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As a devoted Emacs user I think the following is really the most important part of the article: > Emacs is not really an editor either! I believe that Emacs is

by bradrn 5y ago

As a devoted Emacs user I think the following is really the most important part of the article: > Emacs is not really an editor either! I believe that Emacs is the ultimate editor building material. The out-of-the-box experience is kind of basic and somewhat weird, but I don’t think that anyone should be using Emacs like this. You take this simple foundation, you shape and mold it to your taste and preferences and you end up with the best possible editor for you and you alone. That’s the reason why you should consider using Emacs. … For me, personally, the ability to extend Emacs easily with Emacs Lisp remains its number one advantage over vim. There’s also the fact that you can re-create much of the vim experience with Emacs, but you’ll be hard pressed to re-create the Emacs experience in vim. For me, this is really the key attraction of Emacs. It’s not an editor; it’s a library for me to build my own ideal editor. And, in the long term, there are very few editors which can compete with this.

kqr 5y ago
For me, this is a bit similar to how Linux is not really an OS, it's a set of tools with which you can build your own ideal OS. This means everyone who likes "Linux" likes a different configuration.
lvncelot 5y ago
I'm currently in the process of moving from vim to emacs, and I've noticed that the only things from vim I really need are the modal editing and the basic keybindings - everything else, like the plugins I've come to love, are more or less interchangable, and from what I've seen, more than plentiful in emacs-land. I think comparing emacs to vim as "editors" creates a false dichotomy, one that has kept me from trying emacs for too long.
- Ketan-fullstack 5y ago
  Modal editing is what made me go back to vim after 2 months of wanting to like emacs. Even with EVIL mode it didn't feel just as smooth. Are there other ways to get modal editing in emacs?
  - lvncelot 5y ago
    None that I'm aware of, especially for vim-users, I'm also using EVIL mode.
    - jb1991 5y ago
      As I mentioned in another comment, "god mode" is an emacs package that provides more native-emacs modal editing features.
  - bradrn 5y ago
    > Even with EVIL mode it didn't feel just as smooth. I’m surprised to hear this. I’d personally assess Evil highly — in some areas, it’s even better than Vim. What problem(s) did you have with it?
  - polaris64 5y ago
    If you haven't done so already I'd also recommend looking at evil-collection (https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection). This enables Evil keybindings throughout Emacs which can certainly help.
  - jb1991 5y ago
    Checkout God Mode, which is inspired by Vim but is designed with emacs bindings in mind, not vim bindings. I used it for years (before moving to VS Code).
- philsnow 5y ago
  If you're a big user of vim macros, take a look at some of the quality of life enhancements that emacs macros have: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Edit-Keyboard-Macro.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ed... specifically kmacro-edit-macro and kmacro-edit-lossage You can edit vim macros but it's not nearly as seamless
andi999 5y ago
So how to learn this? I used Emacs for a couple of years long time ago, but while the experience was ok, it didn't last. Is there a book/or blog about the magic you mention?
- bradrn 5y ago
  There isn’t one in particular I can recommend (or remember). Just look up how to install packages, look at other people’s configs, explore what packages are available, and so on. That’s basically what I did.
  - andi999 5y ago
    Where do I get other ppls configs? Maybe my problem is I do not know any Emacs power users.
    - ReleaseCandidat 5y ago
      Look around at GitHub, for example. There is, for example, mine: https://github.com/Release-Candidate/Emacs https://github.com/Release-Candidate/Emacs
    - alex_smart 5y ago
      Emacs Prelude [1] is an excellent starting point for creating your own emacs experience, without being too heavy-weight or opinionated (as in does not deviate too much from the emacs way of doing things). If you are a fan of vim style modal editing, Spacemacs [2] and Doom [3] are two popular emacs "distributions". [1] https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude [2] https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs [3] https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs
- BeetleB 5y ago
  The Emacs From Scratch series on Youtube is actually quite good. He does have all his config in a Github repository if you need to copy/paste. This is the first video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74zOY-vgkyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74zOY-vgkyw
randomcarbloke 5y ago
if you're a machinist long enough, you end up making your own tools that iron out the minor but ubiquitous quirks that drive you to the brink of madness. I'm happy faffing around with Sublime, VSC, even Nano, but when I'm doing anything substantial over an extended period of time I'll always use Emacs, not only that but in the world of Atom Emacs has to be one of the fastest loading/running editors.
npsimons 5y ago
> Emacs is not really an editor either! I believe that Emacs is the ultimate editor building material. That quote reminds me of this quote: > Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material. -- Alan Kay Funny, Emacs seems to be written in Lisp . . .

