Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Emacsification of Software

sockpuppet.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 304 posts

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#211

Post by sabas123 »

dang wrote: post #106
tptacek wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something about this whole situation that rhymes with the issue of LLM-generated prose. It's not that GPT 5.5 writes bad prose (I mean, it doesn't write good prose, but it's not awful). It's that once I pick up on the text being GPT 5.5's, my brain switches into a mode where it starts reminding me "this is just GPT output, you could just ask GPT 5.5 these questions yourself, and get answers better tailored to…

Those are great points and it leads right back to the solipsism thing. Also, you snuck a "It's not that X, it's that Y." in there. Nice. > you should just do a monthly "Vibe HN" thread It wouldn't stop people from feeding them into the Show HN stream, which is the problem. If we had a good enough way to tell them apart, we could factor them into two streams, but we don't yet.

> It wouldn't stop people from feeding them into the Show HN stream, which is the problem. If we had a good enough way to tell them apart, we could factor them into two streams, but we don't yet.

But it would allow for a culture to grow where the posters would self-contain their submissions into those threads.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#212

Post by t_mahmood »

Your Emacs (or my VIM) config was simple text file, that you can open in a simple text editor, and customize it as needed, and you know where is what. My VIM config is 20 year old. A year or 2 ago, I just dumped the manual package management, and started using a plugin manager.

There are no gatekeepers, no dependencies!

This, require you to have pay $20-$200 to a 3rd party corporation, or have a kind of beefy GPU (to run locally), run some instructions on text file, keep editing till it might does what you intend it to.

You are knowingly adding a dependency, which probably will become a hard dependency when everything goes jumbled up for human reviews, either on a beefy GPU or sending your data to a shareholder pleasing corporation.

Let's distinguish, how these are not the same, and the real price we pay

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#213

Post by jen20 »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #199
chabska wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick google query says 15% of US households own a personal computer in 1989.

Okay, well, it was far more than that in the UK and Europe. I suppose it's a bit like television, it would have been more popular where it was invented.

Around 5 million ZX Spectrums were sold between 1982 and 1992. If all were sold in the UK (they weren’t), that would put the penetration around 25% based on the number of households in 1990.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#214

Post by jen20 »

0xpgm wrote: post #206
152334H wrote: post #176

> For the kinds of software I’m talking about, you want the prompts more than you want the source code. Please do not do this. Per OurWorldInData, >50% of the world lives below $10/day in 2026. A $200/mth AI subscription costs ~66% of that. Generation costs still exceed distribution costs by a wide margin. Uploading costs you nothing, and it can help the poor.

> Uploading costs you nothing, and it can help the poor. Could you expound more on this? Are you suggesting that less energy use in data centers would help the world's poor?

I read the suggestion as being that the world’s poor aren’t paying for AI tokens (or subscriptions) to generate software from prompts, and that sharing the _output_ is more beneficial to people. The reduction in energy waste is secondary, and benefits _everyone_.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#215

Post by teddyh »

Emacs has this property because it uses Lisp. The general tendency for programmers to start writing everything themselves was noted, for Lisp, but was named “The Lisp Curse”¹. It is a curse because programmers stop collaborating. Everyone becomes their own wizard in their own tower, and overall progress stops, and a dark age sets in.

1. https://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html#ma...>

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#216

Post by musebox35 »

I wonder what will be the effect of this on open source software. I do not mean the technical aspects, easy of coding, documenting, explosion of PRs, .. Social aspects scare me a bit more. If everyone is building their own version, will people stick around to contribute to the same project for years. I guess the dedicated ones will do so maybe it is a good thing, a filtering out of the disinterested.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#217

Post by frumiousirc »

nemoniac wrote: post #83

Interesting article. When my Emacs opens a markdown file it immediately converts it into OrgMode format. I find that more readable, more navigable and more editable. Now I'll have to go and meditate about Emacsification.

> When my Emacs opens a markdown file it immediately converts it into OrgMode format.

I want that. Can you give some details?

A search finds modeverv/markdown-to-org which looks 80% there but activates based on a yank or converting an already loaded markdown buffer. Perhaps it can be made to apply on opening a .md file.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#218

Post by ontouchstart »

tptacek wrote: post #105

Software that today is overwhelmingly prepackaged and usually professional, which I think at this point the nerds should reclaim: * Podcast apps * Music listening apps * Feed readers * Bluesky clients * Note-taking apps * Desktop bookmarking/read-later apps * Chat and instant messaging * Time trackers * Recipe managers These are all things that you can get better-than-replacement-grade results from Claude on --- not…

Someone wrote a web server in assembly the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48080587

It is very inspiring.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#219

Post by ErroneousBosh »

jen20 wrote: post #213
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, well, it was far more than that in the UK and Europe. I suppose it's a bit like television, it would have been more popular where it was invented.

Around 5 million ZX Spectrums were sold between 1982 and 1992. If all were sold in the UK (they weren’t), that would put the penetration around 25% based on the number of households in 1990.

One specific model of ZX Spectrum, which is one specific make and model of home computer.

Did you live in the UK in the 1980s?

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#220

Post by estimator7292 »

tptacek wrote: post #105

Software that today is overwhelmingly prepackaged and usually professional, which I think at this point the nerds should reclaim: * Podcast apps * Music listening apps * Feed readers * Bluesky clients * Note-taking apps * Desktop bookmarking/read-later apps * Chat and instant messaging * Time trackers * Recipe managers These are all things that you can get better-than-replacement-grade results from Claude on --- not…

[dead]
Post reply on HN