Comment by ncouture | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ncouture | Hacker News Reader

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I deeply share your feelings and recommend anyone to give Emacs and Org mode a try. The learning curve can be long, but if you start programming Emacs on your first day it will love you back faster.

If Org mode interests you this may be good advice:

  - http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html

  For the lazy, I have an emacs.d directory packaged with,
  Norang's Bernt Hanson Org mode configuration, if you are 
  eager to try Org mode for the first time, try it out:

    - clone https://github.com/ncouture/emacs.d
    - replace ~/.emacs.d with the repo's root dir
    - launch emacs
    - read Bernt Hanson's Org configuration workflow
      documentation (http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html)

If you start using Emacs and want some advice:

  There are many well-rounded pre-packaged Emacs 
  configurations available out there, they may be nice but 
  they will fool you.

  Try them to get a feeling on how Emacs behaves with
  other people, but don't stick around too long.

  Build your own environment.

The best way to use Emacs is to make it work the way you want.

http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html is awesome for inspiration but it's a ton of information. I think your point about pre-packaged Emacs configs also applies to org-mode configs.

For building a productivity system, I think it's much easier to build it in small pieces, week by week.

Org mode configs are really Emacs configs.

It's true it's easier to build your system in small pieces as you discover your needs, but it helps a ton to have a better idea of what can be accomplished through customization.

In my case, I didn't write any Elisp between 2004-2010 and probably used Org mode as a bullet list during that time. Until I had enough interest to read its documentation and explored how others are using it.

Only then was I able to come up with a half-decent solution that was still quite good, but really so far off of what can be accomplished with a better understanding of the parts at play in this mode, as demonstrated by Bernt Hanson's setup (http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html).

To this day I'm not even considering trying to rethink the way he is using Org mode because his setup works out perfectly for me, and I have to GTD like everybody else.

All I'm saying is it may not be obvious at first glance and without studying documentation but a very powerful set of tools are available in there and anyone with half a brain can use them, and that it's best to adopt complex-type configurations once you've wrapped your head around them.

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