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In Emacs, everything looks like a service

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Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#101

Post by rshackleford1 »

bcjdjsndon wrote: post #13
kandros wrote: post #5

One of the pivotal moments in my career has been when I used Emacs just enough to truly understand what "Emacs is an operating system" means, not just as a joke but as something I could believe in

But you already had an operating system and you could already code... Did Emacs really give YOU any capability you didn't have before? Don't forget this is a text editor, not an IDE or some general purpose automation harness You could add lisp to mspaint and mspaint suddenly becomes awesome somehow? I don't follow the logic

I send text messages from Emacs because my phone doesn't get service in my basement. Sure I could do the same thing with any programming language, but it took me like 2 hours to hack something together on top of Emacs' built in IRC client.

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#102

Post by jhalloran »

One thing that's easy to forget is how much of the "everything is a service" idea predates LSP. Emacs had long-running subprocesses, RPC-ish interactions, TRAMP, GUD, REPL integration, etc. LSP standardized one important interface, but it wasn't the beginning of the architecture.

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#103

Post by iLemming »

kleiba2 wrote: post #27

I've been an Emacs user for over 25 years. But last year I switched employers and they won't let me use it even for tasks where it would absolutely shine. Their argument is that all team members should use the same tools, and I guess that is a valid point. Unfortunately, I failed to convince my employer to make everybody else switch to Emacs. So, now I'm using lots of one-purpose tools, one for each separate task, a…

What a nightmare. The day anyone tells me not to use a specific editor regardless of what it is, I'd be opening their suggested one to type my resignation letter. And not because I love Emacs, Vim or whatever.

I mean I'd understand enforcing using specific tools while pair-programming, mentoring, etc., but not allowing a software engineer to use whatever editor they are most comfortable using at all is not even dystopian, it's simply imbecilic. How are they supposed to not just "perform" but to get any shit done at all? It's equivalent of hiring a secretary and asking them to type everything in Hebrew (a language they have zero awareness of), using Dvorak (a layout they've never tried) and then complaining that their typing speed is undesirable.

How the fuck do these people even get to managerial positions? How in the world are these kinds of companies and company cultures not bankrupted themselves out of existence?

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#104

Post by iLemming »

masfoobar wrote: post #34
kleiba2 wrote: post #27

I've been an Emacs user for over 25 years. But last year I switched employers and they won't let me use it even for tasks where it would absolutely shine. Their argument is that all team members should use the same tools, and I guess that is a valid point. Unfortunately, I failed to convince my employer to make everybody else switch to Emacs. So, now I'm using lots of one-purpose tools, one for each separate task, a…

At a company I work for, they are doing various changes (and control) over the software we install as we transition to a larger company. I believe they are using Microsoft Intune so they can allow/deny what can be installed. I have not updated my laptop (or got a new one) because I am concerned they will not allow me to install or continue to use Emacs. Honestly, I can vision how that conversation goes:- [manager]: H…

> they are doing various changes (and control)

OMG. Don't let me even start here. Corporate IT cultures sometimes are so exhaustingly cretinous. With straight faces they'd perform "security theatre" that has nothing to do with security, but is still just so infuriatingly time-consuming and ignorant on even most basic things. Honestly, I am so thankful to Emacs for cultivating a hacker's mindset in me, otherwise I'd be so freaking burned out all the time if I didn't know how to bypass most of the nonsense they enforce on everyone. I even asked my IT guy once: "I don't get it, don't they realize that devs are just gonna play along with this bullshit maybe a couple of times and then they'll just fucking script a workaround? I for sure will...", and he was like: "I know, it is so stupid, but hey, I don't make these decisions here..."

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#105

Post by iLemming »

bcjdjsndon wrote: post #13
kandros wrote: post #5

One of the pivotal moments in my career has been when I used Emacs just enough to truly understand what "Emacs is an operating system" means, not just as a joke but as something I could believe in

But you already had an operating system and you could already code... Did Emacs really give YOU any capability you didn't have before? Don't forget this is a text editor, not an IDE or some general purpose automation harness You could add lisp to mspaint and mspaint suddenly becomes awesome somehow? I don't follow the logic

Emacs is not an editor. It's a Lisp-powered text orchestrator. It allows you to read, write, ocr, encrypt, decrypt, compile, debug, profile, browse, rss, email, calendar, track, journal, publish, tangle, run, query, spawn, multiplex, ssh, edit, diff, merge, blame, rebase, stage, review, chat, note, link, roll, play, run, preview, transcode, transcript, evaluate, redefine, introspect and rebuild anything in your computational vicinity - local and remote machines.

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#106

Post by im3w1l »

rshackleford1 wrote: post #98
stormking wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs is a LISP refugee in Unixland. It doesn't follow the Unix philosophy, it follows the LISP philosophy. But it integrates. Forgot where I found this.

Bash is a shell refugee in Unixland. It doesn't follow the Unix philosophy, it follows the Shell philosophy. But it integrates. Why do you say such silly things?

Unix philosophy clearly favors and privileges certain methods of composition and interoperation. C-calls, program invocation, files and sockets/pipes. Calls inside various vms like lisp, java, python or wasm are not among those.

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#107

Post by abecedarius »

pjmlp wrote: post #6

> A common refrain is that Emacs is an operating system (OS). This isn’t true, but what invites comparison to an OS is its ability to orchestrate applications and utilities above the OS kernel level. Only because Lisp Machines, or variations thereof didn't took off in the mainstream. "Symbolics Lisp Machine demo" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk "Emacs and Lisp" https://funcall.blogspot.com/2025/04/emacs-a…

An OS is a virtual machine meant to be shared among programs. Sure the central examples expose most of an ISA that they run on themselves, but there are also examples like Inferno, Taos, AS/400.

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#108

Post by koiueo »

Arubis wrote: post #69
kleiba2 wrote: post #27

I've been an Emacs user for over 25 years. But last year I switched employers and they won't let me use it even for tasks where it would absolutely shine. Their argument is that all team members should use the same tools, and I guess that is a valid point. Unfortunately, I failed to convince my employer to make everybody else switch to Emacs. So, now I'm using lots of one-purpose tools, one for each separate task, a…

Having everyone on a team have different personalities is managerially inefficient. You have to deal with each team member in a different way instead of being able to have a unified emotional approach. So we required frontal lobotomies for everyone on the team.

Unironically. I once was told by my manager, that I got to fix being an introvert.

I stayed for 8 months in that company (would be less, but such is the expat's life on a visa), and leaving was the best professional decision of my life.

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#109

Post by GregDavidson »

Emacs is a Platform. Operating Systems are also Platforms. Many other things are platforms. A platform is a layer of software designed to enable you to build new things on it. This should raise the question: What platform X would be good for building this thing Y I want to build? I often find X = Emacs, but also Racket, Rust, et al. An application which is also a good platform may be worth a greater learning investment than a simpler application would justify.

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#110

Post by wglb »

kleiba2 wrote: post #37
jerf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... how would they tell?

By looking at my screen? But also, why would you disobey a direct instruction from you super?

In my youth, I openly railed against this type of thinking. I was near quitting one gig when the VP said that all work done on our Dec 10 had to be done in batch mode. Fortunately, this dictum was shortly reveresed.

To further answer why I would disobey a direct instruction is that I presume those hiring me expect me to produce solutions to problems--have a problem solving attitude. A direct instruction of that sort is contrary to that.

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