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by microtonal 2497 days ago
> 2. Switching to Emacs/Spacemacs (Emacs works best on Linux)

Just to echo this: Magit (Emacs git client) alone has given me a large boost in productivity.
1 comments
danShumway 2496 days ago
I didn't want to go into details there, but Magit is wildly good. Line-by-line git-blame an entire file with 3 keystrokes, time travel back-and-forth over commits for a single file, quickly preview any file in the repo from any branch/commit using fuzzy-search. This kind of stuff really shines when you're working on a large company repo -- it meant if someone from another department called me up to talk about some obscure feature branch, I could open the relevant files without switching branches or stashing my current changes.

Aside from Magit, I also get a lot of use out of Org-mode (Emacs pure-text notetaking/todo-list client). I'm syncing to Android with Orgzly. Org-mode was the original feature that got me to try out Emacs, and for a while it was the biggest reason I stuck with it, since I'd never used Vim keybindings before. Vim keybindings made me less productive until I learned them, but were balanced by just how good Org-mode was.

I've even grown to appreciate packages like Calc (Emacs calculator). Dang if RPN style input isn't actually faster to use once you get used to it.

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sooheon 2496 days ago
I use and appreciate all of these tools on MacOS, FWIW.
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danShumway 2496 days ago
I do as well. If you're on Mac, you should still totally look into Emacs, it's great. Heck, if you're on Windows you should still at least think about Emacs.

Emacs overall works slightly better on Linux, because it's primarily optimized for that system. One big area where you'll notice that is if you start embedding X windows into buffers. EXWM is definitely not something I'd try to set up on Mac.

If you're not trying to do stuff like that, then Emacs on Mac is fine. I use a Mac at work and Emacs is a big productivity boost.

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