Derek Slager: The Case for Emacs

Sunday, December 03, 2006
The Case for Emacs

When well-seasoned programmers get together to speak of the "good old days", there are a few persistent topics. There are always at least a couple of archaic programming languages ... depending on the number of reminiscing participants, there can even be enough to inspire a game of "I had it worse than you did!". Inevitably, this is followed by some form of reference to ancient multi-user operating systems, mainframes, or -- although increasingly rare -- systems involving punched cards. More often then not, this piece of the conversation will lead to discussions of operating ancient editors via terminals -- with ed nearly always starting that conversation (and earning several grimaces at its first mention).

If you've heard enough of these discussions, as I have, you've surely observed that the tone of these discussions suggests that we are now in a golden age of development tools ... I've been writing software, and hearing these discussions just long enough to start to wonder if these discussions were any different back then (it's all relative, isn't it?). Me? Well, I started this game a bit late relative to most of the "good old days" participants I've observed. They had Pascal, I had VB5 -- they had ed, I had ... well, VB5 ... they had libraries, I had BBSes, they had printed manuals, I had CD documentation ... the list goes on.

The Beginning

I stumbled into programming during high school (I'm excluding the 10 print "derek", 20 goto 10 fun that so entertained me in grade school). I was responsible for inputting data penned in by customers entering contests, signing up for mailing lists, etc. into a database. Every time I re-entered the same postal code three times in a row I could feel my brain shrinking.

Within the friendly environment that was VBA (in Microsoft Access '95), I managed to script a form into filling in a few fields for me when encountered with one of the most popular postal codes. I was hooked -- entering the addresses had been transformed from mind-numbing boringness to a creative exercise in trying so save as many keystrokes as possible.

My initial fondness for VBA (and Microsoft's influence on programming curricula in the greater Puget Sound area) led me to a Visual Basic programming course at a local community college. I enjoyed it, and it eventually led me to my first programming job (which really was a web design job, but nobody seemed to mind -- perhaps because I was still in high school, or perhaps because I was making $8/hour).

In these early years of my career (before it was officially my career, I should add), there was never a distinction between language, framework or development environment. My language was Visual Basic, I called Visual Basic functions, and I did all of this using a product called Visual Basic ... the explosion of Active Server Pages brought Visual InterDev along for the ride, and C++ tasks were handled by Visual C++. There was always a "right" tool for the job.

A Hot Cup of Java

After a couple of years of making ASPaghetti, I started toying with a language called Java. I use the word "toying" quite intentionally, because at the time my best description of it would have been "language used to make cool buttons on Web pages". I had been quite ignorant of the growing Java juggernaut, but our company had recently bought some Oracle licenses (it was the Dot-Com era, why not?) and it seemed to be the language of choice for folks in that camp.

I quickly moved from "toying" to "using". For a Visual Basic programmer, Java was like heaven -- actually, Java was heaven. After two weeks of using it, I was ready to have the "good old days" conversation about old Visual Basic. Goodbye class modules, hello beans!

One thing that was very different in the Java world, and it was new to me, was choice in environment. In the Microsoft world (and this is still true today), there was a supported development environment released with the language ... in Java, the tutorials were telling me to set a CLASSPATH environment variable (bad advice, by the way -- -cp is much less painful, but I digress) and use the editor of my choice. Using Notepad was fine for my "First Cup of Java", but I knew I'd be needing auto-completion and a "debug toolbar" before long.

My quest for the perfect Java IDE never really finished -- I started with Oracle JDeveloper (basically an early version of JBuilder), and later dabbled with VisualAge, Webgain, Netbeans, JBuilder itself, and just about everything else that came around ... I never fell in love with any of them, but most were a pretty nice step up from the development tools I had worked with previously. They all had the basic features I was looking for -- syntax highlighting, intelligent completion, click-to-run, debugging ... none of them stood out, but they were all Good Enough[tm].

The Dark Side

There is a dark side of the programming world. Some are never exposed to it ... some have only had enough exposure to be scared by it. The dark side consists of a wide network of programmers, about 1 to 2 for every 10, who throw away the rules. They run strange operating systems, they spend free time on weekends experimenting with programming languages you've never heard of (Hask-what? Eif-who?) ... and they don't use the same tools that you do, to say the least.

I remember the first time I witnessed a member of this "dark side" in action. I had wandered into the cubicle of one of our recent hires, a long-haired "Unix guy" who was in the midst of a rather furious coding session in a very strange looking editor (Vim, for the curious). Watching him operate his editor was truly an experience. He was working at a pace I'd never seen before, his cursor flying around the buffer like a pinball. I was like a child seeing a magician for the first time (that hat was empty!).

