[HN Gopher] Bad Emacs Advice
___________________________________________________________________
Bad Emacs Advice
Author : grep4master
Score : 145 points
Date : 2022-01-20 12:55 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.masteringemacs.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.masteringemacs.org)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| For those picking up emacs for lisp development, I'll add another
| piece of terrible advice: enabling paredit mode.
|
| I think these all have a similar theme to them "I am more
| productive _now_ since I have turned them on, so I wish I had
| switched sooner " but they ignore the fact that each of those
| things adds friction to learning the basics, and at some point
| people will just nope-out.
| felideon wrote:
| Yes, good point. Learn how to balance parens with rainbow
| delimiters (if anything) and, once you you're comfortable with
| sexps, give paredit a try.
| Yuioup wrote:
| just like pizza with pineapple, people do occasionally give out
| downright bad advice.
|
| I really don't understand this pineapple on pizza meme. I think
| it's delicious!
| Koshkin wrote:
| As is emacs without the menu, the toolbar, and the scrollbar!
| convolvatron wrote:
| I agree. when they added those things I immediately turned
| them off and never looked back. the author argues that they
| are just a couple lines..but they are a couple lines of
| useless noise
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > but they are a couple lines of useless noise
|
| for people who know the system. The menubar is useful for
| discovery if you're new to the system, which seems to be
| the audience they're writing for.
| bananamerica wrote:
| This meme is so popular because the overwhelming majority of
| people thinks pineapple on pizza is a disgusting abomination. I
| empathize with you, it's tough being the contrarian sometimes.
| I say that as someone who likes the Star Wars prequels :P
| asciimov wrote:
| There is definitely a silent majority of people who love
| pineapple on their pizza. My local pizza guy tells me
| Hawaiian is one of his top selling pizzas.
|
| Those that like pineapple on their pizza just don't speak up
| because they don't feel the need to be harassed over their
| pizza choices.
| simiones wrote:
| Most people in Europe especially, and especially in Southern
| Europe (Eastern Europe as well, but that's less relevant to
| pizza), tend to dislike sweet-and-salty combinations, with some
| limited exceptions (such as carrots or peas).
| mickeyp wrote:
| OP here. I just like funny quips; it's just there to break up
| my rambling monologuing :-)
| euroderf wrote:
| But are you quite prepared for tuna on pizza ?
| going_ham wrote:
| I think that pineapple topping on the pizza meme is designed by
| pizza elitist to fool normal people from trying it out. Once
| you try pizza with pineapple toppings, it gives this
| extraordinary taste. Sweet, sour and salty. All at same time!
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Just like a good salad, a pizza has 6 things: salt, crunch,
| fat (cheese), acid (tomatoes), sweet (pineapple/mango/fig or
| a stewed sweet tomato sauce) and umami (Parmigiano
| Reggiano/Grana Padano/etc or anchovy). But not all 6 in every
| bite.
|
| Most Americans use a fairly sweet pizza sauce. Adding
| pineapple to that makes it too sweet. But I like my sauce
| with more tomato acid, so a little bit of fig or pineapple
| complements the flavours. The nice thing about pineapple is
| that you don't get it in every bite like you do with a sweet
| sauce.
|
| Edit: and now I sound like the pizza snob. :) It should be 7
| -- good pizza has both crisp and chew.
| lvass wrote:
| Most americans use a fairly sweet everything. God even
| their barbecue is full of sugar. I have the impression the
| whole country is sugar addicted. I'm from a culture where
| mixing salty and sweet stuff is considered abhorrent (south
| america), I could not find a single food I liked in the
| time I spent in the US (except desserts), and was soon
| forced to cook myself or I'd barely eat at all.
| Fwirt wrote:
| It gets added to pretty much every prepared food here
| whether you like it or not. Even "staples" like bread
| have sugar added even to the "healthy" brands. It's easy
| to get addicted when it's difficult to avoid unless you
| cook every meal at home from scratch. (And even then you
| have to be careful because some ingredients have sugar
| added to them.) There are many of us that don't like the
| situation but once you're addicted your tastes change and
| when everything around you keeps sneaking it in it's hard
| to eliminate from your diet.
