

Emacs isn't for everyone (2010) - pmoriarty
http://briancarper.net/blog/534

======
tptacek
_Emacs is good at integrating with Git too. So good that there are four or
five different Emacs-Git libraries, each with a different interface and
feature set. I gave up eventually and went back to using the command line._

This is superficially true but fundamentally incorrect. There is _one_ Git
mode that everyone uses: Magit. Magit is incredible; it is one of a couple
Emacs integrations that make the tool it integrates with better, in a
significant and meaningful way.

I'm not a "use Emacs as my shell", "read my email in Emacs" kind of person.
And I am nowhere nearly as effective in Git on the commandline as I am with
Magit.

Use Magit.

~~~
conistonwater
_There is one Git mode that everyone uses_

This is actually a bit of a problem. Even with many things available out
there, some things are more useable than others, and it takes quite a bit of
digging to figure out which packages you want to install.

I think people who write up their experiences in emacs and give suggestions
about which packages are genuinely useful, and which alternatives aren't, are
being really helpful.

~~~
caisah
Actually magit is the second most downloaded package from MELPA. It's kinda
hard to miss it.

~~~
conistonwater
_Actually magit is the second most downloaded package from MELPA._

Thanks. I didn't know MELPA had download counts, now I do. But there is
nothing in `list-packages' that hints at this, really, it's just a list of
packages.

 _It 's kinda hard to miss it._

The person who wrote the article managed this easily enough. Emacs packages
also interact with each other (e.g., completion minor modes and language major
modes, things like flycheck). I still think there's a fair amount of
uncertainty about what packages one should install, and that projects like
[https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude](https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude) are
really helpful in this regard.

~~~
fafner
> The person who wrote the article managed this easily enough.

Since it's a single data point I think it really says more about the author of
the article than about Emacs...

------
chetanahuja
The title of this blog-post is _Emacs isn 't for everyone"_. Another posts on
the same blog is charmingly titled _" Emacs undying hatred"_
([http://briancarper.net/blog/290/emacs-undying-
hatred](http://briancarper.net/blog/290/emacs-undying-hatred) ). Just putting
two and two together here, I'd come to the reluctant conclusion that emacs is
not for brian carper (the blogger).

~~~
dwc
I used emacs for about 10 years. I got to be pretty ok with it. On a lark I
decided to try vim for a few weeks and see what it was like. About 2 weeks in
I was already more productive in vim. I've never even considered switching
back. I don't hate emacs, but emacs isn't for everyone. But vim isn't for
everyone either. Use what you like.

------
melling
You can always use emacs like Notepad until your curiosity takes hold. There
are so many resources to learn emacs that it's easy to browse and learn.
Reddit and StackExchange are "newer" communities.

[http://emacs.stackexchange.com](http://emacs.stackexchange.com)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/](http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/)

~~~
rbdn
More resources for a quick start:

[http://emacs.sexy](http://emacs.sexy)

    
    
        brew install emacs --HEAD --use-git-head --cocoa --with-gnutls --with-rsvg --with-imagemagick

------
wglb
I suspect that if i had to learn emacs with the "big-bang" theory, I would be
less satisfied. Big-bang is where you try to get it all at once.

My path to emacs started with MicroEMACS. Then, I ended up with a DEC
workstation with emacs. What worked for me was starting with the minimum
viable command set--open a file, find some text, add or change some text, save
the file, exit. Then add a new command or two as you go along. In the 22 years
that i have been using emacs, there hasn't been a period of concentrated
study. Maybe a few minutes at a time picking up something new.

If I had to teach someone learning emacs to "Refactor this java code", I'm not
sure how I would go about instructing someone to do that.

But it serves me well for most of my programming and writing.

------
chris_j
Over four years have gone by since this post was written and there are now a
number of other options for working with Clojure. For example, Counter
Clockwise adds Clojure support to Eclipse and Light Table is an editor built
from the ground up (in ClojureScript) that adheres more closely to modern UI
idioms.

You can see which development environments are most popular in the 2014 State
of Clojure survey results [0]. It's interesting to note that Emacs is still by
far the most popular.

[0] [https://cognitect.wufoo.com/reports/state-of-
clojure-2014-re...](https://cognitect.wufoo.com/reports/state-of-
clojure-2014-results/)

------
dragonwriter
I am less then convinced that relying on Emacs as a primary environment is a
problem, but I think that not documenting the relevant features of emacs and
the relevant emacs mode(s) for your language or tool the same as you would if
it was a custom, language-specific environment is a problem. Too often the
relevant emacs mode is documented with the assumption than any new user of the
language already has a broad general proficiency with Emacs.

------
swatow
it's nice to see an article that says "X isn't for everyone" in the field of
text editors.

While the author talked about emacs being "painful" to learn, they later
rephrased in terms of a time investment. But I don't think it's just about a
time investment. Some people find the process of learning new key bindings,
workflows, etc. more painful than others.

I notice that every single person on my ~5 person team uses Eclipse, instead
of Emacs or Vim. That's probably partly due to the influence team members have
on each other. But I think it's also because we chose (or were assigned) this
team based on certain personality traits. The team's product is focussed on
making certain hard to use things easier to user. I think that the people who
could relate to this product, are the sort of people who experienced the
"pain" of learning things like emacs more than others.

I think that we need to acknowledge that people are different. We should value
the people who are capable of learning things like emacs with little
psychological difficulty. But those of us who like things to be easy and
intuitive from the start, should use our visceral experience or hard to use
products, to guide us in making easier to user products for others.

------
Dewie
And the alternatives are... nothing beyond text editor + terminal, it seems.
So does anyone have any plans?

~~~
Sanddancer
If you're working on clojure, there are many alternatives to emacs.
Counterclockwise for if you want to do editing in eclipse. Enclojure if you
want to do work in netbeans. vsClosure if you want to work in visual studio.
Emacs is not the alpha and omega; there are other tools out there which quite
possibly have better workflows depending on your need.