I rudely interrupted his session -- in part to marvel at his proficiency, but also to ask some questions about his current project. He walked me through the code he was working on, and the artistry continued -- he seemed able to will his cursor around the buffer with the power of his stare, as if he was simply "thinking it" there. I'd never seen anything like it -- he wasn't using his editor -- he was his editor.

I was forever changed. I had seen what the dark side was capable of, and I wanted a membership card. Going back to my IDE was a depressing affair -- I tried -- and I tried hard, to replicate the genius I'd just seen. He had clued me in to a couple of his tricks, which I tried to emulate. I took a tour through my IDE playground again, trying to find one that would enable me to perform the magic tricks he executed so effortlessly, but I couldn't.

I spent a week or so trying to convince myself that all of that "other stuff" in my IDE made up for what it lacked in the editing department. I was partially successful -- I mean, my debugger sure looked a lot fancier than his (gdb, for the still curious). That had to count for something. And that intelligent completion -- surely I couldn't live without that, right? Right? Not exactly ...

I made a conscious effort that week to think about each feature as I used it. Intelligent completion? Sure, it was helping me code, but how much? With this in mind, I noticed that I was doing some really idiotic things, like typing n-e and then waiting a (brief) moment for the completion window, in some cases using my arrow keys to find the appropriate completion, and selecting it. This, as opposed to just finishing the keyword ... x-t ... surely, somebody observing from the dark side would be shaking their head at the sight of this. I had to do better. My tools were good, maybe even great, but they still weren't good enough.

I Think I Can ...

With the help of a Unix shell account, I decided to take a tour of the dark side. I did a bit of research (Have you heard of this fantastic new search engine called Google? No, no -- l-e ... yeah, that's it -- now search for "cigar!"), and found that the dark side was in the midst of a civil war -- the Emacs-folk vs. the Vi(m) folk. Oh boy ... I was going to have to choose. A bit more reading convinced me that what I was seeking (magical editor powers, that is) could be achieved with either. I'd seen what Vim could do, how about this Emacs thing?

My first experience with both editors was a disaster ... in Vi, I did finally stumble into the proper mode for getting characters into the buffer, but it wasn't a pretty process (and it certainly wasn't intentional). Emacs started out a little better, but I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to quit -- control-s? control-q? And yeah, the fact that I kept toggling flow control on the terminal certainly didn't help. Finally, I figured it out -- control-z! Pressing that makes Emacs go away, problem solved. Alright, time for some magic tricks! Oh, and it took a couple of hours before I realized that I was suspending it rather than quitting. When you're accustomed to control-q, \C-x\C-c is a long ways away. Fortunately, the tutorial (\C-ht) got that out of the way in a hurry.

Armed with some documentation and a bit more time, I ended up giving each editor a fair shake. In no time, I was moving around buffers pretty well in Emacs -- not exactly comfortable, but reaching for my arrow keys less and less (not because it made sense to me, but it had been suggested that this was the path to magic, so I figured I'd try). Vim was starting to become less painful as well, although the mode switching was really causing me to do some amazingly stupid things (something tells me Vim users all have rigorous backup schedules). in any case -- I figured that to become a magician I would need to focus on one editor, and my laziness led me to Emacs (sorry Vim, too much early mode pain).

Magic Tricks

It really didn't take too long to reach my goal -- I had to re-train a lot (OK, nearly all) of my editing instincts, but before long I was performing buffer magic tricks of my own. By this time, I'd found other "dark siders", and I was extracting as much information as I could from them ("Hey, how'd to swap those characters?") ... each tidbit I picked up, I would force myself to use for a day, and inevitably, I'd end up using it 100 times the next week, wondering how I ever lived without it.

That's really the Zen of Emacs. When I encounter people who see me using Emacs, they typically assume that I use it because of its customizability. That's a nice feature, but it's not the reason to use Emacs. The Zen part is all there in the base package -- even without a .emacs file (a Lisp file read at startup used to customize Emacs). The "magic tricks" that turn you into an editing wizard aren't really tricks at all -- they're core features. Once you learn these core features, it's astounding the magic you can do -- and you can do it everywhere. You can swap arguments in C the same way you swap words in a text file -- you can autofill your comments just like your paragraphs -- rectangle insertion makes block comments as well as it adds a shared prefix -- dynamic abbrevs (rich, but unintelligent completion) work everywhere -- and all of this stuff works whether you're editing C#, Javascript, CSS, Java, XML, Ruby, Lisp, ... the list goes on. And trust me, these features only sound exotic until you depend on them.

