Re: Failing to see the allure of Emacs

[Stefan Kamphausen]

Hi,

Daniel <unagimiyagi@gmail.com> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I started learning emacs 48 hours ago.  The motivation for this was to
> be able to do programming and general computing tasks through just
> emacs.  I've seen the wizards who are just doing all kinds of crazy
> stuff--quickly.  I am not sure what the benefit is now, though, after
> going through the tutorial.

the tutorial will only get you going.  From there on it's a long
journey.  But beware, somewhere down the path you may pass the point of
no return.  For me all other IDEs are basically unusable for my daily
work, mainly because their editors suck so much. 

>
> Yes, I can edit text files and python files and java files no
> problem.  And I have no doubt that I'll get faster. But I thought that
> I would never have to leave the emacs terminal window.

I leave it all the time, I even keep a few terminal windows open,
although I can M-x shell.


[...]

> But again, did I expect too much out of emacs?  So far I find it to be
> about as good as BBEdit . It's a text editor but no more.  I expected
> emacs to be the one program that ruled them all.

Just a few things that I have in Emacs and don't find in other
editors...

M-x describe-mode (C-h m)
    Tell me what is available right here and now, context sensitive

M-x describe-key (C-h k)
    What happens when I press that key...

M-x view-lossage (C-h l)
    Huh? I mistyped and something strange happened.  This will tell you,
    what.

M-x where-is (C-h w)
    Find keybinding for a command

M-x apropos (C-h a)
    there was that command, named something like... uh, what was it?
    ... 

M-x mark-sexp (C-M-Space)
    Mark "logical" parts, intelligent for many, many modes.

M-x transpose-chars (C-t)
             -lines (C-x C-t)
             -sexps (C-M-t)
             -words (M-t)
    well, ... transpose things.

M-x upcase-
    downcase-
    capitalize-word

M-x fill-paragraph (M-q)
    Honestly, how can people format plain text without this??

M-x indent-for-tab-command (usually TAB)
    Emacs is the only editor I've ever used that gets indentation
    right. 

M-x grep
M-x occur
M-x anything (addon)
M-x locate


... to name but a few.  I can't really tell all things, because my
fingers have their own brain ;-)



Kind regards,
Stefan
-- 
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