Getting Started With Org Mode
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as a thorough introduction showing what Org mode can do for personal organization.
What it is
Harry Schwartz gives a roughly hour-long tour of Emacs Org mode as an outliner, task manager, markup language and agenda tool. He demonstrates how he uses it for documents, presentations and todo lists.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2018 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Recommends danShumway · 2018-07 · on “Ask HN: How do you keep checklists?”
Org-mode[0] is the best merge I've found between plain text and more powerful workflow/scheduling features. I synchronize to android using Orgzly[1]. If I wasn't on Emacs as my main editor, I would just use plain text. There have been efforts to get Org-mode working in other editors, but I don't know how good they are. The benefits of plain text are more important to me than the benefits of the special features. I've used a lot of todo apps, and some of them are very good for specific tasks, but most aren't adaptable enough for my needs. Eventually I gave up and went to plain text, and was happy. Org-mode is just a better version of plain text. [0]: [this video] [1]: [LINK]
Recommends AreYouElite · 2021-12 · on “My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)”
ORG-MODE ORG-MODE ORG-MODE Jeff, everything you do could be done with org-mode by using a key combination. it would also add a calender with an agenda and schedule and and and and the main thing: it's a text file just like what you are using. this is a nice how to (no relation to me) [this video]
Recommends thr3ads · 2022-12 · on “Ask HN: Looking for a Programable Text Editor”
Because of the steep learning curve and troubleshooting associated with it, I've become more hesitant in recommending Emacs. However for the curious, the video Getting Started in Org Mode [1] which is a great demonstration on Emacs and Org Mode's potential as an organizational tool. Anyone still curious and would like to smooth out the learning curve, I'd recommend using an emacs starter kit such as Doom Emacs [2] which has a lot of OOB functionality without having to immediately learn Elisp. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]
Cites brlewis · 2021-01 · on “Developers spend most of their time figuring the system out”
> why literate programming isn't more popular is beyond me I saw this topic brought up in a video I was watching yesterday [this video] There are 2 reasons: 1. Programmers and code review tools are not very good at making sure comments and documentation are updated when code is. 2. People see literate programming as primarily for documentation-focused or teaching purposes. The statistics in the article we're commenting on suggest that more software systems should be documentation/teaching focused, since the "learning the system" phase is where most of the time goes.