5 ms·

Emacs My Way

23 points by intinig 13y ago

dmortin 13y ago
"I had to spend around two full years memorizing key chords" Yet another user who thinks emacs is about the key cords. It's not, it's about extensibility. I changed most of the default key bindings, because they were inconvenient. Remember: Emacs should adapt to you, not the other way around. That's what Emacs is about. Some people even use VIM bindings in Emacs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz_0i27wYbg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz_0i27wYbg
- klibertp 13y ago
  Yes, yes, yes! I came here to write exactly this: what is the point of having infinitely configurable and extensible editor if you don't configure it and extend it to your liking? The very first thing I did after switching to Emacs was to rebind most frequently used keys to something sane. The next thing was to make the functions themselves sane - IIRC the first command I wrote was "comment-or-uncomment-region-or-line". My emacs config is about 4k lines of my own code at this point, very little of which implements anything by itself. It's full of customize-options, hooks and defadvices, eval-when-loads and similar things, which make Emacs into my editor. If I had to learn some defaults I couldn't change I would just use some IDE or another editor.
  - dded 13y ago
    > the first command I wrote was "comment-or-uncomment-region-or-line" verilog-mode (and I imagine others) includes something like this this. C-c C-c comments region, and C-c C-u uncomments it. It handles embedded /* */-style embedded comments intelligently.
    - klibertp 13y ago
      I don't want to hit different keys for commenting and uncommenting! What I want is to have one key which does all this: 1. if there is no region active and current line is not commented - comment it 2. if there is no region active and current line is commented - uncomment it 3. if there is region active and it's fully commented - uncomment that region 4 otherwise comment the full region And it's this easy to do this: (defun comment-or-uncomment-region-or-line () "Comments or uncomments the region or the current line if there's no active region." (interactive) (let (beg end) (if (region-active-p) (setq beg (region-beginning) end (region-end)) (setq beg (line-beginning-position) end (line-end-position))) (comment-or-uncomment-region beg end))) So I see absolutely no reason for not coding this up and using it :) (Other than, heck, it really is my first ELisp function and it shows :D)
      - ics 13y ago
        Evil-nerd-commenter does the same thing, but if I didn't use email I would have the same thing in my init. It's pretty great.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jeremiep 13y ago
"go-mode, because the cool guys program in Go now, don’t they?" Way too opinionated for my tastes, I'll stick to using https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude with a few custom settings. Optional packages should be the way to go for these configuration bundles.
weaksauce 13y ago
I like the idea of emacs... Every time I read a list of plugins like this I get put off by it though. I want an editor that does editing well and helps me edit source code faster. These lists, for the most part, show how emacs has git integration that's better than the command line(not too hard a task), or rvm switching(how often is this really needed? Set it once in the .ruby-version file and be done with it), or some other external program that can be brought into emacs and have marginal utility. Maybe I am just not getting it and this is a sincere query for the emacs people out there to show me the way. (Vim guy that wouldn't mind switching but hasn't seen a compelling case for it other than the fact that emacs lisp is the bees knees.)
- klibertp 13y ago
  Well, I switched to Emacs from Vim exactly because of ELisp. Or rather because of Vimscript: I thought that Lisp or whatever, even Forth would be better than Vimscript :) After 3 or so years of using Vim heavily I started hit the limit of what can be done with defaults, simple options adjustions and even plugins. I honestly tried to use Vimscript, but I couldn't bring myself to do this for real. I knew some Scheme then, so I wasn't afraid of Lisps. I switched and I immediately started implementing things I wished I had implemented months earlier in Vim. My Vim config was ~700 loc and it had only a few custom commands defined in it after 3 years. As I mentioned in another comment my emacs config is ~4k loc now and defines a multitude of advices, hooks and plain commands after half a year. It grows almost every day and what's most important is that coding to Emacs APIs in ELisp gives me much more pleasure than coding in Vimscript. Lastly, modality - somehow I'm not missing it. It's not that I've seen the light and now think that modal editors are an abomination, but I came to appreciate modeless-by-default model of editing. Emacs ofers many ways to enter modal mode, so when I felt that modal interface would be better for something I just coded it so it's modal. In short - if you're a happy Vim user who doesn't feel the need to write your own Vimscript (or you're happy with Vimscript!) then I see no reason to switch (maybe org-mode or something, but that's a very specific case). But if you thought at some point that you'd like to code up something in your editor but didn't because it was too much of a PITA then give Emacs a try.
