____________________________________

		               EMACS RANT
		  ____________________________________


As much as I like this piece of software it really shows it's age and
has some ugly warts. In this rant I'll go over some of them for my own
amusement.


1 text editing sucks
====================

  In vim you  have to switch between two different  modes to edit text
  which sucks. In emacs you have to memorize and perform in some cases
  really  ridiculous keychords  which also  sucks. Want  to store  the
  number 1337 in a named register called "a"? No problem: C-u 1337 C-x
  r n a.  Now increase  this  number by one: C-u 1 C-x r + a.  But why
  would you even do that?


2 strange terminology
=====================

  This madness gets only mitigated by  the fact that you can run every
  Emacs function  by name via M-x  (in Emacs bizarro land  *M* denotes
  the *META* key which is in most cases the ALT key). But now you have
  to  remember a  myriad of  ancient and  counter intuitive  terms and
  function names.

  - Want to cut and paste a word? No, want to *kill* and *yank* it.
  - Want to swap two lines? No, you want to *transpose* them.
  - Want to refresh a buffer? No you want to *revert* it.
  - Want to increase the font size? No, you want to increase the *text
    scale*.


3 window management
===================

  And  don't get  me  started on  managing windows  in  Emacs. It's  a
  fucking nightmare. By default new windows  pop up left and right. It
  really drives me nuts that new windows don't automatically get focus
  (e.g. the buffer window, help window, shell output, etc.). If I want
  to close them  I have to "C-x o"  until I get to the  new window and
  than type "q" or "C-x 0" to get rid of it. Yes I could just use "C-x
  1" but this  potentially also makes other windows  disappear which I
  might still  need. My conclusion:  if you're working with  more than
  one  file buffer  just pop  out another  frame and  let your  window
  manager handle it.


4 tabs
======

  So you want  to use tabs with  Emacs? Forget about it!  Tabs are not
  the Emacs  way. Emacs operates on  buffers so you are  better off to
  just improve the way you do  your buffer switching. I tried multiple
  packages for tabbing  but not one really does what  I want. Why does
  it seem to be impossible? Because  Emacs WORKS ON BUFFERS AND NOT ON
  TABS!!!111


5 about these buffers
=====================

  Yes, there are  a thousand buffers which are open  in the background
  at any moment and you don't want a tab for every single one of them.
  When  I was  starting out  with Emacs  I routinely  went through  my
  buffer  list and  closed  the ones  I didn't  need  anymore. Then  5
  minutes later my  buffer list was cluttered again. In  such a moment
  you feel  like Sisyphus rolling  the boulder  up the hill  again and
  again and...  The point is with  Emacs you just have  to accept that
  these buffers are there so let them  be. Your leet gaming pc with 32
  gigs of ram will handle it just fine.


6 rmail
=======

  Email in Emacs is another beast  which really isn't worth the hassle
  if you don't  use email extensively. I once tried  it with rmail and
  it was  really my strangest  experience with Emacs cruft  yet. First
  off rmail can't do nothing on its own so you need a separate program
  to fetch your  mail. I chose getmail which you  have to configure to
  fetch  all  the mail  (including  attachments)  into a  single  file
  because rmail cannot read anything else. Having a few hundred emails
  in a file and open it with Emacs is no fun experience. It is so slow
  and laggy that it's on the brink of unusable.

  Then I learn with rmail you have a very different workflow from what
  you'd expect. Your main mailbox file is supposed to be empty all the
  time so  you constantly have to  either delete old mails  or archive
  them  into yet  another  rmail file  (which then  also  grows to  an
  unreasonable size)! Ok so how you delete mail in rmail? It's kind of
  like in dired.  You press "d" to  mark a file for  deletion and then
  "x" (which  stands for e[x]punge,  another great term for  the Emacs
  glossary)  to actually  delete them.  Or so  I thought  because this
  doesn't delete anything. Turns out you also have to save the mailbox
  file ("C-x C-s")  to make your changes  permanent! Fortunately there
  is convenient shortcut for the function rmail-expunge-and-save which
  is bound to "s". You see it's  not a trivial task to delete mails in
  rmail.

  I know there are other email  solutions for emacs like Gnus (which I
  wouldn't touch with a ten foot  pole because it's even more annoying
  to use) or mu4e (which I actually got work at some point) but here I
  lay  defeated.  This shit  just  isn't  for  me  so I'm  back  using
  Thunderbird for the two emails I write per month.

  /rant