[stuntkite]

I've done a ton of writing and system description. I've got kit in Illustrator, I've bought tools on the mac like Scrivener[0] and Scrapple for writing fiction and technical documentation. I can really move with Omnigraffle. I've bridged that gap with writing my own tools in Python with JS web display layers. I am a competent developer in a few languages and I have known about emacs and org-mode for going on a decade.

I take big stabs at it becoming my goto. I feel like I've done a lifetime of development to just dance around figuring out this tool.

Do you have any suggestions for making it stick? I'm making 2019 my year to really get emacs and put some time into fun Lisp. Any tips relating specifically to org-mode and not just "how to not quit using emacs" would be greatly appreciated.

[0] https://www.literatureandlatte.com/store

[a-saleh]

I don't really have any 'tips to make it stick', because I don't really try to?

Most of my day-to-day development happens in VS Code, most of my in-console or over-the-ssh editing in vim. For interactive/exploratory programming I often grab jupyter notebook.

But having emacs with an org-file open at all times is nice. The bullet lists are pretty :-) And I am slowly branching out to other things that org-mode is capable off. I.e. I started writing a presentation outline in org-mode, then I realized that I could just write the whole thing there and export it to reveal-js html with few key-strokes.

[mickael-kerjean]

> "how to not quit using emacs" would be greatly appreciated.

Emacs kinda feel like a weird animal when getting started but that's just muscle memory. The best way to have it stick is to get a better understanding of its power. I wrote a 5 episode tutorial series that should get you on the right path: https://mickael.kerjean.me/2017/03/18/emacs-tutorial-series-...

[stuntkite]

Very cool! I just skimmed the series and sat with Ep1 a bit. I will work through it this coming week and see how it lands.

I like the format. Thanks!

[subjectsigma]

I'm a huge emacs fan but this seems silly. You're comment makes it sound like you're struggling with emacs - don't, just use whatever you're comfortable and productive with.

[stuntkite]

Well a big thing that happened for me this year is losing OSX as my primary environment. So everything is in flux and has been for about six months. I don't see Apple turning around for what I need and I've been 100% linux desktop over this time period. I'm a long time linux and BSD user, but haven't had it as my primary OS in nearly a decade.

My job has shifted towards ops and managing kubernetes clusters at scale. Since I'm refiguring everything I used to do this year, I figure I might as well try things I always meant to that have been around forever and seem to do it just fine without buying into commercial tools (that largely aren't available for my platform anyway).

Because of my work focus on virtualization, my primary machine is starting to be a mini cluster and I have a 5 node rack adjacent. Being portable between all these environments is becoming an asset very quickly.

Maybe it's silly, but I'm not moving around comfortably in almost anything like I was. World's my oyster I guess.

[subjectsigma]

If you want zero-config portability, learn vim. It's installed everywhere and is very useful. But if you're set on emacs, here's some stuff that helped me.

The video on golfing is great to learn how to "think Emacs": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE2haYu0co8

Avoid using Ctrl; either palm-press or map Capslock to Ctrl. http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_pinky.html

Don't lean heavily on movement commands, the easiest way to navigate around Emacs is searching. Instead of pressing C-p five times or even C-u C-p C-p, just search for the word you're going to with C-s.

Official reference card is good: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/pdf/refcard.pdf

Steal heavily from other people's configs. Since you're new and you like org-mode see these two files: https://github.com/magnars/.emacs.d/blob/master/settings/san... http://pages.sachachua.com/.emacs.d/Sacha.html#org2b182a5

Hope that helps.