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The Emacsification of Software

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Re: The Emacsification of Software

#221

Post by backscratches »

ex-aws-dude wrote: post #53
SoftTalker wrote: post #7

"Personal Software" i.e. programs that one writes for oneself, was the original vision of home computing back in the 1960s. The PC wasn't really anticipated, but the thought was that everyone would have a computer terminal at home, and write programs to do whatever was needed. It was imagined that programming would become easy enough that anyone could learn to do it. We're not there yet but with LLMs we're getting cl…

That's going to be huge thing in the future I think Everyone having their own hyperspecific apps or even different UIs/visualization in the same app The whole idea of an application becomes a much more fluid thing If your app is built with a dynamic language why not let users re-write the code themself and add whole new features

This is why open source has been great and will only get better

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#222

Post by shaokind »

iLemming wrote: post #146
saltcured wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your analogy breaks down because lots of people don't program "anything and everything". I can relate to being considered quite an expert in certain programming domains among my peers, but there being all kinds of potential programming around me that I just don't find interesting at all. Programming is also so much broader than something like cooking. It would be like saying that "you make your living manipul…

Yeah, sure analogies are... well... some made up shit we use, because we have imagination. And the imagination can take you for a spin. I just disagree with why Emacs heavy users are often "blamed" to be obsessed with their tools "needlessly". What does it even mean to desire "as little maintenance as possible"? Okay, let's say I don't use Emacs (which is like I dunno over 90% of existing programmers in the world). W…

I'd like to make some points more explicit about my philosophy.

1. Yes, everything has a maintenance cost. Some choices have less. For instance, electing to choose Todoist instead of org-mode for my todo list means I no longer have to worry about syncing, merge conflicts, or whether the mobile app I've chosen fully conforms to the spec (well, whatever attempt at creating a spec existed at the time).

Of course, I am paying a very literal cost for convenience, and offloading maintenance to the Todoist engineers.

2. Emacs is a cool piece of software, and I am glad others have figured out how to leverage it, in such a way they have a configuration for life. I spent a lot of time marvelling over the set up that Protesilaos had for his writing [0]. It just wasn't for me.

3. For Emacs, if I want to use it like I wanted to, I have a couple of options. Install a package like Doom Emacs, which gives me most of what I want, with a whole lot of cruft I don't. And I have to keep that up-to-date, and worry about random community plugins breaking. Or figure out what set of plugins (after first picking a package manager) to incorporate. Or figure out the Elisp to do it myself. And my writing config would differ from my software engineering config.

No shade on the people who want to do this, but I just... don't? I can use Zed, or VSCode, and I'm 90% of the way there. Install (or configure) the Evil mode equivalent, and I'm happy.

4. One of the smartest engineers I worked with couldn't touch type until about 20 years into his career. The idea that everyone is ricing everything they do, is unrealistic.

[0]: https://protesilaos.com (purely for the emacs, not anything else there)

[1]: https://bphilip.uk/blog/2025-03-09-chase-bank-sync/

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#223

Post by Antibabelic »

teddyh wrote: post #215

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... >

Is you actually look at the Lisp ecosystem as it exists today (even just Emacs by itself) you'll quickly realize that none of this is true in practice. Other people have pointed this out.[0]

[0] https://applied-langua.ge/posts/lisp-curse-redemption-arc.ht...

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#224

Post by rvz »

palata wrote: post #208
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…

> As tptacek says in the OP, it's "easier to build your own solution than to install an existing one" - or to learn an existing one. I can install WhatsApp in a few tens of seconds. You most definitely spent more time than that writing this comment. Would you mind sharing a video of you building a custom WhatsApp in less time? Not even starting to think about getting other people to talk to you on your instantly-buil…

It has been 3 hours already since your comment and I have just installed a WhatsApp update and it took around 10 seconds.

We're still waiting for tptacek's DIY WhatsApp alternative since he believes that it's "easier to build your own solution than to install an existing one".

That must be one of the most silliest comments I have ever read, and the worst part is even the moderators agree with the statement.

AI psychosis is indeed real.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#225

Post by palata »

rvz wrote: post #224
palata wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As tptacek says in the OP, it's "easier to build your own solution than to install an existing one" - or to learn an existing one. I can install WhatsApp in a few tens of seconds. You most definitely spent more time than that writing this comment. Would you mind sharing a video of you building a custom WhatsApp in less time? Not even starting to think about getting other people to talk to you on your instantly-buil…

It has been 3 hours already since your comment and I have just installed a WhatsApp update and it took around 10 seconds. We're still waiting for tptacek's DIY WhatsApp alternative since he believes that it's "easier to build your own solution than to install an existing one" . That must be one of the most silliest comments I have ever read, and the worst part is even the moderators agree with the statement. AI psych…

To be fair, I think it is true that AI will help nerds (like me) implement their own clients. Without AI, I will think that "I could make my own client", I will spend some evenings and weekends proving that I can solve the problem, and then I will never spend the time I would need to actually make it usable.