  - 13y ago
unknownian 13y ago
After using vim for a while by recommendation of acquaintances, I decided to give Emacs a try on Windows and GNU/Linux. I've found that it's quite enjoyable, even though I'm too lazy to customize it extensively. It has a lot of nice things already built-in. I would say it's the best FOSS text editor on Windows, at least.
fddlr 13y ago
I'm a recent CS graduate, who only used IDE-s and Sublime Text so far. I have only heard about Emacs and vim when I started my internship. I tried it but it didn't really felt good using it. Can somebody tell me what are Emacs' benefits over IDE-s and ST for example?
- actsasbuffoon 13y ago
  Emacs is extremely extensible. Some people use it as-is out of the box and are happy with it, others treat it more like a framework for creating text editors. Sublime has plugins, but it's nothing compared to the Emacs ecosystem. I can edit code in one pane, manage my git repository in another, have a terminal to run tests in a third pane, chat with a co-worker with Jabber in another, and look up documentation in a browser (w3m) in yet another pane. The merge conflict resolution capabilities in Emacs are also pretty excellent. I'd say they're at least on par with Vim's excellent Fugitive plugin. Org mode is a thing of beauty. You can write notes (and enable spell checking in the buffer), create TODO lists, spreadsheets, calendars, handle time tracking, and even embed executable snippets from various languages. The coolest Org mode story I've heard is about Avdi Grimm. He wrote a Ruby book in Org mode and embedded his code right in it. With a single Emacs command he could extract the code from the book and run specs against it, and also package the whole thing up as an ebook. The learning curve doesn't have to be as brutal as depicted in the blog post. I've only been using Emacs for 4-5 months, and I'm already very efficient with it. I've changed a lot of the keybindings to match what I'm already familiar with, so I didn't learn Emacs as much as I made Emacs learn me. I used Sublime for years before my switch to Emacs (with a 3 month layover in Vim Land). Sublime is really easy to use, and I still recommend it for designers who write a bit of code, people new to programming, and people who just aren't interested in learning new tools. That said, I spend 90% of my time writing code, and it's great to have an editor that can trivially be made to do whatever I want it to.
- esc 13y ago
  An addition to great points already made in this thread- in Emacs it might take a while to set up your environment to your liking but once you have done it you can use it for _everything_. From writing code to managing your agenda to writing haikus. As a user of Dvorak keyboard layout that alone is invaluable to me since I always have my shortcuts optimized for Dvorak no matter what I'm doing.
samgranieri 13y ago
I tried emacs a few years ago when the peepcode on it came out. It's a full blown OS with a text editor! I managed to get my work done, but it wasn't for me. I went back to Textmate for another few years, and am now happily using vim with tmux. I might try emacs again in the future.
arthurnn 13y ago
for the minitest users, I created a minitest-mode that has being really useful https://github.com/arthurnn/minitest-emacs https://github.com/arthurnn/minitest-emacs . The mode is pretty similar to the rspec-mode, however it works on minitest.
hardwaresofton 13y ago
The default-installed package management system on emacs is fantastic. You generally have to include more sources to get a lot more packages (marmalade), but it's way better than Vundle/Pathogen. Also, IMO the real driving force behind why emacs is the best browser is the rejection of modality that was the norm (of the time). I think a lot of people would find it ridiculous if they entered their favorite IDE and were forced into a modal scheme for text entry.
macavity23 13y ago
Nice shoutout to ag but doesn't link to it: https://github.com/Wilfred/ag.el https://github.com/Wilfred/ag.el Search the current project, the scope of which is automatically constrained by git/subversion metadata. Awesome sauce! This is one of the things I love about emacs. I've been using it for over a decade now and I'm still regularly discovering new hotness.

