— layout: default title: Org is Great! excerpt: Sharing my experience using org-mode to get a PhD categories:
- org-mode
tags:
- emacs
- lprog
- org
- web
—
On the shoulder's of giants
orgmode and its incredible breadth in functionality has been brought to you by the hard lessons of experience. Much of how I wrangled this beast into assisting me with my research was all learned from people for whom org is a labor of love. By putting this up for those of you with an interest, I hope I can help you bypass some of the hurdles.
I have a very long line of people to thank for this wonderful collection of tools. Beginning with Lovelace to legends like Stallman and Knuth, and more presently the following org/emacs wizards:
- Sacha Chua
- Phil Hagelberg
- John Kitchin
- Xah Lee
- Jorgen Schafer
- more to come as I remember the many who've helped me figure this out
emacs
The stumbling block. Without the experience of using text only files, few have moved on to the land of knowing there is a great battle between the forces of vim and vile. While I use emacs, I do understand plenty of people have their reasons for using alternatives. Unfortunately org only comes with emacs… so you got to use it for any of this to work. vile is a way to make org available to anyone who wants to try.
That being said. I love emacs. Lisp is great. Everything is great. Except for all that confusing crap that isn't. That however is just what happens in software. With a little investigation, most problems are easily resolved and then you end up learning surprising things about how emacs can make your life easier.
Figure 1: Via XKCD
orgmode
A major mode of emacs where I now spend most of my computering. As you will see, this website, my research journals and code, presentations, and finally preparing manuscripts can all be done in the same environment.
org-babel
This is really the heart of what makes org-mode so powerful. It builds on producing the concept of literate programming that Knuth put forward in the 80's. This concept will hopefully demonstrated in the examples I will post here.
Let's go on a adventure!
I hope these posts will be useful to those of you who appreciate the way literate programming can improve your life. The concept extends beyond writing better code, it allows for better human-computer interactions. Computers are certainly a tool that have already augmented our reality.
With literate programming, it become far easier to have a conversation with both the CPU and your fellow collaborators. As you work in org-mode, you will provide valuable documentation for both the people you work with and you in the future. Not only does org-mode with org-babel make for better code, it can greatly help you streamline all other tasks a computer is used for.
By improving the interface with the computer to allow us to more naturally use it for mirroring our thought process, org-mode has enabled unprecedented access to the power of computing for me. By sharing my experience, perhaps others will discover this as well. Please reach out to me if you have questions, and I will try to get back to you as quickly as I can.