Emacs Rocks | Hacker News Reader

Emacs Rocks

emacsrocks.com

88 pointsrfreytag27 comments

I feel like this was a missed opportunity to use emacs.rocks (which as of right now is not registered. Hurry!)

Pretty sure ".rocks" didn't exist yet when this domain was purchased. It's not all that new[0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=emacsrocks.com

vim.rocks too (hurry up!)

As a die hard Vi(m) user, who just rage quit Emacs today because it messed up on undoing things (Emacs did what Emacs does, sadly my brain doesn't work the same way), I had hoped to see more than just "more excuses to never leave your editor"

I like to use undo-tree for making sense of my undo history. It's inspired by Vim, apparently, so it might work for you.

https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/undo-tree.html

Undo-tree is pretty awesome. Saved me from anguish more than a few times.

But alas, emacs is just too slow during startup for my workflow. I use it with clojure but only because of Cider.

It's very snappy to open if you run it as a server. Defining an alias for 'emacsclient -a= -c' was enough for me. It will boot Emacs if it's not already running, but otherwise, you immediately get a new frame hooked up to the running instance. You can also run Emacs as a systemd user service, to spare even that first delay.

You do have to get into the habit of exiting by closing the buffer or the frame instead of quitting Emacs.

I’ve tried that a few times, but inevitably emacs+plugins get into a bad state and I have to restart.

Plus I haven’t figured out how to keep my buffers organized. When I’m working on project x, I don’t want to see project y buffers. I’m sure there are many plugins for that too, but the state gets corrupted over time and stuff I use quits working.

I much prefer separate instances for separate work, and nvim or vim start from scratch faster than an emacsclient connects.

But why close it? I never close Emacs.

I guess I use it differently than you. It’s common for me to get emacs+plugins into an unstable state.

Sadly, undo-tree is infamous for losing undo history. It's a wonderful package otherwise. Pity it hasn't been maintained in such a long time.

Give Emacs another go with Doom: https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs

The undo in Emacs is great, it's impossible to lose anything because you can undo your undos. I wouldn't start off doing serious work with it, though. Switch gradually and you can avoid these situations by looking stuff up in the moment. Pick a side project to start out with, not your main gig. And if you're a VI user, go with Spacemacs or at least use Evil.

It's very possible to lose your undo history if you use undo-tree. It's happened to me a bunch of times, and undo-tree is infamous for this.

Sticking to vanilla Emacs undo is supposed to be more reliable.

(Curious vim user here) Did you find any occasions where emacs was preferable to vim?

vim zealot who's been using emacs lately:

pros: - magit. unbelievable. - org mode. vimwiki pales in comparison - best vim emulation I've used - impressive operating system :) - configuration is awesome. doing literate org mode configuration with org babel. - lisp is cool.

cons: - haven't gotten comfortable dealing with "projects" yet, navigating files feels awkward. - doesn't feel quite as good as an editor as vim, but better than anything else out there. - no flutter mode - elm integration not quite as nice as I'd like

it feels like I'll get over the cons.

"navigating files feels awkward"

What makes navigating files in vim so much better?

Vim was my primary editor for decades, but I was never particularly impressed with its file-navigation plugins, and mostly used the shell for file navigation. Emacs is really no worse in this regard, from what I can see. It has packages which are clones of or similar to vim plugins like NerdTree and the like (which I don't like myself and don't use, but they're there if that's your thing), and it has a bunch of other ways to navigate files -- like doing so from the minibuffer using counsel-find-file, or from dired, or from within a shell running inside Emacs, etc.

"doesn't feel quite as good as an editor as vim"

In what way? Have you tried evil? It makes Emacs 90% like vim, in my experience, and I rarely miss anything from the vim world myself (though, honestly, there are a handful of things that would be nice to have.. but not nearly enough for me to contemplate switching back to vim).

Evil mode.

You should try Spacemacs; best of both worlds. It's amazing.

Long time emacs user here. This is a great resource.

P.S.: I also happen to be a vi user.

EViL?

Unlikely, probably just DUmB.

The amount of time it takes to setup tune customize and debug emacs is no longer justifiable

Some people like to paint ducks or build model airplanes. Some relax by plopping down in front of their PlayStation or TV for a few hours. Others like to tweak their editor. Is that so wrong?

Not at all. Emacs works as a hobby but unfortunately lost its practicality

You have any idea how long does it take to fine-tune a piano? How difficult and expensive is to adjust a Formula 1 bolid for a specific track? How long does it take to train a service dog?

Just because it takes time and effort to master and fine-tune a tool, required process does not render the tool impractical. Au contraire - it makes that tool the best suited for the task.

pardon. One shalt not argue with a true believer

Reply on news.ycombinator.com