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Bad Emacs Advice

masteringemacs.org

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61–70 of 148 posts

Re: Bad Emacs Advice

#61

Post by TacticalCoder »

0xdky wrote: post #28

Another lesson I learned from almost 2+ decades of using Emacs: Track your customizations in a version control. Using customize package and reading the diff in dot Emacs file has taught me quite a bit about certain aspects of the package. Side note: It would be awesome if Emacs could do the versioning as part of saving the customizations - build Emacs with libgit2 and make it a native git client.

for a reason I forgot my .emacs.d/ ("hidden" dir) is a symlink to emacsdotd/ (not hidden) and, yup, it's in git. Some are going to say: "why stop there!? version your entire user dir" and I can see the appeal (but haven't tried yet).

I'm one of those who track everything Emacs: including all the packages. When I upgrade packages, I first check that nothing broke then I commit "Bump avy to 20220114" or whatever. This way I can easily share the exact same config on several machines/several user accounts and I know I can easily roll back to a known fully working setup. YMMV.

Re: Bad Emacs Advice

#62

Post by uncletaco »

mynameismon wrote: post #41

Maybe it's me, but starting out with Emacs the previous month, I tried using Doom Emacs the other week, and the number of packages it was being used frightened me. Building your own init.el is much much better, because you know your Emacs in and out, and dont have random keybindings triggering stuff. Maybe I'll never get the popularity of Doom

> Maybe I'll never get the popularity of doom

Honestly its a double edged sword here. Doom has so many built in convenience functions like `set-font!` and `set-repl!` that an experienced elisp programmer would probably love it for building their own configuration.

On the other hand it bundles so much that an inexperienced emacs user might be more keen to do the bare minimum and rely on the packages bundled with doom to give them all the cool stuff without much effort. After all, why "reinvent the wheel"? I personally don't agree with that sentiment, I think learning how to build and maintain a personal emacs config makes a person a better programmer generally, and makes them prone to reading and writing documentation rather than copying solutions.

I started off with doom and even though I don't use it anymore I still find myself reading its source to figure out how Henrik approached a solution. Love it or hate it, Doom is great in both very good and bad ways for emacs users.

Re: Bad Emacs Advice

#63

Post by wiredfool »

toyg wrote: post #6
Yuioup wrote: post #2

just like pizza with pineapple, people do occasionally give out downright bad advice. I really don't understand this pineapple on pizza meme. I think it's delicious!

It's because it was not a thing in Italy, so accepting it was seen as the sign of being out of touch with "real pizza" traditions. Sadly, a natural reaction of disgusted rejection by Italians has been adopted by snobs all over the world. Nowadays you'll find it even in Italy, because tourists demand it and they pay hard cash, so fuck it all anyway.

There are lots of things which are non traditional but good on pizza.

Fish and chips for one. Curry wurst. Apple, persimmon, pine nut and blue cheese. Halloumi, pea, and mint. Mushroom, goat cheese and chipotle. Cranberry and white pudding. (Or cranberry and goat cheese) Christmas dinner. (Turkey, stuffing, ham, cranberry). Pulled pork. Roast pineapple and mint. Bacon and egg. Berry and cream cheese. Salmon and cream cheese and wasabi.

I have been known to make specific dinners in order to have the leftovers to put on pizza.

Re: Bad Emacs Advice

#64

Post by mynameismon »

uncletaco wrote: post #62
mynameismon wrote: post #41

Maybe it's me, but starting out with Emacs the previous month, I tried using Doom Emacs the other week, and the number of packages it was being used frightened me. Building your own init.el is much much better, because you know your Emacs in and out, and dont have random keybindings triggering stuff. Maybe I'll never get the popularity of Doom

> Maybe I'll never get the popularity of doom Honestly its a double edged sword here. Doom has so many built in convenience functions like `set-font!` and `set-repl!` that an experienced elisp programmer would probably love it for building their own configuration. On the other hand it bundles so much that an inexperienced emacs user might be more keen to do the bare minimum and rely on the packages bundled with doom…

> Doom has so many built in convenience functions like `set-font!` and `set-repl!` that an experienced elisp programmer would probably love it for building their own configuration.

Fair enough, I came from a background of JavaScript and Python, and Lisp was entirely foreign to me, let alone Elisp.

> After all, why "reinvent the wheel"?

