confessions of an IDE-junkie
Topic: code, general|
Ever since I got my MBP, I’ve been trying to re-learn emacs. The last time I used it (or vi) was back in school in Clemson. 8 yrs ago. So, I knew it was going to be quite a learning curve. And I tried. For a week. Ctrl-x Ctrl-f, Ctrl-x Ctrl-s, Ctrl-x b. Ok. What is the command to find something? Ctrl-s. Oh I thought that was to save. No Ctrl-x Ctrl-s is to save, Ctrl-s by itself is to find. Ah. I see.
Actually I don’t.
While I am an avid user of keyboard shortcuts, I am not a fanatic as this guy -
So it’s not an editor for the faint of heart, and this blog is targeted at people who have already made the commitment, and want to improve their mastery of this elegant, timeless piece of software.
The rest of you: I think your Eclipse just finished launching, so you can get back to work now.
The past 8 years of Visual Studio-JEdit-Eclipse see-it-all experience has perhaps made me faint at heart. Perhaps I like to see all my project files (yeah “buffers”, whatever) in a single view, like the fact that all I can switch to a different file without alt-tabbing, like to debug in the same app, like to know that Ctrl-s is to save and Ctrl-f is to find, like to know….
Ok folks, I admit it. I am an IDE-junkie. And my Eclipse has just finished launching - so back to code.
June 17th, 2006 at 14:34
Well, development environment is a personal choice. As an emacs user, I feel so frustrated when I try to learn a GUI-based IDE. After spending so many hours mastering emacs, I can never go back to another editor.
So I can understand your pain when you are trying to learn something new after spending so many hours mastering Eclipse.
But I just want so say this in support of Emacs: it behaves as you want it to be. I can program in any language, write documents (i wrote my thesis in emacs!), compose mails, use it as a shell, and my personal fav: I never need to UPGRADE!
But as I said, a development environment is a personal choice. Good Luck!
June 17th, 2006 at 15:00
you mean ever since you upgraded to emacs version 22
http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/12/12/1158218.shtml
June 17th, 2006 at 15:15
When I said there’s no need for upgrade, I meant that emacs has everything (if not more than everything) to make an awesome editor.
Did you get a chance to read the features in this version?
http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/emacs/emacs/etc/NEWS?rev=1.1295&view=auto
“** Support for Cygwin was added.
** Support for FreeBSD/Alpha has been added.
** Support for GNU/Linux systems on S390 machines was added.
** Support for MacOS X was added.”
There is so many other stuff going on in emacs development. I’ve once read that an average programmer uses only 10% of emacs functionalities in his lifetime!!
June 17th, 2006 at 19:10
[...] Actually, Eclipse did not launch yet. If failed. Apparently the OSX drop from eclipse.org is bogus. It fails on my OSX with some crap about missing jni path. Ugh! [...]