4 ms·

"a few hours" ??? Come on, let's not pretend that EMACS is going to take "a few hours" to come to terms with and become more productive in than an IDE.

granos 11y ago
I actually switched from VS to vim (while doing a project that integrated ironruby and C#). It took me about a week to reach 75-80% effectiveness with vim. At the end of 2 weeks I was back to full speed. At the end of 2 months I was considerably more effective at editing code. I'm now several years and several jobs removed from that initial project and I can't imagine not using vim.
- MrBra 11y ago
  IronRuby... good (and too short) memories.. I hope MS will embrace Ruby again sooner or later.
  - granos 11y ago
    I gave up on that hope a while ago. And also on developing for Microsoft platforms in general.
    - MrBra 11y ago
      This is completely nonsensical.
aldanor 11y ago
I switched to Emacs (Spacemacs) from Sublime Text with zero prior knowledge of vim or Emacs. In a day or two I could continue doing what I was normally doing. In a few weeks I felt completely comfortable.
taylodl 11y ago
My 13 year old daughter came up to speed with emacs in a couple of hours. Now she's starting to realize she can make it into whatever she wants and make it work however she wants. She hadn't even thought about being able to program new functionality into an application. It's opened whole new worlds for her. Yes, emacs.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Actually, you can get decently proficient in just few hours. Have you actually tried sitting in front of Emacs or vim for more than 30 minutes, to the clock? Humans have this funny thing as they grow older - they look at a thing, maybe try it out for few seconds, and then immediately determine it's too difficult and it will take forever. They rarely bother to spend actual five minutes, to the clock. If they did, they might actually have learned something. 25 minutes of deliberate practice - a single Pomodoro - is enough to become acquainted with several of Emacs features - like, navigation by semantic units and incremental search and autocompletion. You won't get proficient in that time, but it's enough to rewire yourself to actually start using it when writing code. Which will then lead to you becoming proficient while doing your regular, billable work. Seriously, set up a Pomodoro timer, sit in front of Vim or Emacs, and try to practice a few things. You'll be surprised how fast you can learn. (And yes, I did that, so I'm not talking out of my ass. I actually almost doubled my Emacs productivity once in 5 pomodoros - in 2.5 hours - two of which I spent watching Emacs Rocks videos, two on rewriting s-expressions with Paredit, and one on multiple-cursors.)
- crispyambulance 11y ago
  Actual proficiency in emacs takes time, a lot of it, and practice, a lot of it. To reach a level of skill where using emacs is easier/faster/better than something like intelli-j (for instance) requires significant dedication and repetition. Far, far more than "a few hours".
- reitanqild 11y ago
  > Have you actually tried sitting in front of Emacs or vim for more than 30 minutes, to the clock? Not parent but I have. I still would recommend something else for all the stuff I work with. That said, it is amazing, I just believe in my line of work people are better off spending time learning an ide, esp refactoring, efficient search/ replace as well as how to enable block selection.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    > I still would recommend something else for all the stuff I work with. I sometimes do to. In particular, when that stuff is Java or C# - it's hard to beat the support IDEs gives you there. So I personally opt to switching said IDEs to Emacs keybindings instead. (Also, one could argue that you need IDEs there mostly as crutches to support the weak language, but that's a topic for another day...) > better off spending time learning an ide, esp refactoring, efficient search/ replace as well as how to enable block selection. Refactoring - if you mean semantic transformations supported by your IDE, then yes. See above. But for search/replace and block selection no IDE beats the convenience of Vim and Emacs. They simply can do that better and more naturally (along with plethora of similar things helping with selection and navigation). And this is exactly the type of thing I was talking about in my previous comments - you can learn both under one Pomodoro if you focus solely on it, and then normal work will quickly take you to proficiency.

granos 11y ago

I actually switched from VS to vim (while doing a project that integrated ironruby and C#). It took me about a week to reach 75-80% effectiveness with vim. At the end of 2 weeks I was back to full speed. At the end of 2 months I was considerably more effective at editing code. I'm now several years and several jobs removed from that initial project and I can't imagine not using vim.

MrBra 11y ago
IronRuby... good (and too short) memories.. I hope MS will embrace Ruby again sooner or later.
- granos 11y ago
  I gave up on that hope a while ago. And also on developing for Microsoft platforms in general.
  - MrBra 11y ago
    This is completely nonsensical.

aldanor 11y ago

I switched to Emacs (Spacemacs) from Sublime Text with zero prior knowledge of vim or Emacs. In a day or two I could continue doing what I was normally doing. In a few weeks I felt completely comfortable.

taylodl 11y ago

My 13 year old daughter came up to speed with emacs in a couple of hours. Now she's starting to realize she can make it into whatever she wants and make it work however she wants. She hadn't even thought about being able to program new functionality into an application. It's opened whole new worlds for her. Yes, emacs.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Actually, you can get decently proficient in just few hours. Have you actually tried sitting in front of Emacs or vim for more than 30 minutes, to the clock? Humans have this funny thing as they grow older - they look at a thing, maybe try it out for few seconds, and then immediately determine it's too difficult and it will take forever. They rarely bother to spend actual five minutes, to the clock. If they did, they might actually have learned something. 25 minutes of deliberate practice - a single Pomodoro - is enough to become acquainted with several of Emacs features - like, navigation by semantic units and incremental search and autocompletion. You won't get proficient in that time, but it's enough to rewire yourself to actually start using it when writing code. Which will then lead to you becoming proficient while doing your regular, billable work. Seriously, set up a Pomodoro timer, sit in front of Vim or Emacs, and try to practice a few things. You'll be surprised how fast you can learn. (And yes, I did that, so I'm not talking out of my ass. I actually almost doubled my Emacs productivity once in 5 pomodoros - in 2.5 hours - two of which I spent watching Emacs Rocks videos, two on rewriting s-expressions with Paredit, and one on multiple-cursors.)

crispyambulance 11y ago
Actual proficiency in emacs takes time, a lot of it, and practice, a lot of it. To reach a level of skill where using emacs is easier/faster/better than something like intelli-j (for instance) requires significant dedication and repetition. Far, far more than "a few hours".
reitanqild 11y ago
> Have you actually tried sitting in front of Emacs or vim for more than 30 minutes, to the clock? Not parent but I have. I still would recommend something else for all the stuff I work with. That said, it is amazing, I just believe in my line of work people are better off spending time learning an ide, esp refactoring, efficient search/ replace as well as how to enable block selection.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > I still would recommend something else for all the stuff I work with. I sometimes do to. In particular, when that stuff is Java or C# - it's hard to beat the support IDEs gives you there. So I personally opt to switching said IDEs to Emacs keybindings instead. (Also, one could argue that you need IDEs there mostly as crutches to support the weak language, but that's a topic for another day...) > better off spending time learning an ide, esp refactoring, efficient search/ replace as well as how to enable block selection. Refactoring - if you mean semantic transformations supported by your IDE, then yes. See above. But for search/replace and block selection no IDE beats the convenience of Vim and Emacs. They simply can do that better and more naturally (along with plethora of similar things helping with selection and navigation). And this is exactly the type of thing I was talking about in my previous comments - you can learn both under one Pomodoro if you focus solely on it, and then normal work will quickly take you to proficiency.