Two Years of Emacs Solo • Hacker News Board

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#101

Post by otsaloma » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 1:32 PM UTC

> Partly because I wanted my config to survive without breakage across Emacs releases. Partly because I was tired of dealing with package repositories, mirrors going down in the middle of the workday, native compilation hiccups, and the inevitable downtime when something changed somewhere upstream and my job suddenly became debugging my very long (at the time) config instead of doing actual work.

Picking on this detail, what I've found works nicely is that when a new major Emacs version flows into my Debian, I also update all packages to their latest versions and then freeze those versions until the next major Emacs release. And those versions are locked in my emacs.d git repo, so I have a reproducible Emacs at home and work both. There's a little iteration to adapt to changes in Emacs and packages, but after that, it's stable and reliable for a year or two.

https://github.com/radian-software/straight.el

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#102

Post by deltarholamda » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

NetOpWibby wrote: post #27

I’m always impressed by people who are hardcore EMacs or Vim devs, their setups are impressive af. I’m a GUI guy though. As soon as I try delving in, I abort when I see things like “just type c-C dingle bob to do x thing.” I’m happy these people found something that works with their brains. I just want a GUI that works like what they use. I recently saw a Zed fork stripped of AI stuff but there’s no binaries yet (you…

>I abort when I see things like “just type c-C dingle bob to do x thing.”

I used nothing but emacs for several years (well, xemacs, but close enough), because I was using an old Thinkpad, and long-term use of the trackpoint gave me RSI in my finger. Being able to use nothing but the keyboard was nice.

Eventually I went back to BBEdit and have remained there. You can make it mostly keyboard oriented if you want, but sometimes using the mouse is easier/faster, and I have a lot of reps inside of BBEdit. It just seems more like home to me. A nice balance between GUI and keyboard-focussed IMO.

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#103

Post by k_bx » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 1:36 PM UTC

draxil wrote: post #59

k_bx wrote: post #31

> — Sensible file handling: backups and auto-saves in a cache/ directory, recentf for recent files, clean buffer naming with uniquify It's crazy to me how out of the box when you edit nginx file at /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/foo it creates another file foo~ there and nginx tries to load that too When I tried to ask emacs reddit community they started attacking me for changing the default that only I need and fits every…

emacs users who are hostile to you configuring things, aren't really getting the point IMO :)

They are hostile to me proposing a better (IMO) default

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#104

Post by eej71 » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:05 PM UTC

k_bx wrote: post #103

draxil wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

emacs users who are hostile to you configuring things, aren't really getting the point IMO :)

They are hostile to me proposing a better (IMO) default

It depends on what you mean by default and whose default.

You can change your own defaults quite easily!

Changing the default setup with emacs that has been shipping for > 30 years is tough.

Getting nginx to ignore a well established pattern by a well established editor seems equally sensible and perhaps more doable. Yes?

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#105

Post by RahulMJ » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

Hey celadevra_, author here. Thanks for submitting my post to HN, I really appreciate it.

Seeing it stay at #1 for a few hours while my blog server struggled with the requests was quite a joy :)

PS: Also, thanks to everyone who commented on it. While I can't reply to all of you, I'm doing my best to read everything. I'm glad to hear that the project resonates with so many people, whether philosophically, aesthetically, or as something partially useful.

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#106

Post by k_bx » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

eej71 wrote: post #104

k_bx wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are hostile to me proposing a better (IMO) default

It depends on what you mean by default and whose default. You can change your own defaults quite easily! Changing the default setup with emacs that has been shipping for > 30 years is tough. Getting nginx to ignore a well established pattern by a well established editor seems equally sensible and perhaps more doable. Yes?

By default I mean whatever you get by doing `sudo apt-get install emacs-nox`

I disagree about "tough". Emacs has changed for the better in new releases quite drastically in the last years in my experience.

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#107

Post by dec0dedab0de » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

scbrg wrote: post #76

sshine wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ~foo as backup convention is not part of any standard. Using hidden files is a stronger convention, e.g. .foo.swp or .foo~. But nginx's sites-enabled also doesn't filter those. It's a very simple mechanism that assumes what you put in that directory is a website configuration. Adding backup files here and there is considered spam, no matter how old it is. It's the second thing I fix in either Vim or Emacs: Put ba…

> The ~foo as backup convention is not part of any standard. Emacs does foo~ by default, not ~foo. In either case, you're not really supposed to edit files in sites-enabled. That directory is expected to contain symlinks to files in sites-available. I'm not going to say with any certainty that one of the reasons for this indeed is that the pattern (which was used by apache as well - and perhaps other things before it…

I liked doing symlinks so the site configuration is with the rest of the site, but that was before containers when it was common to host a bunch of sites on one instance apache or nginx.

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#108

Post by pwillia7 » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #24

This article shows how Emacs remains a beautiful, relevant project several decades after it was first created. The core design and implementation’s ability to evolve into something still useful today and competitive with modern tools is an amazing achievement. Also, with LLMs driving so much of current development it potentially makes Emacs even more competitive relative to modern IDEs. Development can be driven prim…

Emacs would be a pretty badass "OS" for LLM agents to use... has anyone explored and written something up on that yet? Perhaps emacs commands would give agents even more power than just shell commands ?

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#109

Post by NetMageSCW » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

sshine wrote: post #69

parasti wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would fault nginx here instead. Tilde-suffixed backups is an old convention used by vim and emacs among others. Definitely older than nginx.

The ~foo as backup convention is not part of any standard. Using hidden files is a stronger convention, e.g. .foo.swp or .foo~. But nginx's sites-enabled also doesn't filter those. It's a very simple mechanism that assumes what you put in that directory is a website configuration. Adding backup files here and there is considered spam, no matter how old it is. It's the second thing I fix in either Vim or Emacs: Put ba…

What standard would that be?

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#110

Post by ajstars » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

The solo Emacs path is underrated for building deep understanding. Most people reach for a config framework immediately and end up with a system they can't debug. Starting from scratch forces you to actually understand what each piece does, even if it takes longer upfront.