mode. Evil is not going to be as good of a Vim as Vim. I can tell that even with a glance at the Evil website. One of the best things about Vim is the extensive documentation. Evil just has a 22 page PDF manual...lots of which is filled with Emacs Lisp. So if I use Evil, I then need to spend time learning Evil and how to customize it with Emacs Lisp. Or I can just use Vim.

Re: Emacs, naked

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the fad-editor in LightTable's place will be called in a few years?

What was it a few years ago? I'm going to guess that whatever the answer is, it didn't have anywhere near the extension capability of either Emacs or LightTable.

[deleted]

Re: Emacs, naked

#164
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try out emacs every few years. Every time, I get discouraged whenever I attempt to do something simple (change the theme, etc) by the amount of configuration necessary. I may try your repo, since it seems to have a lot of stuff already configured. The other thing is that Emacs is really slow to start as soon as you have a few plugins, compared to vim.

Slow emacs startup isn't a problem thanks to the new emacs-server stuff. Running emacs with the "--daemon" flag will cause it to do initialization, fork into the background, and become persistent; now edit files using commands like "emacsclient $filename". Eamcsclient will connect to the daemonized emacs server and have it open $filename, bringing it forward either in an existing frame or (using the "-nw" or "-nc" fl…

Slow emacs startup ... people restart their emacs?

Re: Emacs, naked

#165
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I grew frustrated trying to edit Haskell in Emacs; there are a bunch of half-baked modes out there. What's wrong with the normal haskell-mode? https://github.com/haskell/haskell-mode (interestingly another commentator here claims that Emacs' Haskell indentation is superior to VIM's https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7111521 ) > It's not great at doing version control [...] Have you tried magit? It's probably the…

> What's wrong with the normal haskell-mode? The indentation doesn't work well. It gets the indentation right maybe 80% of the time, but missing it 20% of the time is a big deal when you have to deal with the "tab-cycle." I spent so much time fiddling with indentation that I turned off auto indentation...and Emacs without mode-based auto indentation is much worse than Vim with manual indentation. I also had problems…

Did you try all three indentation modes?

It's a bit unfortunate that there have to be three separate indenters, but most people find that one of them is good enough.

Re: Emacs, naked

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other thing is that Emacs is really slow to start as soon as you have a few plugins, compared to vim. This just mean you are "doing it wrong". Your .emacs file should not be loading anything, but instead setting things to be loaded when needed using autoload, eval-after-load and auto-mode-alist.

Also make sure all your plugins are byte-compiled, this can shorten loading time significantly. Not a problem for elpa/package.el plugins, but I have quite a few plugins managed manually (I'm still not using el-get, shame on me) and the way I byte compile them all at once is to place a cursor on a directory with them in dired and issuing: C-0 M-x byte-recompile-directory The C-0 prefix arg causes it to recompile ever…

You could automate this with a function hung off the after-load-functions hook. Here's something off the top of my head:

     (defun foo-compile-if-newer (path)
       "A function suitable for hanging off `after-load-functions',
     which will byte-compile an Emacs Lisp source file for which there
     is no pre-existing compiled file, or there is a compiled file 
     older than the source."
       (and (save-match-data
               (not (null (string-match "el$" path))))
            (let ((elc-path (byte-compile-dest-file path)))
              (if (or (not (file-exists-p elc-path))
                      (time-less-p (nth 5 (file-attributes elc-path))
                                   (nth 5 (file-attributes path))))
                  (progn
                    (message "Auto-%scompiling %s..."
                             (if (file-exists-p elc-path) "re" "") path)
                  (byte-compile-file path))))))
     
     (add-hook 'after-load-functions
               'foo-compile-if-newer)
Adding an exclusion list, if you feel the need for one, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re: Emacs, naked

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see where you're coming from here. But my conclusion was that Emacs with Evil is just as good an editor as Vim. And as a bonus I get the complete customizability of Emacs. So when you say "I will pick Vim since it's the better editor," what Vim features in particular (beyond modeful editing, which Evil provides) make you say that?

>(beyond modeful editing, which Evil provides) This is exactly my point. The Emacs mentality is that Emacs can do everything...it can even be Vim. Why should I do that when I can just use Vim? Maybe Emacs can do anything, but it doesn't do anything well unless you've got a dynamite mode. Evil is not going to be as good of a Vim as Vim. I can tell that even with a glance at the Evil website. One of the best things abo…

Ritchie's riposte seems apropos here: "If you want [Vim], you know where to find it."

Re: Emacs, naked

#168
post #38

(shameless plug) Don't you want a nice Nyan Cat in that modeline in the sky? ;). http://nyan-mode.buildsomethingamazing.com/

(shameless plug) And don't you want the current weather to go alongside your Nyan, thanks to an Emacs minor mode inspired by a Hacker News comment? https://github.com/aaron-em/weatherline-mode.el

Any chance of getting this added to MELPA? :)

Re: Emacs, naked

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If THAT makes you uncomfortable, then obviously you haven't seen THIS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1sXuHnf_lo

It's the ASCII art social commentary about the cultures surrounding various popular programming languages that I hope people will find the most offensive about that video. Well worth pausing and zooming in when he mentions your pet programming language.

I cackled! Thank you for pointing that out.

Alas, I must confess that I have written Visual Basic (VBscript) code in Emacs.

A while back I was screwing around with a project which attempted to generate, via the Windows speech synthesis API, output vaguely resembling SHODAN from the System Shock games (example: [1]). The most I can say for it is that I didn't entirely fail; despite having access to a quite good female voice (NeoSpeech "Kate"), and despite SAPI 5 offering what I found a surprising degree of flexibility, there's only so much you can do with it; I got closer than I expected, but not close enough to think it worth releasing. [a]

In any case, VBScript is the handiest way I could find to screw around with SAPI, and it turns out there is a Visual Basic mode for Emacs [2]; I found it to be remarkably not bad. Nothing could make working with Visual Basic other than painful, but Emacs comes as close as anything else I've ever used.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iZMD_eCpEo

[2] http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/visual-basic-mode.el

[a] I've just unearthed it, and it hasn't yet succumbed to bit rot; maybe I'll throw it up on my Github account just for the hell of it.

Re: Emacs, naked

#170
post #7

Ì wonder if some Emacs people intend to migrate to LightTable in a few years?

I wonder what the fad-editor in LightTable's place will be called in a few years?

That's pretty uncharitable to LightTable which is doing a number of things differently. Inline evaluation, and great support for ClojureScript with a connected repl to name a few.
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