Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

916 Days of Emacs

sqrtminusone.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 309 posts

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#291

Post by ddavis »

TheCondor wrote: post #10
ddavis wrote: post #3

Cool post! I really don't want to know how much time I've spent configuring Emacs over the last 12 years :P The explosion of great Emacs Lisp packages over the last few years has absolutely made it difficult to avoid forever playing around with Emacs.

Have you tried any of the distributions? I have had sort of a semi-annual ritual of re-evaluating my emacs configuration. This last December I've tried Centaur out and while it's not perfect, it's not too bad. Definitely an interesting place to start from.

I’ve never used one. I’ve declared init.el bankruptcy a few times in those 12 years but I always build from vanilla Emacs- lots of use-package use though.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#292

Post by teddyh »

abhayhegde wrote: post #262
teddyh wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start with the official Emacs Tour: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/

Sure, this might help. If you've had experience, what's unique about Emacs for you?

You could think of Emacs as a mix between an integrated program suite (like Lotus Symphony, Ashton-Tate’s Framework or AppleWorks) and a Lisp Machine.

Like an integrated program suite, you can move from program to program (Emacs modes), copying your data around easily, and using similar (or the same) commands and user interface for every program/mode, making data manipulation in many ways simple and fast.

Like a Lisp Machine, Emacs is totally user programmable at every level, making both debugging easy when/if something breaks, and extensible with your own programs, ranging from simple keybindings, or macros, to full major modes. (Most major modes in Emacs started out as a single person’s personal customizations.)

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#293

Post by co_dh »

juped wrote: post #75
commandlinefan wrote: post #15

I've been a hardcore vi user pretty much my entire life, but I decided to force myself to spend a year using emacs a while back just to see what all the fuss was about. When the year was over and I "allowed" myself to return to vi, it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders... to this day I still don't see what the hype was about. On the plus side, though, I memorized the emacs cursor movement commands, which…

Emacs is an operating system, not an editor; I'm really not sure why Stallman constantly promoted the "emacs vs. vi" meme. You might as well try to switch from Notepad to Linux. It's just a type error, and you'll have a bad time.

A single threaded OS. I remember that sometimes I launched a slow process in emacs, and then can do nothing but wait.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#294

Post by lispm »

teddyh wrote: post #292
abhayhegde wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, this might help. If you've had experience, what's unique about Emacs for you?

You could think of Emacs as a mix between an integrated program suite (like Lotus Symphony, Ashton-Tate’s Framework or AppleWorks) and a Lisp Machine. Like an integrated program suite, you can move from program to program (Emacs modes), copying your data around easily, and using similar (or the same) commands and user interface for every program/mode, making data manipulation in many ways simple and fast. Like a Lisp…

> Like a Lisp Machine, Emacs is totally user programmable at every level

It's just that the levels of GNU Emacs don't get as low-level as the Lisp operating system of Lisp Machine (which is an actual computer with its operating system, and not an programmable editor written on top of operating systems, which were written in C and a bunch of other languages). The levels of a Lisp Machines go all the way down to (for example) the network stack and the actual instructions interfacing with the hardware. GNU Emacs usually re-packages the underlying OS services (I/O, file system, GUI, ...) with a Lisp-based API and one programs with that.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#295

Post by butterisgood »

commandlinefan wrote: post #15

I've been a hardcore vi user pretty much my entire life, but I decided to force myself to spend a year using emacs a while back just to see what all the fuss was about. When the year was over and I "allowed" myself to return to vi, it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders... to this day I still don't see what the hype was about. On the plus side, though, I memorized the emacs cursor movement commands, which…

I think of emacs as more of an operating system for emacs lisp with an in-built editor more than I think of it as an editor.

I say that because I have "live documents" that run Jira queries for me, and cross reference defects to other systems behind REST interfaces and can drive the whole thing with a few keystrokes.

(And it didn't take long to put together)

Emacs and emacs lisp, is a bit like Smalltalk in some ways too, once you get the hang of it. (and I've thought of porting that entire workflow I just mentioned to Pharo too)

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#297

Post by green7ea »

LastNevadan wrote: post #98
commandlinefan wrote: post #15

I've been a hardcore vi user pretty much my entire life, but I decided to force myself to spend a year using emacs a while back just to see what all the fuss was about. When the year was over and I "allowed" myself to return to vi, it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders... to this day I still don't see what the hype was about. On the plus side, though, I memorized the emacs cursor movement commands, which…

When I was at the university and started programming on UNIX, the professor said we should try both emacs and vi and see which we like better, and provided links to some tutorials. I tried them both and liked vi. Emacs seemed slower. In my undergraduate wisdom, I deemed emacs to be "stupid" and went on with my life using vi. After I had been programming professionally for about ten years, I decided that my harsh judg…

That's an interesting guess but I wouldn't necessarily agree.

I've been a touch typist as long as I can remember and have been an avid emacs user for the last 15 years. I used vim for about 2 years before switching. I do have my caps lock bound to CTRL and have ALT+(jkl;) as movement keys in emacs so that might be a sign that there is some truth to what you say.

I would guess the reason that I used vim instead of emacs at the start was the learning curve - I simply couldn't bother to learn all the emacs combinations and program in elisp whereas in vim, I could be somewhat productive without much to learn.

Once I learned emacs, it was hard to go back to anything else but I still use vim on other machines when emacs isn't available.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#298

Post by teddyh »

lispm wrote: post #294
teddyh wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could think of Emacs as a mix between an integrated program suite (like Lotus Symphony, Ashton-Tate’s Framework or AppleWorks) and a Lisp Machine. Like an integrated program suite, you can move from program to program (Emacs modes), copying your data around easily, and using similar (or the same) commands and user interface for every program/mode, making data manipulation in many ways simple and fast. Like a Lisp…

> Like a Lisp Machine, Emacs is totally user programmable at every level It's just that the levels of GNU Emacs don't get as low-level as the Lisp operating system of Lisp Machine (which is an actual computer with its operating system, and not an programmable editor written on top of operating systems, which were written in C and a bunch of other languages). The levels of a Lisp Machines go all the way down to (for e…

Well, yes, because GNU Emacs runs on Unix-compatible systems, and Emacs uses the Unix API to do its thing. For instance, Emacs does not implement TCP itself, it uses the Unix TCP/IP stack.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#299

Post by retrocryptid »

Blackthorn wrote: post #198
matheusmoreira wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Thank god for musl.

Software people are hilarious. Wow, I sure hate using this amazingly working and workable product because I don't like what the source code looks like! I'm so glad there's an alternative that looks prettier!

If only there were a HN commenter that would tell us how we should think.

Re: 916 Days of Emacs

#300

Post by retrocryptid »

Y_Y wrote: post #110
retrocryptid wrote: post #78

Oh man. I'm embarrassed to say I've been using emacs for almost 40 years and it probably accounts for 80% of my screen time. I wonder how many people know emacs predates gnu-emacs? I remember being skeptical of open source until I saw what gnu emacs could do. Then I got slightly more skeptical when I looked at the code ;-)

How many fingers do you have left?

Me? I lost a finger in the great key-binding wars of the late 80s. Like I said... if you make it to your deathbed with all 9 fingers, you're not trying hard enough.
Post reply on HN