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Emacs 26.1 released

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31–40 of 105 posts

Re: Emacs 26.1 released

#31
post #30

Completely OT, but I remember when building Emacs was like "there goes my afternoon". On my current desktop (which is kind of snazzy, I admit), it takes less than 30 seconds wall clock time. This is one aspect of The Future(tm) I definitely appreciate. ;-)

You have one mother of a desktop there. Or, you're not doing a clean build :).

For me, full clean make takes AFAIR something like 10 to 20 minutes. i5-2400, 12GB RAM, SSD drive. Still, totally worth it :). I've been running Emacs 26 for 2 months now.

Re: Emacs 26.1 released

#32
I am not a programmer but have been learning programming since last 2 years.

Only yesterday, I installed emacs and spent half an hour on it. Even opened a tutorial to learn the basics.

But I got irritated pretty soon and gave it up. Now I am thinking about people who use it like a pro. How the hell did they master this beast?

Re: Emacs 26.1 released

#33

I am not a programmer but have been learning programming since last 2 years. Only yesterday, I installed emacs and spent half an hour on it. Even opened a tutorial to learn the basics. But I got irritated pretty soon and gave it up. Now I am thinking about people who use it like a pro. How the hell did they master this beast?

Steeep learning curve. Baby steps and don't give up. Make judgement after a month or two.

Key point is you can program it to do what you prefer.

Re: Emacs 26.1 released

#34

I am not a programmer but have been learning programming since last 2 years. Only yesterday, I installed emacs and spent half an hour on it. Even opened a tutorial to learn the basics. But I got irritated pretty soon and gave it up. Now I am thinking about people who use it like a pro. How the hell did they master this beast?

1) realize you may never “master this beast”

2) commit to it for a few weeks and become proficient

3) keep learning

Re: Emacs 26.1 released

#35

I am not a programmer but have been learning programming since last 2 years. Only yesterday, I installed emacs and spent half an hour on it. Even opened a tutorial to learn the basics. But I got irritated pretty soon and gave it up. Now I am thinking about people who use it like a pro. How the hell did they master this beast?

We spent a whole hour.

Okay, more seriously, it took me about a month to stop hating Emacs in 2002. I only started because I thought I had no choice. I was a math undergrad, I wanted to write math, and they plopped me in front of Emacs and LaTeX running on Debian. Alright then, I'm here to learn new mathematics, so I'm also going to learn new ways to type mathematics. This is just how we do things in university, I thought.

Fifteen years laters, I haven't stopped using and learning about Emacs. I can't do any serious writing without it.

So, my advice is, if you don't want to keep learning Emacs forever, just stay with whatever you like right now. As a general rule, the Emacs faith does not proselytise. Some of us tolerate Emacs, but you'll have to try it yourself to see if you do.

Re: Emacs 26.1 released

#36

I am not a programmer but have been learning programming since last 2 years. Only yesterday, I installed emacs and spent half an hour on it. Even opened a tutorial to learn the basics. But I got irritated pretty soon and gave it up. Now I am thinking about people who use it like a pro. How the hell did they master this beast?

I'm not a programmer but I have dabbled in code for a while. Emacs honestly made me love using my computer again.

Give yourself a full day for the tutorial and then try to stick to it even though for a while you will be slower and clumsier at everything. This will pay off massively.[0]

Make it part of your routine. Apart from coding in it, use it for email (mu4e/offlineimap), for git (magit), as a local and remote file manager, for writing notes and running a diary (org mode), for submitting papers (LaTeX/Auctex), for your terminal...

Speaking for myself, it actually improves my quality of life, and I feel like I've only scratched the surface.

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10942008/what-does-emacs...

Re: Emacs 26.1 released

#37
post #33

I am not a programmer but have been learning programming since last 2 years. Only yesterday, I installed emacs and spent half an hour on it. Even opened a tutorial to learn the basics. But I got irritated pretty soon and gave it up. Now I am thinking about people who use it like a pro. How the hell did they master this beast?

Steeep learning curve. Baby steps and don't give up. Make judgement after a month or two. Key point is you can program it to do what you prefer.