| Naga wrote:
| Hawaiian pizza (cheese, ham and pineapple) is normalized here
| in Canada. I'm not personally a fan, but I have always had a
| hard time finding it unusual.
| esclerofilo wrote:
| Despite the name, it originated in Canada, you'd expect it to
| be normal there.
| pantulis wrote:
| Pretty normal in Spain as well. In fact it's my go-to
| choice when ordering.
| szszrk wrote:
| Tried pineapple pizza on multiple occasions and it never gave
| me a bad advice!
| toyg wrote:
| It's because it was not a thing in Italy, so accepting it was
| seen as the sign of being out of touch with "real pizza"
| traditions. Sadly, a natural reaction of disgusted rejection by
| Italians has been adopted by snobs all over the world.
|
| Nowadays you'll find it even in Italy, because tourists demand
| it and they pay hard cash, so fuck it all anyway.
| jjice wrote:
| Some people don't like sweets with their acids/savory foods.
| Claiming it's an argument over traditional pizza is a bit
| overkill.
| ska wrote:
| How often are the same people as vociferous about disliking
| pork chops & apple sauce, chinese bbq, etc. ?
|
| It's seems a pretty silly thing to get worked up about.
| There are vastly more egregious slights to the good name of
| pizza in nearly every american frozen food aisle, after
| all.
| prussian wrote:
| >It's because it was not a thing in Italy
|
| I'm pretty sure even Tomatoes weren't. I hope this isn't the
| reason for the disdain.
| _jal wrote:
| I'm fine with disdain. If pizza were French, there'd be
| legislation about it.
| ycombinete wrote:
| "Of course it's not _real_ pizza, that'd have to be
| imported from the Pizza region in Italy"
| Zababa wrote:
| I fail to see the problem with this. Especially when it's
| products made from animals that eat the grass around that
| place. Or anything soil-dependant really. Wine is very
| different depending on where it comes from.
| Bayart wrote:
| That sentence works if you replace _pizza_ with
| _parmesan_ , or any of the Italian protected origin
| foods.
| ska wrote:
| It's easy to poke fun, but DOP isn't just about region
| and it does matter, at least for many things.
|
| I don't know that "you can't call it X" is the right
| approach, but there should be some really clear to
| consumers way of saying "X was made to a particular
| standard" vs "all bets are off with Y" - then let them
| decide.
| Bayart wrote:
| I'm not the one poking fun, my comment was
| straightforward.
|
| I'm French, we invented this legal device, I know how it
| works and why it exists (and I think it's got every right
| to).
| ska wrote:
| My mistake, I thought I was replying to parent.
| leephillips wrote:
| > it was seen as the sign of being out of touch with "real
| pizza" traditions.
|
| ...by people who don't know where what they think of as
| "Italian pizza" actually comes from. Look up "pizza effect."
| rincewind wrote:
| I have tried to find the roots of this "pizza effect" myth,
| but all I could find is somebody making a point about
| mindfulness meditation and yoga, and I am not even sure how
| it holds up WRT yoga, because Indian yogis who do not-
| Western yoga are still a thing.
|
| WRT pizza, it's clearly false. Pizza was a thing in Italy
| before World War II and it spread through Europe from
| Italy, not from the USA. You can trace the history of many
| pizzerias in Italy back far further than the "pizza effect"
| would have you believe, so you can easily de-bunk it by
| going to the web site of a pizza place in Napoli.
| mtts wrote:
| Agreed, it's false. Pizza in Italy (and in the rest of
| Europe, for that matter) is very little like pizza in the
| US.
|
| Amusingly, however, while it's influence on the food
| itself is at the very least debatable, the influence of
| the US on how pizza is consumed is in fact very real: the
| fact that Italians nowadays drink beer with their pizza
| is something they learned from American GIs in WWII who
| brought the practice over from home.
|
| Before that time, there was no overlap between Italians
| who drank beer (Northerners) and Italians who ate pizza
| (Southerners). Thanks the American soldiers Southerners
| learned to drink beer and Northerners learned about
| pizza.
| leephillips wrote:
| People who discuss the pizza effect are well aware that
| it started in Italy. The interesting "effect" part is
| that the version that is popular now in Italy was heavily
| influenced by the development of pizza in, largely, New
| York, by Italian immigrants. It was re-imported back into
| Italy. It's a cautionary tale for people who fret about
| cultural appropriation and a reminder that the idea of
| the "original" or "authentic" version of something is
| often more complicated than we imagine.
