From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Luca Ferrari Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?" Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 08:27:55 +0200 Message-ID: References: <87y58pplcp.fsf@VLAN-3434.student.uu.se> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1375165687 3905 80.91.229.3 (30 Jul 2013 06:28:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 06:28:07 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Jul 30 08:28:10 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1V43Pl-0001uL-Bw for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 30 Jul 2013 08:28:09 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:56316 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1V43Pk-0005d2-Qh for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 30 Jul 2013 02:28:08 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:56404) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1V43Pa-0005ci-Da for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 30 Jul 2013 02:27:59 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1V43PZ-0003Tz-AH for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 30 Jul 2013 02:27:58 -0400 Original-Received: from mail-wg0-x22a.google.com ([2a00:1450:400c:c00::22a]:64501) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1V43PZ-0003Tv-4B for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 30 Jul 2013 02:27:57 -0400 Original-Received: by mail-wg0-f42.google.com with SMTP id j13so3477856wgh.3 for ; Mon, 29 Jul 2013 23:27:56 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:date :x-google-sender-auth:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type; bh=aEGWpTnTVB4qzftOM9ByOpVNDMsPsBfXpn1fk3K6R78=; b=jhhGN77N1C+wh7D//K+bG7f8oAd8wT9J83rE1zv5KNq+K2ZrRYvFRLbFRyj7oxjVJ2 GZm2qg/fTtacv+3567l46mKh/NuIYZ7cnyEtv0Cw41CSZfMi1kh3DFubemKizXC8xLtZ oRyEL3kRuoKRXAQI9dgNI+uV2sPiImV6UhGxxRiYjAtYl7hpee0+VDzJYz6X+YbOHwCt H1ukFg46JDEWZNQzRRmYSfSHt0aA1mFQPOcAQhG6mOiz59MnYw4qypHXyL4um3gYWB2c KK6Md7GGxIRKVBdICpMfZq9flAEHuGqTwwllVYuosDDH38POgXUmVnZJLHXKWkfgm0ob yF3A== X-Received: by 10.180.92.1 with SMTP id ci1mr13577wib.14.1375165676014; Mon, 29 Jul 2013 23:27:56 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: by 10.194.157.194 with HTTP; Mon, 29 Jul 2013 23:27:55 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: X-Google-Sender-Auth: bx0h0O3D1Y4dPbhZD4tLlXi5ILw X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Error: Malformed IPv6 address (bad octet value). X-Received-From: 2a00:1450:400c:c00::22a X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:92526 Archived-At: On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 5:37 PM, Rustom Mody wrote: > On Monday, July 29, 2013 8:16:05 PM UTC+5:30, Jambunathan K wrote: >> Personally, my first love with Emacs was when someone showed M-q to me >> and the most uglily indented text aligned nicely between the margins. > > I started using emacs in the early 90s because I wanted something better than an interactive shell for teaching interaction with a (pre)haskell interpreter. Dunno if comint mode existed then -- I at least did not know about it. > Wrote my own mode which used to crash not just emacs but even linux in interesting ways! Couple of years later, found scheme-mode written on top of comint and search-n-replaced it for my purposes. > I started using Emacs because (i) I hated vi with a passion, since it was the _only_ editor university was teaching us and I was wondering why and (ii) because I found it incredibly faster than more other editors. For instance, while doing my master degree thesis, a latex document that resulted in almost 300 pages, emacs was able to le tme search forward and backward incrementally, while other editors, even those latex-branded, were sinking parsing such a large document. Therefore I decided Emacs had to be my editor of choice, and then I used to program almost everything I had in almost every language ranging from java, perl, php, etc. I teach some web stuff in high school, and I'd love students use emacs but I have to face that students are not living a point and click generation and they do not understand the real power of using keystrokes. Moreover, as already said, they are brain damaged and this does not help. To learn Emacs (as to learn anything else) you need attitude. > I am frequently asked to use something more 'modern/reasonable' etc than emacs (eclipse/sublime-text etc). > This is something happens to me too: my colleagues often look at me like a nerd because I don't use something more eye-candy like ultraedit/eclipse/netbeans/whatever. But I feel comfortable with my keys and the speed of emacs. There are however a few places where Emacs should get a real improvement: - IDE-like support and code autocompletion (cedet and autocomplete are very helpful, but there is still a gap with some major IDEs) - prebuilt and preconfigured packages: often configuring emacs is a quite tricky - inclusion in base systems: the first thing I often do when installing a new system is to add emacs since it is rarely used as a default editor. Luca