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> From there it's learning some keystrokes Learning Emacs is VERY clearly not this trivial... to use Emacs to any extent where it's more useful than it's compe

by jonfw 6y ago

> From there it's learning some keystrokes Learning Emacs is VERY clearly not this trivial... to use Emacs to any extent where it's more useful than it's competitors, you have to learn the models it works in, a new programming language- and then there are a LOT of keystrokes

pmoriarty 6y ago
Do you want a trivial learning curve or do you want power? The people who Emacs will please most are power users who are willing to put in the time to learn it and configure it to their liking.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Believe it or not, it’s possible to have something that’s simple to use at first, but as you go deeper, you learn and configure. That idea is what some on this thread refer to as “sane defaults,” but it seems that every Emacs user refuse to change; Some even look down on people who don’t want to put in the effort. IMHO it reeks of smugness and elitism. I’ll concede that one can be extremely productive using Emacs or Vim, but the steadfastness to refuse to adapt to changes in how most developers work isn’t going to help win any arguments.
jerf 6y ago
I... uh... am almost in some sense ashamed to admit this, but I've been using emacs for about 23 years now, and I still don't program elisp. I can just about diagnose errors in my not-very-complicated .emacs with a bit of googling, and that's about it. I've read about it, and I understand the basics, but I know nothing about the APIs and have no experience in it past one-liners. It probably is a good idea to learn it, in some sense, and you'll probably have to pick up at least the basics that I've picked up, but it's definitely not a commitment to learn a new language.
- joosters 6y ago
  Same here, but not ashamed about it at all. If there's something I need to automate or change in emacs, it's just a web search away and I can find the elisp that I need to add into my config files. I'd consider myself an advanced user of emacs, but that still doesn't mean that I have any motivation to write any new emacs modes or functions, since just about everything I could ever want already exists!
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  Using Emacs without knowing eLisp is like owning a race car but always driving it in first gear.
  - jerf 6y ago
    I can deal with that metaphor, if "a race car in first gear" is still faster than a lot of other cars. Plus, it's the same race car. I've programmed half-a-dozen languages quite seriously in emacs, and I'm not changing editors the whole time. So, while I may not know elisp, I do know a fair amount about emacs and don't have to relearn how to do a lot of things in a new IDE every three years... or, worse yet, discover that entire features are missing because "nobody" has ever used an editor that had them. (I'm not sure I could live without macros of some sort in an editor.)
  - gitrog 6y ago
    I would say it's more like driving a race car but - provided you use one of the many configurations or frameworks ala Spacemacs/Doom out there - having the gears automated by the car's system. An experienced racer would be much better off with driving in manual, but for a beginner or someone never expecting to push the car to its limits the automated gears are plenty good enough.
- pmontra 6y ago
  I got good at elisp in my first years of emacs 30 years ago. Tons of customizations. Then I let it go. I remember the basics but I never write any serious script. No need for that. There are so many packages ready to be installed and Stackoverflow. The solutions are already there so I can concentrate on my job.
BeetleB 6y ago
> to use Emacs to any extent where it's more useful than it's competitors, you have to learn the models it works in, a new programming language- and then there are a LOT of keystrokes Let's take these claims one by one: > you have to learn the models it works in I read a book on Emacs and practiced along all within one week. At the end of the week, I was doing more with it than with any of the previous text editors I used. Indeed, my desire to learn Emacs was explicitly to replace the other editors I was using - and I succeeded. Over the subsequent weeks, every time I encountered a situation where I said "Oh, I wish the feature I used in editor X existed in Emacs", a quick Google search told me how to set it up for Emacs. > a new programming language I was a power Emacs user for over 9 years before I learned Emacs Lisp. Clearly wrong claim. > and then there are a LOT of keystrokes While I'll admit you get more productive the more you learn, for most of those 9 years I did not know many keystrokes. Instead, you do M-x and the command. With completion systems like ido (the "simplest" of the powerful completion systems), you can quickly find the desired command just by guessing what it will be named. I only started learning lots of keystrokes recently, using flashcard software. And even with that, I stopped after about a year once I learned how to use hydra.
- jonfw 6y ago
  My argument is that modern IDE's are HIGHLY functional out of the box. I'm sure that Emacs can be competitive with Notepad++ in just an hour or two- but without learning the extension ecosystem, some configuration, buffers, and a lot of keybindings- You'd probably be much more productive in VSCode after that hour. For instance- search and replace. I'm not an IDE user, but I'm sure I could pop open any modern IDE and find and use search and replace in roughly 5 seconds. Emacs- is that discoverable? Or does it require documentation?
  - allarm 6y ago
    1. Emacs is not an IDE. 2. Emacs has an amazing help system, it is highly discoverable.