23 points by intinig 13y ago

"I had to spend around two full years memorizing key chords" Yet another user who thinks emacs is about the key cords. It's not, it's about extensibility. I changed most of the default key bindings, because they were inconvenient. Remember: Emacs should adapt to you, not the other way around. That's what Emacs is about. Some people even use VIM bindings in Emacs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz_0i27wYbg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz_0i27wYbg

klibertp 13y ago
Yes, yes, yes! I came here to write exactly this: what is the point of having infinitely configurable and extensible editor if you don't configure it and extend it to your liking? The very first thing I did after switching to Emacs was to rebind most frequently used keys to something sane. The next thing was to make the functions themselves sane - IIRC the first command I wrote was "comment-or-uncomment-region-or-line". My emacs config is about 4k lines of my own code at this point, very little of which implements anything by itself. It's full of customize-options, hooks and defadvices, eval-when-loads and similar things, which make Emacs into my editor. If I had to learn some defaults I couldn't change I would just use some IDE or another editor.
- dded 13y ago
  > the first command I wrote was "comment-or-uncomment-region-or-line" verilog-mode (and I imagine others) includes something like this this. C-c C-c comments region, and C-c C-u uncomments it. It handles embedded /* */-style embedded comments intelligently.
  - klibertp 13y ago
    I don't want to hit different keys for commenting and uncommenting! What I want is to have one key which does all this: 1. if there is no region active and current line is not commented - comment it 2. if there is no region active and current line is commented - uncomment it 3. if there is region active and it's fully commented - uncomment that region 4 otherwise comment the full region And it's this easy to do this: (defun comment-or-uncomment-region-or-line () "Comments or uncomments the region or the current line if there's no active region." (interactive) (let (beg end) (if (region-active-p) (setq beg (region-beginning) end (region-end)) (setq beg (line-beginning-position) end (line-end-position))) (comment-or-uncomment-region beg end))) So I see absolutely no reason for not coding this up and using it :) (Other than, heck, it really is my first ELisp function and it shows :D)
    - ics 13y ago
      Evil-nerd-commenter does the same thing, but if I didn't use email I would have the same thing in my init. It's pretty great.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jeremiep 13y ago

"go-mode, because the cool guys program in Go now, don’t they?" Way too opinionated for my tastes, I'll stick to using https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude with a few custom settings. Optional packages should be the way to go for these configuration bundles.

weaksauce 13y ago

I like the idea of emacs... Every time I read a list of plugins like this I get put off by it though. I want an editor that does editing well and helps me edit source code faster. These lists, for the most part, show how emacs has git integration that's better than the command line(not too hard a task), or rvm switching(how often is this really needed? Set it once in the .ruby-version file and be done with it), or some other external program that can be brought into emacs and have marginal utility. Maybe I am just not getting it and this is a sincere query for the emacs people out there to show me the way. (Vim guy that wouldn't mind switching but hasn't seen a compelling case for it other than the fact that emacs lisp is the bees knees.)

klibertp 13y ago
Well, I switched to Emacs from Vim exactly because of ELisp. Or rather because of Vimscript: I thought that Lisp or whatever, even Forth would be better than Vimscript :) After 3 or so years of using Vim heavily I started hit the limit of what can be done with defaults, simple options adjustions and even plugins. I honestly tried to use Vimscript, but I couldn't bring myself to do this for real. I knew some Scheme then, so I wasn't afraid of Lisps. I switched and I immediately started implementing things I wished I had implemented months earlier in Vim. My Vim config was ~700 loc and it had only a few custom commands defined in it after 3 years. As I mentioned in another comment my emacs config is ~4k loc now and defines a multitude of advices, hooks and plain commands after half a year. It grows almost every day and what's most important is that coding to Emacs APIs in ELisp gives me much more pleasure than coding in Vimscript. Lastly, modality - somehow I'm not missing it. It's not that I've seen the light and now think that modal editors are an abomination, but I came to appreciate modeless-by-default model of editing. Emacs ofers many ways to enter modal mode, so when I felt that modal interface would be better for something I just coded it so it's modal. In short - if you're a happy Vim user who doesn't feel the need to write your own Vimscript (or you're happy with Vimscript!) then I see no reason to switch (maybe org-mode or something, but that's a very specific case). But if you thought at some point that you'd like to code up something in your editor but didn't because it was too much of a PITA then give Emacs a try.
- 13y ago