by bradrn 5y ago

kqr 5y ago

For me, this is a bit similar to how Linux is not really an OS, it's a set of tools with which you can build your own ideal OS. This means everyone who likes "Linux" likes a different configuration.

lvncelot 5y ago

I'm currently in the process of moving from vim to emacs, and I've noticed that the only things from vim I really need are the modal editing and the basic keybindings - everything else, like the plugins I've come to love, are more or less interchangable, and from what I've seen, more than plentiful in emacs-land. I think comparing emacs to vim as "editors" creates a false dichotomy, one that has kept me from trying emacs for too long.

Ketan-fullstack 5y ago
Modal editing is what made me go back to vim after 2 months of wanting to like emacs. Even with EVIL mode it didn't feel just as smooth. Are there other ways to get modal editing in emacs?
- lvncelot 5y ago
  None that I'm aware of, especially for vim-users, I'm also using EVIL mode.
  - jb1991 5y ago
    As I mentioned in another comment, "god mode" is an emacs package that provides more native-emacs modal editing features.
- bradrn 5y ago
  > Even with EVIL mode it didn't feel just as smooth. I’m surprised to hear this. I’d personally assess Evil highly — in some areas, it’s even better than Vim. What problem(s) did you have with it?
- polaris64 5y ago
  If you haven't done so already I'd also recommend looking at evil-collection (https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection). This enables Evil keybindings throughout Emacs which can certainly help.
- jb1991 5y ago
  Checkout God Mode, which is inspired by Vim but is designed with emacs bindings in mind, not vim bindings. I used it for years (before moving to VS Code).
philsnow 5y ago
If you're a big user of vim macros, take a look at some of the quality of life enhancements that emacs macros have: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Edit-Keyboard-Macro.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ed... specifically kmacro-edit-macro and kmacro-edit-lossage You can edit vim macros but it's not nearly as seamless

andi999 5y ago

So how to learn this? I used Emacs for a couple of years long time ago, but while the experience was ok, it didn't last. Is there a book/or blog about the magic you mention?

bradrn 5y ago
There isn’t one in particular I can recommend (or remember). Just look up how to install packages, look at other people’s configs, explore what packages are available, and so on. That’s basically what I did.
- andi999 5y ago
  Where do I get other ppls configs? Maybe my problem is I do not know any Emacs power users.
  - ReleaseCandidat 5y ago
    Look around at GitHub, for example. There is, for example, mine: https://github.com/Release-Candidate/Emacs https://github.com/Release-Candidate/Emacs
  - alex_smart 5y ago
    Emacs Prelude [1] is an excellent starting point for creating your own emacs experience, without being too heavy-weight or opinionated (as in does not deviate too much from the emacs way of doing things). If you are a fan of vim style modal editing, Spacemacs [2] and Doom [3] are two popular emacs "distributions". [1] https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude [2] https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs [3] https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs
BeetleB 5y ago
The Emacs From Scratch series on Youtube is actually quite good. He does have all his config in a Github repository if you need to copy/paste. This is the first video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74zOY-vgkyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74zOY-vgkyw

randomcarbloke 5y ago

if you're a machinist long enough, you end up making your own tools that iron out the minor but ubiquitous quirks that drive you to the brink of madness. I'm happy faffing around with Sublime, VSC, even Nano, but when I'm doing anything substantial over an extended period of time I'll always use Emacs, not only that but in the world of Atom Emacs has to be one of the fastest loading/running editors.

npsimons 5y ago

> Emacs is not really an editor either! I believe that Emacs is the ultimate editor building material. That quote reminds me of this quote: > Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material. -- Alan Kay Funny, Emacs seems to be written in Lisp . . .