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> Most of my time is spent outside of the editor - reading specs/docs/code, debugging/tracing/analyzing existing code, or just thinking about code. Most of my

by rekado 11y ago

> Most of my time is spent outside of the editor - reading specs/docs/code, debugging/tracing/analyzing existing code, or just thinking about code. Most of my time is spent inside the "editor" (Emacs). Reading docs is in Emacs, debugging is in Emacs, too. Thinking about code is assisted by `M-x zone`... :) To be able to stay in the same application in which I can use my home-grown features on everything that can be mapped to text buffers is an advantage; a subjective advantage, maybe. I don't need to switch contexts as often any more, and my brain thanks me for that. I grew up on vim and got very comfortable with it, but elisp, interacting with inferior processes, and the overflowing kitchen sink in general slowly replaced my combination of vim+xmonad+tmux+terminal.

ksk 11y ago
Ah, well I guess you're the lucky one :) For me, most of the material that I need to reference is PDFs/Slides from talks/Books/Web pages/My own hand written notes/etc - basically stuff that is not plain-text. Luckily I have a multi-monitor setup, so I don't really pay any penalty to switch contexts. But keeping all that aside. As far as just the editing is concerned, all the advanced features in vi and such do help if you're typing out reams of code - something which I never find my self doing. I suppose the obvious unstated thing here is that people have been productive in all sorts of environments, from notepad to pico to visualstudio to vi. From personal experience I find my self agreeing a lot more with people who say it doesn't matter _that_ much.
- rekado 11y ago
  I'm not one to argue about productivity. It's a term I never found very meaningful, so I cannot be sure other people mean the same that I understand when I hear the term. For me it's not about lines of code per unit of time, but about what feels right, and that's very subjective. Dependent on the task I can probably make a decent amount of progress without Emacs, too, so I wouldn't argue that my productivity depends on it. But this Emacs environment is molded after my habits, so it's a really comfortable place, an extension of my body, much like a good tool for wood working that fits your hand just right and lets you work directly on an object without having to think of the tool as a mediator between your body and the work piece. I wouldn't work with computers if I didn't feel comfortable. Thanks to the flexibility and hackability of Emacs I'm a lot more comfortable doing computer work than I would be without it, meaning that I'll become a gardener a couple of decades later than I would without it.
  - ksk 11y ago
    I agree with your view.

by rekado 11y ago

ksk 11y ago

Ah, well I guess you're the lucky one :) For me, most of the material that I need to reference is PDFs/Slides from talks/Books/Web pages/My own hand written notes/etc - basically stuff that is not plain-text. Luckily I have a multi-monitor setup, so I don't really pay any penalty to switch contexts. But keeping all that aside. As far as just the editing is concerned, all the advanced features in vi and such do help if you're typing out reams of code - something which I never find my self doing. I suppose the obvious unstated thing here is that people have been productive in all sorts of environments, from notepad to pico to visualstudio to vi. From personal experience I find my self agreeing a lot more with people who say it doesn't matter _that_ much.

rekado 11y ago
I'm not one to argue about productivity. It's a term I never found very meaningful, so I cannot be sure other people mean the same that I understand when I hear the term. For me it's not about lines of code per unit of time, but about what feels right, and that's very subjective. Dependent on the task I can probably make a decent amount of progress without Emacs, too, so I wouldn't argue that my productivity depends on it. But this Emacs environment is molded after my habits, so it's a really comfortable place, an extension of my body, much like a good tool for wood working that fits your hand just right and lets you work directly on an object without having to think of the tool as a mediator between your body and the work piece. I wouldn't work with computers if I didn't feel comfortable. Thanks to the flexibility and hackability of Emacs I'm a lot more comfortable doing computer work than I would be without it, meaning that I'll become a gardener a couple of decades later than I would without it.
- ksk 11y ago
  I agree with your view.