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> the billions of js frameworks and wars about how everything anyone tries to do is wrong IMO... This isn't universal. HN is one of the places where it is the

> the billions of js frameworks and wars about how everything anyone tries to do is wrong IMO... This isn't universal. HN is one of the places where it is the worst. I probably wouldn't be fighting with Go right now if it weren't for HN; I'd probably be using Java. Staying up to date isn't really as important as it appears. There are people having successful careers with COBOL right now, and while that may not be where you want to go, switching between JS frameworks does not sound any better. And you can basically ignore the JS frameworks. They don't matter. Because of HN I switched from TextMate to Sublime Text to Emacs to Vim. What did I get out of it? Not a thing. Maybe I can type a little faster when I am in vim. But mostly I just get annoyed when the rest of the OS doesn't support the shortcuts that I am now used to. I switched from Mac to Linux to Mac. I got nothing out of it, except that now I get more annoyed when I can't do something on my Mac that I was able to do on Linux. Don't do what I did. I think it's completely possible to be a developer without all this, as long as you can recognize when you are wasting your time.

cicero 11y ago
One of the most cheerful people I met was a guy on the commuter train about ten years ago poring over a greenbar fanfold[1] listing of COBOL code used in a gas station point-of-sale backend. I asked him about it, and he enthusiastically told me about what he was working on and how a problem had developed over night that he was going in to work on. It made me realize that software development doesn't have to be bleeding-edge to be interesting. Indeed, I thought the stability of an established COBOL ecosystem might be refreshing. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_stationery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_stationery
andars 11y ago
"Don't do what I did" Unfortunately, you're a few years too late... I switched from TextWrangler to vim to TextMate to atom to emacs to vim. Totally pointless and stupid (of me) in retrospect. Same thing again with web. I'm finally learning to ignore the shiny but it seems like everyone I see/meet (both online and in person) are only interested in the backwards-incompatible new release of Express 17.0 for NodeJS, now with ES7 features. Thanks for your response. Looking back and moving forward, I guess.
- kbenson 11y ago
  Emacs to vim boggles my mind. I mean, I've been a vim die-hard for decades now, but I'm not sure there's a compelling reason to switch from emacs to vim or vice-versa. To my mind they are pretty much equivalent feature wise.
  - 0942v8653 11y ago
    When I switched from emacs to vim, I was looking for something that 1. starts up fast - I used emacsclient but that got to be sort of a headache, and still did not start up as instantly as Vim does 2. Better keybindings - I would have used evil-mode but I felt at the time that it would be better to use actual vim. 3. Runs in a terminal window - Absolute necessity, so my only real choices were emacs and vim. I liked the workflow I had with `emacs *.py` or whatever I was doing but I thought at the time that vim would better support it. A friend actually pushed me into using vim, which is funny because he uses the arrow keys with it... I got used to vim way quicker than I expected to, mostly because it was the only editor I installed at all (I switched from emacs to vim at the same time I switched from mac to linux) Of course i do not recommend you switch between them but those were my reasons at the time.
  - andars 11y ago
    I should note that each phase was pretty short lived, as in I barely scratched the surface of emacs.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I was considering this actually, but opted for eventually learning evil-mode at some point instead. Vim has superior approach to keybindings, but Emacs has the power of Lisp. Evil-mode feels like best of both worlds to me.
    - edwintorok 11y ago
      I've mostly switched from Vim to Emacs by using spacemacs: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/master/doc/DOCUMENTATION.org#who-can-benefit-from-this https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/master/doc/DOCUME... I like the keybinding conventions (all starting with SPC, hence the name).
opsforgotmypass 11y ago
> Don't do what I did. I try. I don't think going from a GUI editor to Emacs was a complete waste of my time and I still like it a lot BUT whenever you make that kind of switch you gotta stay out of the "this is the best thing ever" mentality. Instead of seeing $EDITOR as the Holy Grail that cannot be eclipsed by anything (which is false) I see it as my favorite tool in a toolbox. I like it but I also recognize it's just one of many tools and it's not always the one I should use and getting frustrated at the differences is pointless. That last bit took a while for me to realize. I think what helped was seeing other people code without my favorite editor with an IDE or something. Watching Notch coding an FPS using an IDE caused quite a few of us in the HN thread that followed to just kinda take a step back. I'm still relatively new to programming so hey thanks for the advice.
- davidw 11y ago
  I started using Emacs 20 years ago and have happily stuck with it.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
What separates good programmers from great programmers is that the latter know what not to learn. If you look at most of the great computer scientists and system architects, they all have very unconventional and personalized setups which are completely far off the grain.
vacri 11y ago
I think you're painting too bleak a picture. A balance is needed between chasing the shiny and ignoring the world's movements. Whether you're a developer, a medical practitioner, a lawyer, an accountant, in real estate, a mechanic, a civil engineer, a teacher, a politician, whatever you have... to be a good professional, you need to keep up-to-date. This doesn't mean latching onto the bleeding edge, but it does mean learning things and occasionally trying new tools or methods.