| gpderetta wrote:
| One of the most popular if not the most popular versions
| of pizzas in Italy is the pizza margherita (and in fact a
| lot of pizzas are just margheritas with additional
| toppings).
|
| Pizza margherita existed in the IXX XIX century already
| in its modern form.
| leephillips wrote:
| I'm not familiar with this century.
| Koshkin wrote:
| I wish we stopped using the Roman numerals. (On the other
| hand, they are good for coding interviews, and MMXXII
| looks pretty!)
| gpderetta wrote:
| fixed /facepalm
| leephillips wrote:
| Thought so, but wasn't sure. I was fond of the pizza
| effect story, and am holding on to the hope that it's at
| least partly true. But you supply a powerful counter-
| fact.
| krageon wrote:
| I have trouble believing this, given that I have tasted
| pizza from both places and it is not alike.
| toyg wrote:
| I would take what a "Austrian-born Hindu monk and professor
| of Anthropology at Syracuse University" says on the history
| of a traditional staple of my own country's diet with a
| massive grain of salt.
|
| Pizza existed before Italian migration to North America was
| even a thing. It gained tomatoes when they became more
| readily available and better known in the early XIX
| century, and that's about it. The explosion in Italian
| migration happened later, by then most of the traditional
| pizzas had long been codified.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Nah, It can not be because a lot of people just dislike
| pineapple mixed with their food. No way, it can't be.
| ycombinete wrote:
| Also some of us just find the taste of things like pineapple
| on pizza and burgers, or maple syrup with bacon etc.
| disgusting
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I feel like it's probably because a typical American pizza
| has savory toppings, and pineapple is unusual in that
| respect. At least, that's why people around me complain about
| it. The Italian pizza ship sailed a looong time ago.
| hbn wrote:
| This is the first I've heard as it being some kind of "it's
| not traditional" argument
|
| Everyone I've ever talked to that has an issue with it just
| think it's gross. And they're usually people that are not
| very big risk-takers with their tastes, and order the exact
| same item at a restaurant every time they go. And only want
| either cheese pizza or pepperoni.
| krageon wrote:
| > snobs
|
| I don't like fruit as part of a main course (i.e. not a
| dessert) or appetizer. That doesn't make me a snob, it just
| means I don't think fruit belongs there and don't appreciate
| when it is.
| nescioquid wrote:
| I suppose you won't eat a pizza with that red berry paste
| on it then?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Plums in chicken? Orange in sauces? Pear in a salad?
| Pineapple on ham? Lemon in anything?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Not the person who said it first, but I dislike all of
| those things except lemon[1]. In addition, my wife likes
| cranberry preserves with poultry and applesauce with
| pork, both of which I find distasteful.
|
| However pineapple with _anything_ savory is by far the
| worst for me. I prefer to not even sit next to my wife
| and kids when they are eating pizza with pineapple on it
| because the smell from it is enough to throw the taste
| off.
|
| 1: Okay, there are _some_ sauces that technically have
| some orange or orange juice in them, but have so many
| other ingredients that it really just adds the tiniest
| hint of tangyness. but e.g. duck a l 'orange is too much
| orange for me.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| No tomatoes? No salads with fruits? No Duck a l'Orange? No
| fried plantains?
| wiredfool wrote:
| There are lots of things which are non traditional but good
| on pizza.
|
| Fish and chips for one. Curry wurst. Apple, persimmon, pine
| nut and blue cheese. Halloumi, pea, and mint. Mushroom, goat
| cheese and chipotle. Cranberry and white pudding. (Or
| cranberry and goat cheese) Christmas dinner. (Turkey,
| stuffing, ham, cranberry). Pulled pork. Roast pineapple and
| mint. Bacon and egg. Berry and cream cheese. Salmon and cream
| cheese and wasabi.
|
| I have been known to make specific dinners in order to have
| the leftovers to put on pizza.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Hard agree.
|
| My first job was a pizza place where we had "Pizza of the
| Month" deals which were unusual pizza's. Street taco pizza?
| Amazing. Thanksgiving pizza? Amazing. Spicy honey + fresh
| mozzarella? Amazing. Baked potato pizza? Amazing.
|
| Just gotta remember to not use tomato sauce for some of
| those.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| If you find yourself near Slade, KY, you might find
| Miguel's worth a visit[0]. Their list of toppings and
| sauces is extensive, in part reflecting that it's
| anything in the kitchen that might reasonably be a pizza
| topping, salad component, or breakfast burrito filling.
| Hell, they'll put rotini on your pizza if you want, since
| they have it on hand for people who prefer pasta to pizza
| as their dinner substrate.
|
| I suspect you could experiment to your hearts content for
| a long while there.
|
| [0] It's unlikely that you'll "find" yourself in Slade
| without already knowing about Miguel's.
| C4stor wrote:
| If think the joke is that author himself don't side with the
| (mostly pointless) debate about pizza and pineapple, so
| whatever your own opinion, you can see his point.
| black6 wrote:
| OT: mango is another good topping.
| memling wrote:
| > I really don't understand this pineapple on pizza meme. I
| think it's delicious!
|
| Arnold has an opinion.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKV74qkokmk
| siver_john wrote:
| To be fair when I push the meme I do it because I personally
| dislike Pineapple, I sincerely don't care what people put on
| their personal pizza, just don't put it on mine. Counter, I
| have enjoyed Brussel Sprouts on pizza and I feel that is a much
| bigger sin.
| retzkek wrote:
| Shaved Brussels sprouts, fried (or roasted), with a balsamic
| glaze? Sounds good to me!
| bitwize wrote:
| I agree that the tool and menu bars are helpful for beginners. I
| disable mine to reclaim the vertical space (precious in a 16:9
| world), to focus my attention on using the command keys, and
| because I'm a relatively experienced Emacs user! If keeping them
| helps you get your way around Emacs, by all means go nuts!
| aww_dang wrote:
| Feels like these problems mostly relate to the tech-wizard
| elitism theme. By all means use the help features and GUI menus
| if that's what you need. I believe when you run these commands
| via GUI you also get feedback explaining the equivalent keystroke
| sequence.
|
| Reminds me of the old days of IRC posturing, newbie bashing and
| RTFMing. Today most info can be obtained by a well crafted search
| query.
| 0xdky wrote:
| Another lesson I learned from almost 2+ decades of using Emacs:
|
| Track your customizations in a version control. Using customize
| package and reading the diff in dot Emacs file has taught me
| quite a bit about certain aspects of the package.
|
| Side note: It would be awesome if Emacs could do the versioning
| as part of saving the customizations - build Emacs with libgit2
| and make it a native git client.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| for a reason I forgot my .emacs.d/ ("hidden" dir) is a symlink
| to emacsdotd/ (not hidden) and, yup, it's in git. Some are
| going to say: _" why stop there!? version your entire user
| dir"_ and I can see the appeal (but haven't tried yet).
|
| I'm one of those who track everything Emacs: including all the
| packages. When I upgrade packages, I first check that nothing
| broke then I commit "Bump avy to 20220114" or whatever. This
| way I can easily share the exact same config on several
| machines/several user accounts and I know I can easily roll
| back to a known fully working setup. YMMV.
| oblio wrote:
| If by "version your entire user dir" you mean "version all
| your manually edited configs", that can work.
|
| Init a git repo in your $HOME, add a .gitignore that by
| default excludes everything then manually add just the files
| and folders you want to track.
|
| Especially if you want to publish the repo, be careful,
| because it's <<extremely>> easy to accidentally expose
| confidential stuff.
| tom_ wrote:
| Yes. Also, don't put your own stuff in init.el. Put your own
| stuff in another file, and load it with load-file from init.el.
| This massively decreases the chances that Emacs will make a
| mess when it adds or updates its own stuff.
| mickeyp wrote:
| You could probably write it. Emacs is able to track which
| settings you've _applied_ but not yet saved; that could serve
| as the linchpin for generating versioned changes.
| bananamerica wrote:
| The customize interface is quite useful. It's probably more
| adequate if you don't have a huge intricate init. With time,
| custom.el (or init.el if you keep everything in the same file)
| can get difficult to manage. When that happen, a lot of people
| opt for something more readable and human friendly, like use-
| package or a distribution such as doom-emacs.
