3 ms·

I had a similar experience to yours until I realized that the extensible part also means you don't need to use the builtin commands and shortcuts. I have been u

by fipar 7y ago

I had a similar experience to yours until I realized that the extensible part also means you don't need to use the builtin commands and shortcuts. I have been using emacs for 10 years (used vim for about 12 before that, using emacs with evil-mode now) and, to this day, I have to google 'how to quit emacs' when I am faced with a vanilla emacs :) I just feel it's "my" editor more than any other editor I've ever used. edit: typos

ljm 7y ago
I’ve basically used Hydra (as opposed to Evil) for creating a series of mappings that make sense for me.
klibertp 7y ago
> I just feel it's "my" editor more than any other editor I've ever used. So true! When I first tried to get into Emacs it was as a somewhat seasoned programmer who wanted to play with a Lisp other than Scheme. I've read the built-in tutorial and almost ran away in horror. I get it - for non-programmer users, yes, it makes sense to try to teach them the usage of an editor. I lost quite a lot of time trying to remember exotic chords like C-u C-x ^ a and so on, but it was ultimately meaningless - not one such shortcut remains in my config. Emacs is an IDE for Emacs Lisp written in Emacs Lisp (and it's incredibly powerful at that, BTW). In other words, it's a bunch of APIs you can call, and it also gives you the place where you can interactively execute any elisp code and see the effects immediately in the same instance of the editor. It's obvious in hindsight, but I believe I'd get into Emacs much faster if I started with Emacs Lisp manual or maybe "Writing GNU Emacs Extensions" book instead of going through the Emacs manual (huuuuuge!) first and trying to bend my habits to fit the vanilla Emacs. I think most programmers who wish to switch to Emacs should try to do it the other way: start with learning Elisp syntax and Paredit, then learn about modes, hooks, and key-maps and start hacking your own config. Everything else - buffers, windows, fringes, faces, what-have-you - you'll learn as needed when you need to implement a particular command which deals with them. Pull in a healthy amount of plugins then read their source - or just read the source of Emacs, as you can jump to definition of any function in one click, even if it's written in C - and before long you'll have a comfortable environment to work in, with all the features you learned to love from your previous editor. And that's when the fun part start: exploring Emacs features that you've never seen or heard about, wrapping external tools and streamlining their workflows, exploring the huge pile of add-ons.
- DanielBMarkham 7y ago
  This is excellent advice. I may make another go at it. Like you, I've tried before. After a day or two of trying to remember alt-command-blah-blah-blah every time I wanted to do something simple, I gave up. Then I started mousing around which totally defeated the purpose of trying to pick it up. I also found (at least 7-8 years ago) the windows Emacs to be terribly slow. Hopefully that's not still true. That also effectively kills the learning experience after a while.
  - icen 7y ago
    > alt-command-blah-blah-blah C-h f And then I type sort of what I want (with helm or ivy, it's a fuzzy match) and select it from the list, which brings up it's documentation and what keystrokes call it. There is also `where-is` if you remember the name, or `M-x` (or `M-:`) if you don't mind typing it out.
c256 7y ago
How to quit vanilla emacs: select “Quit” under the File menu. If you’re using macOS, you can also select “Quit Emacs” under the application “Emacs” menu, like every other macOS app. If that wasn’t an option for you, very likely you’re not in vanilla emacs, or you’re in a particularly ancient emacs (which happens, but is as easily avoidable as using vim, VS, Sublime, etc.)

by fipar 7y ago

ljm 7y ago

I’ve basically used Hydra (as opposed to Evil) for creating a series of mappings that make sense for me.

klibertp 7y ago

> I just feel it's "my" editor more than any other editor I've ever used. So true! When I first tried to get into Emacs it was as a somewhat seasoned programmer who wanted to play with a Lisp other than Scheme. I've read the built-in tutorial and almost ran away in horror. I get it - for non-programmer users, yes, it makes sense to try to teach them the usage of an editor. I lost quite a lot of time trying to remember exotic chords like C-u C-x ^ a and so on, but it was ultimately meaningless - not one such shortcut remains in my config. Emacs is an IDE for Emacs Lisp written in Emacs Lisp (and it's incredibly powerful at that, BTW). In other words, it's a bunch of APIs you can call, and it also gives you the place where you can interactively execute any elisp code and see the effects immediately in the same instance of the editor. It's obvious in hindsight, but I believe I'd get into Emacs much faster if I started with Emacs Lisp manual or maybe "Writing GNU Emacs Extensions" book instead of going through the Emacs manual (huuuuuge!) first and trying to bend my habits to fit the vanilla Emacs. I think most programmers who wish to switch to Emacs should try to do it the other way: start with learning Elisp syntax and Paredit, then learn about modes, hooks, and key-maps and start hacking your own config. Everything else - buffers, windows, fringes, faces, what-have-you - you'll learn as needed when you need to implement a particular command which deals with them. Pull in a healthy amount of plugins then read their source - or just read the source of Emacs, as you can jump to definition of any function in one click, even if it's written in C - and before long you'll have a comfortable environment to work in, with all the features you learned to love from your previous editor. And that's when the fun part start: exploring Emacs features that you've never seen or heard about, wrapping external tools and streamlining their workflows, exploring the huge pile of add-ons.

DanielBMarkham 7y ago
This is excellent advice. I may make another go at it. Like you, I've tried before. After a day or two of trying to remember alt-command-blah-blah-blah every time I wanted to do something simple, I gave up. Then I started mousing around which totally defeated the purpose of trying to pick it up. I also found (at least 7-8 years ago) the windows Emacs to be terribly slow. Hopefully that's not still true. That also effectively kills the learning experience after a while.
- icen 7y ago
  > alt-command-blah-blah-blah C-h f And then I type sort of what I want (with helm or ivy, it's a fuzzy match) and select it from the list, which brings up it's documentation and what keystrokes call it. There is also `where-is` if you remember the name, or `M-x` (or `M-:`) if you don't mind typing it out.

c256 7y ago

How to quit vanilla emacs: select “Quit” under the File menu. If you’re using macOS, you can also select “Quit Emacs” under the application “Emacs” menu, like every other macOS app. If that wasn’t an option for you, very likely you’re not in vanilla emacs, or you’re in a particularly ancient emacs (which happens, but is as easily avoidable as using vim, VS, Sublime, etc.)