4 ms·

Well there is the built in tutorial for that. And it'll leave you at a point where you can frustratingly do text editing and feel a bit confused about what all

by geokon 9y ago

Well there is the built in tutorial for that. And it'll leave you at a point where you can frustratingly do text editing and feel a bit confused about what all the hype is and then after a few weeks/months you'll drift back to a more traditional/"modern" text editor. At least that was my experience... twice.. The only way to stick with emacs is to see how extensible and useful it is - which is really all about learning org and how to add packages. Org is really the gateway drug b/c of how useful it is for everyone - even non developers. For developers the other "killer-app" is magit. For a long time I used emacs just for magit. Only a couple of windows git GUI editors come close in usefulness

rubenbe 9y ago
I'm a long time vim user, but after a colleague showed me org-mode I installed emacs (with spacemacs). Currently I only use it to edit org files, but it feels like there is a whole ecosystem waiting to be explored.
- icen 9y ago
  You should check out magit, as well.
  - brudgers 9y ago
    And elisp.
    - _e 9y ago
      and pacmacs [0] [0] https://github.com/codingteam/pacmacs.el https://github.com/codingteam/pacmacs.el
- cle 9y ago
  Magit, ESS, SLIME, Cider, Gnus/mu4e, dired... There are some fundamentals that make it relatively easy to pick up anything: * Help system (nearly everything is self-documenting) * Customization * ELisp basics (write some helper functions in your .emacs) * Debugging (Edebug, just do C-u C-M-x to instrument a fn and step through it next time it's called) I've been a long-time Emacs user, and the "aha" moment happened when I realized that Emacs really boils down to three things: 1) a text editor 2) mechanisms to interact with your system (e.g. subprocesses) and 3) interactive and dynamically programmable runtime. Once you learn the fundamentals of those three things, the sky's the limit...
VLM 9y ago
Another way to look at it is saving time and effort to do it right at the start. Learning how to use emacs without paredit and then learning again with paredit is twice the work of just learning once with paredit. Ditto projectile (with projectile-helm) If you get used to smacking tab a zillion times while opening files to autocomplete, upgrading to helm find files after the tab habit is deeply ingrained will be painful (tab in helm find files is the help key, not the autocomplete key, helm is conceptually like "always on autocomplete" times a million sorta) Also with the ecosystem of modes, meta-e usually does the right thing in all the modes unless you're editing something that doesn't have the right mode installed by default, then you get used to not using the keystroke M-e, possibly all the time in all files, which is really bad because M-e will work if you simply install that file's mode package. Obviously this extends way beyond one keystroke which multiplies the impact. Its possible to use emacs at least two levels. Theres low level where the editor helps you navigate and format, if you permit it by adding file type packages. Then there's the high level where magit or org mode are nice CLI applications almost stand alone. So if you start out at a high level emacs with "my vim-alike can also run magit, so to me emacs is just a vi that can run magit" you're going to miss out on the substantial performance gains of low level emacs like navigation keystrokes. Maybe a good programming analogy is its much simpler to start noob programming students on msbasic.exe, but everyone seems to think almost anything else as a first language is better in the long run, even if almost everything else is harder to use for the first fifteen minutes.
- omaranto 9y ago
  Another way to look at it is saving time and effort to do it right at the start. Learning how to use emacs without paredit and then learning again with paredit is twice the work of just learning once with paredit. That's an exaggeration, it's definitely a lot less than twice the work. I'd say 1.2 times at most.

by geokon 9y ago

rubenbe 9y ago

I'm a long time vim user, but after a colleague showed me org-mode I installed emacs (with spacemacs). Currently I only use it to edit org files, but it feels like there is a whole ecosystem waiting to be explored.

icen 9y ago
You should check out magit, as well.
- brudgers 9y ago
  And elisp.
  - _e 9y ago
    and pacmacs [0] [0] https://github.com/codingteam/pacmacs.el https://github.com/codingteam/pacmacs.el
cle 9y ago
Magit, ESS, SLIME, Cider, Gnus/mu4e, dired... There are some fundamentals that make it relatively easy to pick up anything: * Help system (nearly everything is self-documenting) * Customization * ELisp basics (write some helper functions in your .emacs) * Debugging (Edebug, just do C-u C-M-x to instrument a fn and step through it next time it's called) I've been a long-time Emacs user, and the "aha" moment happened when I realized that Emacs really boils down to three things: 1) a text editor 2) mechanisms to interact with your system (e.g. subprocesses) and 3) interactive and dynamically programmable runtime. Once you learn the fundamentals of those three things, the sky's the limit...

VLM 9y ago

Another way to look at it is saving time and effort to do it right at the start. Learning how to use emacs without paredit and then learning again with paredit is twice the work of just learning once with paredit. Ditto projectile (with projectile-helm) If you get used to smacking tab a zillion times while opening files to autocomplete, upgrading to helm find files after the tab habit is deeply ingrained will be painful (tab in helm find files is the help key, not the autocomplete key, helm is conceptually like "always on autocomplete" times a million sorta) Also with the ecosystem of modes, meta-e usually does the right thing in all the modes unless you're editing something that doesn't have the right mode installed by default, then you get used to not using the keystroke M-e, possibly all the time in all files, which is really bad because M-e will work if you simply install that file's mode package. Obviously this extends way beyond one keystroke which multiplies the impact. Its possible to use emacs at least two levels. Theres low level where the editor helps you navigate and format, if you permit it by adding file type packages. Then there's the high level where magit or org mode are nice CLI applications almost stand alone. So if you start out at a high level emacs with "my vim-alike can also run magit, so to me emacs is just a vi that can run magit" you're going to miss out on the substantial performance gains of low level emacs like navigation keystrokes. Maybe a good programming analogy is its much simpler to start noob programming students on msbasic.exe, but everyone seems to think almost anything else as a first language is better in the long run, even if almost everything else is harder to use for the first fifteen minutes.

omaranto 9y ago
Another way to look at it is saving time and effort to do it right at the start. Learning how to use emacs without paredit and then learning again with paredit is twice the work of just learning once with paredit. That's an exaggeration, it's definitely a lot less than twice the work. I'd say 1.2 times at most.