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>So, why should you try Emacs in 2024? >You’re a curious person and a constant tinkerer who likes playing with (insanely cool) vintage software. >You want to

>So, why should you try Emacs in 2024? >You’re a curious person and a constant tinkerer who likes playing with (insanely cool) vintage software. >You want to experience life outside the mainstream. >You’ve always wanted to learn a bit of Lisp. >You want to build an editor that’s uniquely tailored to your needs and preferences. >You’ve got a lot of time to kill. Is this sarcasm? I think focusing on the killer apps might have hooked me more than that closer!

dingnuts 3y ago
I think it's not sarcasm so much as it is gentle self-chiding. Emacs configuration can certainly be a timesink, especially if you enjoy it. That said, it's pretty easy to put your Emacs config on the back-burner for a long time once you have things how you like them, and it becomes a much more OPTIONAL time sink at that point. Using something like Doom Emacs could even prevent it from really ever being much of a time killer, but in my experience, once one is bit by the customization bug, one doesn't -mind- the time sink so much because the fruits of your labor are worth it
- thraxil 3y ago
  > That said, it's pretty easy to put your Emacs config on the back-burner for a long time once you have things how you like them, and it becomes a much more OPTIONAL time sink at that point. To illustrate this, I'm a heavy emacs user. I've been using emacs more or less exclusively since 1999 (I had two years where I forced myself to use vim to make sure I'd really given it a fair shake), including org-mode, using gnus for my email client, and writing code pretty much every day (with magit, helm, and projectile, tramp for working on remote servers). Here's: ~/.emacs.d <master> » git log --pretty=format:"%h %ad %s" --date=short|head -n 20 6795c07 2023-12-23 rust-mode dd241ec 2023-10-24 full screen automatically on mac 1cf8287 2023-10-22 mac stuff bc1e456 2023-10-22 conditionally set home dir e7d3577 2023-10-22 mac font size f8ba89c 2023-10-22 add ligature stuff 7ef9bce 2023-10-22 add ligature.el 1aaf1e1 2023-05-06 gitignore some stuff de56154 2023-05-06 update the other capture template entries 948d2ea 2023-05-06 capture template works differently now 5b2d34e 2023-05-06 copilot 00991ae 2019-12-28 whitespace d334506 2019-12-28 don't need the other conditional either 95ffdf7 2019-12-28 still working 23378b8 2019-12-28 oh... working now? c1fb771 2019-12-28 that works fine again caf80c0 2019-12-28 removing recenter seems to help 04eba58 2019-12-27 setup 171f175 2019-12-27 weird 05c4163 2018-03-14 terraform/hcl mode 20 commits in the last six years. A good chunk of them because I got a Mac last fall (for work) and so I finally had get my config working somewhere other than Linux. Mostly I only have to tough the config when I add a mode for a new language or when I go through a major OS upgrade that pulls in a new enough version of emacs that I need to make some fixes. I would say that none of those took more than 5-10 minutes of my time. I have about 100 commits total in my git history (so going back to about 2008). Meanwhile, I see colleagues using VSCode constantly trying out new plugins and configs. I think I've spent more time in pairing sessions in just the last year watching other people tweak their editor settings than I've spent configuring emacs in the last decade. When I get a new machine, I just clone that config repo and I'm good to go.
da39a3ee 3y ago
From 20 years experience, it's spot on. What's wrong with telling the truth rather than being a salesperson?!

dingnuts 3y ago

I think it's not sarcasm so much as it is gentle self-chiding. Emacs configuration can certainly be a timesink, especially if you enjoy it. That said, it's pretty easy to put your Emacs config on the back-burner for a long time once you have things how you like them, and it becomes a much more OPTIONAL time sink at that point. Using something like Doom Emacs could even prevent it from really ever being much of a time killer, but in my experience, once one is bit by the customization bug, one doesn't -mind- the time sink so much because the fruits of your labor are worth it

thraxil 3y ago
> That said, it's pretty easy to put your Emacs config on the back-burner for a long time once you have things how you like them, and it becomes a much more OPTIONAL time sink at that point. To illustrate this, I'm a heavy emacs user. I've been using emacs more or less exclusively since 1999 (I had two years where I forced myself to use vim to make sure I'd really given it a fair shake), including org-mode, using gnus for my email client, and writing code pretty much every day (with magit, helm, and projectile, tramp for working on remote servers). Here's: ~/.emacs.d <master> » git log --pretty=format:"%h %ad %s" --date=short|head -n 20 6795c07 2023-12-23 rust-mode dd241ec 2023-10-24 full screen automatically on mac 1cf8287 2023-10-22 mac stuff bc1e456 2023-10-22 conditionally set home dir e7d3577 2023-10-22 mac font size f8ba89c 2023-10-22 add ligature stuff 7ef9bce 2023-10-22 add ligature.el 1aaf1e1 2023-05-06 gitignore some stuff de56154 2023-05-06 update the other capture template entries 948d2ea 2023-05-06 capture template works differently now 5b2d34e 2023-05-06 copilot 00991ae 2019-12-28 whitespace d334506 2019-12-28 don't need the other conditional either 95ffdf7 2019-12-28 still working 23378b8 2019-12-28 oh... working now? c1fb771 2019-12-28 that works fine again caf80c0 2019-12-28 removing recenter seems to help 04eba58 2019-12-27 setup 171f175 2019-12-27 weird 05c4163 2018-03-14 terraform/hcl mode 20 commits in the last six years. A good chunk of them because I got a Mac last fall (for work) and so I finally had get my config working somewhere other than Linux. Mostly I only have to tough the config when I add a mode for a new language or when I go through a major OS upgrade that pulls in a new enough version of emacs that I need to make some fixes. I would say that none of those took more than 5-10 minutes of my time. I have about 100 commits total in my git history (so going back to about 2008). Meanwhile, I see colleagues using VSCode constantly trying out new plugins and configs. I think I've spent more time in pairing sessions in just the last year watching other people tweak their editor settings than I've spent configuring emacs in the last decade. When I get a new machine, I just clone that config repo and I'm good to go.

da39a3ee 3y ago

From 20 years experience, it's spot on. What's wrong with telling the truth rather than being a salesperson?!