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Emacs, how it all started for me

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Re: Emacs, how it all started for me

#61

Post by stackghost »

iLemming wrote: post #58
stackghost wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You just decided it's hard/time consuming/worthless even though you have "never heard" about it? You must mave misread what I wrote, because you're conflating two different statements. >I have to move between different projects, in different PLs, dissimilar teams; I poke into various APIs; consume data in all sorts of formats None of this requires elisp beyond the use-package incantations to install a given mode, wh…

> I have zero desire to hack around in it for fun You just sit here stiff-necked without even the slightest clue of what I'm talking about. I don't hack for "fun", I hack with a purpose. Here's a practical anecdote. I was pair programming with Matthew over Zoom and he was showing me certain things. He would navigate to different sites, switch between terminal and his editor, run some scripts etc. I just couldn't bear…

>So why don't you take my word for it and give it a try, instead of arguing that the side (you have never even experienced) is not worth your attention?

Because you're being too aggressive and unpleasant

>What do you have to lose anyway?

Time spent on more important things

Re: Emacs, how it all started for me

#62

Post by egorelik »

stackghost wrote: post #38
iLemming wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs is most definitely not a rocket science. The problem with people trying Emacs is that they approach it just like any other text editor, instead of understanding the grand, core principle of it - Emacs is first and foremost a Lisp interpreter with a built-in text editor and not the other way around. Therefore it makes much better sense if you approach it from a Lisp perspective. Alas, many, perhaps most, beginne…

>Emacs is first and foremost a Lisp interpreter with a built-in text editor and not the other way around. I've been using emacs as my primary editor since about 2002 and I hate this take. Emacs Lisp is by far the worst part of emacs. It is a horrible language, best kept dark and deep in the vaults, not to be used, unless at the uttermost end of need. My config, after more than two decades, is about 400 lines, and I c…

To each their own, but I don't really understand the sheer hatred elisp puts in some people. As far as scripting languages go, it's pretty good. I haven't seen a scripting language alternative I'd really prefer for this - maybe Clojure or some other modernized lisp.

Re: Emacs, how it all started for me

#63

Post by hollerith »

stackghost wrote: post #38
iLemming wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs is most definitely not a rocket science. The problem with people trying Emacs is that they approach it just like any other text editor, instead of understanding the grand, core principle of it - Emacs is first and foremost a Lisp interpreter with a built-in text editor and not the other way around. Therefore it makes much better sense if you approach it from a Lisp perspective. Alas, many, perhaps most, beginne…

>Emacs is first and foremost a Lisp interpreter with a built-in text editor and not the other way around. I've been using emacs as my primary editor since about 2002 and I hate this take. Emacs Lisp is by far the worst part of emacs. It is a horrible language, best kept dark and deep in the vaults, not to be used, unless at the uttermost end of need. My config, after more than two decades, is about 400 lines, and I c…

Some of us like Emacs Lisp fine.

Its documentation (the manual in Info and M-x describe-function, etc) is exceptionally good. I don't need to be connected to the net when I'm writing something in Emacs Lisp. Try that with Javascript!

Re: Emacs, how it all started for me

#64

Post by iLemming »

stackghost wrote: post #61
iLemming wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have zero desire to hack around in it for fun You just sit here stiff-necked without even the slightest clue of what I'm talking about. I don't hack for "fun", I hack with a purpose. Here's a practical anecdote. I was pair programming with Matthew over Zoom and he was showing me certain things. He would navigate to different sites, switch between terminal and his editor, run some scripts etc. I just couldn't bear…

>So why don't you take my word for it and give it a try, instead of arguing that the side (you have never even experienced) is not worth your attention? Because you're being too aggressive and unpleasant >What do you have to lose anyway? Time spent on more important things

> Because you're being too aggressive and unpleasant

Huh. Well, I guess, fair enough. Would be weird for me to assert that I don't feel like it. What could I say in my defense? Jesus tried to spread the word nicely, have you heard what happened to him later? :)

> Time spent on more important things

There are a bunch of things I had to learn over the years. Three things I have never, not once, ever regretted spending some time getting familiar with - Linux, Vim-navigation and Lisp. All three grand ideas have a profound compounding effect on my workflow. Turns out, later you'd carry regret not for trying random things, but for things you have never tried. I do to a certain degree regret chasing things that turned out to be ephemeral, but that time doesn't feel exactly wasted. The only genuine regret I still carry - I wish I had someone in my life to urge me to try learning these things sooner. I do absolutely regret the time wasted. All three taught me a great deal of wisdom, and I wish I did it when I was much younger.

