Re:Unix as a tool forge (and how Emacs fits in Unix philosophy)
by gumby on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @04:16PM
(#33524417)
The GP gave great advice that, in light of your response, I'll augment.
1 - Sometimes the worst helpers are the enthusiastic fans, not just with bands but with software. Most emacs advice starts by talking about customization. The GP was smart not to: just get comfortable with the model of emacs: a modeless editor. c-f goes forward a character, m-f a word. In code: c-f forward a character, m-f a symbol, c-m-f a structure (depends on the language).
You can always type c-H (^H) at any time for help. It's context-sensitive so if you're typing a long command (m-x find file) it will show you the completions. If you can't remember a command c-H a (apropos) will show you matches. etc. All explained when you start with c-H t
All of the stuff above has been true for more than 40 years. A lot of rough edges have been knocked off over that time! Even back then people who claimed that they "couldn't do anything with a computer" were writing documents with Emacs, even writing macros and such.
For more modern times: you'll find in most programming languages, markdown, etc syntax highlighting is automatic.
Once you are comfortable editing text or code, you can see how to add, say, LSP support, or investigating how to compile your code and why that's easier in Emacs, and just incrementally make your environment more comfortable and powerful. I've been using Emacs since 1978 (when it was written in TECO, not a form of Lisp) and still I learn something new every week or so.
Remember that "EMACS" stands for "Emacs Makes All Computing Simple"
1 - Sometimes the worst helpers are the enthusiastic fans, not just with bands but with software. Most emacs advice starts by talking about customization. The GP was smart not to: just get comfortable with the model of emacs: a modeless editor. c-f goes forward a character, m-f a word. In code: c-f forward a character, m-f a symbol, c-m-f a structure (depends on the language).
You can always type c-H (^H) at any time for help. It's context-sensitive so if you're typing a long command (m-x find file) it will show you the completions. If you can't remember a command c-H a (apropos) will show you matches. etc. All explained when you start with c-H t
All of the stuff above has been true for more than 40 years. A lot of rough edges have been knocked off over that time! Even back then people who claimed that they "couldn't do anything with a computer" were writing documents with Emacs, even writing macros and such.
For more modern times: you'll find in most programming languages, markdown, etc syntax highlighting is automatic.
Once you are comfortable editing text or code, you can see how to add, say, LSP support, or investigating how to compile your code and why that's easier in Emacs, and just incrementally make your environment more comfortable and powerful. I've been using Emacs since 1978 (when it was written in TECO, not a form of Lisp) and still I learn something new every week or so.
Remember that "EMACS" stands for "Emacs Makes All Computing Simple"