|
| The author mentions that some things can be hard to do outside
| of the customize interface. That is true. When that happens, I
| just use the interface and then move the setting from custom.el
| to use-package. But that's rare, I can't remember the last time
| I did that.
| mynameismon wrote:
| Maybe it's me, but starting out with Emacs the previous month, I
| tried using Doom Emacs the other week, and the number of packages
| it was being used frightened me. Building your own init.el is
| much much better, because you know your Emacs in and out, and
| dont have random keybindings triggering stuff. Maybe I'll never
| get the popularity of Doom
| rprospero wrote:
| > ... don't have random keybindings triggering stuff.
|
| As a long time Emacs user, I feel that this is slightly unfair.
| When I first started out, I found that my documents from Emacs
| were far more common than in other editors. It took me two
| years to realise that I was often bumping C-t where trying to
| hit C-r or C-y and silently transposing two characters. In over
| twenty years of Emacs usage, I have never once used C-t on
| purpose. I feel that this perfectly matches the "keybindings
| triggering random stuff" experience and it is fully there in
| vanilla Emacs.
|
| With twenty years of experience, I have my own, esoteric init
| file that I would not recommend on any newbie. However, I
| personally feel that Emacs has succeeded despite its default
| keybindings.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > In over twenty years of Emacs usage, I have never once used
| C-t on purpose.
|
| This is funny to me because, while I'm not an Emacs user, I'm
| a Mac user who's gotten used to the tiny subset of Emacs
| keybindings built into Cocoa text fields, and I use C-t
| fairly frequently! Apparently you do not make character
| transposition errors as often as I do.
| rprospero wrote:
| That is really interesting. To be fair, I should have
| prefaced that I have cerebral palsy, so my typing patterns
| are likely different from most of the population.
| __david__ wrote:
| I just wish M-t worked in the Cocoa text fields, I somehow
| use that more than C-t. And M-d, too--I accidentally type
| "[?]" a lot. :-(
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| You can enhance the set of keybindings by placing this
| file in ~/Library/KeyBindings, which will solve the M-d
| problem (though not the M-t one):
|
| https://github.com/ppwwyyxx/dotfiles/blob/master/macOS/Li
| bra...
|
| It's a life saver.
| thom wrote:
| Some people like ready made Emacs distros, some people like
| hand coding their init.el (don't forget your early-init.el!)
| Some people like Arch, some people like Ubuntu. Some people
| like Linux From Scratch, some people like typewriters. Live
| your life, be free.
| thom wrote:
| It sometimes seems to me that there's this idea that unless
| you're customising Emacs and gaining complete understanding
| and mastery of its primitives, there's no reason to use it
| over another editor. As if the core editing experience is so
| horrible, why would you go through all that if you're not
| going to use the superpowered bits? I think this is doing a
| big injustice to how good most of Emacs and the packaged up
| versions are, even without a line of elisp.
| donio wrote:
| Yes, gradually building your own config is a much better
| approach on the long run. Start lean, learn the basics and add
| one thing at a time as you learn. Always have complete mastery
| of your .emacs and understand every line: why it is there, what
| exactly it does. Never blindly copy random stuff wholesale
| without understanding it.
| sping wrote:
| I have to say I don't particularly see the wisdom of this
| (common) view.
|
| It's acceptable to people to use the standard Elisp, and
| Emacs itself, without digesting that code, but somehow using
| a canned config is bad. I find the choice of where to draw
| the dividing line somewhat arbitrary.
| mcbuilder wrote:
| If you have spent years writing your own config, you appreciate
| all the things doom brings to the table. I know I'd never end
| up writing such a good system from the ground up.
| remedan wrote:
| I had a very similar experience when I decided to learn Emacs
| recently. The first thing I did was try Doom Emacs. It was nice
| but I felt that there is this big layer of stuff separating me
| from having complete control over my editor.
|
| So I deleted my config. Went through the tutorial with vanilla
| setup. Then I continuously kept adding packages and tinkering
| with my config. After about two weeks, I felt that my
| productivity was on par with what it was previously in Neovim.
|
| I've been using Emacs for a couple of months now and I'm happy
| I went this route. It is a tool I use almost daily and thus
| having a deep level of understanding and control is worth it.
