path: root/2020/subtitles/emacsconf-2020--26-emacs-as-a-highschooler-how-it-changed-my-life--pierce-wang.vtt

WEBVTT

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Hello and welcome to my EmacsConf lightning talk.

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Today I'll be talking about 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
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 half,

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and I have been keeping it up ever since.

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Violin is a 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 in the past,

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and this year I'm taking my first AP Comp. Sci. course in my high school.

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And so I've done a lot of side projects,

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mainly in Python, and some very short scripts in Elisp.

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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 see what I can do better,

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and just 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, funnily enough,

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at a Vim conference given by Aaron Bieber, titled:

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"Evil Mode or How I Learned to 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 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 have

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the evil-mode package and very quickly switch to Emacs.

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At the time, I was also in my sophomore year,

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and so I had had a sort of a note-taking system
in the past.

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But it was not good, and I needed a more organized note-taking system.

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My parents had suggested paper for a while,

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and there was the whole organization part of that,

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but that did not really work out for me.

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And so I was trying to find this better 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 define at the time,

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but I realized was really what I was looking for.

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First of all, it had to be flexible enough,

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and second of all, I had to have control over the data.

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And so through this process,

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I actually went through a bunch of note-taking softwares rather systematically.

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I went through Google Docs, which very much did not work out.

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I also went through Evernote which also was not great for me,

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and OneNote, which I 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.

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I had taken some notes and I wanted to export it,

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and OneNote 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 change.

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So I discovered Emacs through this talk,

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and through the wonderful features of 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,

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and I happened to press I,

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which for the Emacs keybinding is the default for diary entry.

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I was very excited.

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I shouldn't stay on the slide too long lest you read it.

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So let's move on to the next one.

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So the learning curve for me, I think,

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particularly being an ex-Vim user,

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evil-mode made it very easy to switch.

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Thankfully, there was the Emacs reference sheet,

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and having evil-mode to switch between texts...

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Whether it be editing a text file,

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or going to other parts of just Emacs in general,

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I think Vim really helped with making me feel comfortable

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within this new environment.

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So, having that experience, I also wasn't new

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to the keybind-based world.

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I have been very comfortable with the 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 environment for me.

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I also spent a lot of time looking at the Emacs reference sheet,

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Just thinking about trying to find all of the different functions.

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If I didn't know what something was, then I queried it in Emacs,

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and then I figured out what it was.

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And that was one of the best ways for me to discover

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all of the capabilities of Emacs.

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Thirdly, of course, the self-documenting feature

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or nature of Emacs and narrowing frameworks such as helm

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really helped find things, especially for M-x.

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For a while, I was just...

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I would go about my day, and if I pressed a keybind that I didn't know what it did,

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I would do the lossage and see the list of keybinds that I had pressed

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and tried to find that one, and query the function and what not.

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So yeah. And now we jump to now.

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So there is at least one moment in each day when I think

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how would I live without Emacs,

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particularly now during my senior year in high school.

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Things are very busy with school, violin, and other side projects.

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It's pretty crazy, and so Emacs 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

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is being able to have things in different files,

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notes within the tasks,

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all of that stuff has been truly a lifesaver.

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And so I think I can confidently say

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that I have found Emacs to be 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+ line Org literate config.

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I actually started with an Elisp config,

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just the vanilla Emacs with evil-mode,

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and I built it up from there.

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Eventually I switched to Org literate configs,

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and used that to organize the snippets

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that I was putting in there.

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So yeah, this is really my workflow now.

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Currently about 90% of everything I do on my computer is in Emacs.

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The most notable things, of course--

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the list is far too long to put on one slide--

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but I do a lot of my programming in Emacs,

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mainly Python and Elisp.

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Because of my AP Comp. Sci. class,

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I have to do Java as well,

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and thank goodness Emacs has wonderful 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.

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Essay writing I do in Org Mode, and I have some template files,

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template Org files which I just include at the top,

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and then I can export easily to LaTeX and a beautiful PDF.

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Math, physics, same thing.

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LaTeX fragments are a lifesaver, and also really pretty.

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I take notes on basically everything.

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At first, I had things separate,

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and then I started sort of putting it all into one notes.org file,

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or most of it into one file,

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and that has actually worked out surprisingly well,

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especially with all the searching
features of agenda and what not.

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And I also use mail.

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I recently made the switch, probably about one or two months ago,

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and it has been one of the best switches I've ever had,

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especially given connecting to tasks all of this wonderful stuff.

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Just putting even more in Emacs is always a good thing, I found.

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So reflecting back on my journey,

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I think one of the most important things

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was just having a reason to use it.

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When I came to Emacs I had something that I was looking for,

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and as soon as I found it, I delved right in,

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and I started using it for that thing.

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So I was sort of forced to take the time to read the docs

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and figure out what functions I needed to function

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and how I was going to put my workflow,

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and also, of course, the desire to tinker.

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So, really, what's next for me is just wanting to become

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a more active member of the Emacs community.

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I want to give back, and I think this talk

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is sort of the first step to that

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being a more active part of this community

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that has, indirectly, perhaps, but just really helped me

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become a better and more organized human being.

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I have some package ideas that I'm slowly working on,

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and yeah, I just hope to spread the word.

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So thank you very much for listening to my lightning talk.

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If you'd like to contact me here are

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three modes of or two modes of communication.

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I will be on IRC more soon,

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and you can always email me if you have any questions.

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You can also search me on Youtube: Pierce Wang violin.

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Thank you very much and I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference.