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The power of emacs is also it's biggest flaw - it's a tremendously powerful piece of software but it's hard to master. I think that's wrong. It more having to

by kiba 15y ago

The power of emacs is also it's biggest flaw - it's a tremendously powerful piece of software but it's hard to master. I think that's wrong. It more having to do with emacs having old arcane UI convention that doesn't make sense to a modern user. Where is my copy and paste? It's not C-c C-p? Save is C-x C-s? WTF?

mixmax 15y ago
that's exactly my point - emacs doesn't put emphasis on the UI at all as you point out. If you can be bothered to learn its, as you put it, arcane ways then it's tremendously powerful tool. But my mom wouldn't stand a chance.
- yomomma 15y ago
  yomomma so dumb she bought a white emacs at the parking lot
- kamaal 15y ago
  Anybody's mom need not has to be as proficient or even use Emacs as much you or I need to be proficient playing a violin or a piano. This also means musical instruments have to be designed to be optimal for musicians who play them regularly not for general amateurs like us who play them once in a while. Same for a code editor. They need to be optimized for programmers not general masses.
gwern 15y ago
What fraction of the M-x commands and modal functionality (to say nothing of the Lisp functions) are covered by any CUA binding (or whatever C-c C-p comes from)? If a user turns on M-x cua-mode, do the discoverability problems instantly all go away?
espeed 15y ago
Emacs is about muscle memory -- after a while, it just flows.
- rdtsc 15y ago
  Yes. If you stop to think about what the key-binding is for the command, you are not using emacs efficiently. Interestingly I would not even be able now to teach someone what the commands are without having an editor open, as I don't really remember them, only my fingers remember the sequence. It is like my brain has built a macro for the command and sent the actual code to the fingers, so I don't have to think about it.
  - kamaal 15y ago
    How is this any different, like using any tool used by any profession by a professional frequently. Programmers, Musicians, Carpenters, Chef's, Drivers and almost everyone in those lines use their tools frequently enough such that their usage is committed to muscle memory and not the usual think-act-think cycle. That's also because most problems are matched to solution patterns. You might have seen this while working with the programming language you have mastered. If there is syntax error, you generally don't read the entire error message. You just ideally read the template and the 'fill-ups' in the template and the line number. You go straight without bothering much and fix it. Same with an editor. There are some things that you do so frequently, its actually better and efficient if the editor enables muscle-memory use cases than Apple product's kinda UI design. Its precisely this 'problems matched to solution patterns' thing that will some day enable us to do drag and drop programming. There will ready templates for each problem each of which will match a solution pattern. We will just parameterize the templates. To an extent this is already there auto-complete, macros, template driven programming etc. But in future we may see full scale stuff like this.
    - rdtsc 15y ago
      > How is this any different, like using any tool used by any profession by a professional frequently. It is not. However since it is an editor, it can be a tool used by a number of professions -- a writer or a programmer. What it improves is text editing capabilities. How does it improve them? It help you keep your hands on the home row. Not saying that vi doesn't do that, it does too. So they can both work. One can argue perhaps that emacs' key combinations are harder to memorize but eventually they are easier encoded into muscle memory. > To an extent this is already there auto-complete, macros, template driven programming etc. But in future we may see full scale stuff like this. Interesting point. I think there is a larger discussion point in there. In general that hasn't happened and wizards, macros and templates still haven't replaced programmers. Business, non-programmer, programming languages, built from drag-and-drop components have been dreamed about since COBOL. And it is funny, but it still hasn't happened. The idea was that instead of hiring programmers, managers would just encode business rules in an easy language or environment and bam! mix in some AI and they are done.
einhverfr 15y ago
Three words that describe why not Emacs: "Inner Platform Syndrome"
calibraxis 15y ago
Well, F2-F5 is how I save a file. ;) I just push my fingers up and mash any of those keys. Actually there's an interesting advantage — Mac and Linux differ on using control and command keys. I'm constantly switching between the two OSes using VMs, and fairly awful things happen when my fingers get confused. Whereas there's no confusion between emacs and either those environments. For cutting/pasting, Emacs uses a clipboard which remembers a bunch of things, not just the last thing you copied/cut. So at least you gain something to compensate you for initial frustrations. (Though I saw someone use a Mac program which improves the Mac clipboard in this direction.)
rbanffy 15y ago
> old arcane UI convention that doesn't make sense to a modern user If you are unhappy with the shortcuts, you can buy a Sun Type 7 keyboard and have keys dedicated to cut, copy and paste. I never tried to bind the keys to the Emacs functions, but I am quite sure it must work.

