12 ms·
I have been using GNU Emacs since the late 1980s. It has been my life's editor, so to speak. At 59 1/2, it seems unlikely that I will ever switch to another edi
by jes 8y ago
I have been using GNU Emacs since the late 1980s. It has been my life's editor, so to speak. At 59 1/2, it seems unlikely that I will ever switch to another editor. It's served me well. I am grateful to the hackers that created it.
- agumonkey 8y agoI wonder what kind of programs get to follow you for so many decades.
- jes 8y agoFor me, the only software that I have used consistently since that era (~1981 or so) would be UNIX and the C programming language. And to be honest, I don't write that much straight C anymore.
- kickingvegas 8y agomake is for better or worse, forever.
- brlewis 8y agoJust bash, the command-line tools one uses from bash, LaTeX, and emacs/vim. I think git will stick around for decades even though its predecessors didn't.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoMy machines pretty much run Emacs, LaTeX, and Firefox, and everything else is largely window-dressing[0]. (I end up doing most of my command-line stuff from eshell inside of Emacs these days.) [0] Well, a WM/DE of course, either Stumpwm or Plasma. And pdfpc[1] is really pretty fantastic for showing "Beamer" (pdf) slides. And syncthing for sync'ing between machines. [1] https://pdfpc.github.io/ https://pdfpc.github.io/
- theonething 8y agoThere's vi/vim of course.
- int_19h 8y agoOn Windows, some file managers are in this category. E.g. Far has been around for about 25 years now, and still has a cult-like following, especially in Eastern Europe / ex-USSR. ImageMagick is another one that has been around for almost 30 years, and is the Swiss army knife of batch image processing on any platform.
- agumonkey 8y agoyou get me to think about guys like Game of Thrones author, who writes in WordStar 4.0 for DOS :) And in a way.. MS Office has been forever, even though it changed a lot in the recent years .. Excel is still Excel.
- aerique 8y agoOn file managers: Norton / Midnight Commander.
- int_19h 8y agoWell, you won't really see anybody using the original NC outside of DOS emulation. Midnight Commander and Far are spiritual successors, hence why I'm counting from mid-90s for them, not from mid-80s. I suppose it could be seen as vi to Vim, though.
- Veen 8y agoJohn McPhee has written using a customised version of Kedit since the early 80s. https://www.kedit.com/index.html https://www.kedit.com/index.html https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/14/structure https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/14/structure
- username223 8y agoI haven't been using it quite that long, but still... It has served me well for decades, and I expect it to outlive me. How many coders can say they contributed to something like that?
- rgrau 8y agoSpeaking about age and contributions. I turned 36 today and this emacs version is the first one that has some code of mine. It's strange, but I feel extremely excited about this coincidence. :D
- ddavis 8y agoI'm just under half your age and I hope to be using Emacs when I'm 59 1/2! I'm also grateful to everyone who has made Emacs as great as it is.
- mercer 8y agoSame here. For me it's org-mode that made me commit to it, but I might end up using it for many other things eventually (git, coding, etc.). I'm mostly okay with code editors coming and going, but the one constant in my life has been project/task management, journalling, and personal information management in the broadest sense. I just got tired of my tools either turning to shit, being deprecated, or not quite doing what I need them to do. Org Mode has been exactly what I've been looking for, and once I started using it seriously it became the thing I didn't know I wanted. It's really comforting to me to know that I'll probably be able to use the same tool for the rest of my life, and that I can (and often already do) use it for many other things (Tramp, magit, coding in general).
- mrspeaker 8y agoI only just understood Emacs about a year ago, despite being a nerd for at least 30 years. I like to think I don't have too many regrets in life - but I'm kicking myself for not realizing what Emacs was way back then - or at any of the times I've tried it out in the past (writing it off as "a text editor")! Never too late though, and on the plus side I've now got decades of hidden Emacs goodies still to discover!