That's not to say you can't add useful tricks on top of these core features. The point is, you don't have to. I think a lot of people avoid Emacs because of this misunderstanding. The truth is that Emacs isn't scary -- you don't need to know a thing about Lisp, Emacs Lisp, or Unix (Emacs works wonderfully as a native Windows binary). You don't need to have a .emacs file, you don't need a PHD in Parenthesis to be a magician. You do need to give it some time, but it will pay you back.

Emacs doesn't seem like much at first. It takes an hour or two to get the basics down, at which point a new user can probably use it with almost-Notepad-level efficiency. It takes a lot more time to get to the next level, but once you do, you can't go back. I remember explaining to an early Emacs user how much I loved prefixed arguments (numeric arguments to alter command behavior). He laughed at me like I was joking. I mean, that's fair -- prefixed arguments do sound like a silly "border feature" if you've never worked with them before. And hey, it took me a while to pick up on them. But now, I use them many times daily.

Stretch Yourself

Another thing you get with Emacs is flexibility. Have you ever wanted to experiment with a new technology, but avoided it because you were too comfortable in your existing programming environment? Come on -- you saw that Ruby on Rails screencast, right? If you're an Emacs user, you can be writing C# on Windows Monday, Ruby on Mac OS Tuesday, and Python on Linux on Wednesday. In each case, there are language-specific tools to use, but the place you spend the most time -- your editor -- is consistent across tools and platforms. Virtually all the time you invested in learning (and customizing) the editor comes along for the ride each time. Emacs lowers the bar.

OK, I know -- you're not convinced. You love -- no, you love your IDE. I've been there. How about 5 years ago, though? Were you using the same IDE? Were you even using the same language? Me neither. How about in 5 years -- do you think you'll be using the same language? The same tool? Really? If you did switch, how much knowledge from your last development environment transferred? You might think that "it doesn't matter" -- heck, I probably would have said the same thing reading this 5 years ago ("bah, I'll just learn a new IDE when I pick that language up"). It's difficult to explain how much you can gain from mastering an editor -- you just have to experience it. Have you ever learned a keyboard shortcut in a program, and wondered how you ever lived without it? Gaining proficiency in Emacs is like that feeling times 1,000. Emacs is never having to press the same button 5 times in a row.

It's powerful, even if it doesn't sound like it. After several years of using Java, I needed to switch to C# for a few projects which integrated with native Windows libraries. My development process hardly changed in the process -- every trick I knew for editing, buffer management, compiling -- it all transferred. With the recent shift towards standards-based Web-centric applications, and working for a startup, I'm writing C#, JavaScript, Java, CSS, C++ and XML regularly -- all within the friendly confines of Emacs. And yes, I'm writing this blog post in Emacs (using a custom RELAX NG Compact schema in NXML mode, for the still curious).

Emacs Hacks

Getting started with Emacs can be a bit intimidating at first. It's a community run by dark-siders, and they have a tendency to assume you're a rocket scientist. Wading through the documentation and getting out of the gates is the hardest part (it was for me -- I'm not even a model rocket scientist). I'm going to dedicate a few posts on this blog (in "hacks" style, sans the book-length depth) to helping you do just that. I'll probably bias it somewhat towards installing and using Emacs on Windows, since it's quite a bit easier on Linux (apt-get install emacs21 doesn't make for a very interesting blog post).

If you're not convinced -- I understand. And it doesn't bother me at all. I have nothing against language or environment-specific tools. I use them all the time -- debuggers, static analysis tools, inspectors, refactorers -- you name it. You don't have to dump your IDE -- you can even use them side-by-side if that's more comfortable for you. My point is that mastering a flexible editor (Emacs or otherwise) can make you a more versatile, more productive developer. It might even make you a better developer. No Elisp hacking required.

30 CommentsPosted at 1:00 AM to Categories: Emacs
Save & Share: Dot This!

Comments

Sunday, December 03, 2006 3:44:39 AM by Dave G.
I used to use Epsilon, a commerical knockoff of Emacs, and I swore by it until someone turned me on to Visual SlickEdit, and I've never looked back.

