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Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

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Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#91

Post by wizzwizz4 »

edgyquant wrote: post #80
fhd2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally trained the correct technique as a child because I was so into computers. I'd argue children today are far less exposed to keyboards than people (well, nerds) my age were.

Maybe but I’ve typing since I was a kid on a Windows 95 and I still only know the gist of the keyboard and have to look down and correct myself every minute or so, so I don’t that’s they only reason. I actually think that typing without looking isn’t as important as people used to say it was for speed.

Just memorising the order of the keys from left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and reciting it, was enough for me never to have to look down. I have no idea why or how; I assume it's something to do with dreaming.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#92

Post by convolvatron »

zdragnar wrote: post #59
lawn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amazing how common it is for programmers to not be touch typists (I mean typing without looking at the keys). Like, isn't that something you pick up by the sheer amount of keyboard time?

I'm a touch typist, but emacs chords always bothered me. I feel much more content switching to mouse or track pad for things like switching tabs, picking files from a file tree to copy / paste or duplicate or whatever, etc. That said, being a programmer and not touch typing definitely sounds odd to me as well

unfortunately I can only really work for long stretches on a kinesis split keyboard - with the modifiers all the on the thumb. if they would finally make a bluetooth one maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#93

Post by School-Cotton »

jb1991 wrote: post #47

Amazing that I have not used emacs in years but I wanted to see this artist mode with my own eyes, so I opened it and was surprised I could still remember how to get all around with the m-x commands... my muscle memory even remembered the combo to exit emacs correctly, and even as I type this, I couldn't tell you what that key combo is! It's all in my finger muscles' memory. Incredible.

C-x C-c

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#94

Post by tom_ »

BeetleB wrote: post #90
submeta wrote: post #39

After spending endless hours in learning the ins and outs of Emacs and starting to learn Elisp, I come to realize that Emacs‘ tinkering-to-doing ratio is too high. I need tools that get out of my way. Emacs can get a hobby or an obsession. If you have nothing else to do, fine, spend your time sharpening the saw instead of cutting wood. I turned to VS Code + PyCharm for coding. And use Emacs for editing text only. And…

> I come to realize that Emacs‘ tinkering-to-doing ratio is too high. You are in full control of how much tinkering you do, though. Strange to blame a tool for this.

But most of the things you do require a certain amount of tinkering, even basic stuff like setting up C indentation, making Emacs not use tabs, and configuring keyboard shortcuts - especially in the early days, when you might not quite understand how things fit together.

Compare and contrast with Visual Studio Code, which has a much smoother onboarding experience.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#95

Post by bitexploder »

mabub24 wrote: post #61
lawn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amazing how common it is for programmers to not be touch typists (I mean typing without looking at the keys). Like, isn't that something you pick up by the sheer amount of keyboard time?

Most people get by with pseudo-touch typing. They have most of the speed down, and look down at the keyboard occasionally, but they do not have the accuracy that is displayed in true touch-typing.

That sort of blows my mind. How can you not learn to touch type? It will take you a month at most and it greatly improves life at a keyboard.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#96

Post by BeetleB »

tom_ wrote: post #94
BeetleB wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I come to realize that Emacs‘ tinkering-to-doing ratio is too high. You are in full control of how much tinkering you do, though. Strange to blame a tool for this.

But most of the things you do require a certain amount of tinkering, even basic stuff like setting up C indentation, making Emacs not use tabs, and configuring keyboard shortcuts - especially in the early days, when you might not quite understand how things fit together. Compare and contrast with Visual Studio Code, which has a much smoother onboarding experience.

Agreed about the onboarding experience. However, the person I was replying to seems quite well versed in Emacs.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#97

Post by RMPR »

tra3 wrote: post #10
teddyh wrote: post #3

I think many Vim users look at Emacs and go “Hmm, Emacs is a bit more clunky when I use Emacs to do the exact same things I do in Vim. Therefore, I’ll stick to Vim.”

Check out evil mode. Makes emacs behave more like vi. Game changer for me.

One of my pain points with evil mode (and with every vim emulation for that matter): it's often incomplete. To keep my fingers on the home row I use Alt to exit insert mode (:help i_META in neovim) but Alt- is already mapped to something in Emacs, and that's just painful.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#98

Post by ByteJockey »

rthomas6 wrote: post #22
ByteJockey wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean. Emacs has the ability to do basically what vim does. Evil mode is really nice (though I can never get used the = register evaluating elisp instead of vimscript). What kills me about emacs is the startup time. Breaks my flow when I'm jumping around and need to edit something quickly. Though I'll admit that doom provides a very nice environment for when I want to play around with some lisp.

Check out Doom Emacs for a fast startup time with no server.

I mention using doom in the last line of the comment you responded to.

But, yeah. I use it for the start up time/vim compatibility out of the box.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#99

Post by xhevahir »

ripe wrote: post #45

For people who ask, "why use text-only editors like vim or Emacs, when I can use a full GUI IDE?": One of the reasons I haven't seen mentioned much is: I'm a touch typist, and I hate having to switch between mouse and keyboard! I have to take my attention off the screen. Slows me down. Disturbs my concentration. With Emacs, I can work for hours without ever having to hunt for the mouse, or without even having a mouse…

I just started using VS Code a lot last weekend and I didn't find myself using my trackpad much. The Vim plugin, whatever it's called, allowed me to do the same things I do in Vim itself. I can't speak to the Emacs emulation, though, now that I think about it.

Re: Batteries included with Emacs (2020)

#100

Post by wrycoder »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #76
edgyquant wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can type without looking but I still have trouble placing my fingers over the keyboard in the right initial place so I’ll often start a little off and I type so fast that I’ll type half a dozen characters before I realize and have to correct.

Most keyboards have a little raised bump on the F and J keys ;)

I once subscribed to a magazine and received the subscription at my address, but with a strange name. I took me a minute to realize that it had been touch typed, but with the right hand displaced to the right by one position.
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