Learning Emacs Part 1

Emacs, if you’re unfamiliar, is a text editor that has been around since the 1970s. It was originally designed for editing macros in early computer systems. The most popular version, and the one that dominates the space today is GNU Emacs which was developed by Richard Stallman somewhere around 1976. I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty details of its history but knowing that it has been around for nearly 50 years and remains a very popular editor, particularly among developers and others, like me, who are interested in exploring different technologies and appreciate the extensibility and utility of the program gives you a sense of why you might want to consider it.

Learning Emacs

For some time now I’ve had a preference for using plaintext files where ever I can. I explained in this post why that is, so I won’t repeat it here. But in order to begin using plaintext it is necessary to have an editor that will support it.

Now, over the past few years I’ve preferred using nano, a simple, easy to use plaintext editor on linux (and other devices e.g. mac). Nano is just a basic editor and while it served its purpose, I was looking for something a bit more flexible. Prior to nano, I periodically turned to vi or its more recent incarnation, vim. Vim (or vi) is so deeply rooted in the unix-y space that, unlike nano, it does not need to be installed. It is part of the OS. The problem with vim, though, is that it is a modal editor. Modal editing has its charms and its benefits but also creates a few, not obstacles, per se, but frustrations. Modal editors have different modes (hence “modal”) and in order to accomplish different actions you find yourself frequently changing modes. Once you’ve worked with a modal editor for a while those actions become more or less automatic and I am slowly getting there. Still, it’s frustrating to have to stop and think about what mode you need to be in in order to accomplish some action.