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You probably do want an editor that is free, can be used for the rest of your life, works perfectly in a terminal, and is completely programmable. I suggest yo

You probably do want an editor that is free, can be used for the rest of your life, works perfectly in a terminal, and is completely programmable. I suggest you continue on with your ascent to emacs understanding! Be sure to use something like prelude, i.e. something with 'sane defaults', and checkout this slideshow by emacs enthusiast (and chief designer of ruby) Yukihiro Matsumoto. (http://www.slideshare.net/yukihiro_matz/how-emacs-changed-my-life http://www.slideshare.net/yukihiro_matz/how-emacs-changed-my...) It took me 3 weeks to become proficient, and I moved from Sublime Text 2.

elwell 12y ago
I'll check out Prelude; I have better-defaults installed, but this seems to be much more radical. Just curious, how did you find out about Prelude? I'm a freelancer so I don't have any in-person exposure to model/mentor programmers outside of the web, and I'm thus finding it difficult to even know if I'm using Emacs in a sane way. For example of the type of things I wonder about: do most Emacs users keep the basic keymapping the same (C-n, C-p, C-f, C-b etc.) or do many switch to a non-conflicting but more ergonomic alternative. (The idea that such an important keymapping is decided by the first letter of an action rather than ergonomic sensibility is insane to me.)
- grandalf 12y ago
  also don't forget to take a look at technomancy's emacs starter kit, which was very helpful to me when I got started using emacs: https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit
- snogglethorpe 12y ago
  Almost every Emacs user uses the standard keybindings for most stuff (though many change the odd binding or two for personal reasons). They work really well once you get used to them, and they tend to form a system: C-f goes forward a character, M-f goes forward a word, C-M-f goes forward an "expression", and those same modifier keys have similar relationships for other commands. As for ergonomics... Emacs bindings feel far more natural and comfortable than any other editor bindings I've ever used, but then I've used Emacs for a long time and am well used to them. I suspect that the same is true for most people: what feels/works best will have more to with what you're used to than any inherent superiority. [And probably no keyboard-oriented editor that's been successful for any length of time will have a truly un-ergonomic design, because it couldn't have succeeded with such.] Probably the closest thing to what you're describing is the various editor emulation packages, which often remap many basic bindings... Of these, vi/vim emulation is probably the most popular these days, and there are like 4-5 vi/vim emulation packages, of varying degrees of sophistication (and age), although I'm not sure which is the current favorite (maybe "evil"? http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil ).

elwell 12y ago

I'll check out Prelude; I have better-defaults installed, but this seems to be much more radical. Just curious, how did you find out about Prelude? I'm a freelancer so I don't have any in-person exposure to model/mentor programmers outside of the web, and I'm thus finding it difficult to even know if I'm using Emacs in a sane way. For example of the type of things I wonder about: do most Emacs users keep the basic keymapping the same (C-n, C-p, C-f, C-b etc.) or do many switch to a non-conflicting but more ergonomic alternative. (The idea that such an important keymapping is decided by the first letter of an action rather than ergonomic sensibility is insane to me.)

grandalf 12y ago
also don't forget to take a look at technomancy's emacs starter kit, which was very helpful to me when I got started using emacs: https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit
snogglethorpe 12y ago
Almost every Emacs user uses the standard keybindings for most stuff (though many change the odd binding or two for personal reasons). They work really well once you get used to them, and they tend to form a system: C-f goes forward a character, M-f goes forward a word, C-M-f goes forward an "expression", and those same modifier keys have similar relationships for other commands. As for ergonomics... Emacs bindings feel far more natural and comfortable than any other editor bindings I've ever used, but then I've used Emacs for a long time and am well used to them. I suspect that the same is true for most people: what feels/works best will have more to with what you're used to than any inherent superiority. [And probably no keyboard-oriented editor that's been successful for any length of time will have a truly un-ergonomic design, because it couldn't have succeeded with such.] Probably the closest thing to what you're describing is the various editor emulation packages, which often remap many basic bindings... Of these, vi/vim emulation is probably the most popular these days, and there are like 4-5 vi/vim emulation packages, of varying degrees of sophistication (and age), although I'm not sure which is the current favorite (maybe "evil"? http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil ).