Three HUGE Mistakes New Emacs Users Make

The biggest mistake is not using Emacs.

Startup time of less than 2 seconds is not a problem because you should never quit emacs in the first place.

@dt: Terminal mode emacs instances can indeed leverage the server. Just use the -nw flag with 'emacsclient' (rather than 'emacs,' which is what you used in the demo). Greybeards like me (I started using emacs in mid-eighties) used it for years before there was a truly viable graphical mode. Terminal mode is still faster, and with a properly-configured terminal (or emulator) the fontifying ("faces") are just as effective. It's the "always-works" mode for emacs :-) Love the channel, keep on keepin' on :-)

Derek, Derek...it is 2 years after you started with Emacs that you explain these very important features, that many of us never heard of??? Time for you to rebuild a deep, complete, 8 or 10 part tutorial on Doom Emacs!

I don't consider not running server as mistake. Seriously, fighting about 2 seconds launchtime?

I've been using Emacs some 30 years. At last activated the daemon after watching the video :D Better late than ever, I guess...

I was a vim user for quite some time but learned about doom emacs from DT when you started posting about it about a year ago. Had a rough start but now that I've got the hang of it It's awesome. Your videos were really helpful then to get me started and now I rarely use anything else. Everything except browsing and media is now emacs for me and rarely use terminal as well. Emacs (Doom) fulfills like 80% of my workstation needs

The terminal version is great for when you have a development server and you only can ssh into it. I use this all the time and it feels like having a proper desktop app

Small correction: SPC . is not dired, it's an ivy prompt

In many of your videos, I see you type the full path for programs that you have aliases for. At least in bash, you can prefix the program name with \ and it'll run the non alias command ;)

I started using emacs yesterday, great timing to upload this video!

You had me in the last part. I'm switching to emacs because of terminal side. I'm switching from vs-code because of option ssh-ing to my machine and have just one IDE. (on site I'd use vs-code, ssh = nano (simple for small changes, annoying for complex changes)) I'm glad you mentioned that it is fine for tty only access.

The right way to use Emacs is to forget everything you learned about Linux and make Emacs to your operating system.

Trying using emacs as a terminal app, thinking it's more "true way" was my sin. And also the reason for me to quit. Thanks, Derek. I guess, I give it another try.

Emacs is GNU Hurd but Richard Stallman refuses to acknowledge it. ;-)

I’ve been using Vim for 12ish years now. Over the past year I’ve gotten into Obsidian and also iOS development so I haven’t used vim/neovim a ton lately. About to make a pivot back to non-iso development and I’m ready for something new. I’m going to give this a shot. Thanks for the video.

I can of have a weird masochistic love-hate relationship with emacs. I'll be drawn to using it for a while as my main editor, but then I'll get frustrated because I'm not good at using it. And then I'll be drawn to it again. Maybe I need to see a therapist. Whereas for Vim, we kind of have an understanding: used for limited editing , no fancy keystrokes, save and quite before anything serious might happen. Not as romantic but it works

Good tips, haven't used Emacs much. The terminal in the example with running process is not useless though, pressing ctrl-z and then typing 'bg' will set it free.

I config emacs with more than 300 package with 1 second to load ❤ it is based in one guy i dont know his name for now, i think emacs with lisp better than neovim and lua and less just now i need to config eshell

Thanks DT! After 6 months of Emacs usage, I reached the same conclusion that first impression of Emacs is not doing it justice. It's like opening up xmonad, and tinkering with it for 10 minutes, and decide that it cannot do much. It just doesn't make any sense.