rml

This is a very good feature/workflow based intro

As the years go by one realizes that even these “features” like Org, Dired, etc are just illusions in some sense. They’re just Elisp code someone else wrote and put a name on. You can take or leave them or write your own code that changes/advises/customizes them.

It’s all up to you. You don’t need a blessed “plugin” architecture, some PM at IntelliJ’s permission etc

At some point one realizes the “visual shell” nature of Emacs. Every single piece of text on screen can be programmed to “mean something” (see also: “recognizers” from human interface research) and have actions taken on it either by the editor itself, or external processes / scripts you call with a command. If it’s common enough, make a key binding. It’s your house, do what you want

Depending on how you set up your environment, you may never have to look at text again that you do not have this level of power over. You are no longer at the mercy of “application developers”

I’ve been using it since 2005. Guess how many of 2005’s popular editors even still exist

My recommendation to anyone trying to actually learn is start with the full vanilla config, weird default keybindings, etc, go through the built in tutorials, and only add things to your config that you write and understand yourself. Understand it in its own terms. The plethora of packages, etc have “cool features” but impede learning by adding mountains of complex dependencies that are opaque to the beginner and cause confusion IMO

If you want to learn how Org mode works, start by reading outline.el

then read Dominik's outline-magic.el

then see how far you can get with your own customizations on top of that to augment, e.g. plain markdown text

you may find you're doing well at that point and don't need to deal with the 100k+ line beast that is Org, nor its transitive dependencies

at that point you will really understand (that part of) Emacs, and will no longer see Org as "a discrete thing", but just "some code someone else wrote" that you can take or leave

In the book 'Double Entry' the author explains that the guy who created GDP was actually in favor of having family caregiving and household activities accounted for in GDP. If that had happened, different world

For something this small we can enumerate all the cases (this is a Scheme version of the Mathematica `Tuples` function)

    > (list-tuples '(B G) 2)
    ((B B) (B G) (G B) (G G))

3 cases have at least one girl

of those 3 cases, 1/3 are both girls

This kind of writing is what I browse the internet for.

FWIW the stuff about dealing with the Feds only applies out west AFAICT

There’s lots of rural land in the northeast where you can basically just go to your small town hall and get whatever done without much hassle. Or just don’t tell anyone and nobody cares (if it’s actually rural enough)

Also in the northeast many areas are depopulating due to folks aging out, so there is land available (as long as you avoid the popular NYC and BOS-adjacent areas)

Fair warning you will need to accept that other people may not share all of your “correct” opinions but they will probably still be kind enough to help you IRL with a flat tire or digging your truck out etc :-)

I find this to be true in many areas of life, esp. in recent years. My perfect trail running shoe was made in 2006. My perfect car was made in 2008. Those products are no longer made, and the new ones are not "better", just "different". (Often worse tbh)

We get to buy the product someone is willing to make, not the product we want to buy. The product is often not "better" for the user, but for the company making it. And as a user you can just FEEL it dripping from every new thing. It's not appealing at all to me.

There must be an economics term that describes this. I've taken to calling it "supply side rules everything around me"

I'm glad people keep writing these "how I set up my computer" articles because it's how I learned almost everything I know - thanks to the kindness of internet strangers.

anyway here's my idiosyncratic setup, would probably be terrible for anyone else:

everything goes in Dropbox (paid 2TB account)

my Dropbox subfolders are organized by broad filetype, e.g.

    ~/Dropbox/{Code,Documents,Videos,Downloads}

on a new computer I install Dropbox and create symlinks, e.g.

    /home/rml/.emacs   -> /home/rml/Dropbox/Code/personal/config/dot-emacs
    /home/rml/.Xinitrc -> /home/rml/Dropbox/Code/personal/config/Xinitrc
    /home/rml/Code     -> /home/rml/Dropbox/Code
    ... etc

Because I pretty much live in Emacs and manage files using `dired` I have lots of Elisp code and custom keybindings that take me to my most-used files and directories. For other "tier 2" things I either know where they are due to long habit (most stuff doesn't move or it's obvious which folder e.g. a PDF will be in) or I use a combination of `M-x locate` and `M-x grep` which works pretty well.

Re: concerns about "where apps store stuff" I mostly don't care because everything I care about is in Dropbox. If it's something I use a lot, its config is symlinked in wherever the app expects it to be - otherwise everything is a few `dired` commands away.

(On macOS `M-x locate` can be configured to use the builtin `mdfind` which works very well for finding things IME. I think it's what drives Spotlight.)

At some point I may set up 'recoll' and all that but so far I haven't needed it so I haven't paid the complexity tax of trying to configure that across Windows/macOS/Linux vs. good old locate/grep

FWIW because I limit myself to a "standard" set of apps (Emacs, browser, VLC, PDF/image viewer) the above setup works pretty much the same across Windows/macOS/Linux, so most of the time I don't have to care that much which system I'm typing into

Your comment makes me think you may enjoy the science fiction book 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' by Walter M. Miller (perhaps you already have :-})

It's set at a monastery in the desert post nuclear apocalypse, where scribes copy wiring diagrams and store artifacts like partially destroyed circuit boards without understanding what they are / how they work. And it builds from there.

Thanks for this. 40s and starting to have pain in the big toe joint. Getting some better shoes and spacers as a result. Seriously, thank you!