Thanks for sharing. I've been off editor hopping for quite some time, nowadays I just use some pre-defined configuration like Doom Emacs, occasionally I try to build some environment, with AI help, from "scratch" for fun and curiosity.
I really like Emacs' flexibility + evil-mode and reactivity, recently I searched for something similar and found Lem: https://github.com/lem-project/lem, looks promising, I'll try it out and compare with Emacs when I have the chance and time.
My favorite way to move around in Emacs, and to move text around, is via avy-mode: https://github.com/abo-abo/avy. If you have not experienced avy-mode, give it a try, I think you will wonder how you ever got along without it.
In short: turn Emacs navigation into Vim-like navigation, make the editing modal, and thus make navigation hyper-efficient. (If you like the idea, I would suggest taking a look at evil-mode if you come from Vim, or god-mode and devil-mode if you already are used to Emacs.)
A few useful pieces of advice beside that, too. The workflow the author describes is not how I prefer to do things, but the author mentions a number of important capabilities to be aware of: operating at sexp level, subword motion, etc. Narrowing and folding, which I like to use, are not mentioned.
No mention of LSPs or compilers, but these are their own large topic.
Hmm, would be interesting to see a "race" between this and isearch; from the examples, it looks like this has an advantage only if you have lots of similar strings, so "the one you're looking at" vs. "typing more letters of the word" is an advantage? (externally timed, see The Humane Interface for details on how self-reporting doesn't actually work to measure this kind of thing)
I really like this, it's a bit hardcore, but for someone that really cares about efficiency (whether it is worth it or not - debatable), this is great.
Though I have one minor nit against one point, that I've seen basically in every similar article:
> This means no arrow keys and no mouse
I use Neovim daily, and there is no denying that 98% of the time, using mouse is less efficient than doing a fancy search or jump. But for the remaining 2%, it's provably true that mouse is better - like, selecting an arbitrary block of code (without {} or any keyword to hang on). So I always recommend leaving the mouse enabled. Just use it when it makes sense.
In my opinion there's no reason to stick to the "old school" / classic emacs controls. They're archaic at this point.
I am an experienced emacs user and I still use CUA mode, arrow keys, and I wrote a package which completely overhauls built-in "word jumping" commands (called bbww on melpa.)
You don't need to worry about upholding traditional emacs orthodoxy
Disagree with this just because it makes everything else easier. The more you stick to common key bindings, the more intuitive various packages will be. Eg navigating lines vs blocks in a magit diff block is C-n and N respectively. Copying a full hash is M-w. All these bindings are intuitive “overlays” on conventional bindings.
Emacs shines when packages combine to form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Changing basic key bindings is the quickest way to vitiate that symbiosis.
Unfortunately.
And while they may be old school, traditional, and orthodox, they are by no means idiosyncratic. They’re widely supported: readline , bash, everywhere on macos, even modern browsers. Eg you can actually paste in bash: try killing something with C-w or C-k, and paste it back using C-y. Or transpose arguments using C-M-t. Navigate suggestions in Firefox using C-n and C-p. Bash even supports undo using C-/.
All to say: learning emacs movement keys pays off.
Meh. I'm not a fan of modal interfaces. But if it works for you, then knock yourself out. I appreciate the write-up here. I'll give it a try to see if I can see what the author is talking about. The overwhelming majority of code I write now is in snippets inside text documents (think Knuthian Literate Programming) so I don't know how that would work w/ the author's modal setup. But they went to the trouble of documenting it, and it seems sort of like what `vi` people are always yammering about. Seems a decent idea to try to understand it.
Seems to be an intro to a kind of but lite weight vi mode. I tend to like the regular mode in Emacs.
Maybe a bit OT, but I think I saw here a week or more ago a post about magit, I am toying with using it, but seems to be a rather big package. Plus I wonder why dash is needed:
Thanks for sharing. I've been off editor hopping for quite some time, nowadays I just use some pre-defined configuration like Doom Emacs, occasionally I try to build some environment, with AI help, from "scratch" for fun and curiosity.
