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Magit Kickstarter fully funded

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Re: Magit Kickstarter fully funded

#61

Post by lionel- »

SadWebDeveloper wrote: post #54
CJefferson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the example of kickstarter, it seems completely undiscoverable -- things just keep happening and popping up and down, with no obvious indication of how, or why, those things were selected. It's a demo which I'm sure appeals to emacs users, who are the target, but I couldn't imagine using it as a non-emacs user. I previously tried learning emacs to use OrgMode, and gave up after a couple of days when I failed to…

This is my original point, tbh i didn't know about magit before this post, when i first opened the link and find out about it somehow i expected a GUI rather than a text-based app, m sure vim/emacs fans are excited about it but to me, this type of UIs (text-based) feel old and clunky. it's like we were still using norton/midnight commander for handling our files.

The point of this kind of UI is that they become an extension of yourself. Saying these UI are old and clunky is exactly like saying a keyboard is old and clunky.

Re: Magit Kickstarter fully funded

#62

Post by TeMPOraL »

tarsius wrote: post #60
dang wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundraisers are penalized on HN because they don't fit the site mandate. There are always exceptions though. If we had known about this one we might have made an exception for it.

Ah, didn't know about this. It was a bit frustrating to see 15 attempts by happy Magit users to let HN know about the campaign fail miserably. Especially because a few weeks earlier "Emacs and Magit" [1] easily made it to #1. So when this thread at least managed to stay on the front page I figured that drama and success sell, trying to interest potential users in a tool that has more to offer than meets the eye, not…

Personally I figured that the words Emacs and Kickstarter in the same headline would induce lots of surprise with HNers. Alas, I didn't know about the penalty. Its existence is obvious in retrospect, though.

Re: Magit Kickstarter fully funded

#63

Post by tarsius »

SadWebDeveloper wrote: post #54
CJefferson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the example of kickstarter, it seems completely undiscoverable -- things just keep happening and popping up and down, with no obvious indication of how, or why, those things were selected. It's a demo which I'm sure appeals to emacs users, who are the target, but I couldn't imagine using it as a non-emacs user. I previously tried learning emacs to use OrgMode, and gave up after a couple of days when I failed to…

This is my original point, tbh i didn't know about magit before this post, when i first opened the link and find out about it somehow i expected a GUI rather than a text-based app, m sure vim/emacs fans are excited about it but to me, this type of UIs (text-based) feel old and clunky. it's like we were still using norton/midnight commander for handling our files.

Magit is definitely different enough from both your conventional GUI and command-line interface to make it hard to immediately see its benefits, which is why I did not only post some commented screenshots [1] (which may fail to impress), but also a text [2] which explains in what ways Magit differs from GUIs and command-line interfaces and what sort of benefits it draws from that.

[1] https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/magit-walk-through/#start [2] https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/the-magical-git-interface/#st...

A reason why it might actually be an advantage that the interface is "text based" is that the thing the tool interacts with is also text [3]. The primary difference to git is that the "output" is "actionable", the primary difference to GUIs is that every feature of git can be exposed quite naturally.

[3] And a major advantage of that is that the barrier between writing the code and thinking of it in terms of change sets starts to break down.

Re: Magit Kickstarter fully funded

#64

Post by taeric »

funspectre wrote: post #57
taeric wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key bindings are typically very mnenomic. For example "s" stages, "c" brings up the commit window, "b" the branches window, etc. There are a few that go against this. "x", for example. But it really becomes almost conversational. Edit: corrected spelling of mnenomic. :) Not convinced it is correct word, oddly...

The correct spelling should be mnemonic.

Yeah, originally I put pneumonic. Which, is definitely wrong.

I just keep thinking there is another word that is even more applicable than mnemonic. Guessing I'm just confusing myself.

Re: Magit Kickstarter fully funded

#65

Post by agumonkey »

tptacek wrote: post #3

Wow, I had no idea this was happening! You can still back it and apparently get Magit stickers. Magit is so good that it's actually a reason to use Emacs in the first place.

> Magit is so good that it's actually a reason to use Emacs in the first place.

This is a damn high compliment.

Re: Magit Kickstarter fully funded

#66

Post by Myrmornis »

pmoriarty wrote: post #36
cjauvin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I find that Helm is the third (although I'm aware it might not be a popular opinion).

If you like Helm, check out Ivy, Counsel, and Swiper.[1] They do many of the things that Helm does, but are a lot faster, less buggy, and have a less unorthodox UI. Also check out Hydra (by the same author).[2] That's really revolutionized my Emacs experience recently. It's customizable menu system you can add anywhere. I've put all those Emacs functions I keep forgetting exist in to it and now they're all at my fing…

I've tried twice to switch from helm (especially helm-projectile-grep) to the ivy ecosystem and I found the way that helm invokes the search tools to result in a much faster experience, and saw no reason to switch.

Re: Magit Kickstarter fully funded

#67

Post by agumonkey »

dman wrote: post #10
tptacek wrote: post #3

Wow, I had no idea this was happening! You can still back it and apparently get Magit stickers. Magit is so good that it's actually a reason to use Emacs in the first place.

Org mode is the other reason.

I like and appreciate org mode a lot, but I could live without and not notice. Emacs is more my lispy scratchpad with OS batteries (I mean bindat, sockets, comint, eshell, -mode, ...)

Re: Magit Kickstarter fully funded

#68

Post by Myrmornis »

dman wrote: post #10
tptacek wrote: post #3

Wow, I had no idea this was happening! You can still back it and apparently get Magit stickers. Magit is so good that it's actually a reason to use Emacs in the first place.

Org mode is the other reason.

Org-mode, has a huge amount of functionality in it. One response to that is that yes, it's amazing, a very impressive ecosystem. Another response is that the lack of single-purpose and modularity is maddening; it's tempting to say it's against the unix design philosophy etc.

Of course, that's also the old joke about emacs. Personally, as I got more heavily involved in software development, I wound my org-mode usage down to just outlining and syntax-highlighted source code blocks.

Re: Magit Kickstarter fully funded

#69

Post by crispinb »

(A bit of an aside) This represents an interesting 1-person 'business model': make yourself useful (and known to be useful) working on an open source project. Once established, use kickstarter to gain some full/part-time funding. The amount of pre-kickstarter work involved to get there obviously wouldn't make a good business case in purely utilitarian terms, but it seems like an appealing way to have a chance at getting paid to do some good work.

Re: Magit Kickstarter fully funded

#70

Post by somedudetbh »

tarsius wrote: post #34

(author here) The support I received during the last three weeks has been phenomenal! Thanks again! The only disappointment was that the campaign did not get a lot of press outside the Emacs community, which was a bit frustrating because I published a lot of the articles that are intended for potential users who are not Emacs users. Until now that is - please have a look [1]. I found it quite challenging to explain w…

Magit is really an incredible piece of work. Thanks so much for it. I mean, I already use emacs, but I feel it would be a legitimate reason to switch to emacs, or even to use emacs just when dealing with Git operations.
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