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Making Emacs Popular Again

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Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#691
post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why it'll slowly go extinct.

emacs is Lindy. VS Code will go extinct before Emacs. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Effect )

We don’t know when vscode will or won’t go extinct. It’s less distinct than other similar editors in comparison to emacs, so the switching cost is a lot lower. But my point being isn’t that vscode will somehow be “the great winner,” but rather that new things will come and continue to replace the old.

Emacs has/had the option of changing with the times. They’ve opted out of that. So most newcomers will opt out of emacs, and thus it’ll slowly die out.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a researcher, and I have a git repository for my notes, which I edit using markdown. It supports latex math, tables, cross links, labels, and html if I need to do anything fancy, like inserting images, videos, etc. (youtube embedded video? no problem). I can edit them from any device, and they get sync'ed everywhere via git. I can also read them from everywhere, and markdown renders super nicely. I take markdown…

Can you elaborate, please? How do you use latex, images and cross-links in markdown?

As others have mentioned:

* $$2^n$$ for latex, renders fine on all browsers

* ![]() for images

* []() for links, including cross-links

    ** The link syntax is [](), so for example [this is a link](http://google.com)

    ** Markdown ## Headers have an anchor with their name (e.g. `#Headers`), so you can cross-reference any other 
    section of any other note in the git repo by just using [see this section](./path/to/other/note.md#that-section)
I have a simple CI service on my git repo that checks for broken links, so that if I move a file I get a CI error if there are broken links to it.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#693
post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Install Spacemacs. 2. Observe a flurry of errors every time you start emacs. Ignore and hope it works because no idea how to fix any of it. 3. Find, among a million others, the command that seems to do what exactly what you want. Command gives an error. Dunno how to debug. 4. Watch emacs features that should work ootb not work because spacemacs or evil or one of the three bazillion packages did something that brok…

If you install Spacemacs from develop branch, don't change the defaults and enable just the git plugin, it's pretty much always going to work just fine unless elpa is down or something. I install Spacemacs in every machine for the sole reason of using Magit with vim bindings. It's so far beyond all other git clients it's even hard to explain to others sometimes. If Magit existed as a native standalone app, I would be…

You can always donate the same funds to the development of magit.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#694
post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do one thing in JetBrains: edit code. That's it. In Emacs, I read my mail, I organise my agenda, I write technical reports, blog posts, I wrote my entire thesis in org-mode. I collect research notes in Emacs, and a journal. I do my bookkeeping and accounting in Emacs. I write Confluence articles, so I don't have to deal with Confluence's shitty interface. I edit remote files, I edit files via sudo on my machi…

Really? There's a way to edit confluence pages in emacs? you've made me very happy! EDIT: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ConfluenceMode

Actually, I just use ox-confluence, which means I can export (narrowed) org-mode trees to confluence. It exports it to a buffer that I cut-and-paste into the web page.

I think confluence.el is no longer maintained, sadly. Maybe an interesting new side project :)

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#695
post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do one thing in JetBrains: edit code. That's it. In Emacs, I read my mail, I organise my agenda, I write technical reports, blog posts, I wrote my entire thesis in org-mode. I collect research notes in Emacs, and a journal. I do my bookkeeping and accounting in Emacs. I write Confluence articles, so I don't have to deal with Confluence's shitty interface. I edit remote files, I edit files via sudo on my machi…

What are your favourite features about magit? I switch between Pycharm and Vs code and terminal for my git usage. I find Pycharm has a really great git blame ui that makes it easy to walk back in time and investigate changes. It lets you toggle "Annotations" next to the line number, that display the SHA. From there, you can right click > show diff, from which you can _also_ show annotations, and continue jumping back…

I think incremental commits are among my favorites in magit. It's so quick and easy to stage and commit selectively.

The other thing I love about it is discoverability of git features. Did you know that you can stash index and working tree separately? I only know because of magit. Now that I know, I have actually used it to great success.

Also, I've become my team's go-to rebase monkey. What takes my colleagues minutes of thinking what to rebase where, and how, and how to deal with the conflicts, I'm usually done in seconds. Also, conflict resolution with magit is really very streamlined. Conflicts still suck, but less so.

Pushing/pulling to/from different remotes is quick and easy (happens often with github forks and PRs), merging and branching is a breeze, and you've got splendid auto-completion on branch and tag names (I use ivy.)

