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by videophile 6152 days ago
Ok, I'm not a PC-nazi but I think someone needs to call the article out:

This is generic claptrap ("use help"?! he, and it's pretty clear it's a he, could have at least looked at how hard emacs help is to use for beginners) interspersed with sexist pictures and commentary. It is offputting to many people, and I'd like to see my favorite editor associated with higher caliber tutorials.
3 comments
dkarl 6152 days ago
Each of the tips is an important and non-obvious point, and several are unusual and probably good advice: post a cheat sheet, write down interesting commands, update your cheat sheet. Tips for beginners are always pretty generic. I'm sure someone, somewhere has suggested the same thing, but I give him credit for 33% unpredictable content, which is actually pretty good.

As a longtime emacs user, I'm still working on a few of these. I often discover useful new commands and forget them by the time I need them again -- obviously I should have them posted on my cheat sheet. I don't use command-apropos or the included documentation as much or as well as I should, either. I think insufficient use of help is way too common -- a lot of people ask me for help as soon as Google fails them.

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kiba 6152 days ago
I do not understand how these pictures are sexist.
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jrockway 6152 days ago
Only men should be using computers, duh.
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le_dominator 6152 days ago
I've tried to get into emacs and vi but neither of them "feel right". Generally it seems like these editors take a particularly geeky sort of personality to get into in the first place, which is awesome. The nature of emacs isn't exactly user-friendly, so someone moving towards it would already be adventurous enough to parse the help files (and has probably read a fair share of man pages as well... blegh).

As for the images and title of the article: what could have been (very often times these sorts of pieces ARE) a very drone-like, dry sack of shit for a paper that only someone with a robotic policeman's mentality could enjoy, I found to be humorous and filled with life.

Will I be using emacs anytime soon? Probably not but it's encouraging to see that there are cool, funny, HUMAN community members out there who want to help get people excited and productive with something they enjoy.

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