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The Emacsification of Software

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Re: The Emacsification of Software

#231

Post by skydhash »

Antibabelic wrote: post #194
johanvts wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They don't offer APIs precisely so that you can't integrate several sources in one app.

I have Gonic (a subsonic server) on my home server and my client is a perl script. It basically allows me to search for an album, present a prompt for me to select the best match, and then builds up a playlist for the tracks to pass to MPV. That’s pretty much all I ever need. I would gladly dump the whole spotify client if they had an API to do the same (even if the queue is a long stream of data instead of tracks).

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#232

Post by chipotle_coyote »

palata wrote: post #225
rvz wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the "nerds (like me)" part of your observation is something that a lot of AI-enthusiast nerds seriously underestimate. For as long as there's been personal computing, there's been a narrative that everyone would be a programmer if we just made it easier for everyone to program, and we've seen attempt after attempt after attempt to introduce new technologies that will surely, surely, be the key to unlocking this. What we don't seem to consider is the vast circumstantial evidence that the vast majority of users are simply not interested in creating tools, automations, widgets, etc., and never will be.

For my part, I am not only a nerd, I am literally an Emacs-using nerd, and I am not interested in using LLMs to create a plethora of bespoke applications that are subtle tweaks on existing tools. I haven't ruled out using AI to assist in helping me with a program that I've been wanting to write for years, but a lot of what's blocking me on that is figuring out design aspects that an LLM wouldn't be able to help me with in the first place. (I'm also concerned about "vibe-coding" programs that I don't 100% understand, at least if they're programs that I might ever want to release into the world.)

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#233

Post by drewg123 »

This really resonates with me. The ability to quickly writing one off, personalized apps really seems to be the strong suite of GenAI.

A month or so ago, I had claude write a visualizer for some data. There is an existing python viewer, but it bogs down & is painfully slow at the scale I need. So I asked Claude to port it to a compiled language. After 2 hours of iterating, I had the tool that I wanted.

Note that its throwaway, dumpster fire code. But for a one-off tool like that, its fine.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#234

Post by vinceguidry »

Antibabelic wrote: post #223
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...

The curse actually feels more relevant to me to ruby rather than lisp.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#235

Post by jcynix »

palata wrote: post #225
rvz wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But I find it a little extreme to say "it's faster to build your own than to install an existing alternative".

Installing an existing alternative might be easy ... once you found the one which best (i.e. mostly) matches your requirements. The time consuming task IMO is the time needed to find and then choose between half a dozen (or so) alternatives which all might do the job ... until you installed them, tested them, and found that they are insufficient for the job you expect them to do.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#236

Post by maximilianburke »

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…

What would be amazing now would be a way to deploy my own Claude-built utility applications to my phone without having to go through the effort of securing a Mac developer account and going through that whole rigamarole.

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#237

Post by Joker_vD »

Antibabelic wrote: post #223
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...

And if then you compare it to e.g. Python (or JS) ecosystem, well. It's all very relative, isn't it?

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#238

Post by Antibabelic »

Joker_vD wrote: post #237
Antibabelic wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

And if then you compare it to e.g. Python (or JS) ecosystem, well. It's all very relative, isn't it?

It's not clear to me what you mean, can you elaborate?

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#239

Post by zephen »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #226
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…

> > "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)?

As if someone vibe-coding it has that insanely deep knowledge?

Re: The Emacsification of Software

#240

Post by tptacek »

yoz-y wrote: post #202
tptacek wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about entire systems. That's something to be optimistic about too. But it's actually not the thing the comment you responded to was about. I'm not saying I'm excited to get out of the Apple Music ecosystem (I like Apple Music, the service, quite a lot). I'm excited to get out of Music.app , and into my own custom Apple Music player; one where playlists and play history are simple, sanely-schemaed sqlit…

I was too, thinking about making my own apps for a lot of stuff, but for now I’m sticking to web apps because distribution on mobile is still crap.

Why are you distributing at all?
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