Re: Emacs, how it all started for me

#65

Post by stackghost »

iLemming wrote: post #54
stackghost wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Emacs is first and foremost a Lisp interpreter with a built-in text editor and not the other way around. I've been using emacs as my primary editor since about 2002 and I hate this take. Emacs Lisp is by far the worst part of emacs. It is a horrible language, best kept dark and deep in the vaults, not to be used, unless at the uttermost end of need. My config, after more than two decades, is about 400 lines, and I c…

> Emacs Lisp is by far the worst part of emacs Say what you want, but I wouldn't trade it for any other (non-homoiconic) language. Sure, it won't win the contest of the "nicest Lisp", nevertheless - it's a Lisp, and therefore far better suited for the things Emacs is designed to do. Have you ever thought why Org-mode, developed and maintained by a handful of people (perhaps fewer people than the React.js core team ha…

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Re: Emacs, how it all started for me

#66

Post by iLemming »

egorelik wrote: post #62
stackghost wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Emacs is first and foremost a Lisp interpreter with a built-in text editor and not the other way around. I've been using emacs as my primary editor since about 2002 and I hate this take. Emacs Lisp is by far the worst part of emacs. It is a horrible language, best kept dark and deep in the vaults, not to be used, unless at the uttermost end of need. My config, after more than two decades, is about 400 lines, and I c…

To each their own, but I don't really understand the sheer hatred elisp puts in some people. As far as scripting languages go, it's pretty good. I haven't seen a scripting language alternative I'd really prefer for this - maybe Clojure or some other modernized lisp.

It's not just Elisp, I think, just any Lisp dialect gets this reaction. Which, honestly, I can't fully comprehend. Wait, how do even people use Emacs while at the same time hating Lisp? Isn't that kind of a painful way to deal with it in general? Sounds like having extreme motion sickness but still loving cars, puking all the way while driving them.

Re: Emacs, how it all started for me

#67

Post by iLemming »

stackghost wrote: post #65
iLemming wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emacs Lisp is by far the worst part of emacs Say what you want, but I wouldn't trade it for any other (non-homoiconic) language. Sure, it won't win the contest of the "nicest Lisp", nevertheless - it's a Lisp, and therefore far better suited for the things Emacs is designed to do. Have you ever thought why Org-mode, developed and maintained by a handful of people (perhaps fewer people than the React.js core team ha…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Emacs, how it all started for me

#68

Post by egorelik »

iLemming wrote: post #66
egorelik wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To each their own, but I don't really understand the sheer hatred elisp puts in some people. As far as scripting languages go, it's pretty good. I haven't seen a scripting language alternative I'd really prefer for this - maybe Clojure or some other modernized lisp.

It's not just Elisp, I think, just any Lisp dialect gets this reaction. Which, honestly, I can't fully comprehend. Wait, how do even people use Emacs while at the same time hating Lisp? Isn't that kind of a painful way to deal with it in general? Sounds like having extreme motion sickness but still loving cars, puking all the way while driving them.

I think there is a crowd, maybe less common than the others, that just want less warts. I can understand that, though I'm not sure the usual dialects that get thrown around are much better.

What I don't understand is wanting to replace elisp with a mainstream scripting language. None of them are really functional-style languages; it's just a completely different world.

(Non-scripting languages are a different story, but fundamentally a different use case.)

Re: Emacs, how it all started for me

#69

Post by a_e_k »

drdexebtjl wrote: post #60
a_e_k wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only problem is that, in the name of not breaking backwards-compatibility (or something like that), the archaic defaults have remained. As a user since '97, I've often felt that this philosophy is entirely, well, backwards. I know how to read the release notes to learn of such changes and how to edit my personal init.el file to revert a setting if I don't like the new default. As long as no one takes away the o…

One solution that I really like for that is having the user configuration carry some kind of version number. Then, to change a default from `old` to `new`, you instead change it to `configVersion >= x ? new : old`, and add some kind of non-fatal warning in the else case instructing users to set their config to `old` explicitly. You don't break people's setups, they become aware of new defaults without reading release…

I do like that general idea. I bet it would be possible wrap in a handy elisp macro.

Re: Emacs, how it all started for me

#70

Post by fileeditview »

vondur wrote: post #40
fileeditview wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some good tutorials on youtube to start from zero. E.g. "Emacs from scratch" by System Crafters. I only started using an AI to help fix issues or understand configuration problems when my config was already >1000 lines. But yea there are several ways to approach this :)

Yikes, that's over 12 hours of videos in that series. Stuff like that scares me away from trying it out.

I understand that. It's very slow pace. I did it bit by bit over several days. But I was also often skipping ahead.
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