- zikzak 8y agoI am excited for you but that "journey of discovery" is way, way too addictive for me. I find myself chasing edge case requirements in my config rather than getting work done. To each thier own, of course! I still use Emacs when I ssh into my vps and, if I want primarily on Windows doing dev if Visual Studio, would likely use it for everything (as I did back when I was primarily on UNIX systems). Just writing this makes me think "maybe I'll install it on Windows on more time". The core issue for me is context switching between Emacs and VS. Even with various keybinding tricks it is always awkward. Best of luck on your journey with Emacs. Do it for me! :)
- Arelius 8y agoI setup the VS Emacs bindings and then always bind C-X C-E to open current file/line in Emacs from VS. With that I get along pretty well combining VS and Emacs.
- stevenwoo 8y agoAre you using one of the VS Emacs bindings available in the library or a custom one? I've found all of the most popular ones to not be good enough to use VS like Emacs in Windows.
- Arelius 8y agoThe MS provided Emacs Emulation. You have to jump through some hoops to update it for 2017. It's not perfect, but it gets me close enough until I need to open in Emacs.
- 8456523 8y agoI'm 58 2/3, and GNU Emacs has been my daily driver since 1991. vscode however will probably take over that role some time during the next 12 months.
- rainygold 8y agoWhy vscode?
- snazz 8y agoI’ve seen this pop up a lot lately—someone who’s been using Emacs or Vim for years and then sees the “new cool” editor and says they’ll be switching to it. I have the same question, since someone who’s used Emacs for that long would surely have “seen the light” already. Maybe they’re yak shaving with the config instead of getting work done? That’s one of the few valid complaints I can think of.
- kstrauser 8y agoI used Emacs for a couple of decades but switched over to VS Code after a couple of days of playing with it. I love Emacs and the concept of infinite configurability. But as it turns out, I don't actually use most of that flexibility. It's more common that I'll install a package, tweak a couple of knobs, and get on with work. Well, VS Code offers the equivalents of all the Emacs packages that I actually use, and they come with sane defaults. Once I've tweaked the Python module a little bit, I tend to ignore its other options and get back to editing code. And in that code editing environment, I honestly prefer VS Code. The key bindings feel like other modern apps (yay for using the same Mac shortcuts for moving around that every thing else uses). Menus (and their shortcuts) work as expected. I don't have Emacs's beautiful macros, but I do have multi-cursor editing which is beautiful in a different way. It's fast. It looks pretty, with nice easier-to-install themes and icon packages. Basically, VS Code does everything that I ask of Emacs, but in a modern package. I still love Emacs. I had switched to Sublime Text at one point but came back to the 'Macs because ST wasn't good enough to win me over permanently. And I definitely still love the idea that I can rewrite all of Emacs to make it my own personal slice of editing heaven that is optimized for me and me alone. That's wonderful! But now that there's an excellent, MIT-licensed, well supported alternative that doesn't everything that I want in practice, I'm sold. But if MS ever loses the plot and ruins VS Code, I'll be back on Emacs in a heartbeat.
- sandov 8y agoHave you had RSI issues? Do you use it with the default keybindings? I've tried it a few times but the default keybindings seem unnatural to me. Not that it's Emacs fault, considering the keyboards they used back then.
- eartheaterrr 8y agoI've been using Emacs Evil mode for years, and I find it much better than the better defaults. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil
- brlewis 8y agoI've been using the default keybindings for decades and never had RSI issues. The only time my wrist has started to bother me is when I use some other program that involves a lot of mouse motion.
- regularfry 8y agoThe first time I ever had wrist issues, they were triggered by emacs and a crappy keyboard. I switched to a split keyboard, and they went away. Unfortunately it was a split keyboard with membrane keys, so the going away was only temporary. I've since switched to a proper mechanical keyboard and all is fine with the world.
- wglb 8y agoFor me it was going to kinesis and trackball
- jimbokun 8y agoStep one: remap Caps Lock to Control.
