Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

braveclojure.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 138 posts

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#61

Post by alokv28 »

computer wrote: post #55

Question to the Emacs crowd: how do I hit Alt comfortably? My instinct is to use my left ring finger, but have trouble doing that without moving my other fingers much. Could it be because I have very large hands (or because my keyboard sucks)? Is it a good idea to just remap capslock to be the meta key?

On OSX I have Meta bound to the Apple key.

What also helped is a tip borrowed from Steve Yegge [1] to bind C-x C-m to M-x (also C-c C-m, in case you miss the x). This avoids my most common use of Meta, allowing me to use the more comfortable Control (bound to Caps Lock).

[1] https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#62

Post by jcurbo »

I had tinkered with emacs over the years but mostly used vim for programming, until the past year or so when I started writing Haskell and LaTeX for school and put in a determined effort to use Emacs full time. I've found I like a 'regular' text editor more than vi's modes, and that (like rickdale's comment) when I've tried out other editors like Textmate or Sublime Text, they feel like they're missing something compared to the raw extensibility of Emacs. (What that something is I'm not quite sure and - I just feel like if I want an extensible editor, emacs is the best. Strong opinion weakly held I guess)

My advice to new users is to start simple and try to only add in extensions/modifications when you hit pain points. I added some universally useful/specific ones early on like AuCTeX, a solarized theme, turning on syntax highlighting, haskell-mode, and so on, but I've found that piling on a ton of plugins and getting away from the 'default' behavior makes it much harder to create a comfortable workflow. This is also why I'm not a fan of stuff like Prelude or emacs-starter-kit.

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#63

Post by rrmm »

rickdale wrote: post #15

When I was in college I had the privilege to work on a project with a developer that understood emacs as on operating system and used it as a way of life. When we started the project he would yell at me whenever I took my hand off the keyboard and tried to use the mouse. Finally he started to hit my hand with a ruler when I would lift it up. My emacs skills are still probably only 1% of his, but after working that sh…

hah! I did this to people too. I ended up popping the keycaps of the arrows off the keyboard and taping over the hole.

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#64

Post by hannibal5 »

rickdale wrote: post #15

When I was in college I had the privilege to work on a project with a developer that understood emacs as on operating system and used it as a way of life. When we started the project he would yell at me whenever I took my hand off the keyboard and tried to use the mouse. Finally he started to hit my hand with a ruler when I would lift it up. My emacs skills are still probably only 1% of his, but after working that sh…

Chapter 8: The Cruel Tutelage of RMS.

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#67

Post by beffbernard »

computer wrote: post #55

Question to the Emacs crowd: how do I hit Alt comfortably? My instinct is to use my left ring finger, but have trouble doing that without moving my other fingers much. Could it be because I have very large hands (or because my keyboard sucks)? Is it a good idea to just remap capslock to be the meta key?

I use my thumb.

Though I replaced my CAPSLOCK with CTRL and I mapped C-x C-m and C-c C-m to be equivalent to M-x. This dramatically reduce my usage of Alt.

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#68

Post by smacktoward »

rickdale wrote: post #15

When I was in college I had the privilege to work on a project with a developer that understood emacs as on operating system and used it as a way of life. When we started the project he would yell at me whenever I took my hand off the keyboard and tried to use the mouse. Finally he started to hit my hand with a ruler when I would lift it up. My emacs skills are still probably only 1% of his, but after working that sh…

Fifty Shades of GNU?

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#69

Post by terhechte »

lord_quas wrote: post #49
outworlder wrote: post #24

Finally an introduction that has screenshots which don't remind you of the 70's. Fonts and color schemes do matter, specially nowadays with the likes of Sublime and Textmate. Even more so for new users.

This is one of the most beautiful theme I've come across, and the one I am currently using: https://github.com/jasonm23/emacs-purple-haze-theme

Interestingly, I use Soothe (https://github.com/jasonm23/emacs-soothe-theme) also by the same guy, which is also one of the most beautiful themes to ever grace one of my editors.

Re: Start Using Emacs – A Thorough Guide for Beginners

#70

Post by skylan_q »

RBerenguel wrote: post #17
burgerz wrote: post #14

What benefits does Emacs have over something like Sublime? All I can see is you can customize a million key binds so you don't have to use the mouse. Sorry but I'm not racing type to as fast as possible when I write code, I don't mind spending an extra second and using a cursor.

Emacs also binds almost any REPL (Python, Lisp dialects, Erlang...) There's also AucTeX if you need to write TeX (the best thing for LaTeX out there.) Emacs is also completely configurable with emacs lisp: you can write your own "things." For example, I have a mode I used to format posts for my blog: with just a few custom keybindings I had it formatted to my tastes and special CSS rules. PS: Also, leaving the keyboa…

I can't repeat myself enough.

TRAMP mode: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode

I do plenty of work over ssh, and this saves me the headache of dealing with screens and multiple terminals.

Post reply on HN