And I would love it if more services had an Open API and allowed people to write their own clients. I like the concept of "emacsification of software".

But I find it a little extreme to say "it's faster to build your own than to install an existing alternative". You still have to spend a lot of time building your own, it's just that now it's realistic without taking a sabbatical.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#226

Post by aleph_minus_one »

palata wrote: post #208
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…

> As tptacek says in the OP, it's "easier to build your own solution than to install an existing one" - or to learn an existing one. I can install WhatsApp in a few tens of seconds. You most definitely spent more time than that writing this comment. Would you mind sharing a video of you building a custom WhatsApp in less time? Not even starting to think about getting other people to talk to you on your instantly-buil…

> > "easier to build your own solution than to install an existing one" - or to learn an existing one.

> I can install WhatsApp in a few tens of seconds.

But do you now have an insanely deep knowledge of WhatsApp (i.e. what serious "learning" means)?

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#227

Post by rbanffy »

The author highlights an interesting point. There are a couple variables in action:

A- The difficulty to publish the tool

B- The difficulty to create the tool

C- The usefulness of the tool to others

D- The social reward for publishing the tool

E- The negative incentive of adding a dependency

Difficulty to find a canned solution goes up with A (because someone needs to create it) and B (someone needs to figure out how to publish it), but, the more useful it is to the community (C), the easier it gets to find it, because people will tell you.

If A and B are substantially different, if A is much higher than B, people will tend to write their own and forget about it. If B is lower, there will be fewer solutions to your problem. If A and B are low, and the social reward (C) for A is higher than the price of depending on something else (E), you'll have a leftpad situation. A lot of NPM is made of packages with high C and D and low E.

In the case of Emacs Lisp, A used to be high, but now is low, B (once you climb the learning curve) is low, C, D, and E aren't high either way. This can lead to a scenario where you build the tool before you even look if there is a tool that does it (unlike it is with VSCode, and with Eclipse before it - both have a high B).

I see a thesis someone younger than me will want to bring out to this world.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#228

Post by finaard »

disinterred wrote: post #12
simoesd wrote: post #2

I know the article is mostly about making stand-alone software, but this type of thing is why one of the things I value most when looking workflow tools I will be using heavily is extensibility. I can try put someone's neovim plugin for a second, figure out if it's something I actually need, and if so make my own personal version that matches my mental model perfectly, adds all the dumb little bells I want, and remov…

I'm the same. In all honesty, when you start up emacs for the first time with a blank config, it looks terrible. But then you start building it up with plugins and adding code to support your own quirky workflows and slowly it becomes too powerful in your life to ignore. I have not been able to drop it for 13 straight years. With AI taking over the development experience, emacs and neovim have only become even better…

I'm currently polishing one of my packages for publication, and for that do a lot of testing in a vanilla Emacs. It's shocking how many of even (to me) absolute core functionality is actually customization I did a decade or two ago, and then forgot about.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#229

Post by oluminate »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #8
empath75 wrote: post #3

I love this and I have a handful of tools like this that I built for myself (I had claude write me a TUI crossplane kcl function renderer, for example -- something whose total addressable audience in the world is probably 20 people). "Content creation for an audience of one" is really the revolutionary change that is happening right now because of AI. Disposable apps, disposable books, disposable movies, disposable m…

Setting aside the fact that good content is more enjoyable than bad content, experiences are meant to be shared. Humans are a social species, and a very large part of media consumption goes beyond the actual consumption and into sharing that experience with other people. People build communities around the media they like, and even integrate their favorites as part of their identity, wearing branded clothes or cospla…

I think that software made for one fills a similar niche to ultra-processed foods — many of which were created to supply soldiers with sustenance in an active war, and continue to fulfill the needs of their consumers (travelers — who might not have the time or space to practically prepare a home-cooked meal, working professionals — who similarly benefit from less planning and food preparation), but as research has evolved, society has realized that these meals are linked with metabolic disease and adverse health outcomes.

Applications for one, might serve as a sort of "ultra-processed software" that can fill useful niches like generating textbooks on the fly (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130679), generating focus oriented music for long study sessions, and obviate writer's block.

However, I feel like there are downsides that are both obvious (insularity, discoverability, reliability, and platform dependance) and non-obvious issues which will take time for the public to determine what they are.

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