by jonfw 6y ago

pmoriarty 6y ago

Do you want a trivial learning curve or do you want power? The people who Emacs will please most are power users who are willing to put in the time to learn it and configure it to their liking.

colejohnson66 6y ago
Believe it or not, it’s possible to have something that’s simple to use at first, but as you go deeper, you learn and configure. That idea is what some on this thread refer to as “sane defaults,” but it seems that every Emacs user refuse to change; Some even look down on people who don’t want to put in the effort. IMHO it reeks of smugness and elitism. I’ll concede that one can be extremely productive using Emacs or Vim, but the steadfastness to refuse to adapt to changes in how most developers work isn’t going to help win any arguments.

jerf 6y ago

I... uh... am almost in some sense ashamed to admit this, but I've been using emacs for about 23 years now, and I still don't program elisp. I can just about diagnose errors in my not-very-complicated .emacs with a bit of googling, and that's about it. I've read about it, and I understand the basics, but I know nothing about the APIs and have no experience in it past one-liners. It probably is a good idea to learn it, in some sense, and you'll probably have to pick up at least the basics that I've picked up, but it's definitely not a commitment to learn a new language.

joosters 6y ago
Same here, but not ashamed about it at all. If there's something I need to automate or change in emacs, it's just a web search away and I can find the elisp that I need to add into my config files. I'd consider myself an advanced user of emacs, but that still doesn't mean that I have any motivation to write any new emacs modes or functions, since just about everything I could ever want already exists!
pmoriarty 6y ago
Using Emacs without knowing eLisp is like owning a race car but always driving it in first gear.
- jerf 6y ago
  I can deal with that metaphor, if "a race car in first gear" is still faster than a lot of other cars. Plus, it's the same race car. I've programmed half-a-dozen languages quite seriously in emacs, and I'm not changing editors the whole time. So, while I may not know elisp, I do know a fair amount about emacs and don't have to relearn how to do a lot of things in a new IDE every three years... or, worse yet, discover that entire features are missing because "nobody" has ever used an editor that had them. (I'm not sure I could live without macros of some sort in an editor.)
- gitrog 6y ago
  I would say it's more like driving a race car but - provided you use one of the many configurations or frameworks ala Spacemacs/Doom out there - having the gears automated by the car's system. An experienced racer would be much better off with driving in manual, but for a beginner or someone never expecting to push the car to its limits the automated gears are plenty good enough.
pmontra 6y ago
I got good at elisp in my first years of emacs 30 years ago. Tons of customizations. Then I let it go. I remember the basics but I never write any serious script. No need for that. There are so many packages ready to be installed and Stackoverflow. The solutions are already there so I can concentrate on my job.

BeetleB 6y ago

> to use Emacs to any extent where it's more useful than it's competitors, you have to learn the models it works in, a new programming language- and then there are a LOT of keystrokes Let's take these claims one by one: > you have to learn the models it works in I read a book on Emacs and practiced along all within one week. At the end of the week, I was doing more with it than with any of the previous text editors I used. Indeed, my desire to learn Emacs was explicitly to replace the other editors I was using - and I succeeded. Over the subsequent weeks, every time I encountered a situation where I said "Oh, I wish the feature I used in editor X existed in Emacs", a quick Google search told me how to set it up for Emacs. > a new programming language I was a power Emacs user for over 9 years before I learned Emacs Lisp. Clearly wrong claim. > and then there are a LOT of keystrokes While I'll admit you get more productive the more you learn, for most of those 9 years I did not know many keystrokes. Instead, you do M-x and the command. With completion systems like ido (the "simplest" of the powerful completion systems), you can quickly find the desired command just by guessing what it will be named. I only started learning lots of keystrokes recently, using flashcard software. And even with that, I stopped after about a year once I learned how to use hydra.

jonfw 6y ago
My argument is that modern IDE's are HIGHLY functional out of the box. I'm sure that Emacs can be competitive with Notepad++ in just an hour or two- but without learning the extension ecosystem, some configuration, buffers, and a lot of keybindings- You'd probably be much more productive in VSCode after that hour. For instance- search and replace. I'm not an IDE user, but I'm sure I could pop open any modern IDE and find and use search and replace in roughly 5 seconds. Emacs- is that discoverable? Or does it require documentation?
- allarm 6y ago
  1. Emacs is not an IDE. 2. Emacs has an amazing help system, it is highly discoverable.