Live data from Hacker News

In Emacs, everything looks like a service

yummymelon.com

41–50 of 127 posts

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#41
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, I am a very senior member of my team so 25-50% of each day is spent helping and/or teaching teammates. In situations like that, it is useful to be deeply familiar with the tools that your teammates are using so you can tell them exactly what to do. For example, if I'm teaching a new hire to set up their vscode it is not very helpful to tell them "now you need to activate the python venv". It is much more…

At some point, shouldn't installing a venv be a pre-requisite to actually be hired as a dev?

That was just an example.

The point of the parent is that in an ideal situation, where everything works without flaw, theoretically it makes no difference which tools everyone uses. In real life, you having a homogeneous setup across a team makes the sysadmin's job a lot easier.

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#42
post #27

I've been an Emacs user for over 25 years. But last year I switched employers and they won't let me use it even for tasks where it would absolutely shine. Their argument is that all team members should use the same tools, and I guess that is a valid point. Unfortunately, I failed to convince my employer to make everybody else switch to Emacs. So, now I'm using lots of one-purpose tools, one for each separate task, a…

> Their argument is that all team members should use the same tools, and I guess that is a valid point

No. That's only a valid point if something about the tool must be shared between users, rather than just the output. Emacs is a text editor. It reads, modifies, and produces text. The correct tool for each team member to use is the one they're most productive with, full stop.

Jesus fucking Shiva while Odin watches, but I hate corporate management "thinking". It's just become more and more brain-dead over the decades.

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#43
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, I am a very senior member of my team so 25-50% of each day is spent helping and/or teaching teammates. In situations like that, it is useful to be deeply familiar with the tools that your teammates are using so you can tell them exactly what to do. For example, if I'm teaching a new hire to set up their vscode it is not very helpful to tell them "now you need to activate the python venv". It is much more…

At some point, shouldn't installing a venv be a pre-requisite to actually be hired as a dev?

[deleted]

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#44
post #5

One of the pivotal moments in my career has been when I used Emacs just enough to truly understand what "Emacs is an operating system" means, not just as a joke but as something I could believe in

But you already had an operating system and you could already code... Did Emacs really give YOU any capability you didn't have before? Don't forget this is a text editor, not an IDE or some general purpose automation harness You could add lisp to mspaint and mspaint suddenly becomes awesome somehow? I don't follow the logic

> You could add lisp to mspaint and mspaint suddenly becomes awesome somehow?

TBH that does sound pretty awesome, assuming good primitive operations were exposed through the Lisp API.

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#45
post #37
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... how would they tell?

By looking at my screen? But also, why would you disobey a direct instruction from you super?

> why would you disobey a direct instruction from you super?

Because the instruction was stupid, based on marketing instead of utility, or otherwise given without any thought to how it impacts the actual day-to-day work of their subordinates.

Why WOULDN'T you disobey a stupid instruction? What's the difference between "stop using this tool you're productive in and switch to this one that you're demonstrably LESS productive in for no reason other than I heard it was a good idea", and "Go strap some rocks onto your ankles and swim the English channel. I heard that was a good idea."?

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#46
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one" -- Dan Ingalls

Developers love building on platforms. Saying there shouldn't be platforms defies reality. Edit: Looking up the quote it seems to just be the person being pedantic in how they define operating systems.

> Edit: Looking up the quote it seems to just be the person being pedantic in how they define operating systems.

What a surprise

Pragmatism beats idealism in the real world

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you already had an operating system and you could already code... Did Emacs really give YOU any capability you didn't have before? Don't forget this is a text editor, not an IDE or some general purpose automation harness You could add lisp to mspaint and mspaint suddenly becomes awesome somehow? I don't follow the logic

> You could add lisp to mspaint and mspaint suddenly becomes awesome somehow? TBH that does sound pretty awesome, assuming good primitive operations were exposed through the Lisp API.

It would become AutoCAD. That is pretty awesome.

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#48
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one" -- Dan Ingalls

As long as you don’t care about interlanguage interop, sure. The opposite point of view, that every language tries to become an operating system (and consequently to prevent other languages from coexisting), is also possible, and I’m somewhat more sympathetic to that one.

That is mostly a non issue on microservices and serverless runtimes running on top of type 1 hypervisors, and bare metal embedded deployments.

Re: In Emacs, everything looks like a service

#50
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By looking at my screen? But also, why would you disobey a direct instruction from you super?

> why would you disobey a direct instruction from you super? Because the instruction was stupid, based on marketing instead of utility, or otherwise given without any thought to how it impacts the actual day-to-day work of their subordinates. Why WOULDN'T you disobey a stupid instruction? What's the difference between "stop using this tool you're productive in and switch to this one that you're demonstrably LESS prod…

[dead]
Post reply on HN