Trials and Tribulations of a new Emacs user

Falling for Emacs Propaganda since 2026

[rusticalities]

well, i did a thing chat. i was using emacs, and was using a random window splitting function from stackoverflow. i was getting tired of how the windows were splitting in such a way that it was getting unwieldy, so i, in classic emacs fashion, hacked up a master-stack layout splitting function.

does tumblr even support code blocks?

dotfiles linked here with the whole file as the second link attatchment

dotfiles

collection of dotfiles

[emacs-propaganda-faller-for]

Stealing this thank u 👀👀👀

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Emacs Musings: Week 14

I lied, I spent more time with F#.

While I was still struggling with omnisharp, FSAutocomplete seems to work pretty much perfectly out of the box! You do need to add the :AutomaticWorkspaceInit init option to get it working though.

I'm still torn on the keybinds for editing files. I feel like I would be much happier with evil mode enabled... navigating files with the emacs defaults still feels really clunky in comparison. It *probably* doesn't help that I still use vim bindings at work...

The fsharp-ts-mode does have some annoyances. I'm having to manually add files to the fsproj as I create them. I *imagine* I could create a hook that does this automatically, but I'm happy for now just adding manually. It helps me make sure they're in the correct order anyway

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Emacs Musings: Week 11

Had a bit of a break to focus on getting settled into a new job, but am now back on the emacs enjoyment! New things:

1. I've learnt the elisp syntax, and am slowly learning how to use it to automate things.

2. Now that I know how elisp works, I feel a little more confident installing packages I need! It's becoming a competent editor at last.

3. Magit lives up to the hype. It just... works. perfectly. Nothing so far has been an issue with it.

I've also returned to NixOS after a bit of time back on my old muse Gentoo. I love Gentoo with all my heart but, with direnv support for both nix and emacs, I can use nix without even really having to think about it. Emacs just works so nicely with direnv.

My only qualm is eglot and OmniSharp not working properly together on my F# project. However that seems like an issue with OmniSharp support for slnx-based solutions rather than emacs. Much to learn.

Next up I want to get comfortable with LaTex support in emacs, including pdf viewing alongside the code. If that goes particularly well, I may have a look at lilypond integration too...

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Emacs Musings: Week 3

God I love emacs. I found the ef-themes package and its amazing green theme (I love light themes and green):

https://www.protesilaos.com/emacs/ef-themes

I haven't had the chance to get everything set up for all my use-cases due to switching jobs, but I'm thinking about getting some general set-up going for dotnet development soon! Before that, though, I want to work on a nice LaTeX workflow. I've played around a little with a package for using it with latexmk which was nice, but I think I need to set up some proper custom keybinds soon...

The biggest thing I'm missing from my vimkeys setups on my IDEs is how movement works. I'll happily admit that window handling makes much more sense in emacs (although I'll probably never remember what all the different combinations for <C-x>4 and <C-x>5 do), but moving to definitions and usages in code feels quite clunky so far.

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Emacs Musings: Week 2

I've had to slow down a bit due to starting a new job this week, however I've still been looking into emacs a bit!

This week I discovered the direnv package and found that it works absolutely perfectly with a nix flake setup. I've never had an editor that "just works" with direnv before, others always seem quite janky in their implementations. A real breath of fresh air!

The main issue so far has been getting used to editing projects with several files. I'm more used to using a dedicated IDE for these (particularly for dotnet and node projects) so it's been a little awkward. I imagine there are packages for this but I'm still following my self-inflicted minimal packages rule for at least the next few months.

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Emacs Musings: Week 1

I've been having so much fun! I won't lie, I've had several dreams that were essentially about emacs.

One of the best decisions I've made about this journey is to avoid third-party packages where possible, and to limit my editing of keybinds for now. By purposefully avoiding thinking about it, I've found myself able to stop going down the tinkering rabbit hole and hence my time has actually been really productive.

Loving Org Mode so far. I've not fully delved into all its features but even just as a markup language it's been lovely. Also gave eglot a go with a small C project. It went.... okay. I had issues with eglot-rename not picking up everything but I think I just used it wrong...

The default keybinds are still a little confusing to me but I've started getting a little bit of muscle memory behind them.

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So today I decided is the day to finally get into emacs "properly". I have just finished the tutorial (again) and have set some ground rules based on previous false starts with emacs. I've also set some goals for the next year!

Goals:

Create a "good enough" workflow for incorporating my usual file-based notes into emacs (or create a new workflow and migrate over to it). I have started using org docs already so will be exploring these further.

Gain a rudimentary understanding of emacs, elisp, and how to customise to my liking.

Understand project management in emacs (I've seen the projectile package but will be avoiding in favour of vanilla emacs project management for now).

Understand how common coding tasks can be incorporated into emacs (LSP support, debugging, building and managing codebases in the usual languages I work in [C, C#, F#, Rust, Haskell, JS, LaTeX]).

Have fun!

Rules:

I will NOT be installing third party packages until I actually have a use-case for them. The exception is magit, since I have some familiarity with it already and most of my work is in version control.

No evil mode. The ~10 years of muscle memory for vim have served me well but it's about time I tried a world without it.

I will NOT be trying to recreate my workflow from other editors/IDEs. Emacs is its own thing, with its own quirks. As much as I'm used to JetBrains IDEs from work, and as much as I'm used to vim at home, I'll never be satisfied if I just try and recreate the very editors that I'm already dissatisfied with.

I will avoid the subreddit like the plague. Not too hard given that Redditors make me want to uncontrollably vomit but, after skimming it earlier, it's full of the same nonsense I see in certain linux circles that makes me distrust most posts there by default.

I will be learning elisp and editing my config by hand, however will not shy from customise mode to discover what can actually be done by default and how.