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How I am deeply integrating Emacs

joshblais.com

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Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#61

Post by MarsIronPI »

ngc6677 wrote: post #29
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?

A good way to get straight in, is to download `emacs`, open it, and follow the built in "Emacs Tutorial" (click the link on the first page that is shown). It brings a new user through the concepts of the editor, how to move around, do some of the most usual actions, and get familiar with its vocabulary. At first, it is also a good practice not to install any package, and use the built-in capabilities (`magit` and `or…

Also be sure to use "C-h k" (describe-key), "C-h f" (describe-function) and "C-h v" (describe-variable) liberally. Emacs' self-documenting nature makes it significantly easier to understand what certain actions do and how certain options work.

> `magit` and `org-mode` are now part of the default installation)

Org is, but magit is not.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#62

Post by internet_points »

darshanime wrote: post #50
Mackser wrote: post #44

Are there any good videos showcasing a productive Emacs setup like this and how it's used for everyday tasks?

not exactly what you seek, but i like the emacs rocks clips: https://emacsrocks.com/

they're nice and short, but note that the latest one is 8 years old ;-)

(though https://www.youtube.com/@emacsrocks has newer stuff by the same person, seems like game dev in clojure and emacs)

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#63

Post by martinflack »

shevy-java wrote: post #15

This may sound strange, but I actually think we need just ... one editor. Now, this is not a "we need to favour vim over emacs". I think this is a stupid war, the vim versus emacs war. What I mean is ... basically most editors do almost the same exact thing. They look at some buffer for a file and help the user modify this. There is a finite number of operations possible. Why do people keep on re-implementing basic t…

Bluefish has had a release in October 2025 and the development page talks about gtk-3. Are you sure you've kept up to date with it? If you like it, stick with it.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#64

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

precompute wrote: post #20
douglee650 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t emacs slow down on really long files? I mean like 8,000 lines

Not these days. Native Compilation made emacs a faster and there have been a lot of other changes. In fundamental-mode, emacs can handle really large files. When opening files literally, it's even faster. I have this 104k line org-mode file and it's reasonably responsive. Reverting it takes a while, but the UI does not hang while the buffer is being formatted according to the mode. I use a mid tier laptop CPU (6C12T)…

I’ll bite, wtf is your org file?

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#65

Post by slowmovintarget »

skydhash wrote: post #21
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…

> they want a tool that has all relevant to their tasks front and center, all irrelevant invisible or nonexistent That is Emacs. You just have to drag the relevant up first and push down the irrelevant. The thing is in Emacs, most utilities don’t want to presume how you would want some feature. Even if they do have defaults, they are suggestions at most. Instead of getting a tools that you have to learn and conform t…

Polite tools that assume competence are such a pleasure to use.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#67

Post by stronglikedan »

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…

> Who cares?

People with RSI from constantly reaching for a mouse.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#68

Post by joshuablais »

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…

This is the thing people forget about emacs - it is primarily a lisp environment, entirely programmable. Something one can make their very own. Nothing else comes quite as close, even if the keyboard ergonomics (at least for me) do help to sell it. You can change the workspace to better the workflow in real time, that's the biggest selling feature.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#69

Post by joshuablais »

nine_k wrote: post #5
sim04ful wrote: post #4

The more I learn about emacs the more I feel we took the wrong fork on road in terms of the desktop metaphor decades ago.

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…

Some people want to just "do work" and not build a toolchest over the years. I think if I find myself doing something once, I will probably be doing it again, therefore the environment can help me greatly with achieving that goal in far less time. There is a diminishing return for some tasks, but some things I have written in emacs save me minutes of time each time they are run daily.

Re: How I am deeply integrating Emacs

#70

Post by joshuablais »

omnicognate wrote: post #7

Re EXWM and: > Emacs is single threaded, therefore if anything in the system hangs, the whole system hangs For development work I haven't found this to be an issue. Generally when coding I use very few X apps - pretty much just a web browser and maybe occasionally a PDF preview or docs browser. I don't think I've ever had a problem with the single-threaded behaviour blocking window management there. (And as an aside,…

I do have a wandering eye for EXWM, it probably would require my skill with emacs to increase and an optimization of my config so as to defer heavy tasks etc. If you have any suggestions on how to get there, I am all ears! The more I use emacs, the more I want to make my entire computer emacs.
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