Flossing with emacs
A friend at work took me to task for being a programmer without proficiency in a text editor. I deserve it. For various reasons, not the least of them laziness, I have largely stuck to using editors like (currently) BBEdit, EditPlus, and Textpad. I will use vi or vim to edit things on a UNIX server when convenient, but I’m a buffoon getting around in those, even after 5+ years of semi-regular use.
Why? Because I’m a user like any other at the same time I’m a programmer. I often don’t take the time to learn programs with a steeper curve, even though I should.
I also don’t take the time to floss more than a few times each year, which is why I had two cavities drilled last week. Someday I’ll be telling my grandchildren about the barbarous days of drills and tooth decay. What in the world will be my excuse for requesting nitrous oxide then?
Alas. Time marches on, and floss may or may not grow obsolete (what about gum disease?), but it is certainly time for me to get cozy with a coder’s text editor. vi is not robust enough and I’m sick of not finding vim on various distributions of Linux (install it? That could take 5 minutes, or more! I don’t have that kind of time.).
So I’ve decided to start learning emacs, text editor of GNU-land, and chosen programming environment of my friend at work. He seems to love it and I respect his views. He’s been at this a lot longer than I have. It might be like flossing at first, but it’ll be worth it.
on November 17th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
You may want to check out the EmacsWiki (http://www.emacswiki.org/) and the #emacs channel on irc.freenode.net.
on November 18th, 2005 at 11:35 am
i
on November 18th, 2005 at 11:40 am
ooops. apparently the less-than sign i was using to make a heart, as in i *heart* emacs, was interpreted as html, and ate the rest of the comment. i bet the browser is thinking, “what the hell kind of tag is ‘3 emacs!’?!?!?”
I meant to say, i love emacs. used it back in college, but not much since then. ahhh, shell accounts. miss ‘em. i don’t have much experience with text editors other than emacs and ultraedit. but i like emacs.
and oh my god, is abby ever cute! you, my friend, do indeed have wonderous seed.