Also: not for everyone.

I keep hearing people mentioning vim and emacs but I have a strong suspicion that if people spent the same time that they now spend learning and customizing vim and emacs learning a more modern IDE or advanced editor they'd be even more effective (except when they need to edit over ssh).

Personally I use Visual Studio Code all day now. But I've also been happy with Netbeans, IntelliJ, eclipse and Sublime. I rarely have to use a mouse or touchpad, it's all alt-tab, wait-a-second, alt-tab, edit, ctrl-s, ctrl-p type parts of a filename, ctrl-arrowkeys, F2 enter new name for a variable or field etc etc.

I've done one honest attempts at learning emacs (and I kind of enjoyed it) + lots of involuntary training on vim (yes, I prefer it to nano).

Re: Emacs 26.1 released

#38

I am not a programmer but have been learning programming since last 2 years. Only yesterday, I installed emacs and spent half an hour on it. Even opened a tutorial to learn the basics. But I got irritated pretty soon and gave it up. Now I am thinking about people who use it like a pro. How the hell did they master this beast?

Spend another half an hour, only effectively. Open the tutorial, do it. Sure, the keybindings are weird[0], but try to approach them without preconceptions or prejudice. Imagine you're learning professional software for a task you've never done before. Say, 3D modeling or audio work. There, you would just accept the conventions without second-guessing them.

Work on the tutorial, then spend about half an hour to a hour writing some text and code, so that you get used to interactions. Save a couple of files. Open a couple of files. You should be now comfortable enough to do basic work in Emacs. From there, it's practice, reading and exploration.

The cool thing about Emacs is that it's self-documenting. CTRL+h is your friend (in Emacs-speak, C-h). You remember a key combination but are not sure what it does? C-h k key-combination. Remember a function but not where is it bound? C-h w command, or C-h f command - the latter will give you a full documentation of it (and works for other elisp functions as well). Sorta-remember the command? C-h a whatyouremember - will run a regexp search on a list of all commands. Don't remember neither the key nor the command? M-x apropos whatyouremember - this will run a regex search on everything.

Also, the full documentation for Emacs should be available under C-h i. Or, if you are serious about Emacs and have some money to spare, I can recommend this book: https://www.masteringemacs.org/. It will get you up to speed in no time.

Beyond that, Google around. Look for Emacs guides, interesting packages, and interesting Emacs configs (search terms: .emacs, emacs dotfile). They'll introduce you to various productivity and life quality features for which Emacs is so loved.

--

[0] - they're weird because they predate the modern fashion. What you're used to came later, from IBM, and was popularized Microsoft.

Re: Emacs 26.1 released

#39

I am not a programmer but have been learning programming since last 2 years. Only yesterday, I installed emacs and spent half an hour on it. Even opened a tutorial to learn the basics. But I got irritated pretty soon and gave it up. Now I am thinking about people who use it like a pro. How the hell did they master this beast?

I was wondering that too. However it ended up having the best highlighting and indenting packages for the languages I was using. It was available on most platforms and most of all worked in an SSH session.

I wouldn't try to learn everything at once would just learn:

1) How to quit 2) How to save a file 3) Basic navigation: up, down, left, right, end of line, beginning of line 4) How to cut a line, and how to paste a line

Some of those you might already know from using bash or even basic text editing on macOS.

Re: Emacs 26.1 released

#40
post #16
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I similarly encourage any Mac users who are serious about emacs to use Mitsuharu Yamamoto's fork, which adds several usability improvements that RMS refuses to endorse and is just generally a better experience on Mac. Mainline GNU Emacs feels clunky and obsolete by comparison.

that RMS refuses to endorse What's his rationale?

That Emacs should not give an advantage to non-free operating systems.

Now, because Emacs is free software, this doesn't prevent anyone such as Yamamoto to go and modify Emacs. Rms doesn't want his officially-sanctioned version to have Mac-only improvements, but he also defends the GPL which allows other people to do so. Rms isn't going to go and tell Yamamoto to take down his fork or anything (but he probably will tell macOS users at every opportunity that they are working with an abusive OS).

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