101–110 of 121 posts
Reading guides like these makes me think about how I sound like when I implore novices to try out the command-line. Why should I? I'll peg myself as a half-competent developer, the kind who codes everyday and can lose a weekend to a spontaneous side project. I am completely in agreeance that tool mastery is vital for enjoying and being productive in programming, I just have no concept, not from this guide, and not fr…
A developer who is curious enough to try Lisp is possibly more intelligent than average This is the kind of exaggeration that makes a lot of people to avoid even trying Lisp. Any programming language that uses a different programming paradigm than the one you are familiar with will make you a better programmer.
I don't really have any desire to try lisp, and every time I see that kind of lisp advocacy I have even less.
Whether or not lisp is worthwhile to learn has nothing to do with how some people advocate for it, right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I spent 5 years learning and using vi (n perhaps a dozen different Unix-like OSes, so they were all different, meaning I could only use a core set of features. I then spent a few years working on Windows where I had Vim, but other editors I used were, well, 'standard'. Then ViEmu came along and I now move between Vi-like editing in VS and Vim, and 'normal' editing in other apps. It's not too bad, to be honest. I'm ed…
Vimium is really good for mouseless vi-like browsing in Chrome though. https://vimium.github.io/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll be using emacs as the sole text editor with my students in September, so there'll be a few more young programmers learning how to use it.
I hope you will be teaching Intro to Emacs. Why else would you impose a text editor on students?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really have any desire to try lisp, and every time I see that kind of lisp advocacy I have even less.
Yes, it's very cheesy, but maybe rephrase it as "people who are open to trying new languages are more open-minded by definition, and they keep a flexible mind and learn to think about problems in different ways." I mean, however cheesy some Smug Lisp Weenies(tm) may be, why not learn something new? Lisp (the language family) is really cool, you should try it. elisp may not be the most exciting family member, though.
Perhaps a naive question here, but I'm interested in emacs now, and I need to ask: does your left pinky finger get used to all the CTRL and ALT key combos, or do you change the key bindings, or are there special keyboards meant for emacs use, or what? Two minutes into the tutorial I was already thinking about whether there should be some sort of hack to use CAPSLOCK instead of CTRL...
I guess it's time once again to mention the Kinesis Advantage keyboard on HN. You can rebind every key. You can rebind control and meta to keys that are under your thumbs, and put one copy under each thumb so you don't have to use the same thumb all the time. And everyone who walks by your desk will have an excuse to start a conversation about your incredibly strange keyboard.
Once you have mastered Emacs, you are good at all other editors I haven't found that to be true at all. I find that due to archaic idiosyncrasies and the customization possible with emacs, the more time I spend with it the more difficult it becomes to use different editors.
I spent 5 years learning and using vi (n perhaps a dozen different Unix-like OSes, so they were all different, meaning I could only use a core set of features. I then spent a few years working on Windows where I had Vim, but other editors I used were, well, 'standard'. Then ViEmu came along and I now move between Vi-like editing in VS and Vim, and 'normal' editing in other apps. It's not too bad, to be honest. I'm ed…
Perhaps a naive question here, but I'm interested in emacs now, and I need to ask: does your left pinky finger get used to all the CTRL and ALT key combos, or do you change the key bindings, or are there special keyboards meant for emacs use, or what? Two minutes into the tutorial I was already thinking about whether there should be some sort of hack to use CAPSLOCK instead of CTRL...
You should absolutely rebind Caps Lock to Ctrl. I guess it's time once again to mention the Kinesis Advantage keyboard on HN. You can rebind every key. You can rebind control and meta to keys that are under your thumbs, and put one copy under each thumb so you don't have to use the same thumb all the time. And everyone who walks by your desk will have an excuse to start a conversation about your incredibly strange ke…
A great reference with some pragmatic advice. I've heard that one of the main benefits to emacs is that it can be used to tool itself to one's needs; curious to know if that's what others have found?
Many IDEs are pretty veneers on sequences of complex commands that must be learned by rote. Emacs gives you text buffer interfaces to whatever you want to do, a mostly consistent model for dealing with them and the programmability to change whatever you like.