How users start programming in Emacs Lisp...

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 11:43 PM
> From: "Arthur Miller" <arthur.miller@live.com>
> To: "Eduardo Ochs" <eduardoochs@gmail.com>
> Cc: "Christopher Dimech" <dimech@gmx.com>, "help-gnu-emacs" 
> <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>, "Jean Louis" <bugs@gnu.support>
> Subject: Re: How users start programming in Emacs Lisp...
>
> Eduardo Ochs <eduardoochs@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > On Sat, 29 May 2021 at 23:12, Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 10:37 AM
> >> > From: "Jean Louis" <bugs@gnu.support>
> >> > To: "Christopher Dimech" <dimech@gmx.com>
> >> > Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> >> > Subject: How users start programming in Emacs Lisp...
> >> >
> >> > (...)
> >> >
> >> > *scratch* buffer is famous for it.
> >> >
> >> > I just need more of them but *scratch*, so I do it this way:
> >
> >
> > Hi, just a curiosity...
> >
> > why do you prefer to use scratch buffers for elisp code instead of
> > using (semi-scratch?) files in which we record all our experiments?
> >
> > In the tutorials of eev I try to convince the new users to treat their
> > notes and scratch code as "field notes", and save everything they
> > can... one of my arguments is this:
> >
> >   Learning eev is also like learning to use paper notebooks. It is
> >   much easier to understand the notes and ideas what we wrote
> >   ourselves in our notebooks than to understand what other people
> >   wrote in their notebooks... when we go back to what _we_ wrote we
> >   are able to reconnect with what we were thinking, even when our
> >   notes are quite terse because we did not write down all details -
> >   and we can't do that with other people's notes.
>
> I think you are probably correct about saving notes. Some vary famious
> scientists attribute almost everything to their notes.

That is correct.  Darwin and Fermi have done the same.  But Stephen King
is famous for saying that notes are the best way to immortalise bad ideas.
Really good ideas stick around.  Today, I get to agree with King in respect
to the experience with Fermi.  But the same cannot be said about Darmin
during his trips.

Thusly, in point of fact, there are no good rules, but just what works for you.

> Maybe a
> self-saving scratch buffer isn't bad idea. It could maybe append a date
> and always open "fresh" but the true file would be save in the
> background, as a sort of a database. Sort of like we clear the terminal
> screen with Ctrl+l but the output is still there, just not
> visible. There probably is some note-taking package that already does
> that. Maybe some org-capture template that auto puts note in a lisp src
> block. Or maybe your eev already does that. Still didn't try it. It
> seems so conceptually big to me so I never get to it. Similar as that
> other package Hyperbole.
>