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How I am deeply integrating Emacs

joshblais.com

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Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#51

Post by jbstack »

tmtvl wrote: post #46
adlpz wrote: post #37

A question for the heavy Emacs users: What's your take on opinionated distros like Doom Emacs or Spacemacs? I've been doing my daily journaling and task management on Emacs for while now, using Doom Emacs. Rationale was that it'd be mostly pre-configured to a sane standard and that, for actual text editing, I'm a long time vim enjoyer, so evil mode is great there. However I always feel that when I go beyond the safe…

My petty opinion is that distributions which disable the menu bar are bad, distributions which use an edgelord dark theme are bad, and distributions which do both are terrible. Where Doom in particular is concerned I dislike the fact that it starts with Vi keybindings by default (I quite disfavour modal editing, there's a reason I switched away from Vim after 5 years) and that it changes the 's' binding so I can't ev…

I think some of these are unfair criticisms, because they are things that can be trivially changed. E.g. disabling evil mode or changing the theme are one-line modifications in the Doom config. After all, any opinionated Emacs distro has to make some choices otherwise there would be little point in anyone using one.

For me the issues with Doom are (a) the complexity as a whole that it introduces, and (b) so many things are already installed/configured that you end up using them without any real "under the hood" understanding which is so essential for customisation.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#52

Post by jbstack »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #38
fhd2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the power of Emacs is mainly that I can do everything with the keyboard, which is not only much faster, but also - to me - much more enjoyable than going through visual menus with the mouse. For someone not good with the keyboard, it's probably a nightmare. I suppose it's good for power users and terrible for casual users, and I don't know if there's any way to really build one user interface that works equal…

When I got into emacs 20+ years ago the "use only the keyboard" thing was a huge point of pride and to this day I don't understand why. Who cares? I use emacs because I can code the entire environment. Fundamentally the mouse is just a form of modal editing. Emacs supports this in spades of course, and god-mode is my modal input minor mode of choice, but clicking to jump to a position on screen can often be a lot fas…

I think this largely misses the point. It isn't about which out of keyboard vs mouse is objectively better or faster. It's about subjective comfort. If a system "feels" nicer to use then I'll feel more motivated while using it which means I'll use it more and be more productive, and that's a sufficiently good reason to prefer one over the other. For me, that means using the keyboard and not the mouse.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#53

Post by bodge5000 »

omnicognate wrote: post #11
nine_k wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs is great for people who are fine tinkering with their tools, and adjusting them to their needs and tastes. Emacs improves my quality of life quite a bit. A lot of people hate that, they want a tool that has all relevant to their tasks front and center, all irrelevant invisible or nonexistent, and zero options to tinker with. It should just work, and preferably never change. A middle ground are the browsers that…

> A lot of people hate that It seems a curious attitude for a developer, though. My curiosity about how things work and the joy I get when I make a computer do the specific thing I want it to do for me are the reasons I program for a living.

I fit into this category so I might be able to explain. I'd like to learn emacs and build my perfect config for my WM and so on, but on top of that theres a long list of other stuff I want to do and build and learn. My time is finite and with all the other demands of life, my energy even moreso, so naturally I have to make sacrifices.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#54

Post by jbstack »

kirubakaran wrote: post #9
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #6

I like eMacs but I feel the whole workflow is wrong. Buffers are a stacked tiled window manager inside your window manager. Your browser is a tabbed window manager, and many other applications are also window managers. I wish any sub buffer of any application was for all intents and purposes a dedicated window, so the WM can take care of the rest. Maybe it’s an adjustment that I could make in my workflow, but a globa…

You can configure Emacs to open each buffer in a new frame — ie “window” and manage them with your window manager

Exactly. I share the view that it doesn't make sense to effectively have two window managers running (one in my WM and one in Emacs) with different philosophies and shortcuts. But, and in a more general sense this is the great thing about Emacs, if you don't like its default behaviour you just change it.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#55

Post by slu »

voidUpdate wrote: post #24

I keep hearing about emacs and how awesome it is, is there a good resource for a complete beginner who is familiar with programming but not necessarily editors like vim or emacs, just to get started?

The "Mastering Emacs" is great. But, you don't need it to get started, instead check https://www.masteringemacs.org/reading-guide

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#56

Post by gtpedrosa »

adlpz wrote: post #37

A question for the heavy Emacs users: What's your take on opinionated distros like Doom Emacs or Spacemacs? I've been doing my daily journaling and task management on Emacs for while now, using Doom Emacs. Rationale was that it'd be mostly pre-configured to a sane standard and that, for actual text editing, I'm a long time vim enjoyer, so evil mode is great there. However I always feel that when I go beyond the safe…

I'm in the same boat and curious if other more experienced users have any resources to point to. My anedoctal data point is that after starting with doom emacs and having problems to set it up on another machine i fund out all i needed was a very small configuration file to accomplish my orgmode/agenda usage needs. So all it took was an issue and a clear vision of the goal to find a way through. Maybe it is a healthy approach to keep the complexity manageable to your usage

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#57

Post by cluckindan »

Aromasin wrote: post #34
piokoch wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe or not, you can go 100% keyboard-only even on Windows. I had a friend, Win server admin (big Microsoft fun), who wasn't using mouse at all.

You can but that doesn't neccesarily mean you should . I tried it for a while, after seeing my Eve Online friend skipping through tasks at a rate of knots without any mouse movement. My god the amount of tab pressing I had to do to get anything done was crippling. I might have to jump through 15 times to get to something that would take me less than a second to click.

Which is why most programs support alt-hotkeys.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#58

Post by omnicognate »

bodge5000 wrote: post #53
omnicognate wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of people hate that It seems a curious attitude for a developer, though. My curiosity about how things work and the joy I get when I make a computer do the specific thing I want it to do for me are the reasons I program for a living.

I fit into this category so I might be able to explain. I'd like to learn emacs and build my perfect config for my WM and so on, but on top of that theres a long list of other stuff I want to do and build and learn. My time is finite and with all the other demands of life, my energy even moreso, so naturally I have to make sacrifices.

That doesn't sound like you "hate that", more like you're making a time management choice. I'd challenge it, as I find time spent on creating a good developmemnt environment pays off very well in overall productivity terms, up to a point, but it's your choice to make. Emacs certainly isnt for everyone, even among those that enjoy tinkering.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#59

Post by jwrallie »

adlpz wrote: post #37

A question for the heavy Emacs users: What's your take on opinionated distros like Doom Emacs or Spacemacs? I've been doing my daily journaling and task management on Emacs for while now, using Doom Emacs. Rationale was that it'd be mostly pre-configured to a sane standard and that, for actual text editing, I'm a long time vim enjoyer, so evil mode is great there. However I always feel that when I go beyond the safe…

I went from Emacs to Vim to Vscode and back to Emacs with Doom, but I still use pretty much all of them. Vscode has copilot, Emacs has org mode, vim is great for light editing.

Vim is the magic that lets me use all of those for what I want without having to change muscle memory, and Doom just happens to aligns with my needs perfectly on that regard.

I think anyone trying to master Emacs within the lines of this article will be trying to bend it to their particular needs and likely will be annoyed at any opinionated configuration.

The answer to your question will depend if you want to add community extensions beyond what Doom integrates or if you want to personalize Emacs by yourself. The latter will work just fine with leader keys as long as you map them, all Elisp should be still available in pretty much the same way. The former will probably be much harder.

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