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EmacsConf 2021 Call for Proposals

emacsconf.org

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Re: EmacsConf 2021 Call for Proposals

#11

Post by gumby »

markmichalski wrote: post #3

I’m not a long-time emacs user, but as a new one, my enthusiasm is really growing. Like everyone, I’m finding that I’m in an increasingly disparate set of tools with diverging interface design choices to get my jobs done. The cognitive dissonance that all these different interfaces presents me with feels like it’s getting out of hand, and is growing non-linearly. Emacs is a arcane tool, and is dated in so many ways,…

> As someone who’s not a developer nor a full-time product person

Emacs was famously used by “secretaries” (as they were referred to in those days) not only to write documents and mail but to write macros to make their lives simpler. Of course none of them could “program” (which was considered quite intimidating) but they didn’t consider writing Emacs macros to be “programming”.

Back then Emacs was written in TECO so writing actual libraries was pretty arcane and not as easy as it is today.

But I’m glad the learned helplessness around programming has largely ablated, in part through improved tools and in part through simple acceptance.

Re: EmacsConf 2021 Call for Proposals

#13

Post by lliamander »

na85 wrote: post #12

LSP-mode has really reinvigorated emacs, at least for me. With flycheck and a language server it's magical. Writing go, it even auto-formats your code and auto-adds imports.

I've struggled a bit with LSP mode (at least for Elixir). I find it hard to use as a full-time IDE replacement, especially since IntelliJ has such good emacs keybindings.

However, as a general text editor, emacs is still great. And I enjoy org-mode.

Re: EmacsConf 2021 Call for Proposals

#14

Post by Wonnk13 »

na85 wrote: post #12

LSP-mode has really reinvigorated emacs, at least for me. With flycheck and a language server it's magical. Writing go, it even auto-formats your code and auto-adds imports.

100% this. I learned Emacs in college for LaTeX and R (pre RStudio). I used it off and on for years after college to be a contrarian if I'm being honest.

With LSP and the various client implementations I'm legitimately more productive in Emacs writing Python, Go, or Rust than whatever flavor of the month IDE thingamajig. Magit and Org are the cherry on top of the sundae.

That said I don't push my beliefs on anyone in my team and I try to learn JetBrains products to make pair programming easier for folks that don't use Emacs.

Re: EmacsConf 2021 Call for Proposals

#15

Post by jen20 »

badsectoracula wrote: post #9
markmichalski wrote: post #3

I’m not a long-time emacs user, but as a new one, my enthusiasm is really growing. Like everyone, I’m finding that I’m in an increasingly disparate set of tools with diverging interface design choices to get my jobs done. The cognitive dissonance that all these different interfaces presents me with feels like it’s getting out of hand, and is growing non-linearly. Emacs is a arcane tool, and is dated in so many ways,…

Unified interfaces and allowing users to transfer any transferable knowledge between programs was one of the main ideas behind GUIs like the original Macintosh and Windows, but somewhere around the turn of the millennium things... broke. But there was a time when interfaces were unified, sometimes to an absurd level (e.g. applications having a File menu when they had nothing to do with files) but IMO that is still be…

> but somewhere around the turn of the millennium things... broke

The rise of electron as an 'acceptable' (to some people) substitute for platform-native applications and the myth of the possibility of the "cross platform UI" has accelerated this, really. It's quite unfortunate.

Re: EmacsConf 2021 Call for Proposals

#16

Post by ashton314 »

lliamander wrote: post #13
na85 wrote: post #12

LSP-mode has really reinvigorated emacs, at least for me. With flycheck and a language server it's magical. Writing go, it even auto-formats your code and auto-adds imports.

I've struggled a bit with LSP mode (at least for Elixir). I find it hard to use as a full-time IDE replacement, especially since IntelliJ has such good emacs keybindings. However, as a general text editor, emacs is still great. And I enjoy org-mode.

I write lots of Elixir at my day job. What’s been tricky for you setting up LSP mode?

Re: EmacsConf 2021 Call for Proposals

#18

Post by p_l »

gumby wrote: post #11
markmichalski wrote: post #3

I’m not a long-time emacs user, but as a new one, my enthusiasm is really growing. Like everyone, I’m finding that I’m in an increasingly disparate set of tools with diverging interface design choices to get my jobs done. The cognitive dissonance that all these different interfaces presents me with feels like it’s getting out of hand, and is growing non-linearly. Emacs is a arcane tool, and is dated in so many ways,…

> As someone who’s not a developer nor a full-time product person Emacs was famously used by “secretaries” (as they were referred to in those days) not only to write documents and mail but to write macros to make their lives simpler. Of course none of them could “program” (which was considered quite intimidating) but they didn’t consider writing Emacs macros to be “programming”. Back then Emacs was written in TECO so…

The version that was used by secretaries in that story was programmed in Lisp, MACLISP for Multics specifically, and extended in Lisp.

Re: EmacsConf 2021 Call for Proposals

#19

Post by hnrj95 »

a lot of very rich emacs development has happened in the last few years, both to emacs itself and to extensions. it’s been an absolute pleasure to use and has genuinely increased my productivity tremendously. eg after getting used to magit, the git cli becomes ludicrously cumbersome

Re: EmacsConf 2021 Call for Proposals

#20

Post by jasonmorton »

markmichalski wrote: post #3

I’m not a long-time emacs user, but as a new one, my enthusiasm is really growing. Like everyone, I’m finding that I’m in an increasingly disparate set of tools with diverging interface design choices to get my jobs done. The cognitive dissonance that all these different interfaces presents me with feels like it’s getting out of hand, and is growing non-linearly. Emacs is a arcane tool, and is dated in so many ways,…

I've been using emacs for many years now, and I'm sad to say that it has never been slower, despite the hardware getting better. Now it lags like crazy when editing a latex document, no matter the recent version. Something went off the rails in the last year or so, and even Atom is more responsive.
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