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The Emacsification of Software

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Re: The Emacsification of Software

#181

Post by iLemming »

peacebeard wrote: post #169
iLemming wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often do you fish out a single word in a paragraph that has no semantic, emotional meaning to you personally and automatically flip the entire book, just because of one word? What I meant is that viewing Emacs merely as a means to achieve a singular goal and to extract specific value (e.g. "I've heard Magit is nice") is shortsighted - approaching it as a strategic, long-term investment yields far greater returns.…

Hmm, not quite an apology, but sort of a tacit acknowledgement that what you wrote wasn’t quite what you meant. Good enough for me.

Now allow me to explain to you kindly, why you're fucking wrong here. You probably have no idea how difficult it is to write anything meaningful in English. Especially these days. For someone for whom English is not a second or even a third language, it can be an enormously hellacious ordeal. I take pride in my English. I think it's quite possible I would never write so colorfully in any other of the three languages I have. For me, each paragraph has meaning, has voice, its own character. It takes time to write. It takes patience, humility, imagination. Machines can do it already, but their language still lacks something. Something ephemeral. Something that would make us watch for two hours, humans doing crazy acrobatics of Cirque du Soleil. I wonder how long would we watch robots doing the same? Well, who knows, maybe we'd be watching robots dancing for two hours. LLMs are getting better with languages too. Which makes it more difficult to write. Properly structured text gets blamed for being generated. Sometimes I deliberately don't fix mistakes, even though it makes my eye twitch. Darn, I'm so pissed I can't use em-dash anymore, goddammit.

I don't owe you an explanation why I do it, why write anything at all. Why HN. I'll say it anyway. I do it because I still recognize people here. Living, dreaming, learning, fighting, hating, daring, loving people. I don't get paid for it, I don't seek recognition, I am not trying to build a name. I share my opinions because nothing is more important for our species than storytelling. And we need to share stories, listen to them, re-live them, learn from them. That's why many of us would go to watch Nolan's rendition of a 2700-year-old story. Even if we don't like the movie already.

And then someone like you comes, shits all over your charming writing, compelled to do it just because they see a word they don't like. Well, honestly, fuck you. Yeah, not nice, but I'd rather be kind and tell you the truth. You wouldn't be saying the shit you replied to me with to my face. Not because I have muscles, or am intimidating, or weak and miserable, no. But because you're definitely not a jerk, or an idiot. I wouldn't have to spend hours wasting on your ass for no good fucking reason. Seriously, I am a solo father with two kids, it's fucking 1:30AM and I'm having to deal with this shit, because writing for me is still fucking hard. English is beautiful, but hard. Come on, kid, think sometimes. For the sake of fellow humans.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#182

Post by faustlast »

e40 wrote: post #86
shaokind wrote: post #6

I've absolutely engaged in making personal software [0] thanks to the age of LLMs. But to be honest, my time using Emacs didn't teach me to "build personal software". My Emacs set up was extremely brittle, and it was a nightmare when I tried to use it across Windows & macOS. My university project was written using an unholy combination of org-mode & some workflow to create a beautiful LaTeX file, and I couldn't tell…

Have had the same emacs setup on linux, windows and macos for 15 years. Honestly, it's the best thing in my computing life.

me too! The peace of mind of getting any computer, cloning my config and feel at home.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#183

Post by knivets »

dang wrote: post #55

This is so exactly right and I've been saying it to whoever will put up with me...(and now am embarrassed I have no link to show for it. oh well, shame is good for writing. envy too!) Software production is now so easy that everything is a .emacs file (pronounced "dot emacs" btw): meaning, each individual has their own entirely personal, endlessly customizable software cocoon. As tptacek says in the OP, it's "easier…

> easier to build your own solution than to install an existing one

seriously?

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#184

Post by chabska »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #117
chickensong wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you change "literally everyone" to "a minority" we can agree.

Well, no, because it wasn't a minority. They were cheap and ubiquitous, unless I suppose you were in one of "Iron Curtain" countries.

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

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#185

Post by johanvts »

tom_ wrote: post #160
dspillett wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past when I've seen someone extolling Windows/Linux compatibility for something as complex as a detailed Emacs setup, they were using WSL or one of the wrappers like Cygwin rather than native Windows compiles of the tooling.

For whatever it's worth, I've always only ever used the native Windows build of Emacs, and I've never had any awful problems sharing my config between Windows, Linux and macOS. I'm sure I had to expend at least a bit of effort to make this work initially, but it wasn't enough for the process to stick in my mind, and the ongoing effort doesn't feel like it's added up to much. (I admit it's added up to more than zero t…

The problem is the dependencies, getting hunspell installed and finding the dictionary files for example. I normally only get a new computer every few years and each time stuff like that is a new pain. And dont even start with treesitter, i cant compile anything on windows and always end up using prebuild dlls.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#186

Post by johanvts »

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…

Music apps especially went downhill, spotify and tidal etc need to offer apis so we can integrate several sources in one app. They used to offer much more. I was able to import my library into spotify once (thoigh it could only hold 10k item back then). I want all my music in one place, not 4 apps

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#187

Post by lxgr »

Markdown syntax highlighting is nice, but at this point I’d be very happy if software could just consistently open .md files as plain text.

I have my Obsidian vault synced to Google Drive, and it’s completely impossible to just look at the files in it via the web interface. iOS support is also more than lacking.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#188

Post by LAC-Tech »

I know this is a bit beside the point of the article, but I also got sick of reading markdown on a terminal...

So I asked my agent to write typst, ran "typst watch", and now I can look at a nice pdf file. it even auto-refreshes when the clanker changes it.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#190

Post by noelwelsh »

tptacek wrote: post #65
noelwelsh wrote: post #52

Ok, not the article I thought it was going to be. In fact it's the complete opposite of what Emacs means to me. For me, the point of Emacs is that I use one program to do everything. Why would I want a special bit of software just to view Markdown? I can view it in Emacs, and then it works with everything else I do. Developing lots of custom applications, AI assisted or not, is not replacing how I use Emacs.

The point of the article is that the whole gestalt of what you do on a computer is now one big programmable surface, and in that regard everything feels a lot more like Emacs. It's not "about" Emacs, it's more about the vibe of personalized software in 2026 to someone who does a lot of Emacs stuff.

Sure, but it misses interoperability, which is the point of Emacs for me. That's my point.
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