Finding Emacs - An Intermission

I've been having fun working through what Emacs is all about over the last few months.  It is interesting to see what makes it so popular, and since I've also been a fan of VI and VIM, the comparison has been interesting.

Whilst I still think that knowing Vi is essential (it is ALWAYS available for a strange system), Emacs has an irresistible attraction - being built upon a lisp interpreter opens up all sorts of possibilities.  I am firmly sold on Orgmode, and my blog posting of using it with gpg for encryption, whilst basic shows the possibilities.  Symmetric encryption with gpg also makes one wonder why bother with other utilities ....

The thing of beauty that is Emacs is that it is available for whichever platform you use, it is extensive and the effort required to learn it will be repaid many times over in a lifetime.  The term "core competency" comes to mind.

Another thing I've come to accept is that Emacs requires effort to learn.  There is no really easy way.  First do the tutorial, perhaps look at a few websites, but READ the MANUAL.  Let the brain think about it and move on from there.  You cannot learn the piano in a week.

On Windows, if you want to use Emacs, then load Cygwin for any supporting binaries.  Cygwin is just essential.

In a way, the whole thing rather mirrors my journey learning Linux.  At first it was strange, and I bought a boxed set of SuSe Linux about 10 years ago, then I used Red Hat for a while and then Slackware (what a wonderful system).  Finally I settled on Debian.  Only today I was looking at a Windows setup and thinking how much easier Debian was to deal with.

About a year ago, I did a couple of posts about Debian Squeeze as it was then.  There were a few problems as could be expected of it at that stage in its development, however now it is days away from becoming the new Debian Stable.  It is a wonderful system.  Like Emacs, the effort expended in learning Debian Linux is repaid many times over.

But then, like so many things in life, we cannot appreciate these things until we have undertaken the journey.


Later.....