4 ms·

>Using terrible tools, and taking pride in their awfulness - Especially common with programmers, who take pride in using programming languages and text editors

>Using terrible tools, and taking pride in their awfulness - Especially common with programmers, who take pride in using programming languages and text editors that have been designed by programmers, not updated since the 1970s, and never touched by anyone with a modicum of design sense. I'm learning emacs at the moment. Tell me I'm not wasting my time. Should I just give in and buy TextMate like every other programmer that works on a Mac seems to?

kujawa 16y ago
I use emacs and vi every day. There's no better python environment than a properly-configured emacs. (I use TextMate, too, but only when I'm doing something disgusting like Rails.)
Hates_ 16y ago
You're not. A lot of good programmers use Emacs or Vi on Mac.
- alexgartrell 16y ago
  If you download and build emacs from source, you can give it a cocoa interface that, I feel, is much better (for its minimalism) than aquamacs. How-To: $ tar xzf emacs-23.2.tar.gz $ ./configure --with-ns $ make $ sudo make install [command] + [space] // Spotlight Emacs http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS
  - strlen 16y ago
    'port install emacs23-app' works well No need to use Aquamacs. The great advantage to using regular GNU Emacs is that I can keep the same config on Linux as on OS X with a couple of cond/if expressions e.g.,: (if (eq window-system 'ns) (setq default-frame-alist '((width . 132) (height . 60))) (menu-bar-mode nil))
- Mavrik 16y ago
  Just because a lot of people use it (and are emotionally attached to the editor just like the article said) doesn't mean it's a good choice to learn. If you have time and will to learn Emacs and customize it to your own liking, do so. But there are more efficient editors with shorter learning curves out there which do a lot of those things out of the box.

kujawa 16y ago

I use emacs and vi every day. There's no better python environment than a properly-configured emacs. (I use TextMate, too, but only when I'm doing something disgusting like Rails.)

Hates_ 16y ago

You're not. A lot of good programmers use Emacs or Vi on Mac.

alexgartrell 16y ago
If you download and build emacs from source, you can give it a cocoa interface that, I feel, is much better (for its minimalism) than aquamacs. How-To: $ tar xzf emacs-23.2.tar.gz $ ./configure --with-ns $ make $ sudo make install [command] + [space] // Spotlight Emacs http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS
- strlen 16y ago
  'port install emacs23-app' works well No need to use Aquamacs. The great advantage to using regular GNU Emacs is that I can keep the same config on Linux as on OS X with a couple of cond/if expressions e.g.,: (if (eq window-system 'ns) (setq default-frame-alist '((width . 132) (height . 60))) (menu-bar-mode nil))
Mavrik 16y ago
Just because a lot of people use it (and are emotionally attached to the editor just like the article said) doesn't mean it's a good choice to learn. If you have time and will to learn Emacs and customize it to your own liking, do so. But there are more efficient editors with shorter learning curves out there which do a lot of those things out of the box.