unknownian 13y ago

After using vim for a while by recommendation of acquaintances, I decided to give Emacs a try on Windows and GNU/Linux. I've found that it's quite enjoyable, even though I'm too lazy to customize it extensively. It has a lot of nice things already built-in. I would say it's the best FOSS text editor on Windows, at least.

fddlr 13y ago

I'm a recent CS graduate, who only used IDE-s and Sublime Text so far. I have only heard about Emacs and vim when I started my internship. I tried it but it didn't really felt good using it. Can somebody tell me what are Emacs' benefits over IDE-s and ST for example?

actsasbuffoon 13y ago
Emacs is extremely extensible. Some people use it as-is out of the box and are happy with it, others treat it more like a framework for creating text editors. Sublime has plugins, but it's nothing compared to the Emacs ecosystem. I can edit code in one pane, manage my git repository in another, have a terminal to run tests in a third pane, chat with a co-worker with Jabber in another, and look up documentation in a browser (w3m) in yet another pane. The merge conflict resolution capabilities in Emacs are also pretty excellent. I'd say they're at least on par with Vim's excellent Fugitive plugin. Org mode is a thing of beauty. You can write notes (and enable spell checking in the buffer), create TODO lists, spreadsheets, calendars, handle time tracking, and even embed executable snippets from various languages. The coolest Org mode story I've heard is about Avdi Grimm. He wrote a Ruby book in Org mode and embedded his code right in it. With a single Emacs command he could extract the code from the book and run specs against it, and also package the whole thing up as an ebook. The learning curve doesn't have to be as brutal as depicted in the blog post. I've only been using Emacs for 4-5 months, and I'm already very efficient with it. I've changed a lot of the keybindings to match what I'm already familiar with, so I didn't learn Emacs as much as I made Emacs learn me. I used Sublime for years before my switch to Emacs (with a 3 month layover in Vim Land). Sublime is really easy to use, and I still recommend it for designers who write a bit of code, people new to programming, and people who just aren't interested in learning new tools. That said, I spend 90% of my time writing code, and it's great to have an editor that can trivially be made to do whatever I want it to.
esc 13y ago
An addition to great points already made in this thread- in Emacs it might take a while to set up your environment to your liking but once you have done it you can use it for _everything_. From writing code to managing your agenda to writing haikus. As a user of Dvorak keyboard layout that alone is invaluable to me since I always have my shortcuts optimized for Dvorak no matter what I'm doing.

samgranieri 13y ago

I tried emacs a few years ago when the peepcode on it came out. It's a full blown OS with a text editor! I managed to get my work done, but it wasn't for me. I went back to Textmate for another few years, and am now happily using vim with tmux. I might try emacs again in the future.

arthurnn 13y ago

for the minitest users, I created a minitest-mode that has being really useful https://github.com/arthurnn/minitest-emacs https://github.com/arthurnn/minitest-emacs . The mode is pretty similar to the rspec-mode, however it works on minitest.

hardwaresofton 13y ago

The default-installed package management system on emacs is fantastic. You generally have to include more sources to get a lot more packages (marmalade), but it's way better than Vundle/Pathogen. Also, IMO the real driving force behind why emacs is the best browser is the rejection of modality that was the norm (of the time). I think a lot of people would find it ridiculous if they entered their favorite IDE and were forced into a modal scheme for text entry.

macavity23 13y ago

Nice shoutout to ag but doesn't link to it: https://github.com/Wilfred/ag.el https://github.com/Wilfred/ag.el Search the current project, the scope of which is automatically constrained by git/subversion metadata. Awesome sauce! This is one of the things I love about emacs. I've been using it for over a decade now and I'm still regularly discovering new hotness.