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Joining the Church of Emacs

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Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#31

Post by eric4smith »

I never got into the eMacs cult.

Been always a vim/vi guy.

To me, using eMacs is like people in the cult of lisp: “Why isn’t lisp running the world?” (While the code in Java 8 every day)

I get it, a few friends of mine actually use eMacs and we remain friends.

But bruh, I’m a CLI guy and I like Vim. It’s literally everywhere.

Even on my all powerful Mac M1 laptop I still use Vim. No not Mac vim, not Visual Code, not NeoVim or some other bastardized version of Vim.

Just Vim. Or vi.

And my .vimrc is on all the computers and servers I use. No plugins.

To each his own. Right?

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#32

Post by kramerger »

eric4smith wrote: post #31

I never got into the eMacs cult. Been always a vim/vi guy. To me, using eMacs is like people in the cult of lisp: “Why isn’t lisp running the world?” (While the code in Java 8 every day) I get it, a few friends of mine actually use eMacs and we remain friends. But bruh, I’m a CLI guy and I like Vim. It’s literally everywhere. Even on my all powerful Mac M1 laptop I still use Vim. No not Mac vim, not Visual Code, not…

This is like a Scientologist criticizing Jehovahs Witness :)

Okay, since this is HN and not Reddit let me make this post a bit more useful: has anyone tried "mg"? It is an openbsd (?) project that is similar to Emacs on a first glance but even lighter than barebone vim. It is what I use for remote editing instead of vi and nano.

https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-current/man1/mg.1

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#33

Post by Y_Y »

pca006132 wrote: post #11

Just wondering is there a way to record macros (similar to vim) and replay them really quickly. I often use this to do batch processing for files, and evil is really slow due to slow rendering after each macro operation.

There's a painfully simple answer to this. Use evil-mode, and then just make your macro exactly as you would in vim. You can have the best of both worlds and it mystifies me when not everyone does this. (No accounting for taste etc.)

Imagine everyone around you argued about it was better to wear socks or to wear shoes, and you just have to wonder why they don't try doing both at once?

Now I wonder if there are people who use Emacs controls in vim and wear their socks outside their shoes.

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#34

Post by Barrin92 »

frodetb wrote: post #23

With all the devotion on display from so many very clever people, it's hard not to be at least a little curious about Emacs. But I still have something holding me back. On the one hand, the entire environment that I've heard described might be very powerful. But at the same time, it is a whole new system to learn and get into, very specific to itself, on top of the operating system I'm already using. People say you w…

>but I tend to be scared away instead.

I think a lot of the myth-making around the power and the cleverness of long time emacs wizards paradoxically achieves exactly what happened to you, it makes Emacs seem more intimidating than it is. Also true for a lot of programming languages with that reputation.

Is emacs old, has weird keybindings and weird UI paradigms? Yes, but it's also just a piece of software and there's nothing in the way of learning it. It calls itself the self-documenting text editor for a reason, it has plenty of learning tools deliberately built in. Despite its reputation, from language support to help there's very few pieces of software that have put that much emphasis on being accessible.

You can still use other software, don't need to go all-in, etc, but I'd always recommend everyone to give it at least a shot.

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#35

Post by bitwize »

pvaldes wrote: post #30
frodetb wrote: post #23

With all the devotion on display from so many very clever people, it's hard not to be at least a little curious about Emacs. But I still have something holding me back. On the one hand, the entire environment that I've heard described might be very powerful. But at the same time, it is a whole new system to learn and get into, very specific to itself, on top of the operating system I'm already using. People say you w…

Is all about muscular memory, so you need to repeat and repeat, and take your time to develop it. Is normal not to grasp it after a few hours using the program. Nobody expects taking one karate class and exit being a master of katas. First emacs kata should include this very simple concepts 1.Opening a file (the easy way) -> extra simple. Type "emacs /path/to/my-file" in a terminal. If a file with this name does not…

Yes, except the keystroke to "close a file" is C-x k (for kill buffer).

Like you said, muscle memory. It's not surprising that you didn't remember the exact name of the keystroke because normally, you just do it.

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#36

Post by dotancohen »

donatj wrote: post #28

I’ve always been a vi/vim guy, it’s not a religious thing, it’s just a decently powerful editor available on most servers I managed to kind of get my head around enough to be productive. I find the weird holy war between the two strange and kind of a turn off.

After decades of using VIM, then NeoVim, I now use Emacs with Evil. The old joke that Emacs is a terrific OS but missing a decent text editor is truer today more than ever.

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#37

Post by bitwize »

gpderetta wrote: post #26
frodetb wrote: post #23

With all the devotion on display from so many very clever people, it's hard not to be at least a little curious about Emacs. But I still have something holding me back. On the one hand, the entire environment that I've heard described might be very powerful. But at the same time, it is a whole new system to learn and get into, very specific to itself, on top of the operating system I'm already using. People say you w…

You do not have to doeverything in emacs. At the end of the day it is a tool and it should make your life easier. Do in it only the bits that actually help you, if any. With time you might do more and more stuff. Or not, that's fine. For example I have been using emacs for more than 20 years and only recently I got into the habit of actually running shells from inside it (it is very convenient, but just opening anoth…

Indeed, no one is telling you you have to or should do everything in Emacs.

But much like Linux itself was in the Windows 9x era, it is a gravity well for your attention, and you will want to do more and more with it if you can.

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#38

Post by JHonaker »

donatj wrote: post #28

I’ve always been a vi/vim guy, it’s not a religious thing, it’s just a decently powerful editor available on most servers I managed to kind of get my head around enough to be productive. I find the weird holy war between the two strange and kind of a turn off.

I don’t think anyone actually thinks it’s anything other than a joke. Hell, many Emacs users use a very complete Vim emulation package called Evil. In fact, the two most popular “pre-configured setups” are designed around Vim keys.

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#39

Post by protomyth »

donatj wrote: post #28

I’ve always been a vi/vim guy, it’s not a religious thing, it’s just a decently powerful editor available on most servers I managed to kind of get my head around enough to be productive. I find the weird holy war between the two strange and kind of a turn off.

I get the feeling a lot of vi/vim users are folks who do sysadmin (whatever fun title that has this year) and vi/vim are installed on the box by default. You don't need a very deep knowledge of vi/vim to be productive. Its basically single page cheat-sheet to be productive enough for a lot of jobs, and it works ok over a low bandwidth connection.

Re: Joining the Church of Emacs

#40

Post by rany_ »

daptaq wrote: post #20
rany_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also makes git blame a lot less useful in these scenarios.

You can pass git blame -w to ignore whitespace changes, though yes, in general it is annoying.

I wouldn't have made this comment if I knew that. Though I suppose this is still an annoyance for git web interfaces. Thanks for the info!
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