Re: Elisp addiction not as bad in light of Linux forkoholism

[Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> PS: What's "the Emacs work-flow"?
>
> If you don't know yet, then you're not worthy of
> knowing.

I guess people use Emacs in very different ways. Still
there should be even bigger similarities. But it is
rather difficult to pinpoint, perhaps because there is
no other program you ever use in remotely the same
way.

If Emacs was only an editor you could compare it with
nano and say it has more features, it is more
configurable, it has specialized modes for different
code, etc. (perhaps nano has that as well?).

If Emacs was only Gnus you could compare it to
Thunderbird and - and so on.

But Emacs is all this and much more, at the same time,
with an interface that is as much the same as it can
be, for so many activities.

Perhaps this is what makes it almost hypnotic, and
part of why you can do it for many hours straight
without getting bored or mentally tired. There is just
so much to do and you yourself don't have to change
that much when you change activity, so there is no
"energy drain" resetting and preparing for something
else...

Another thing with configuration and Elisp which
hasn't been touched upon is that it is activity that
breeds more activity. Which is very good because
activity is the basis of everything. The more you do
it, the more you learn and understand, and the more
ideas what more to do you get.

You know those forums where aspiring programmers ask
for things to do, because they want to program but
they don't have any ideas what to do? Then there is
always some guy saying "a text editor" (as irony, as
that would be almost impossible for a beginner to do)
- but actually that guy could, without irony, say:
"Start configuring Emacs, and write shell functions
for the stuff you do!" If you do that, there is
*never* a lack of things to do :)

-- 
underground experts united