# Emacs as a Highschooler: How It Changed My Life Pierce Wang [[!template id=vid src="https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/emacsconf-2020--26-emacs-as-a-highschooler-how-it-changed-my-life--pierce-wang.webm"]] [Download compressed .webm video (9.3M)](https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/smaller/emacsconf-2020--26-emacs-as-a-highschooler-how-it-changed-my-life--pierce-wang--vp9-q56-video-original-audio.webm) [[!template id=vid src="https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/emacsconf-2020--26-emacs-as-a-highschooler-how-it-changed-my-life--questions--pierce-wang.webm" download="Download Q&A video"]] [Download compressed Q&A .webm video (7.5M)](https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/smaller/emacsconf-2020--26-emacs-as-a-highschooler-how-it-changed-my-life--questions--pierce-wang--vp9-q56-video-original-audio.webm) Could Emacs be humanity's solution to the turbulent years of adolescence? So much more than a text editor, Emacs changed the way I approach everything at the age of 15. In the two years since discovering Emacs in my sophomore year of high school, I have been constantly amazed at what Emacs is capable of. In this talk, I would like to share this journey of discovery and what I've learned along the way, beginning with what led me to Emacs. I will reflect on my experience of the Emacs learning curve and then also talk about the many ways that Emacs has shaped my life as a student, programmer, violinist, and a productive and happy adolescent. In each case, I have thoroughly enjoyed figuring out the best way to make Emacs work for me. Finally, I will reflect on my journey thus far and briefly talk about my plans for the future. - Actual start and end time (EST): Start: 2020-11-29T13.06.20; Q&A: 2020-11-29T13.16.52; End: 2020-11-29T13.21.51 # Questions ## Q6: How would you introduce other classmates to Emacs? Meaning what's the "gateway" drug to Emacs? Would probably start with doom or Spacemacs. Try to find their reason for using Emacs. ## Q5: What made you use Vim in the first place? Were you looking for a note-taking system in plain text (such as Markdown), or were you using it for programming? Used vim first time mainly for programming not for Markdown. ## Q4: I tend to think that life in school-age is somehow simple to organize since categories are easy to distinguish (years/classes, hobbies, …) in contrast to business life (many projects in parallel with many touch-points in-between them). From your point of view: do I have wrong memories on my time in school or did school change that much? School makes it easier to have a structured system. ## Q3: Assuming you keep real time notes during your lessons how do you manage to keep up with the lecturer's speed. I can write LaTeX fragments pretty fast but I am not yet at the point that I can keep up with them. What are the tricks/snippets you use? Oh and do you have a git repo with your Emacs dots that we can see? Types pretty fast (~110 wpm); for math/science uses CDLaTeX, YASnippet expansion, and LaTeX fragments. Emacs config! ## Q2: What do your friends think :) ? (Do you collaborate with your friends?) Overwhelmed them by the positive experience at first :). Now that the configuration is somewhat stable Emacs doesn't come up as often in discussions, though. [someone can probably come up with a better summary of this answer] The general concensus is that it's an amazing piece of software, but they think it's too complicated for them to use. I think they also still have PTSD from the initial days when I was talking about Emacs **all** the time (whooops). ## Q1: Do you use Emacs for school assignments? Answered in talk: yes, Org mode, export to LaTeX -> PDF. One Org mode template file with latex-fragments that is used for exporting. # Notes - Discovered Emacs from: . - Tried various note taking tools - settled on Org mode in Emacs. - YouTube channel: . - Emacs config: .