| lambdaba wrote:
| This is what I did (after brief stint with Spacemacs), only
| what I did is gradually break apart doom-emacs from inside
| it, as in remove abstractions and stuff I didn't use until it
| was a plain (single file) emacs config, then went the other
| direction with modularisation.
|
| This was very educative and I learned a lot about Emacs and
| Elisp.
|
| The irony is after all of this I'm back to Vim and I don't
| feel like going back to Emacs (yet).
| uncletaco wrote:
| > Maybe I'll never get the popularity of doom
|
| Honestly its a double edged sword here. Doom has so many built
| in convenience functions like `set-font!` and `set-repl!` that
| an experienced elisp programmer would probably love it for
| building their own configuration.
|
| On the other hand it bundles so much that an inexperienced
| emacs user might be more keen to do the bare minimum and rely
| on the packages bundled with doom to give them all the cool
| stuff without much effort. After all, why "reinvent the wheel"?
| I personally don't agree with that sentiment, I think learning
| how to build and maintain a personal emacs config makes a
| person a better programmer generally, and makes them prone to
| reading and writing documentation rather than copying
| solutions.
|
| I started off with doom and even though I don't use it anymore
| I still find myself reading its source to figure out how Henrik
| approached a solution. Love it or hate it, Doom is great in
| both very good and bad ways for emacs users.
| bananamerica wrote:
| I'd just like to point out that every single one of Doom's
| modules is optional, and you can install it without any
| external packages whatsoever (including Evil) if that's what
| you want.
| mynameismon wrote:
| > Doom has so many built in convenience functions like `set-
| font!` and `set-repl!` that an experienced elisp programmer
| would probably love it for building their own configuration.
|
| Fair enough, I came from a background of JavaScript and
| Python, and Lisp was entirely foreign to me, let alone Elisp.
|
| > After all, why "reinvent the wheel"?
|
| I think its not of "reinvent the wheel", but let the other
| person do the decision making for you, including picking
| packages, setting up the modeline, so on and so forth.
| Starting out with a bare Emacs installation, you have to
| piece together the various packages that you would want to
| use, where as with Doom, you get everything out of the box.
| Also, maintaining your own init.el helps one learn Elisp
|
| > I still find myself reading its source to figure out how
| Henrik approached a solution
|
| For example?
| tharne wrote:
| I think doom is really good for inspiration. I used it for a
| while and it gave me a lot of good ideas on the _kinds_ of
| things I could do with emacs and elisp.
|
| I now use my own much simpler config, but I've borrowed heavily
| from the things I like about Doom.
| clircle wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly how I use Doom. When I first found it, I
| transplanted its startup optimizations into my existing
| config, but left everything else alone. When I look to do
| something new in Emacs, one of my first instincts is "well,
| let's see how Doom is doing it."
|
| It's works well because I fall into the Evil+Use-package
| Emacs hegemony with my custom config.
| bananamerica wrote:
| Doom Emacs is excellent. I believe you were negatively
| impressed by the default install, but you can install it
| without any packages you don't wan't, or any package at all.
| You can even remove Evil altogether.
|
| You can also easily remove anything afterwards.
|
| Doom is essential for my sanity, and extremely flexible. I can
| do everything I want, just like on a barebones install. But I
| do it in a way that is way simpler, more practical, and
| performant. I'd use Doom even without any of its modules, just
| for the macros, the speed, and the sane configuration layout.
|
| I tried the build your own route for 2 years, ended up with a
| huge messy init impossible to maintain. Doom removes a lot of
| complexity and provides extremely useful macros. The guy really
| knows what he's doing, and the optimizations that he uses are
| impressive.
| taeric wrote:
| I do disable those things. But mostly out of aesthetics. That and
| I am easily distracted. I remember used to trying to find how to
| accommodate all items in the menu bar into my use.
