Programming exercises/challenges

[Edwin]

On Nov 20, 10:32 pm, s... at pobox.com wrote:
>     >> I am constantly amazed at work that people open a separate emacs for
>     >> each file they want to edit.  Most of them seem not to even know that
>     >> find-file exists.
>
>     Edwin> Come on mate... it's already a bit hard to post in a non-native
>     Edwin> language. As a beginner in Python it's just "my two pennies
>     Edwin> worth", really.
>
> No knock on you at all, just an observation about the work patterns many of
> my colleagues have.  The people I work with are professional software
> engineers, engineers, quantitative analysts, etc.  Many not at all new to
> Python, C++, Unix or Emacs.  And it's not like I haven't shown them how to
> do it.  I showed one guy how to exchange two adjacent words today with M-t.
> He about fell off his chair.
>
> Come to think of it, the one other person I work with who always keeps an
> Emacs open is a vi user who likes it for sql mode.  Nothing else.  He runs
> viper mode and keeps an sql mode buffer open continuously with all his
> little sql snippets ready to submit to our Sybase server.  When he uses vim
> to edit?  One vim session per file.  I'm pretty sure that vim allows you to
> open multiple files at once as well.  Go figure.
>
> Skip

No worries. I actually agree. I've found myself in situations like the
ones you describe, finding new commands and realizing there's more to
it than I thought. I have to point out that I myself use Vim more than
Emacs. Not because I think it's better (I'm not a religious person)
but because it has better integration with my Mac... and actually, I
use them for different programming tasks.

As a newcomer to Unix (I've come from Web related fields) I've been
learning not only how to use the operating system, but also Python,
Emacs, Vim, bash, etc. This hasn't been easy, of course, but it has
been quite interesting and as I'm learning a specific topic (say
learning readline commands, how to access command history, etc.) I
don't always keep my editor open; sometimes I want to learn how an
editor does its stuff and then I 'hack' a script for manipulating a
relevant text file (like my diary).

I know you can run your favorite shell inside Emacs and learn from
there, but being the only computer at home (and not the fastest) I
don't want to be opening programs all the time (maybe my girlfriend
has several programs running) so being able to write some beginners'
scripts to solve common tasks has been a good learning experience for
me.

Greetings from the third world (or is it underdeveloped? ;))
E.