The blame mode you described exists in magit, too. You can annotate a file and drill back into a certain commit's history. Actually, the default way magit does it is dissimilar from what you might be used to from other GUI tools. Magit doesn't annotate the left or right, but instead inserts header lines for a commit. That way it's easier to see coherent commits. I find this way of displaying history nicer if your code's commit history actually contains chunks of lines for the files, and it's not so fragmented that practically every line is from a different commit/author. It's possible to do the margin-annotation you're used to from other blame tools, too, though.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New employee 3 workflow at company X: 1. Install Emacs 2. Sync existing config via git 3. Work New employee 4 workflow at company X: 1. Install Emacs 2. Spend 2 hours learning default Emacs 3. Work New employee 5 workflow at company X: 1. Install Emacs 2. Spend 1 - 2 hours learning default Emacs 3. Spend 2 - 4 hours googling interesting Emacs packages, in each case going to their GitHub repo to read the directions, a…

New employees 4 and 5 are completely fictitious and only exist in your imagination/reality bubble. In the real world no mortal has ever learned how to use Emacs in 2 hours to be able to work effectively. And like the OC said the documentation for extra packages are horrible, full of bugs and may take additional week to understand how to use effectively.

It's a text editor. You can work when you know enough do common textual operations to add remove and modify text, search through existing text, jump around to different files in the project, and run whatever constitutes a build.

More sophisticated ide like features normally constitute reading the documentation for a particular project like cider for clojure.

I have no idea why you consider 4 and 5 fictitious. One can read the entirely of mastering emacs and the cider docs in a reasonable period of time for example.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#697
post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do one thing in JetBrains: edit code. That's it. In Emacs, I read my mail, I organise my agenda, I write technical reports, blog posts, I wrote my entire thesis in org-mode. I collect research notes in Emacs, and a journal. I do my bookkeeping and accounting in Emacs. I write Confluence articles, so I don't have to deal with Confluence's shitty interface. I edit remote files, I edit files via sudo on my machi…

> You can do one thing in JetBrains: edit code. That's it. You can also takes notes in markdown docs and/or code comments (it has a built-in TODO detector and organizer). > they use an unholy mix of JetBrains, GitKraken and the command line on Linux, and Tortoise, SourceTree, JetBrains and the command line on Windows I just use SmartGit for git. It's configurable with workflows (or custom commands), navigable with a…

I get it, not everybody has the mindset of living in one tool — I didn't either, before I converted to Emacs, which is a relatively recent development. Maybe 3-4 years, though I did use it ~7 years ago once, and then even further back, probably around 12 or so years ago. I don't quite remember.

But I came back to it, and stayed for good, because Emacs is really an OS with a nice editor. So you can have the same approach of do one thing and do it well, but you have different packages instead of different programs. And they synergize nicely. So it's not only an IDE. Everything I use is purpose-built for that one task, including ledger (accounting), mu4e (mail), lsp (IDE-features), org (agenda, research, documentation) magit (git) etc. None of these things are "plugins". They're programs in their own right, just like ls and mutt, and git themselves.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for me, well, when Spacemacs moves the LSP layer to its non-development branch, I'll probably give it a try again You're doing yourself a discervice for not just using Spacemacs develop branch. It's actually more stable than the master branch.

Interesting. I switched to the develop branch the other day (yes, just to try to get LSP working!) and ran into some glitch that I didn't have the time to investigate -- a complaint about the .spacemacs file missing a variable or something. I'll probably try again this weekend.

You need to run SPC f e D to do a 3-way merge of your .spacemacs everytime after you upgrade Spacemacs.

As changes to Spacemacs are made, there might need more or less things in the .spacemacs file. So you always need to do a manual merge of the changes.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for me, well, when Spacemacs moves the LSP layer to its non-development branch, I'll probably give it a try again You're doing yourself a discervice for not just using Spacemacs develop branch. It's actually more stable than the master branch.

I use and love Spacemacs, but their branch handling is a major PR fuckup. The last stable version should be phased out now. The develop branch works way better. They should rethink their release model.

True, just think they need to embrace the fast development cadence of develop and just make that master.

Re: Making Emacs Popular Again

#700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New employee 3 workflow at company X: 1. Install Emacs 2. Sync existing config via git 3. Work New employee 4 workflow at company X: 1. Install Emacs 2. Spend 2 hours learning default Emacs 3. Work New employee 5 workflow at company X: 1. Install Emacs 2. Spend 1 - 2 hours learning default Emacs 3. Spend 2 - 4 hours googling interesting Emacs packages, in each case going to their GitHub repo to read the directions, a…

> I have no idea why you would be running Emacs in a terminal in the first place. I don't see an advantage of using it outside of the terminal in the first place to be honest. That's the good part about vim. Or if it's complicated for you, use nano. Done. Editing of files while you're in the terminal. And yes vimscript is annoying, but it seems to be simple enough for most of the basic stuff. Otherwise there are plen…

https://blog.aaronbieber.com/2016/12/29/don-t-use-terminal-e...

Accepting the terminal version is accepting an inferior environment with no upside.

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