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hello and welcome to my

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emacs conference lightning talk today

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i'll be talking about

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my journey into emacs as a high schooler

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and how it has changed my life

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right so who am i i am a senior at

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stanford online high school

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and i am also a violinist

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i started violin when i was two and a

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half and i have been

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keeping it up ever since violin is a

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huge part of my life

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and i am very much a musician at heart

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i am also a somewhat capable programmer

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i've done a lot of informal programming

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in the past

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and this year i'm taking my first ap

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compsci course

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in my high school and so

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i've done a lot of side projects

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mainly in python and some very short

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scripts in e-lisp

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and last but not least i am a tinker

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i love to play around with things and

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see what i can do better and just

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have as much fun as possible

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so how did i find emacs

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i discovered it actually through a talk

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funnily enough

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at a vim conference given by aaron

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bieber

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titled evil mode or how i learned to

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stop worrying and love emacs

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i watched that talk a couple times over

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just marveling at all the wonderful

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things that he could do in emacs

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and being a previous vim user myself

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i found it very enticing to be able to

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have

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the evil mode package and very quickly

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switch to emacs

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at the time i was also in my sophomore

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year and so

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i had had sort of a note-taking system

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in the past

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but it was not good um and i needed a

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more organized note-taking system

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my parents had suggested paper for a

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while and

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there was the whole organization

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part of that but that did not really

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work out for me

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and so i was trying to find this better

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note-taking system

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and it was very hard

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i had two main criteria which i did not

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define at the time

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but i realized was really what i was

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looking for

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first of all it had to be flexible

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enough and second of all it had

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i had to have control over the data and

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so

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through this process i actually went

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through a bunch of note-taking softwares

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rather systematically i went through

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google docs

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which very much did not work out

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i also went through evernote which also

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was not

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great for me and one note which i

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settled on for a little while

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but it did not meet these criteria

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particularly the second one i had taken

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some notes

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and i wanted to export it and onenote

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did not let me do that

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it was pdf horribly organized pdf

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and that's when i knew i needed some

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change

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so i discovered emacs through this talk

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and through the wonderful features of

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org mode

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this is my first journal entry in emacs

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i had been playing with it for one day

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and i was on the org agenda and i

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happened to press i

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which for the emacs combined is the

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default for

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diary entry and so i was very excited

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um and i shouldn't stay on the slide too

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long unless you read it

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um so let's move on to the next one

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um so the learning curve for me i think

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particularly being an xbm user

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evil mode made it very easy to switch

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thankfully i there was the emax

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reference sheet

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and having evil mode to

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switch between um

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texts and whether it be editing a text

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file

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or going to other parts of just emacs in

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general

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i think vim really helped with making me

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feel comfortable within this new

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environment

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and so having that experience i also

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wasn't

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new to the keybind-based world i have

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been very comfortable with computer

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and the keyboard for most of my life

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and so it was not a totally new

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environment for me

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i also spent a lot of time looking at

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the emacs reference sheet

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just thinking about trying to find

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all of the different functions if i

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didn't know what something was

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then i queried it in emacs and then i

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figured out what it was

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and that was one of the best ways for me

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to discover

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all of the capabilities of emacs

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thirdly of course the self-documenting

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feature

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or nature of emacs and narrowing

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frameworks such as helm

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really helped find things especially for

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mx

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for a while i was just

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i would go about my day and if i pressed

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to keep mine that i didn't know what it

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did

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i would do the losses and

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see the list of key binds that i had

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pressed and

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tried to find that one and query the

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function

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and what not so

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yeah and now we jump to now so

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there there is at least one moment in

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each day when i think

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how would i live without umax

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particularly now during my senior year

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in high school

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things are very busy with school violin

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and other side projects it's pretty

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crazy

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and so emacs

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and org mode has really helped me stay

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on track with everything

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and the flexibility of these software is

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being able to have things in different

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files notes within the tasks

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all of that stuff has been truly a

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lifesaver

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and so i think i can confidently say

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that i have found emacs to be

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the perfect software for me

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over the past two years of using emacs

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now it is about two years and two months

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i have built a fairly well organized

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2000

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plus line org literate config

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and so i actually i started with an

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e-lisp config

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just the vanilla e-max with evil mode

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and i built it up

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from there eventually i switched to org

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literate configs

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and used that to organize the snippets

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that i was putting in there and so

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yeah this is really my workflow now

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currently about 90 of everything i do on

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my computer is in emacs

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the most notable things of course the

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list is far

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too long to put on one slide but i do a

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lot of my programming in emacs

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mainly python and e-lisp

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because of my ap comp sci class i have

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to do java as well

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and thank goodness emacs has wonderful

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support for that as well

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also i do all of my school assignments

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more or less in emacs essay writing i do

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an org mode and i have some template

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files

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template org files which i just include

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at the top

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and then i can export easily to latex

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and a beautiful pdf

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math physics same thing latex fragments

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are a lifesaver

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and also really pretty

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and i take notes on basically everything

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at first i had things separate and then

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i started

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sort of putting it all into onenotes.org

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file or most of it into one

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file and that has actually worked out

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surprisingly well

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especially with all the searching

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features of agenda

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and whatnot um and i also use mail

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i recently made the switch probably

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about one or two months ago

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and it has been one of the best switches

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i've

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i've ever had especially given

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connecting to tasks all of this

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wonderful stuff

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just putting even more in emacs is

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always a good thing i found

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so reflecting back on my journey i think

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one of the most important things was

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just having a reason to use it

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when i came to emacs i had something

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that i was looking for

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and as soon as i found it i delved right

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in

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and i i started using it for that thing

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and so i was sort of forced to

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take the time to read the docs and

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figure out what functions i needed

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to function and how

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i was going to put my workflow

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and also of course the desire to tinker

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and yeah so really what's next for me

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is just wanting to become a more active

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member of the emacs community

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i want to give back and i think this

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talk is sort of the first step to that

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being a more active part of this

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community that has

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indirectly perhaps um but just like

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really helped me become a better and

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more organized human being

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um i have some package ideas that i'm

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slowly working on and yeah i just hope

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to spread the word

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so thank you very much for listening to

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my lightning talk

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if you'd like to contact me here are

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three modes of

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or two modes of communication i will be

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on irc more

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soon and you can always email me if you

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have

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any questions you can also search me on

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youtube

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pierce wong violin thank you very much

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and

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i hope you enjoy the rest of the

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conference