- adw 8y agoIt's all about knowing the best places for modifier keys; Control next to A, Caps Lock encased in concrete at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
- truncate 8y agoNice! It's been the best constant in my life for the past 6 years (well configs, plugins, and emacs evolved, but very smooth and usually with my pace). I would, however, love to hear a bit more on how you felt about the future of Emacs in those 30 years. I dunno much history, but is there any contrast to the present where Atom/VSCode is kinda shipping shiny (and useful) stuff way faster meanwhile being very configurable.
- onyva 8y agoAbsolutely.
- ww520 8y agoEmacs has served me well over the years. I have a consistent editing platform throughout the changes of languages and document formats. Saved me lots of time to jump right into new languages or new projects.
- intrasight 8y agoSame here. 54 years old. I've used Emacs since James Gosling was still hacking at CMU in the early '80s. Took me some time to finally stop using the Gosmacs key bindings :) 35 years of Emacs use and still going strong and learning new things!
- emacsvimlover 8y agoKudos to you. I have tried and failed miserably to learn emacs many times. The switch from vi seems to be really hard but I really like emacs and hope to become a pro user someday.
- emacsvimlover 8y agoCan you give the n00b's any tips on how to master emacs while keeping it interesting?
- jes 8y agoFor me it's been helpful to sometimes take some time, look at the key bindings for a particular mode, and practice them. With some periodic investment in committing them to memory, I think your Emacs productivity will improve.
- heartofgold 8y agoFor me personally: - I started out just learning navigation. How to move around within buffers, how to open multiple buffers and move around between buffers. Then I learned several built in commands. Years later I learned clojure, a lisp dialect. After learning it, and then looking back at emacs lisp (elisp), and a light bulb went on for me. You can write any elisp function you want, which has functions to manipulate text within buffers and much more. Using it you can create any kind of specialized editor function you can dream of, and you can call that function with "M-x function-name". If use use the function lots, then you can bind that function to a keystroke. (For example, if you wanted a completely custom function... to delete the current block of code, you could write an elisp function to go to move the point to the blocks beginning brace, set the mark, move to the matching brace, and then delete the region.) There are several "modes" that define how buffers behave. A clojure mode will know how to highlight code and navigate around parenthesis. Magit-mode knows all kinds of commands for operating a git project, and org-mode knows commands to help facilitate note-taking.
- alexhutcheson 8y agoThe built-in tour (C-h t) is pretty good and doesn't take too long. Learn the various built-in help features, and use them. C-h C-h describes all the various help features. Beyond that - force yourself to navigate via the keyboard only (no mouse, no arrow keys). You'll get more efficient and pick up shortcuts as you go.
- kwoff 8y agoIf you can find someone who's mastered emacs to show you around, I think that would be a good start. I was fortunate in the mid-90's that such a person sat with me in a computer lab and showed me how much more powerful emacs was than I'd understood till that point.
- h1d 8y agoHave you ever compared it to other modern editors like IntelliJ and VS code? If so, any thoughts about productivity?
- innocentoldguy 8y agoIn my opinion, there is no comparison in productivity. Emacs and Vim both beat IntelliJ and VS Code hands down. Anytime you have to reach for the mouse for something you’re wasting time.
- davidw 8y agoYeah, Emacs is one of the things I'm still using 20+ years on. Not a lot else I'm still using from those days.
- spear 8y agoThirty years of Emacs here as well(1). I still use Gnus to read e-mail and Usenet, and my desktop calculator is a small frame that's running Calc. (1) Well, technically, that includes several years of XEmacs in the middle, when GNU Emacs didn't look as good under X11.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoYou can still use the Lucid/Athena toolkit in GNU Emacs if you ever get nostalgic for the look of XEmacs.
- innocentoldguy 8y agoI really like Emacs, but its chording gives me RSI pain. I wish I could have stuck with it though. That’s great that you could.
- laughingman2 8y agoGive it a chance and try spacemacs (and then after using it for sometime maybe start building something from scratch if you think its too big). The eVil (vim) mode works out of the box and mnemonic bindings are easy to memorize.