Time to throw away my love----Emacs?

[Ding Lei]

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Hello Folks,
I'v been a linux user for around 4 years, experienced varoius mental stages
on views towards *nix style tools that most of Windows user might did. And
now, I am basically quite satisfied with my slackware box.
I used VI for around 2 years, mainly for doing Java programming, Until
recently I turned to the Church of Emacs, doing java programming with the help
of ECB & JDEE.
Yeah, For emacs, I have to admit that, It's not only a tool for me, not just
only prefer, but LOVE. I guess most of people here could understand my
feeling.

But ... the world that we live in is no longer the old Unix hacker's days
(though I did like the culture very much).
Managers need things be done on time. They definitely won't care which tool
you use, whether open source or not. Most of my colleagues uses various new
Fancy stuffs like Eclipse, IDEA, Dreamweaver, and etc, with
bells & whistles that enables you to get very complex operations done only
with a few mouse clicks, which might takes me a few hours to do the same thing
with Emacs.

But I don't *really* care, at the start. I often think, one day, there would
be an Emacs package which could do the samething.(I don't know how to program
in Emacs Lisp, quite a pitty). .....

As time goes, I found my productivity more and more behind my colleagues,
friends. And obviously the manager is quite unsatisified with me.
I starts to worry... about whether I shall persit to stay in the Emacs
world along with his friends? or shall I just turn to M$ Windows, and pickup
cool new things no matter proprietary or not, just as my colleague did
already?
Yes, emacs can do everything, that's what we emacsen usually says. But, when
I found my emacs'startup becomes slower & slower, when I found myself doing
whatever I can just in order to use the same function inside EMACS. I began to
think ... Emacs seems to be some kind of garbage collector ... numerous
functions, add-ons & external program interfaces are added to it, so it
*seems* that Emacs can do ALMOST everything, but (almost) NONE of them are the
best. they are usually slow, hard-to-use(or at least not friendly to
newbies), with lesser functions than their counterparts outside the Emacs
world.

I'v found the reason of my low productivity, I guess. Everytime when I
suprisingly found a new emacs package on the net, then I'll try to install
them, read the Installation Guide, read info Manual, try to learn bunches of
variables with strange names by heart ... and the process repeats...

On the other side, for "mordern" programs, it's much more friendly &
productive, You don't have to spend a week totally just to understand how the
whole thing works(as I did just to setup Gnus) and finally found out your boss
utterly fed up with the Project's progress...

Above are just my very personal view on Emacs, anyway, I still love it. Any
comments & critics are welcome.

[steve]

Post by Ding Lei
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Hello Folks,

Hello!

Post by Ding Lei
I'v been a linux user for around 4 years, experienced varoius mental stages
on views towards *nix style tools that most of Windows user might did. And
now, I am basically quite satisfied with my slackware box.

I started using slackware in the late 90's been a while. Really nice -
no nonsense distro.

Post by Ding Lei
I used VI for around 2 years, mainly for doing Java programming, Until
recently I turned to the Church of Emacs, doing java programming with the help
of ECB & JDEE.
Yeah, For emacs, I have to admit that, It's not only a tool for me, not just
only prefer, but LOVE. I guess most of people here could understand my
feeling.

A world without grep is a world of python bugs because sed does not come
with windows.

Post by Ding Lei
But ... the world that we live in is no longer the old Unix hacker's days
(though I did like the culture very much).
Managers need things be done on time. They definitely won't care which tool
you use, whether open source or not. Most of my colleagues uses various new
Fancy stuffs like Eclipse, IDEA, Dreamweaver, and etc, with
bells & whistles that enables you to get very complex operations done only
with a few mouse clicks, which might takes me a few hours to do the same thing
with Emacs.

Use what works for you, if you can. Learning the new stuff always seems
like a waste of time to me. In the world of UNIX I would say, why yet
another tool? Find an existing tool and make it work for you...

Post by Ding Lei
But I don't *really* care, at the start. I often think, one day, there would
be an Emacs package which could do the samething.(I don't know how to program
in Emacs Lisp, quite a pitty). .....

I do. What do you want it to do?

Post by Ding Lei
As time goes, I found my productivity more and more behind my colleagues,
friends. And obviously the manager is quite unsatisified with me.
I starts to worry... about whether I shall persit to stay in the Emacs
world along with his friends? or shall I just turn to M$ Windows, and pickup
cool new things no matter proprietary or not, just as my colleague did
already?

like I said use what works. If using eclipse works for your task then
use it. It may feel ``wrong'' or uncomfortable. I just started to use
eclipse. With fedora I can run Intel's VTUNE out of the box! This is
some seriously nice software. Having a tool like VTUNE that can really
make people notice small optimizations. Emacs cannot do what vtune does;
that is probably why I use it.

Post by Ding Lei
Yes, emacs can do everything, that's what we emacsen usually says. But, when
I found my emacs'startup becomes slower & slower, when I found myself doing
whatever I can just in order to use the same function inside EMACS. I began to
think ... Emacs seems to be some kind of garbage collector ...
numerous

I believe they call emacs the kitchen sink.

Post by Ding Lei
functions, add-ons & external program interfaces are added to it, so it
*seems* that Emacs can do ALMOST everything, but (almost) NONE of them are the
best. they are usually slow, hard-to-use(or at least not friendly to
newbies), with lesser functions than their counterparts outside the Emacs
world.

This is very true. Learning emacs is not easy. It does take some time.

Post by Ding Lei
I'v found the reason of my low productivity, I guess. Everytime when I
suprisingly found a new emacs package on the net, then I'll try to install
them, read the Installation Guide, read info Manual, try to learn bunches of
variables with strange names by heart ... and the process repeats...

If you are new to emacs lisp I would stay away from melpa.

Post by Ding Lei
Above are just my very personal view on Emacs, anyway, I still love it. Any
comments & critics are welcome.

Ah! a discussion!