I agree with the point of your post -- sort of. As they say, correlation doesn't prove causation. I don't think that using a powerful editor will make you a better programmer, but I think that when someone makes the effort to master a powerful editor, it's a pretty good indicator that they're a good programmer. At least, that's what my anecdotal experience suggests.
Sunday, December 03, 2006 1:53:41 PM by galo
good post.
keyboard based editors are the way to go.

but i still prefer vim :D
Monday, December 04, 2006 12:19:20 AM by Tom
Dinarte's been using Emacs for at least 15 years. Seems to work for him.
Monday, December 04, 2006 4:54:33 PM by David Karr
I started with Unipress Emacs in 1985. I've been using some version of Emacs ever since. In the last couple of years I've probably used Eclipse more, but there are still some things that I still rely on Emacs for:

* Case-based replace
* Automatic comment block formatting
* Shell
* Nick Duffek's compile2: more flexible compile package
* More flexible Java code formatter

The combination of shell and compile2, along with macro recording, allows me to do some pretty nifty things that would have taken ages with a normal IDE/editor.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006 4:37:43 AM by jungler
Emacs with Das Keyboard: way to go.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007 8:43:21 AM by Rik Hemsley
VS.NET with ViEmu and ReSharper == nirvana.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007 7:31:30 PM by Liam
If you haven't explored the customizability of your editor, you're missing about 60% of its power. I have a directory of scripts that I run for any given language file I need to edit, all of which increase my productivity that much more. I can create HTML tables and layouts in a few keystrokes, instead of typing them out. I can get project-specific extensions and editor functions that my editor loads for me (why should I have to do it manually?). And I can perform major magic when 20 files need similar edits: I start a macro, define functions on the fly, and run the edits for one file, then repeat for the other 19.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 12:12:16 AM by Frederic Brunel
I've been using Emacs for the last 10 years and it still amazes me. It's maybe the only software that has never deceived me and I've only scratched it's surface.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 12:14:47 AM by mikem
haha, this is so, like 1970s!
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 12:17:06 AM by tina wexley
great timing, ibm just came out with a <a href="http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/au-dw-au-emacs1-i.html?S_TACT=105AGX01&S_CMP=HP">tutorial for emacs newbies</a>
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 12:20:38 AM by dandy loner
I've been using Emacs (and clones thereof - Epsilon on Windows is wonderful) for nearly 30 years now. Emacs commands are embedded in my spinal cord reflexes, I think.

I know two 'vi' commands: Quit, and how to quit if I've typed something. That's it. :-)

Combined with Perl, and a decent merge program (I won't name names) you can do practically anything to a large body of source that you need to. Thank goodness for power tools.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 2:49:47 AM by thumthing
Well, I'll be honest, I've been using Vi/m on and off since I first started working with *NIX systems (ATTsysVr3 and MS-Xenix on an Altos 286.. yup)

I have always tried to use emacs because I love the idea of using lisp to extend it if I want to.. but MYGOD.. this thing is NOT for the faint of heart. C-ht yes, but it doesn't take long to get the F*K lost in this thing.. VI is idiot (me?) proof that way. I know I can always press esc and get the F out if I did something wrong. (I'm an admin/dba not a devloper)

Just the other day I downloaded EMACS for osx for my spanking new MBP.. and was dissappointed almost immediately. Get into the tutorial and next thing I know the CTRL works and the FRIKKING "META" don't.. thought the tutorial claims its CTRL-v and Alt-V but I'd be damned if I can get it to work on that stupid mac book kbd. So here I am doing ESC-V to do pg-up and I was like.. F* this! I'm not putting up with this shit.. if they can't even bother to put the most used keys on the first page of the tutorial..

I mean.. it takes me 3 for C-this and M-that and I'm in frikking lala-land..

I can feel the power, I know I'm sitting next to a frikking F-16 but what's the point if the first button I push fires off a side winder? I mean come-on.. in the help/tutorial mode?

ESC made me use VI.. tell me the absolute basic of the keys that will get me back to a safe place.

Or you can just dump all over me and call me stupid and shit.. but honestly, I'm not trying to troll or start a flamewar.

help me out here.. I want to use emacs.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 4:45:46 AM by John
jungler wrote:

> Emacs with Das Keyboard: way to go.

Even better (for me) is Emacs with the Kinesis Ergo Contoured.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 4:55:14 AM by John
...set to dvorak, of course.

Also: thumthing, I'm not a Mac user, but I've heard there's a couple different versions of Emacs specifically for OS X. You may want to google around and try them both before going further (you may find they work as expected right out of the box).

