Earlier in my career, I advocated Perl (I still like the
flexibility and the power of language, I just don't hack it much
anymore). I used to teach people the language in formal sessions
and finally ended up creating the Perl Tutorial for System Managers.
Although I possess strong opinions about using software for
particular purposes, I don't think of myself as a zealot. That
said, for technical work, I mostly use the GNU
Emacs editor. Regarding Emacs, you may find some of the
following things useful:
- Prepare for the steep Emacs learning curve and remember
that I never met
a geek who didn't think it was worth it—the higher
the climb this mountain, the better the view. I typically
recommend people learn Emacs using the following steps:
- Read the Learning Gnu Emacs book.
- Use the Emacs Lisp Intro (search for
"emacs-list-intro")
to extend your Emacs customizations.
- Refer to other emacs intialization files (for
example,
mine) to learn more tricks.
- Commit to only editing with Emacs for a month.
- If you need to memorize mass quantities of banal
words/terms/phrases, try
my flashcard
routines. The text file format proves flexible and the
quizzing logic repeats incorrect answers until you get them
correct.