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When I entered a technical University in Spain, all the masters(teachers that have done incredible things on their lives) used either Vim or Emacs. Most "norma

When I entered a technical University in Spain, all the masters(teachers that have done incredible things on their lives) used either Vim or Emacs. Most "normal" people just used other "more visual" editors. As I learned from the masters I started using more and more both vim for unix tasks and programming and emacs for lisp. Now I use 65%vim, 30% emacs, 5% other editors. Both of those editors are extremely powerful. But you need to know how to use them. It is not painful for the master to use them, in fact it is automatic and instantaneous and faster than any other editor, a thought becomes an action without conscious intervention, like you thing in playing Do minor in an instrument and your fingers do it automatically, you want to erase a line or replace a word, you think on it, is done. They are like musical instruments. You could have the best piano or violin in the world, if a mediocre player plays them, you get bad sound. Most people would be better served with a simple electronic piano or a tablet with lights that point to the next notes of the song, and auto correct them when they play a bad note.

_benj 6y ago
Your reference to musical instruments resonates with me (I play piano) and the fact that emacs call they keyboard bindings "chords" further complements that view. I guess the issue that is being handled here thought is that, just like the piano, the road for those actions to become unconscious is a long painful one. When I started using Golang for work the first thing that I did was buy GoLand from jetbrains. It just works, and I'm paid for "playing piano", not for "learning how to play piano" I wish I was able to use emacs professionally but until I'm able to dedicate (usually unpaid) time to learn it, it's just easier to use something else
- necubi 6y ago
  It's really not that painful. In college I spent two weeks forcing myself to use emacs for everything. I printed out a reference card and unplugged my mouse to prevent cheating. It was not a productive two weeks, but afterwards I was proficient in emacs editing and have been ever since. (Of course true emacs mastery goes much deeper, but it really doesn't take that long to become proficient.)
  - quanticle 6y ago
    A broke college student with nothing to lose but time and a professional programmer have entirely two different definitions of "painful". A broke college student will spend two weeks learning emacs to avoid paying for a $100 IDE. A professional developer will happily pay for a $100 IDE if it saves him two weeks of time.
    - antepodius 6y ago
      In this case, it isn't about money, but proficiency.
      - quanticle 6y ago
        Proficiency? Proficiency in what? Proficiency in learning a completely irrelevant language to spend two months getting up to the same level everyone else gets to in two weeks?
        antepodius 6y ago
        Slower to learn, but with a higher cap, and more likely to endure for four more decades than a given learn-in-two-weeks gui program.
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      It's an investment and the payback is considerable. I can start up emacs in any environment and it works the same. I could go back 20 years and use emacs without trouble. Also I can move around in emacs and do stuff with macros that has saved me a lot of time. And emacs rarely has problems, unlike visual studio, which crashes occasionally and is permanently sending my dual-core to 100% of both. Emacs refactoring, heh, not so good... So I use both, do main editing in emacs.
      - quanticle 6y ago
        But you're not going to go back 20 years. No one's going to come along with a time machine and send you back to the year 2000. And, unlike vi, emacs isn't part of the POSIX standard, so your production servers aren't going to have emacs preinstalled. If you're a new programmer, with zero experience, why would you bother learning a program that is going to make you less productive than your peers and isn't going to give you any advantages when you're debugging in production? What exactly is the payoff to this "investment"?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
zdragnar 6y ago
> in fact it is automatic and instantaneous and faster than any other editor Really? I've always found emacs to be on the slower side of things (not nearly as bad as jetbrains / visual studio, of course) and many keyboard commands to be unnecessarily clunky. I don't know how many times I've given emacs a go, and yet I can't seem to get nearly as proficient as I am with VSCode (and sublimetext before that). I know part of it is that I don't typically work in languages where having a live REPL up is terribly useful, so emacs support tends to be a bit... second class. I think my biggest gripe is that there are actually two mountains to climb. First, you have to become proficient with emacs- the chords and so forth. Then you have to find the magical combination of plugins that work together on your operating system with the magical configuration that brings emacs up to par with things that I consider to be table stakes for a good development experience. Doom emacs probably got me the closest there, I think, but struggling to become moderately productive when I already have a tool with which I am extremely productive seems entirely pointless.

_benj 6y ago

Your reference to musical instruments resonates with me (I play piano) and the fact that emacs call they keyboard bindings "chords" further complements that view. I guess the issue that is being handled here thought is that, just like the piano, the road for those actions to become unconscious is a long painful one. When I started using Golang for work the first thing that I did was buy GoLand from jetbrains. It just works, and I'm paid for "playing piano", not for "learning how to play piano" I wish I was able to use emacs professionally but until I'm able to dedicate (usually unpaid) time to learn it, it's just easier to use something else

necubi 6y ago
It's really not that painful. In college I spent two weeks forcing myself to use emacs for everything. I printed out a reference card and unplugged my mouse to prevent cheating. It was not a productive two weeks, but afterwards I was proficient in emacs editing and have been ever since. (Of course true emacs mastery goes much deeper, but it really doesn't take that long to become proficient.)
- quanticle 6y ago
  A broke college student with nothing to lose but time and a professional programmer have entirely two different definitions of "painful". A broke college student will spend two weeks learning emacs to avoid paying for a $100 IDE. A professional developer will happily pay for a $100 IDE if it saves him two weeks of time.
  - antepodius 6y ago
    In this case, it isn't about money, but proficiency.
    - quanticle 6y ago
      Proficiency? Proficiency in what? Proficiency in learning a completely irrelevant language to spend two months getting up to the same level everyone else gets to in two weeks?
      - antepodius 6y ago
        Slower to learn, but with a higher cap, and more likely to endure for four more decades than a given learn-in-two-weeks gui program.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    It's an investment and the payback is considerable. I can start up emacs in any environment and it works the same. I could go back 20 years and use emacs without trouble. Also I can move around in emacs and do stuff with macros that has saved me a lot of time. And emacs rarely has problems, unlike visual studio, which crashes occasionally and is permanently sending my dual-core to 100% of both. Emacs refactoring, heh, not so good... So I use both, do main editing in emacs.
    - quanticle 6y ago
      But you're not going to go back 20 years. No one's going to come along with a time machine and send you back to the year 2000. And, unlike vi, emacs isn't part of the POSIX standard, so your production servers aren't going to have emacs preinstalled. If you're a new programmer, with zero experience, why would you bother learning a program that is going to make you less productive than your peers and isn't going to give you any advantages when you're debugging in production? What exactly is the payoff to this "investment"?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

zdragnar 6y ago

> in fact it is automatic and instantaneous and faster than any other editor Really? I've always found emacs to be on the slower side of things (not nearly as bad as jetbrains / visual studio, of course) and many keyboard commands to be unnecessarily clunky. I don't know how many times I've given emacs a go, and yet I can't seem to get nearly as proficient as I am with VSCode (and sublimetext before that). I know part of it is that I don't typically work in languages where having a live REPL up is terribly useful, so emacs support tends to be a bit... second class. I think my biggest gripe is that there are actually two mountains to climb. First, you have to become proficient with emacs- the chords and so forth. Then you have to find the magical combination of plugins that work together on your operating system with the magical configuration that brings emacs up to par with things that I consider to be table stakes for a good development experience. Doom emacs probably got me the closest there, I think, but struggling to become moderately productive when I already have a tool with which I am extremely productive seems entirely pointless.