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Why GNU Emacs?

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Re: Why GNU Emacs?

#221

Post by rekado »

sklogic wrote: post #61
losvedir wrote: post #46

> Sometimes people who use computers ask me why I would use something as “bloated” as Emacs for text editing. Usually they remark that Emacs is a hold-over from a by-gone era, much too large compared to editors like “vi”, and that they are quite content using a variant of vi or some Notepad-like editor. This feels like a very out of date sentiment to me. I know a decade ago this was the perception, and well know the…

Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping.

Yeah, it's a problem on my i386 IBM P70 which I recently upgraded to 8MB.

Re: Why GNU Emacs?

#222

Post by qznc »

pjmlp wrote: post #208
gkya wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unix has a big flaw: through the pipes pass random data. It's up to the receivers to interpret it. Lisp gives you the possibility to easily structure your data and pass it around, plus the ability to pass programs around. Other than this, the unix way and the lisp way are nearly parallel, though in lisp "command line utility" is called a "procedure".

Hence why I love the idea of REPL as shell as used in the Xerox PARC and ETHZ OSes. Only Powershell comes closer to how this was used.

Every (Unix/terminal) shell is a Read-Eval-Print-Loop.

The difference is the data structure which is passed around. Is it bytes, Cons, or objects?

Re: Why GNU Emacs?

#223

Post by qznc »

gkya wrote: post #65
infodroid wrote: post #49

Many Emacs advocates fall for the trap of apologizing for why Emacs is not Unixy, as though it were some sort of defect. They should celebrate the fact that Emacs doesn't come from the Unix tradition of small, composable tools and "doing only one thing and doing it well". It is rooted in the ambitious work of the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab, the LISP programming language, and the single user MIT Lisp Machine that…

Unix has a big flaw: through the pipes pass random data. It's up to the receivers to interpret it. Lisp gives you the possibility to easily structure your data and pass it around, plus the ability to pass programs around. Other than this, the unix way and the lisp way are nearly parallel, though in lisp "command line utility" is called a "procedure".

So Emacs/Lisp gives you a Unix in your Unix.

Re: Why GNU Emacs?

#224

Post by qznc »

gkya wrote: post #65
infodroid wrote: post #49

Many Emacs advocates fall for the trap of apologizing for why Emacs is not Unixy, as though it were some sort of defect. They should celebrate the fact that Emacs doesn't come from the Unix tradition of small, composable tools and "doing only one thing and doing it well". It is rooted in the ambitious work of the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab, the LISP programming language, and the single user MIT Lisp Machine that…

Unix has a big flaw: through the pipes pass random data. It's up to the receivers to interpret it. Lisp gives you the possibility to easily structure your data and pass it around, plus the ability to pass programs around. Other than this, the unix way and the lisp way are nearly parallel, though in lisp "command line utility" is called a "procedure".

So Emacs/Lisp gives you a Unix in your Unix.

Re: Why GNU Emacs?

#225

Post by rekado »

amasad wrote: post #214

I switched to emacs a year ago and I love it. I feel a lot more productive when everything I need is in single window. However, just recently, I started feeling what used to be minor RSI to be a major discomfort. There are days where I can't type at all. I don't know if emacs' key bindings is mainly to blame here, but it seems like it. evil-mode have been recommended to me but I'm hesitant because I never liked vim's…

I recommend God mode. On my Thinkpad X200S I bind the mode switcher key to the right mouse button, which is easily reached by the right thumb. With God mode you don't have to relearn key bindings, you just no longer need to hit Control and Alt.

https://github.com/chrisdone/god-mode

Re: Why GNU Emacs?

#226

Post by rodelrod »

jjnoakes wrote: post #177
merpnderp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly every IDE of importance has either a full VIM plugin or is working hard on it. Not having to take your hands off the keyboard line to hit the arrows or mouse is a big deal to a lot of devs. Having easy and powerful regex is nearly as important. And having buffers is probably a close number three.

How do you reach the escape key?

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key

Personally, mapping Caps Lock to Ctrl (which I do anyway) and using Ctrl-C works best. I use vim and IntelliJ's vim emulation on an international keyboard where Ctrl-[ won't work.

Re: Why GNU Emacs?

#227

Post by snaky »

rekado wrote: post #221
sklogic wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping.

Yeah, it's a problem on my i386 IBM P70 which I recently upgraded to 8MB.

That's funny the modern Thinkpad flagship mobile workstation model is called P70 exactly.

Re: Why GNU Emacs?

#228

Post by maccard »

Scarbutt wrote: post #185
maccard wrote: post #92

I'd love to get started using emacs, but it's extremely difficult. I want to use it to write c++ on Windows. I'd like to have autocompletion support, and navigation support on a large project (>1million lines). I have yet to manage to get it set up. If it were more straightforward to set up and use, more people would use it I'm sure.

Maybe this could help: http://tuhdo.github.io/c-ide.html

That's great looking. I'll give it a go today!

Re: Why GNU Emacs?

#229

Post by TurboHaskal »

rl3 wrote: post #125

Does anyone have an opinion on Spacemacs [0]? I haven't used it, nor Vim/Emacs. Just came across it during researching the two. Spacemacs appears to have excellent documentation though. [0] http://spacemacs.org/

I wholeheartedly recommend it.

I was a Vi(m) user for years. I love vi as a concept, but extending it always felt very wrong and cumbersome for me, whereas in Emacs it all feels natural as it truly is the extensible, customizable text editor.

org-mode and slime made me pull the trigger and kept using it for half a decade.

Then I lost my Emacs config. Installed Spacemacs and never looked back. It gives you better defaults, a good community and a framework that lets you easily extend it in a more modular way using layers.

It's also much gentler on my wrists.

I still use nvi for quick edits though.

Re: Why GNU Emacs?

#230

Post by gkya »

qznc wrote: post #223
gkya wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unix has a big flaw: through the pipes pass random data. It's up to the receivers to interpret it. Lisp gives you the possibility to easily structure your data and pass it around, plus the ability to pass programs around. Other than this, the unix way and the lisp way are nearly parallel, though in lisp "command line utility" is called a "procedure".

So Emacs/Lisp gives you a Unix in your Unix.

No it gives me something better than unix in my unix.
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