cicero 11y ago

One of the most cheerful people I met was a guy on the commuter train about ten years ago poring over a greenbar fanfold[1] listing of COBOL code used in a gas station point-of-sale backend. I asked him about it, and he enthusiastically told me about what he was working on and how a problem had developed over night that he was going in to work on. It made me realize that software development doesn't have to be bleeding-edge to be interesting. Indeed, I thought the stability of an established COBOL ecosystem might be refreshing. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_stationery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_stationery

andars 11y ago

"Don't do what I did" Unfortunately, you're a few years too late... I switched from TextWrangler to vim to TextMate to atom to emacs to vim. Totally pointless and stupid (of me) in retrospect. Same thing again with web. I'm finally learning to ignore the shiny but it seems like everyone I see/meet (both online and in person) are only interested in the backwards-incompatible new release of Express 17.0 for NodeJS, now with ES7 features. Thanks for your response. Looking back and moving forward, I guess.

kbenson 11y ago
Emacs to vim boggles my mind. I mean, I've been a vim die-hard for decades now, but I'm not sure there's a compelling reason to switch from emacs to vim or vice-versa. To my mind they are pretty much equivalent feature wise.
- 0942v8653 11y ago
  When I switched from emacs to vim, I was looking for something that 1. starts up fast - I used emacsclient but that got to be sort of a headache, and still did not start up as instantly as Vim does 2. Better keybindings - I would have used evil-mode but I felt at the time that it would be better to use actual vim. 3. Runs in a terminal window - Absolute necessity, so my only real choices were emacs and vim. I liked the workflow I had with `emacs *.py` or whatever I was doing but I thought at the time that vim would better support it. A friend actually pushed me into using vim, which is funny because he uses the arrow keys with it... I got used to vim way quicker than I expected to, mostly because it was the only editor I installed at all (I switched from emacs to vim at the same time I switched from mac to linux) Of course i do not recommend you switch between them but those were my reasons at the time.
- andars 11y ago
  I should note that each phase was pretty short lived, as in I barely scratched the surface of emacs.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I was considering this actually, but opted for eventually learning evil-mode at some point instead. Vim has superior approach to keybindings, but Emacs has the power of Lisp. Evil-mode feels like best of both worlds to me.
  - edwintorok 11y ago
    I've mostly switched from Vim to Emacs by using spacemacs: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/master/doc/DOCUMENTATION.org#who-can-benefit-from-this https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/master/doc/DOCUME... I like the keybinding conventions (all starting with SPC, hence the name).

opsforgotmypass 11y ago

> Don't do what I did. I try. I don't think going from a GUI editor to Emacs was a complete waste of my time and I still like it a lot BUT whenever you make that kind of switch you gotta stay out of the "this is the best thing ever" mentality. Instead of seeing $EDITOR as the Holy Grail that cannot be eclipsed by anything (which is false) I see it as my favorite tool in a toolbox. I like it but I also recognize it's just one of many tools and it's not always the one I should use and getting frustrated at the differences is pointless. That last bit took a while for me to realize. I think what helped was seeing other people code without my favorite editor with an IDE or something. Watching Notch coding an FPS using an IDE caused quite a few of us in the HN thread that followed to just kinda take a step back. I'm still relatively new to programming so hey thanks for the advice.

davidw 11y ago
I started using Emacs 20 years ago and have happily stuck with it.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

What separates good programmers from great programmers is that the latter know what not to learn. If you look at most of the great computer scientists and system architects, they all have very unconventional and personalized setups which are completely far off the grain.

vacri 11y ago

I think you're painting too bleak a picture. A balance is needed between chasing the shiny and ignoring the world's movements. Whether you're a developer, a medical practitioner, a lawyer, an accountant, in real estate, a mechanic, a civil engineer, a teacher, a politician, whatever you have... to be a good professional, you need to keep up-to-date. This doesn't mean latching onto the bleeding edge, but it does mean learning things and occasionally trying new tools or methods.