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

Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

bofh.org.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 194 posts

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#141

Post by abakker »

altotrees wrote: post #60

Stories like these are the ones that inspire me the most. People using technology in a way that helps them in their everyday lives, or in a hobbyist fashion. I feel like many of the things I pick-up at work are out of career necessity: the latest framework, bits of an up and coming language that is going to be "the future", semi fluency in a stack so I can aid in a project,I enjoy it, but I don't enjoy it like in the…

As one of those hobbyists, I can say that the thing I wish most for was an easier way of "getting started". I mostly hack around in python, or arduino c, but I really wish that it was easier to write a script and actually give it to someone else, and actually have it run.

The feature I like most about excel, is that it is practically ubiquitous. If I give someone else an excel toy workbook that does something, they can run it without needing to "manage the environment". If I write something in Python/numpy/pandas/Jupyter, it is actually pretty difficult to make it useful to anyone. Portability just makes the whole hobby programming thing much more fun.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#142

Post by TeMPOraL »

kiallmacinnes wrote: post #62
frogcoder wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, he built the system, Emacs is the front end. It's just an awkward front end for most of the people, but with proper training, anyone can pick it up, it's not like ask them to maintain the system. For new formulas, yeah, It's hard to input new formulas, even in spreadsheet. The system is somehow complex, you probably need a UI for new formulas too, even if it's in spreadsheet.

Honestly, I'm not so sure. Emacs isn't known to be user friendly, I can easily imagine many non-techies simply refusing (consciously or, more likely, unconsciously..) to learn it.

Turn on CUA mode to get the traditional shortcuts, don't hide the menu bar and toolbar - and now Emacs is being operated exactly the same as any other programmer's text editor out there.

The reputation of user unfriendliness is undue, and based mostly on looking at how pros work with it.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#143

Post by TeMPOraL »

ams6110 wrote: post #76
rpod wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since org-mode has a built-in spreadsheet system that supports formulas written in emacs calc or even arbitrary elisp: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro...

I really should learn that. I often find myself maniupulating text data in emacs, turning it into CSV or something that I can then copy/paste into a spreadsheet for calculations.

You should. It's surprisingly good. You won't get pivot tables (at least until someone codes them up, which isn't out of the question in Emacs community), but for regular calculations it's awesome.

Here's a short intro: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro....

Here's some documentation: https://orgmode.org/manual/The-Spreadsheet.html

And if you feel that TBLFMs are getting unwieldy, here's a bunch of features I absolutely love: https://orgmode.org/manual/Advanced-features.html. Turning on an extra column lets you name columns and cells, and have Org Mode recalculate the table automatically on any change, instead of on explicit command.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#144

Post by seanwilson »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #140
whynotminot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very important point. Choose tools that are: (1) right for the project (2) right for the current team (3) right for the future team (3) might be hard given you don't know who joins later, and the engineers might also not have a say if they're not involved in hiring. But you can generally make decent guesses. The odds of the next baker you higher knowing SQL and emacs? Pretty low... the odds they know Excel?…

> The odds of the next baker you higher knowing SQL and emacs? Pretty low... the odds they know Excel? Probably higher. Odds that you can teach them the basics of SQL and Emacs? Pretty high. At the level needed here, it's just UI like any other. Journalists are routinely taught SQL as a part of their studies, and secretaries and writers are known to use Emacs. As for your points for tech projects, I really dislike th…

> > The odds of the next baker you higher knowing SQL and emacs? Pretty low... the odds they know Excel? Probably higher.

> Odds that you can teach them the basics of SQL and Emacs? Pretty high.

Have you ever tried to teach a regular person how to use Excel? The above reads like satire if I'm honest. Even teaching someone how to use Emacs alone would be seriously pushing it.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#145

Post by TeMPOraL »

drieddust wrote: post #138
zeveb wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs runs on Windows as well as Linux (& on macOS, too). It works fine on the terminal in Android, but you'll want a keyboard, too. In principle you could add special Android bindings for emacs which would make using it without a keyboard somewhat useful.