I think its not of "reinvent the wheel", but let the other person do the decision making for you, including picking packages, setting up the modeline, so on and so forth. Starting out with a bare Emacs installation, you have to piece together the various packages that you would want to use, where as with Doom, you get everything out of the box. Also, maintaining your own init.el helps one learn Elisp

> I still find myself reading its source to figure out how Henrik approached a solution

For example?

Re: Bad Emacs Advice

#65

Post by thom »

mynameismon wrote: post #41

Maybe it's me, but starting out with Emacs the previous month, I tried using Doom Emacs the other week, and the number of packages it was being used frightened me. Building your own init.el is much much better, because you know your Emacs in and out, and dont have random keybindings triggering stuff. Maybe I'll never get the popularity of Doom

Some people like ready made Emacs distros, some people like hand coding their init.el (don't forget your early-init.el!) Some people like Arch, some people like Ubuntu. Some people like Linux From Scratch, some people like typewriters. Live your life, be free.

Re: Bad Emacs Advice

#66

Post by tom_ »

0xdky wrote: post #28

Another lesson I learned from almost 2+ decades of using Emacs: Track your customizations in a version control. Using customize package and reading the diff in dot Emacs file has taught me quite a bit about certain aspects of the package. Side note: It would be awesome if Emacs could do the versioning as part of saving the customizations - build Emacs with libgit2 and make it a native git client.

Yes. Also, don't put your own stuff in init.el. Put your own stuff in another file, and load it with load-file from init.el. This massively decreases the chances that Emacs will make a mess when it adds or updates its own stuff.

Re: Bad Emacs Advice

#67

Post by hbn »

toyg wrote: post #6
Yuioup wrote: post #2

just like pizza with pineapple, people do occasionally give out downright bad advice. I really don't understand this pineapple on pizza meme. I think it's delicious!

It's because it was not a thing in Italy, so accepting it was seen as the sign of being out of touch with "real pizza" traditions. Sadly, a natural reaction of disgusted rejection by Italians has been adopted by snobs all over the world. Nowadays you'll find it even in Italy, because tourists demand it and they pay hard cash, so fuck it all anyway.

This is the first I've heard as it being some kind of "it's not traditional" argument

Everyone I've ever talked to that has an issue with it just think it's gross. And they're usually people that are not very big risk-takers with their tastes, and order the exact same item at a restaurant every time they go. And only want either cheese pizza or pepperoni.

Re: Bad Emacs Advice

#68

Post by thom »

I dunno, everything the menu does can be recreated in the minibuffer (and you have things like apropos if you're really lost). Personally I like to reclaim as much space as possible, so I turn off modelines too (I have a bit of status info written into the minibuffer, but I'd kill that too if you could).

Re: Bad Emacs Advice

#69

Post by NateEag »

drothlis wrote: post #18

Years ago I wrote the Emacs tutorial I wish had existed when I was learning Emacs: https://david.rothlis.net/emacs/tutorial.html It follows a similar philosophy as the OP: Start by reading Emacs's built-in tutorial, and then my tutorial shows you how to leverage the built-in help system to figure out how to achieve what you want to do.

When people ask me how to learn Emacs, I point them to your tutorial.

It was hugely helpful to me in learning Emacs.

Thank you so much for writing it!

Re: Bad Emacs Advice

#70

Post by Shared404 »

wiredfool wrote: post #63
toyg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because it was not a thing in Italy, so accepting it was seen as the sign of being out of touch with "real pizza" traditions. Sadly, a natural reaction of disgusted rejection by Italians has been adopted by snobs all over the world. Nowadays you'll find it even in Italy, because tourists demand it and they pay hard cash, so fuck it all anyway.

There are lots of things which are non traditional but good on pizza. Fish and chips for one. Curry wurst. Apple, persimmon, pine nut and blue cheese. Halloumi, pea, and mint. Mushroom, goat cheese and chipotle. Cranberry and white pudding. (Or cranberry and goat cheese) Christmas dinner. (Turkey, stuffing, ham, cranberry). Pulled pork. Roast pineapple and mint. Bacon and egg. Berry and cream cheese. Salmon and cream…

Hard agree.

My first job was a pizza place where we had "Pizza of the Month" deals which were unusual pizza's. Street taco pizza? Amazing. Thanksgiving pizza? Amazing. Spicy honey + fresh mozzarella? Amazing. Baked potato pizza? Amazing.

Just gotta remember to not use tomato sauce for some of those.

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