If you still have problems, you could try posting to gnu.emacs.help and asking how to get the keyboard Alt/Meta/Esc thing worked out. It's probably something simple, and once that's set up, you'll be good to go and get started working through the built-in tutorial.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 6:14:40 AM by klang
I am writing this in emacs via the "It's All Text" http://docwhat.gerf.org/2007/01/its-all-text/ plugin for Firefox

.. need I say more?
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 6:58:08 AM by Tim
@thumthing
Ctrl-g in emacs is roughly equivalent to esc in vim, in the sense you are talking about. If you get into trouble just do ctrl-g a couple of times.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 9:13:17 AM by sherl0ck
yes... yes.. I just swapped to emacs as well and still amaze by it.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 12:39:07 PM by Anonymous
I once worked in a shop where the lead tech was using Emacs. Once I proposed to refactor parts of the source into sub-folders to improve structure. He almost violently opposed me with all kinds of arguments, none of which I found convincing. Later on I found that he had the habit of grepping "../../**/*" in Emacs (IIRC). This required all source files to be on the same level in the file system. If we had refactored the code to different levels, this command (which must have almost burnt itself into his spinal cord, so fast was he at typing it) would have become partly "broken".
I call this "tool block" (limitation of your environment or the way you are using it that affects your design choices), and I'm pretty sure the guy wasn't aware that this was the underlying cause of him opposing my refactoring suggestion.
I have become very cautious of anybody defending the "benefits" of their working environment - I've encountered "tool block" too many times. All IDEs have limitations, and this is only a problem if we are not aware of it.
Not a case of pro/con Emacs, just a remark.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 12:48:56 PM by Steve
Later on I found that he had the habit of grepping "../../**/*" in Emacs

find-grep-dired (cough)
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 1:55:22 PM by thumthing
@Tim and others, Thanks, I will try your suggestions. :)
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 5:27:45 PM by RevPriest
I think Emacs is lovely, but it makes my hand cramp up. I think there's a reason RMS has carpel tunnel you know.

Vim's modefull editing keeps my hands from locking up, which is enough reason that I'm more practiced there, and thus it's easier to use it there.

Course, if I'm writing Lisp I'll end up in Emacs, massaging my hands every few minutes.
Friday, March 23, 2007 3:03:51 PM by John
> I think there's a reason RMS has carpel
> tunnel you know

Well, give the guy a break -- he was the primary original author of GNU Emacs, GCC, and lots of other GNU software. :)
Friday, March 23, 2007 3:06:56 PM by John
(RevP, er... I just meant that he's done a lot of typing, not that you were slighting him.)
Friday, March 23, 2007 7:19:41 PM by Michael Pohoreski
The introduction reminds me of...

http://undefined.com/ia/2006/11/07/the-four-programmers
Saturday, March 24, 2007 9:41:22 AM by Drew Thaler
"the dark side was in the midst of a civil war".

Heh. You make that sound as if it's a RECENT thing. ;-)
Sunday, March 25, 2007 5:07:35 AM by Roy Wallis
I started programming as an undergraduate engineering major around 1966, with punch cards. I left in the late 80's to practice law. I remember Emacs as the best tool I ever had, and thus was very pleased to read it is still used.
Sunday, June 03, 2007 2:10:33 AM by Eric
As a long time user of Vi, I actually switched to Emacs for development work. Here's my advice: do NOT use Emacs without switching Caps Lock and Left Ctrl keys and absolutely set up a .emacs file that you like as soon as possible. Steve Yegge (google it) has some good suggestion, but it doesn't take very long to find your own way. Some things are still easier for me in Vi, but I think configuration and setting up a dev environment (as opposed to file editor) is better on Emacs.
Thursday, August 23, 2007 4:36:52 PM by Jose
Eric is more than right. I didn't think it was a big deal at the beginning, but everything is much easier when you left Ctrl is in a sensible place. As for Vi, being a Vim user all my life I've found that emacs in viper mode is pure power.
Friday, September 07, 2007 8:03:09 AM by Egon Schultz
Emacs is a waste of life-energy. It slowly saps your sanity. It is the creation of some demented mofos all right. I laugh every time i hear about the wonders of dired, eshell, tex-mode, and all the other crap that doesn't really work. Take a hint from Common Lisp, the famous dead language. Why do you think it's dead? Because common lisp implimentations force you to work in emacs. Get it? Real people (not pot-smoking college boys) have better things to do with their fingers than C-x b bury slime-popups every 5 secs.
Friday, January 18, 2008 4:47:50 PM by MC
I liked the article and it gave me a sense of nostaligia. I used emacs a lot in my undergrad and masters before being lured to wall street. Never used it again till i recently started using the R programming language for statistics.
I think the complaint about potential carpel tunnel is real as i dimly remember having problems with my pinky during my masters.
I love the programme though.