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Disclaimer: I'm a vim guy. When I get awe-struck comments from those looking over my shoulder, it's not about any plugins or IDE-like functionality, it's about

Disclaimer: I'm a vim guy. When I get awe-struck comments from those looking over my shoulder, it's not about any plugins or IDE-like functionality, it's about how fast I'm editing text. Let's remind ourselves, that's the core function of a text editor: to help you edit text, as quickly and unobtrusively as possible. I was hoping to see more of that angle in this video, but instead I just saw how emacs can be an IDE. I'd be very interested to just see a couple of classes (or any substantial chunk of code) written by an emacs "power user" without the narration and tutorial.

geocar 18y ago
You're not going to see it. Emacs users don't type or edit text faster than vi-users, they type and edit less text. Its a hard thing to convince someone that Emacs is a better editor, when it's clearly and obviously worse at editing text. viper-mode helps emacs be a better text-editor, but it also demonstrates that it is difficult to access that functionality that helps you type less and access the functionality that helps you type faster at the same time- it might not even sure it's possible. Disclaimer: I wrote a vi-clone in Javascript, and for editing text, I use vi.
deleted 18y ago
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jrockway 18y ago
I'd be very interested to just see a couple of classes (or any substantial chunk of code) written by an emacs "power user" without the narration and tutorial. I've tried to do this, but it ends up being not very interesting. There is too much breadth; you really need to be familiar with all of emacs' features to be able to use them at the right time. For any given editing task, there are probably only a few features that you need. Learning the rest will save you time, but you only need the features occasionally. This means that you have to read the manual -- a screencast isn't going to help you. Practice is also essential. You need to burn the commands into your muscle memory, otherwise you aren't going to be very fast. Emacs is like a musical instrument. You have to practice, and you're not going to become a virtuoso overnight.

geocar 18y ago

You're not going to see it. Emacs users don't type or edit text faster than vi-users, they type and edit less text. Its a hard thing to convince someone that Emacs is a better editor, when it's clearly and obviously worse at editing text. viper-mode helps emacs be a better text-editor, but it also demonstrates that it is difficult to access that functionality that helps you type less and access the functionality that helps you type faster at the same time- it might not even sure it's possible. Disclaimer: I wrote a vi-clone in Javascript, and for editing text, I use vi.

deleted 18y ago

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jrockway 18y ago

I'd be very interested to just see a couple of classes (or any substantial chunk of code) written by an emacs "power user" without the narration and tutorial. I've tried to do this, but it ends up being not very interesting. There is too much breadth; you really need to be familiar with all of emacs' features to be able to use them at the right time. For any given editing task, there are probably only a few features that you need. Learning the rest will save you time, but you only need the features occasionally. This means that you have to read the manual -- a screencast isn't going to help you. Practice is also essential. You need to burn the commands into your muscle memory, otherwise you aren't going to be very fast. Emacs is like a musical instrument. You have to practice, and you're not going to become a virtuoso overnight.