this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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How can I become a more "proficient" Emacs user? Esp. in regards to developing (alien.top)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
34 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I hope my question makes sense.

I am using Doom Emacs for a while now and have become fairly proficient. But I feel like whenever I am browsing emacs content online there are still many topics for me to discover. So I was wondering if there is anything that I might be "missing" yet which might help with my productivity or improve my development skills.

Sofar I what have learned, on top from my head:

  • Org/Org Agenda (refile etc.)
  • Magit
  • Vterm
  • LSP Commands
  • Multiple Cursors
  • Literal Config
  • Navigating Emacs itself (which key, debugging, reading Emacs-Lisp (abit))
  • Using Language specific commands, i.e. send buffer to repl
  • Using Undo with Vundo

Only thing I know that I still need to learn is beeing more proficient with vim keybindings, but with that I know where to start.

I know the question is quite broad, but maybe there some "killer features" worth to explore which I am not aware of yet.

I'd appreciate any input.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I don't get the concept of learning vterm, you just start it and use it with Emacs key bindings. Just stop using garbage like Doom Emacs and evil, and start making your own set up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What even is vterm? I've never heard of this tool before.

And I agree, if your gonna use Emacs regularly your most likely gonna want to start customising it to your liking. Though configs like Doom and Space are decent for beginners, eventually they are just gonna get in the way of progress.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I think they're also harmful, OP is feeling he has to learn vim bindings due to Doom Emacs. I agree they are good for users who are heavily wounded people by vim's modal editing and shortcuts, but they need a real treatment eventually.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I think calling something like Doom as garbage is unwarranted and objectively untrue. It is a huge community project that is addressing the needs of that community and has helped a lot of people (myself included). Simply Because the needs of that community are not the same as your needs does not mean it is garbage. Even for people not using Doom, it is a hugely valuable resource for different ways to configure packages. I no longer use Doom, but I and others frequently return to their source to learn some tips on how to configure different packages.

People should simply use the right tool for the job. If someone wants to hit the ground running with sane modern defaults, doesn't want to spend a lot of time configuring Emacs, and wants to use Vim bindings, Doom is an excellent choice. If someone wants to learn how to configure Emacs on a deeper level, spinning your own config is maybe the way to go. Neither is right or wrong, they are simply serving two different purposes, and that is fantastic!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

  1. emacs-pinky impacts some users such as this https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/44c0ed/emacs_pinky/ . I've got Caps Lock mapped to both Control (down-holding) and Escape (up/down). Maybe not you at this point in your life at current usage level. And you could just be lucky and never have physical issues at all with hands and fingers and wrist.

  2. vi can be found on almost any linux box so knowing the basic commands to work with text files when you might not have the luxury of installing is useful - ubiquity argument

  3. the text-objects, somewhat more advanced to learn, in vim are not replicated by default in emacs and you will miss them in editing if you have put them in muscle memory. So things like da( or di( or ci" or ya{ and so on where d is the command and a( or c" and a{ are examples of a much larger list of objects that are easily manipulated

In any case things become a matter of preference and are subjective unless one remains a purist in the spirit of the church of emacs vs vim. The OPs biggest challenge is he appears to be trying to learn vim at the same time he is starting emacs. Many who came to Doom or Spacemacs were vim users switching to emacs.