Advanced emacs user: Mary Rose Cook Setup | Hacker News Reader

Advanced emacs user: Mary Rose Cook Setup

mary.rose.cook.usesthis.com

65 pointsg3orge24 comments

Erm, she doesn't really tell us about her Emacs setup, so what's so advanced about it? Especially considering the long list of auxiliary apps that could potentially be replaced by sundry Emacs modes (Mail.app, iCal, Notational Velocity etc.). Her .emacs directory isn't that complex.

I do like the usesthis posts, including this one, and I'm not trying to be too negative, just wondering about the title…

She links to her config: https://github.com/maryrosecook/emacs

still don't see justification for advanced

I basically agree, but I like the description of pain-discovery-relief and key usage stages. Kind of succinctly describes the cycle of a lot of tools with steep learning curves, not just Emacs.

"Emacs actually comes with a builtin Emacs Aptitude Test. Do you remap your keyboard or the Emacs keybindings before the chords and sequences it comes with by default have wreaked havoc with your hands?" – Erik Naggum

Looking forward to read your 'Super 4dv4nc3d 1337 Emacs User' article. I bet it doesn't have half the insight from this one.

"When I started working at Ableton, I had to use Linux on the desktop for the first time."

I am curious why she had to use Linux at Ableton given that they don't support Linux with any of their products.

I was going to say the same things. Ableton's Live is an amazing software, it is the only reason my main sound workstation doesn't boot to linux by default.

The choice for devs at Ableton is Linux or Windows. The company has Macs, too, but not for primary development machines.

Do Ableton have dev offices in the UK? I thought they had NY/Berlin offices and that was it.

Yes, Ableton only have offices in Berlin and New York City.

This strikes me as strange. I'll bet at least half of Ableton's customers use Macs.

"My dream setup would be some sort of crazy laptop that was small enough to keep in my back pocket but could be folded out so it had an adequately-sized keyboard and monitor."

Sounds good to me.

Sort of almost there: Airplay and a Bluetooth keyboard. I think we're on the verge... :-)

Still waiting to give someone money that can really streamline the Emac learning process, having a series of daily exercises, etc. I don't want a tutorial mode -- I want something consistent supervised by Emac experts. A six-month program perhaps?

Six months? If you really want to pay money, then why don't you just spend an hour watching the Peepcode "Meet Emacs" screencast for twelve bucks, and then spend two weeks applying what you learned?

Don't make it seem harder than it is.

I think the learning curve for emacs is a little bit to do with its unusualness, but mostly to do with figuring out how you and it work together. This latter is a long process of discovery.

First you should learn how to spell it :)

Next, you have to realize that you don't get good at Emacs by taking some course or learning from some master. You have to discover things yourself through practice. If you want to use Emacs, start using Emacs. You will be an expert soon enough.

I have only come to emacs recently, but what I'm finding is that you can ignore the complexity until you need it.

Basically I started out using emacs in a manner similar to Notepad- type stuff in, save it. Then as I went along, I have discovered that if I want it to do something to help me out, it's generally possible. Once I got to that mindset, I started thinking of new ways it could help me, and discovering new ways of making it do those things.

So far, so good.

How does one become an "Advanced Emacs User"?

I say this as I've been using Emacs pretty much every day for about 2-3 years, yet I can't help but feel I've only ventured a couple of miles into the journey.

I use Emacs not just for coding, but organising and note taking, file management, shell, git (just beginning to), irc, sometimes for browsing and occasionally twittering. I know (and love) registers, macros, jumping around with "the mark". However I feel as thought I have reached the so called "Plateau Effect" where I'm not advancing any further.

There are a bunch of good blogs out there about Emacs which I read occasionally as well as flicking through the wiki

* http://emacsblog.org/

* http://www.masteringemacs.org/

* http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/

* http://www.emacswiki.org/

But, I still feel as though I am no where near what can be called an "advanced user". I feel as though there is still so much more Emacs has to offer, but I just can't find it.

I guess my question is: where do I go from here? How does one become truly advanced?

Sorry for hijacking this thread, and thanks in advance for any pointers.

P.S. FWIW my emacs.d is on github: https://github.com/ibrow/.emacs.d

Edit: formatting

I'm 2 years into emacs myself and end up with the same feeling, in my opinion the Advanced user uses the help before online documentation, because everything is provided in emacs the self documenting text editor, not only that but Advanced really means learning Elisp so that whatever you want to implement can be done to your liking not someone else's template, but I do know this for sure I do love emacs and I mean that It's the one tool that has the same model I think in one tool many platforms.

Hmm. Mary is awesome and lovely. But she uses Emacs and I use Vim. That's... that's... allowed, I guess. ;-)

Thanks, Tom :)

The two aren't mutually exclusive. There's Cream for a simpler Vim, and Evil for Vim bindings in Emacs.

I've been using Evil+Emacs for the past month and it's quite nice.

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