A mobile interface for Emacs will be killer. I heard about Orgazly and tried using it but it's a very slow interface. A mobile first design even with limited features will go a long way. Mobileorg was that app for a while but it's development stopped and it's no longer usable.

Agreed. Don't forget about tablets too; I'd happily pay for someone to make Emacs usable with touch gestures and optimized for touch use (e.g. with a clickable, context-aware button row).

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#146

Post by TeMPOraL »

drieddust wrote: post #73

I keep coming back to Emacs reading these stories but it never became a habit primarily I have to work across many desktops/laptops computers with Windows & Linux as well as Android mobile. Emacs not being usable on mobile is a big problem and biggest roadblock in the path.

I used to run separate Emacs instances on both Windows and Linux, but these days I settled for a different workflow. I keep my main Emacs running on my home Linux desktop. From other computers and locations, I just SSH to the desktop and run an Emacs frame in terminal mode (the command is just: emacsclient -t). Turns out, this is usable for about 95% of things I use Emacs for (the remaining 5% are when I need to view a picture or a PDF, which obviously won't show in terminal). Hell, if you configure your terminal/SSH client to run in 256-color mode, the resulting terminal Emacs will be nearly indistinguishable from the GUI one!

That's one of many hidden strengths of Emacs-based workflow - it works the same whether you're running in GUI mode, or connecting remotely with text terminal. That also means I can work on heavy projects from my underpowered 2-in-1 netbook :).

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#147

Post by TeMPOraL »

seanwilson wrote: post #144
TeMPOraL wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The odds of the next baker you higher knowing SQL and emacs? Pretty low... the odds they know Excel? Probably higher. Odds that you can teach them the basics of SQL and Emacs? Pretty high. At the level needed here, it's just UI like any other. Journalists are routinely taught SQL as a part of their studies, and secretaries and writers are known to use Emacs. As for your points for tech projects, I really dislike th…

> > The odds of the next baker you higher knowing SQL and emacs? Pretty low... the odds they know Excel? Probably higher. > Odds that you can teach them the basics of SQL and Emacs? Pretty high. Have you ever tried to teach a regular person how to use Excel? The above reads like satire if I'm honest. Even teaching someone how to use Emacs alone would be seriously pushing it.

I do teach non-tech people computer stuff from time to time in professional capacity, including in the past the Microsoft Office suite, as well as Photoshop, Corel and Inkscape. So I do have a concept of how difficult that is.

That said, in context of work, it's even simpler. A few tasks, a program. You teach people by example. Type this here, type this there, do this, do that, you're done. Nothing hard.

Think of it this way: almost every company that uses computers has some custom assortment of SMB tools and SaaS websites specific to the job at hand. It's normal that people learn this, and they have zero problems with it. Hell, typical ecommerce management panels I see people working in have UX an order of magnitude worse than Emacs.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#148

Post by omouse »

This is basically why I end up going back to Emacs. It's waaaaay too easy to start writing functions and the built-in help system (with docstrings almost everywhere for every function and variable) is invaluable.

Though I'm beginning to wonder if JavaScript-based extensions in VS Code can match the power of Emacs code. Are there plugins that connect to Postgres? or do what Org-mode does?

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#149

Post by mr_overalls »

omouse wrote: post #148

This is basically why I end up going back to Emacs. It's waaaaay too easy to start writing functions and the built-in help system (with docstrings almost everywhere for every function and variable) is invaluable. Though I'm beginning to wonder if JavaScript-based extensions in VS Code can match the power of Emacs code. Are there plugins that connect to Postgres? or do what Org-mode does?

I know it's an oft-repeated gripe here, but Javascript has so many bizarre warts that I'd never trust it to configure my personal computing environment.

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#150

Post by zokier »

omouse wrote: post #148

This is basically why I end up going back to Emacs. It's waaaaay too easy to start writing functions and the built-in help system (with docstrings almost everywhere for every function and variable) is invaluable. Though I'm beginning to wonder if JavaScript-based extensions in VS Code can match the power of Emacs code. Are there plugins that connect to Postgres? or do what Org-mode does?

> Are there plugins that connect to Postgres?

Seems so. https://github.com/Borvik/vscode-postgres

Post reply on HN