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The single best thing I did to become proficient using Emacs was to switch my CapsLock key to Ctrl. Learning to touch type comes a close second.
by gvnonor 15y ago
The single best thing I did to become proficient using Emacs was to switch my CapsLock key to Ctrl. Learning to touch type comes a close second.
- angus77 15y agoI would've thought it'd be the other way around. Why would you bother with a text editor if you're not motivated enough to learn how to type?
- gvnonor 15y agoLearning to use a text editor(or atleast trying) is easier than learning to touch type but anyway people kept touting the power of Emacs and how extensible it was and I decided to give it a shot. On trying Emacs, I loved features such as being able to run a shell, a really good python mode and the extensibility using .emacs files. However since Emacs has a lot of key sequences for navigating between text, modifying text and doing pretty much anything involves not using the mouse, it got really frustrating looking at the keyboard every 2 seconds courtesy my typing illiteracy. So I decided to learn touch typing just so that I could use Emacs properly. One interesting little tidbit.. I had tried around 3 or 4 times previously to learn touch typing but failed. However after I started learning both Emacs and touch typing simultaneously, I succeeded. So I guess the relation is somewhat symbiotic, learning to touch type helped me learn emacs and vice versa.
- evanhanson 15y agoFunny, one of the best things one can do to get faster with Vim is to switch CapsLock and Escape (though I know people who are still reaching all the way to that top left corner even after years of using it).