[HN Gopher] An Interview with Mickey Petersen, Author of Masteri...
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       An Interview with Mickey Petersen, Author of Mastering Emacs
        
       Author : cocacola1
       Score  : 76 points
       Date   : 2022-11-19 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (syntopikon.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (syntopikon.substack.com)
        
       | chipotle_coyote wrote:
       | If you use Emacs in Vim mode -- I'm not much of an Emacs user in
       | general, but lately I've actually tentatively taken to Doom
       | Emacs, much to my own surprise -- is _Mastering Emacs_ still
       | useful?
        
       | ashton314 wrote:
       | _Editing code is easy; there 's myriad editors, including Emacs
       | of course, that can do this. But there aren't many tools to track
       | bibliography, your agenda, email, notes, and writing. But Emacs
       | can easily do all of that, and much more._
       | 
       | There is a certain ilk that prefers to tinker with their tools,
       | until they are just the right shape, versus those who learn to
       | compensate for quirks in their tools. Emacs is definitely quirky,
       | but its strength is it handling your manic desire for total
       | workflow integration.
        
       | alfiedotwtf wrote:
       | I went through Mastering Emacs before actually jumping ship from
       | Vim to Emacs. Glad I did!
       | 
       | After more than 25 years of Vim, in the last month I've
       | completely switched to Emacs. And it feels like a super power...
       | I'll be using it for the next 25 years and beyond!
        
         | nnoitra wrote:
         | Why, what's so good about it?
        
           | nnoitra wrote:
        
         | bch wrote:
         | Enjoy the new environment.
         | 
         | I used to be a "competent" vi user, laughing at the Emacs vs vi
         | jokes, until I realized I didn't _really_ know Emacs. I gave
         | myself a 4-week challenge where I'd use nothing but Emacs, for
         | the challenge, and to learn. Fast forward 5-6 years later,
         | still an Emacs user, I wondered if I could understand vi as
         | well as I'd come to know Emacs. I gave myself a challenge, ...
         | 
         | Have since done the same w ex(1), but I didn't let it stick for
         | many years as a daily-driver.
         | 
         | I'd recommend the challenge to anybody. I did the transition
         | doing "production work", so it's possible - you may not have to
         | "wait for the right time."
         | 
         | Enjoy your editing in good health.
        
         | smitty1e wrote:
         | I'm a https://www.spacemacs.org/ devotee. I love the Vim
         | commands, but physically cannot take more than light
         | interaction with the Emacs default key bindings.
         | 
         | How sweet it is to completely reconfigure the environment
         | without losing magit and org-mode.
        
       | wentin wrote:
       | The closest I ever got with vim is with this game: https://vim-
       | adventures.com/ How different is Vim and Emacs' user experience?
       | Would the vim-adventures also apply to emacs?
        
         | thrown_22 wrote:
         | No.
         | 
         | Vim is a text editor.
         | 
         | Emacs is a lisp interpreter whose dialect of lisp is
         | specialized for text manipulation. In emacs the user interface
         | is incidental to the main goal of programmatic text
         | manipulation.
         | 
         | In vim the user interface is the be all and end all. Which is
         | why vim is now a specialized emacs mode when you need character
         | based text manipulation.
        
       | mark_l_watson wrote:
       | Nice interview. I have been using Emacs for about 40 years, and I
       | am getting a lot out of Petersen's book. He recommends reading
       | the Emacs Manual - I mostly did that decades ago, and forgot most
       | of it.
       | 
       | Anyway, I recommend his book.
        
         | uptownfunk wrote:
         | What helped you most getting up to speed in emacs? Every time I
         | try I give up
        
           | rayiner wrote:
           | I learned it by using it to do a project in college in Common
           | Lisp using SLIME. There wasn't really a good Lisp environment
           | for the editor I was used to before that (visual studio) so o
           | had to power through.
        
           | mark_l_watson wrote:
           | In the early days, it was easy to install Emacs on any system
           | I was working on.
           | 
           | In modern times, VSCode is a fine substitute for Emacs, so
           | try that. I generally prefer Emacs because I am so used to
           | it.
        
             | User23 wrote:
             | VS Code has many pleasant properties, but its lack of
             | respect for user freedom is a real turn off. Also it is
             | considerably less conveniently extensible than Emacs. That
             | however is definitely a double edged sword and there are
             | valid reasons to go with a less customizable tool.
        
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       (page generated 2022-11-19 23:00 UTC)