by kiba 15y ago

mixmax 15y ago

that's exactly my point - emacs doesn't put emphasis on the UI at all as you point out. If you can be bothered to learn its, as you put it, arcane ways then it's tremendously powerful tool. But my mom wouldn't stand a chance.

yomomma 15y ago
yomomma so dumb she bought a white emacs at the parking lot
kamaal 15y ago
Anybody's mom need not has to be as proficient or even use Emacs as much you or I need to be proficient playing a violin or a piano. This also means musical instruments have to be designed to be optimal for musicians who play them regularly not for general amateurs like us who play them once in a while. Same for a code editor. They need to be optimized for programmers not general masses.

gwern 15y ago

What fraction of the M-x commands and modal functionality (to say nothing of the Lisp functions) are covered by any CUA binding (or whatever C-c C-p comes from)? If a user turns on M-x cua-mode, do the discoverability problems instantly all go away?

espeed 15y ago

Emacs is about muscle memory -- after a while, it just flows.

rdtsc 15y ago
Yes. If you stop to think about what the key-binding is for the command, you are not using emacs efficiently. Interestingly I would not even be able now to teach someone what the commands are without having an editor open, as I don't really remember them, only my fingers remember the sequence. It is like my brain has built a macro for the command and sent the actual code to the fingers, so I don't have to think about it.
- kamaal 15y ago
  How is this any different, like using any tool used by any profession by a professional frequently. Programmers, Musicians, Carpenters, Chef's, Drivers and almost everyone in those lines use their tools frequently enough such that their usage is committed to muscle memory and not the usual think-act-think cycle. That's also because most problems are matched to solution patterns. You might have seen this while working with the programming language you have mastered. If there is syntax error, you generally don't read the entire error message. You just ideally read the template and the 'fill-ups' in the template and the line number. You go straight without bothering much and fix it. Same with an editor. There are some things that you do so frequently, its actually better and efficient if the editor enables muscle-memory use cases than Apple product's kinda UI design. Its precisely this 'problems matched to solution patterns' thing that will some day enable us to do drag and drop programming. There will ready templates for each problem each of which will match a solution pattern. We will just parameterize the templates. To an extent this is already there auto-complete, macros, template driven programming etc. But in future we may see full scale stuff like this.
  - rdtsc 15y ago
    > How is this any different, like using any tool used by any profession by a professional frequently. It is not. However since it is an editor, it can be a tool used by a number of professions -- a writer or a programmer. What it improves is text editing capabilities. How does it improve them? It help you keep your hands on the home row. Not saying that vi doesn't do that, it does too. So they can both work. One can argue perhaps that emacs' key combinations are harder to memorize but eventually they are easier encoded into muscle memory. > To an extent this is already there auto-complete, macros, template driven programming etc. But in future we may see full scale stuff like this. Interesting point. I think there is a larger discussion point in there. In general that hasn't happened and wizards, macros and templates still haven't replaced programmers. Business, non-programmer, programming languages, built from drag-and-drop components have been dreamed about since COBOL. And it is funny, but it still hasn't happened. The idea was that instead of hiring programmers, managers would just encode business rules in an easy language or environment and bam! mix in some AI and they are done.

einhverfr 15y ago

Three words that describe why not Emacs: "Inner Platform Syndrome"

calibraxis 15y ago

Well, F2-F5 is how I save a file. ;) I just push my fingers up and mash any of those keys. Actually there's an interesting advantage — Mac and Linux differ on using control and command keys. I'm constantly switching between the two OSes using VMs, and fairly awful things happen when my fingers get confused. Whereas there's no confusion between emacs and either those environments. For cutting/pasting, Emacs uses a clipboard which remembers a bunch of things, not just the last thing you copied/cut. So at least you gain something to compensate you for initial frustrations. (Though I saw someone use a Mac program which improves the Mac clipboard in this direction.)

rbanffy 15y ago

> old arcane UI convention that doesn't make sense to a modern user If you are unhappy with the shortcuts, you can buy a Sun Type 7 keyboard and have keys dedicated to cut, copy and paste. I never tried to bind the keys to the Emacs functions, but I am quite sure it must work.