|
| Completely agree with this article, though. Happy with my
| purchase of this book a while back.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Just to add: the built-in "Introduction to Programming in Emacs
| Lisp" is also really really great. I have been using emacs for a
| while, with one framework or another, but always hesitated
| actually learning lisp. I was too focused on learning the kinds
| of languages and systems that might get me a job, and it felt
| like too big of a venture in learning a whole language _just_ for
| my development environment. Now, I have a given up on the
| employable thing, and have been enlightened by SICP and lispey
| languages, and in general, the simple beauty of Emacs _itself_ ,
| not just what I can make it do. It takes only a little time to
| get comfortable with the nested (), and weird vocabulary, and it
| just really will click with you at some point, how simple it all
| really is, how every function bears on the simple syntactic
| principles of the language as whole, its lists all the way down!
|
| You can _see_ the language work, by looking at the code.
|
| It may not get me a fancy computer job, but I think I am happier
| on the whole anyway, giving myself to lisp. Something therapeutic
| about it.
| gypsyharlot wrote:
| How do you access the built-in "Introduction to Programming in
| Emacs Lisp"?
| [deleted]
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Using the menu bar, remember don't disable that,
| Help => More Manuals => Introduction to Emacs Lisp
| nanna wrote:
| C-h i m 'Emacs Lisp Intro'
| BeetleB wrote:
| More in line with the submission's advice:
|
| Help menu --> More manuals --> Introduction to Emacs Lisp
| gypsyharlot wrote:
| That doesn't work for me.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Are you using Debian, and if so, do you have the non-free
| documentation installed (emacs-common-non-dfsg)?
| gypsyharlot wrote:
| This is Debian, yes. Thank you, I will try that.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Don't use the quotes for the phrase, just type it
| verbatim. If that still doesn't work then either the info
| page isn't installed (weird) or something else is up. You
| can also, from the first info page at C-h i, type "C-s
| emacs lisp intro" which should bring you to it. And
| again, if it's not there then something is wonky with
| your install.
| gypsyharlot wrote:
| I have a totally standard Emacs install, but it's not
| there. C-h i and searching with C-s for "lisp" finds
| nothing either.
| dfinninger wrote:
| I found it on my Mac in the menu bar. Like the one at the
| top of the screen next to the Apple logo. Clicking with
| my mouse: Help > More Manuals > Introduction to Emacs
| Lisp.
|
| I assume in Windows/Linux this would actually be attached
| to the window frame at the top.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| So the only thing I can find is that for emacs before
| emacs 21 it was not included (I didn't know that, I guess
| I installed it through my package manager or some other
| means back then and forgot). After that, it is included
| by default. But you can check to see if your package
| manager includes a separate `emacs-lisp-intro` or similar
| package. Short that, you'll have to download it from the
| site and install it manually to see it in emacs or just
| use the HTML version.
|
| https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html
| ska wrote:
| It should on a standard install.
|
| If you have things remapped, try M-x info, then search
| for "Emacs List Intro" but it should be near the top
| anyway.
| gypsyharlot wrote:
| M-x info, C-s lisp... nothing.
| ska wrote:
| I suspect you have an idiosyncratic install.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Takes me to information on keymaps
| BeetleB wrote:
| Something must have clearly gone wrong with the install
| (or perhaps there is a minimal install version...?) If
| this were Gentoo, I would suggest that perhaps the "doc"
| USE flag was not enabled?
| mindcrime wrote:
| Looks like Debian/Ubuntu and derivatives don't install
| the Emacs manuals by default. I had to do this to get it
| on my PopOS box:
|
| sudo apt-get -y install emacs-common-non-dfsg
| mindcrime wrote:
| Same. I have a vanilla Emacs install and the Lisp Intro
| doesn't seem to be there.
|
| You can find it online though:
|
| https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsLispIntro
|
| Edit: I'm on an Ubuntu derived distro, so this may be the
| issue:
|
| https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/48211/emacs-
| manual...
|
| Edit2:
|
| Yeah, at least for me that was the problem. This fixed
| it:
|
| sudo apt-get -y install emacs-common-non-dfsg
| donio wrote:
| C-h i d m Emacs Lisp Intro RET
|
| Need that d to take you back to the top directory if you
| happen to be browsing some other info manual already.
| gypsyharlot wrote:
| C-h i d m Emacs<press space>Lisp<press space>[no match]
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > ... and have been enlightened by SICP and lispey languages,
|
| Fun anecdote: I've got my copy of SICP signed by both authors
| for Sussman invited me to have tea in his office and when I
| arrived the next day, by sheer chance, Abelson was there too!