I really like Emacs' flexibility + evil-mode and reactivity, recently I searched for something similar and found Lem: https://github.com/lem-project/lem, looks promising, I'll try it out and compare with Emacs when I have the chance and time.
My favorite way to move around in Emacs, and to move text around, is via avy-mode: https://github.com/abo-abo/avy. If you have not experienced avy-mode, give it a try, I think you will wonder how you ever got along without it.
In short: turn Emacs navigation into Vim-like navigation, make the editing modal, and thus make navigation hyper-efficient. (If you like the idea, I would suggest taking a look at evil-mode if you come from Vim, or god-mode and devil-mode if you already are used to Emacs.)
A few useful pieces of advice beside that, too. The workflow the author describes is not how I prefer to do things, but the author mentions a number of important capabilities to be aware of: operating at sexp level, subword motion, etc. Narrowing and folding, which I like to use, are not mentioned.
No mention of LSPs or compilers, but these are their own large topic.
Hmm, would be interesting to see a "race" between this and isearch; from the examples, it looks like this has an advantage only if you have lots of similar strings, so "the one you're looking at" vs. "typing more letters of the word" is an advantage? (externally timed, see The Humane Interface for details on how self-reporting doesn't actually work to measure this kind of thing)
I really like this, it's a bit hardcore, but for someone that really cares about efficiency (whether it is worth it or not - debatable), this is great.
Though I have one minor nit against one point, that I've seen basically in every similar article:
> This means no arrow keys and no mouse
I use Neovim daily, and there is no denying that 98% of the time, using mouse is less efficient than doing a fancy search or jump. But for the remaining 2%, it's provably true that mouse is better - like, selecting an arbitrary block of code (without {} or any keyword to hang on). So I always recommend leaving the mouse enabled. Just use it when it makes sense.
How using a mouse and incurring a context switch is better than just mashing j/k a couple of times in worst case scenario?
When you're not editing lisp.
In my opinion there's no reason to stick to the "old school" / classic emacs controls. They're archaic at this point.
I am an experienced emacs user and I still use CUA mode, arrow keys, and I wrote a package which completely overhauls built-in "word jumping" commands (called bbww on melpa.)
You don't need to worry about upholding traditional emacs orthodoxy
Disagree with this just because it makes everything else easier. The more you stick to common key bindings, the more intuitive various packages will be. Eg navigating lines vs blocks in a magit diff block is C-n and N respectively. Copying a full hash is M-w. All these bindings are intuitive “overlays” on conventional bindings.
Emacs shines when packages combine to form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Changing basic key bindings is the quickest way to vitiate that symbiosis.
Unfortunately.
And while they may be old school, traditional, and orthodox, they are by no means idiosyncratic. They’re widely supported: readline , bash, everywhere on macos, even modern browsers. Eg you can actually paste in bash: try killing something with C-w or C-k, and paste it back using C-y. Or transpose arguments using C-M-t. Navigate suggestions in Firefox using C-n and C-p. Bash even supports undo using C-/.
All to say: learning emacs movement keys pays off.
Firefox opens a new window when I press C-n. Is this a setting that you have to enable?
Meh. I'm not a fan of modal interfaces. But if it works for you, then knock yourself out. I appreciate the write-up here. I'll give it a try to see if I can see what the author is talking about. The overwhelming majority of code I write now is in snippets inside text documents (think Knuthian Literate Programming) so I don't know how that would work w/ the author's modal setup. But they went to the trouble of documenting it, and it seems sort of like what `vi` people are always yammering about. Seems a decent idea to try to understand it.
I've used Emacs for 20 years and I never learnt to navigate in a file except backwards and forwards search.
Is there still hope for me?
I think my biggest issue is that I am a slow coder and I never feel in a hurry.
Seems to be an intro to a kind of but lite weight vi mode. I tend to like the regular mode in Emacs.
Maybe a bit OT, but I think I saw here a week or more ago a post about magit, I am toying with using it, but seems to be a rather big package. Plus I wonder why dash is needed:
https://emacsdocs.org/docs/magit/Installing-from-the-Git-Rep...
In anycase to avoid downloading additional packages I may use Melpa
https://emacsdocs.org/docs/magit/Installing-from-Melpa
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