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Interesting post. I'm ~6 mo into using emacs, but I'm a long time vim user. I use emacs for org mode and org-roam, and for personal finance[0]. And sometime, magit.And honestly... I may never use it for much more beyond this, and that's totally fine with me. Which I suppose is the point of flexibility -- people can use a flexible tool in the way that works best for them. My contribution here is to note that its _also_ ok to decide a tool, even an impressive tool, is something you only want in a few specific contexts without feeling bad about not adopting it everywhere.
I think its working out that way for me because I'm not actually much of a tinkerer. I very much like the straightforwardness of plain text, and I like all tools that empower me to put that in the center of my workflows. I can take or leave emacs, but I love org-*. Actually not too different from how I got into programming in the first place -- being able to write a plain text file in a certain format, point my browser to it, and boom it's a web page, was magic. And from there into actual programs -- use a certain format and boom it does stuff... The tools themselves - eh. Keep it simpler and I'm happier, but I'm not much for customizing them.
I can see how for the tinkering personality one can really get into emacs. That's not me, but emacs works for me for some things, and I've been happy to learn it for those.
[0]https://github.com/beancount/beancount-mode
I only recently feel like I've "gotten" Emacs, to the point where I'm confident enough to tell others about my setup [1], but in the process of doing so I've realized I have so much more built-ins that I've barely touched. Like, dired. Magit, I've only skimmed the surface of. Hilariously, I only learned about apropos last week!
For some reason though I gain great enjoyment from tweaking my Emacs environment (I even made my own theme [2]), and I'm productive at work, so I really can't complain :)
I'm with the author though... would I recommend it? Yeeeeah maybe not, in the long run it's worth it but for new programmers no way, just use vscode like everyone else.
[1] https://blog.calebjay.com/posts/my-emacs-environment/
[2] https://github.com/komali2/Emacs-VSCode-Default-High-Contras...
I only recently feel like I've "gotten" Emacs, to the point where I'm confident enough to tell others about my setup [1], but in the process of doing so I've realized I have so much more built-ins that I've barely touched. Like, dired. Magit, I've only skimmed the surface of. Hilariously, I only learned about apropos last week!
For some reason though I gain great enjoyment from tweaking my Emacs environment (I even made my own theme [2]), and I'm productive at work, so I really can't complain :)
I'm with the author though... would I recommend it? Yeeeeah maybe not, in the long run it's worth it but for new programmers no way, just use vscode like everyone else.
[1] https://blog.calebjay.com/posts/my-emacs-environment/
[2] https://github.com/komali2/Emacs-VSCode-Default-High-Contras...
FYI for anyone looking for a good android org app, I've been using and enjoying Orgzly. [1] Looks like it has a totally different UX than flathabits - I'm not sure how xenodium is managing habits in org. Orgzly mostly is a notebook (org file) and headline/todo/deadline property organizing tool.
[1] http://www.orgzly.com/
The question is almost like asking a fish to describe water. It's the sudden lack of it that produces a really clear example. :)
Anyway, here's a random example that comes to mind: I have some sexps in a Lisp file and I want to sort them alphabetically. Each sexp (usually a top-level form, but not necessarily) usually spans multiple lines, so line-sorting won't do it. Since they may be top-level forms, there may be comments between them that would lose their context if their position relative to sexps were lost, so comments need to "stick to" sexps they're above.
How would you solve this in a random text editor?
In Emacs, I would develop a command that does what I need. At each stage of the development process, I evaluate the command's definition, and it's instantly available to be used and tested. I could even test the function on its own definition, if I wanted to be silly (undoing the sorting after testing, of course).
When I'm done, I save the command definition to my configuration, and it's now a permanent tool in my toolbox. I didn't have to recompile the editor and start a new process, nor did I have to submit a patch to an upstream and ask for it to be merged. Similarly to a carpenter (forgive me if it sounds silly), my editor is my workbench, and as wood is malleable, so is my editor.
So, here's the command I came up with (maybe not the prettiest implementation, but maybe not the worst): https://github.com/alphapapa/unpackaged.el#sort-sexps And using Emacs and Org mode, I publish it into this "unpackaged" package, which I then install into my configuration as a package, and other users can then easily install it into theirs, too.
I don't know of any other editor that can do all of this, certainly not so easily.