| They joked that had I been there 30 minutes early Sussman's
| wife, who proofread the book, would have signed it too! I've
| got a cool pic taken at that moment: me standing along these
| two legends and proudly holding the purple book... I'll post
| that pic and full story the day I have a blog.
|
| Besides that I pretty much live inside Emacs. The occasional
| elisp (3000 lines of custom elisp hackery over the decades) and
| lots of Clojure/ClojureScript.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Wow so cool! I have been working through it with just the
| HTML version, but recently resolved to get the physical book,
| its just one those I gotta have.. Then, one day when I have
| the money, I will get the full volumes of _The Art of
| Computer Programming_ by Knuth.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I wonder how much he could raise for charity by selling
| autographed copies. The man is a legend.
| icedata wrote:
| I just printed out the pdf version of the book. I found a
| shop that would bind it for me and print it double-sided.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Correct, I did not know about 'C-h k', very nice !
|
| very nice write up
| thom wrote:
| I dunno, everything the menu does can be recreated in the
| minibuffer (and you have things like apropos if you're really
| lost). Personally I like to reclaim as much space as possible, so
| I turn off modelines too (I have a bit of status info written
| into the minibuffer, but I'd kill that too if you could).
| distantsounds wrote:
| so let me get this straight:
|
| - read the manual - follow the tutorial - customize it to your
| liking
|
| wow, what enlightening advice! this must be unique to emacs and
| not _any_other piece of software!
|
| once again, all you need to get FP'd on hackernews is to put the
| word "emacs" in your title. zoom! to the front page!
| fabianmg wrote:
| We have found the vim user...
| bananamerica wrote:
| Acessing manual, documentation, values, functions, and source
| code on Emacs is so easy that it would be hard to summarize all
| the ways you can do it. It's an integral part of your workflow,
| and literally unlike anything else. Unlike other programs, that
| really can and _should_ be an integral part of your daily
| routine.
|
| One thing I dislike about the manual is that it rarely presents
| examples, but commands like describe-variable and describe-
| function often help elucidate usage. Not to mention external
| packages that makes all that even easier.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| It would be great if every other software had documentation
| comparable to Emacs', but that's simply not the case.
| drothlis wrote:
| I suspect it's because so many Emacs tutorials out there cover
| the same material as the built-in tutorial. And so many pre-
| packaged Emacs configuration files disable the menu-bar for no
| good reason other than that's what everyone else seems to be
| doing.
|
| e.g. "Emacs Prelude", one such configuration or "distribution"
| of Emacs, used to disable the menu-bar by default as recently
| as a year ago:
| https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/commit/878cffb
| drothlis wrote:
| Years ago I wrote the Emacs tutorial I wish had existed when I
| was learning Emacs: https://david.rothlis.net/emacs/tutorial.html
|
| It follows a similar philosophy as the OP: Start by reading
| Emacs's built-in tutorial, and then my tutorial shows you how to
| leverage the built-in help system to figure out how to achieve
| what you want to do.
| mickeyp wrote:
| I'm the OP. That's a nice tutorial, and I agree with your
| sentiment that you should build on Emacs's ability to query it
| to figure out what to do. That's the main focus of my book,
| too, for the exact same reason.
| NateEag wrote:
| When people ask me how to learn Emacs, I point them to your
| tutorial.
|
| It was hugely helpful to me in learning Emacs.
|
| Thank you so much for writing it!
| dark-star wrote:
| "But just like pizza with pineapple, people do occasionally give
| out downright bad advice."
|
| I stopped reading after this. If you want to look like you're
| objective, don't use pizza as an argument
| jrumbut wrote:
| This is advice for how to give text editor configuration
| advice. The pizza comparison is apt because it's a matter of
| taste.
|
| If the author tried to look objective it would be a false
| front.
| oblio wrote:
| It's just a joke.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I have been turning off the menu bar for quite some time because
| I get distracted easily and any content that's not necessary just
| gets in the way.
|
| That said, you can always call it up as a pop-up menu.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| The menu bar is pretty good for discovery, you'll have to rely
| more on naming convention and documentation without it.
|
| The toolbar is pretty fungible though, few modes do anything
| with it and the core functionality you get from the standard
| chords you find in the tutorial, little bang for the pixels.
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