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#clojure-losangeles
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2019-07-12
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Marcus Pemer16:07:04

Greetings.... Curious who in this channel uses emacs and cider for clojure development?

lukasz16:07:49

it gives me just enough of CIDER's features

dorab18:07:10

I use emacs/cider.

Marcus Pemer19:07:18

Hi @dorab - cool, so do I. My colleague is having a hard time getting over the learning curve and he ended up with intellij/cursive. I have used emacs since 1993 so it came natural to me, but the experience of my colleague (mainly based on frustration when he tried really hard to get productive with emacs) was eye opening.

dorab19:07:08

Yes. I am a long-term emacs user, so using cider was "natural". But if a person is trying to learn clojure AND emacs at the same time, I can understand how that would be frustrating. The general suggestion when learning clojure (or any new language) is to use the editor/IDE that you're most familiar with to get started. THEN, once you're up and running, try out other IDEs to get a sense of the tradeoffs.

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Marcus Pemer19:07:18

Thank you @dorab - this makes perfect sense.

aaelony19:07:40

I use emacs + cider

aaelony19:07:16

I used vi/vim for 15 years before switching about 10 years ago

aaelony20:07:25

many folks won't agree with me, but to me, not learning emacs is akin to not learning regular expressions or deciding not to learn git

nate20:07:41

@aaelony is that in relation to clojure at all or do you think learning emacs is essential even beyond that?

aaelony20:07:00

note, this is strictly my opinion and I respect others may differ, but yes. I think emacs is an excellent tool (for many things: organize your life with org-mode, all text processing, etc...) that also just happens to have a great clojure experience.

aaelony20:07:30

I use it heavily for R-coding as well

aaelony20:07:30

(it might even reduce RSI by using the keyboard more than the mouse)

nate20:07:48

interesting

nate20:07:09

yeah, definitely doing less mousing is good

nate20:07:21

I find it helps with speed too

nate20:07:13

I think using an editor and getting the most out of it is a good thing, emacs is one and so is vim

nate20:07:36

I've found people that have the same level of productivity and customization in other editors too

aaelony20:07:57

agree 100%. There are many things with a learning curve that aren't as useful. My opinion is that you can start with a cheat-sheet with emacs and be up and running quickly. Everything you learn incremental to that is an added plus that will improve skills and shape your metal

nate20:07:07

but I've also met those that use just the basic configuration, and I think they're missing out

Marcus Pemer20:07:03

To me emacs provides the most powerful environment when programming lisp. I come from a common lisp background, using slime/swank, and in our company we have recently worked on a few projects based on clojure. Because of my background using emacs, cider came as the natural choice and I feel perfectly comfortable using it. My colleague, who by now far surpasses me as a clojure programmer, was unable to stay with the emacs learning curve mainly because he felt it impeded his productivity. I am still somewhat puzzled at how he ended up experiencing what I see as by far the most powerful environment as unworkable. Hence my initial question.

lukasz20:07:59

Switching tools is hard, I'm not sure how I could switch away from my hand crafted, locally sourced, farm to table emacs config

nate20:07:03

yeah, and you'll have to pry my small batch vim config from my cold dead hands

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nate20:07:32

I've tried emacs several times and it never meshed with my modal mindset. I totally agree that switching tools is hard, especially when you've got so much invested in one.

lukasz20:07:59

I've used vim for 6 years, switched to evil and then removed it completely after a month or so

lukasz20:07:16

too many emacs packages needed extra code to integrate with evil so it was a waste of time

lukasz20:07:25

I heard good things about spacemacs though

lukasz20:07:31

especially from vim/vi fugitives

nate20:07:46

I think it's wonderful that the connected editing workflow works in so many editors. That way emacs can't be seen a barrier to Clojure's adoption.

alandipert21:07:04

i started using emacs for doing clj, then did enough elisp along the way to become a CL nerd. so, watch out 😄

alandipert21:07:49

i mostly use vim now, but i still really like elisp for scripting. the emacs binary on most OSes includes an http client and json parser which is exactly what i need for lots of scripty type tasks

nate21:07:29

Oh interesting. Using elisp for scripting. I've been meaning to try out joker for that task.

alandipert22:07:08

it’s pretty weird. https://github.com/alandipert/wondr-blog/ is the most sophisticated thing i’ve made, some blogware

dorab21:07:45

Agree with @aaelony that learning emacs will make you a better tool user - even if you never end up using it. Being exposed to the concepts and power of integration that emacs provides will help you understand what is possible. Just like learning LISP will make you a better programmer - even if you never end up using it.

aaelony22:07:22

(+1 even better if you use it ;)