61–70 of 304 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turn off syntax highlighting for your code, translate it to COBOL, and pass it through a formatter that converts it to continuous word-wrapped text. Then we’ll talk again.
I have written multiple books entirely in LaTeX edited with neovim. So... your point is not taken.
"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…
To me, it isn't a matter of if, and the matter of when is also very clearly in "at most 10 years, probably much, much earlier", given that I have relatives already doing this without knowing how to code.
This is a future of computing I am absolutely in love with, and is so incredibly empowering!
"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…
My fears with the situation you are describing is that we end up without a common file format, if everyone has a propietary app and/or file system then that makes transition or collaboration a pain. We probably won't end there due to how lazy most of us are, but it's certainly something to consider
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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turn off syntax highlighting for your code, translate it to COBOL, and pass it through a formatter that converts it to continuous word-wrapped text. Then we’ll talk again.
I have written multiple books entirely in LaTeX edited with neovim. So... your point is not taken.
And why did you author them in LaTeX if you think reading in monospace plaintext is fine for everyone?
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.
Besides being an everything app for you, Emacs is an (unconventional) operating system with weak boundaries between user apps. It makes it easy to modify anything, write new things, or combine two existing ones with very little code, something that e.g. Microsoft could have only dreamed of in Office with its awkward embedding that barely worked. Emacs is one the few survivors of the idea that users should program what they need, which was popular during the personal computing revolution in the 80's. Two others are spreadsheets and BASIC.
Programming turned out to be too complex for the untrained users to handle, but AI makes the idea of custom one-off apps or weird hybrids pretty damn close, that is true in practice. I see a lot of people that vibe code their own little things to get things done. That's precisely what BASIC (often shipped in the stock ROM!) was supposed to be used for.
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.
Another thing is configuration (which also ties to the previous statement). You have to be able to split the idea of the program (what it aims to do) and your personal preferences. Emacs make that easy by having a framework for user preferences. That makes for an extendable program.
The closest, but not as user friendly is unix and suckless philosophy combined. Small programs, easy to understand, configure, and extend.
Edit: Sure there is some small overlap here, but it's really not comparable and definitely not like the way the author describes things. User personalization in Emacs has normally been on a much smaller scale than rewriting entire packages. Configuration is generally smaller tweaks or things on top of existing packages because Emacs provides cohesive extensibility to the point that it often doesn't require "rolling your own." Most packages are already extremely configurable and tailorable. You don't magically get that sort of environment with LLMs. Emacs is much more cooperative/generalized.
The scale and type of custom/personalized software we're seeing now with AI is completely different from how things have been in Emacs. I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing (I think it's both), but it's very different from Emacs and definitely more comparable to something like vim/neovim where (in part just because of the sheer popularity) you constantly have people "rolling their own" packages and a billion versions of everything. Even that is not a great analogy. This is something completely new.
Ehmm, weird, I can't be the only one in the room. You guys didn't know about gfm and gfm-view Emacs modes?
I'm using Emacs since last century and I've got 3 000+ lines of custom Elisp code I wrote (with maybe only a few hundred lines copy/pasta'ed from other configs).
I'm always using a recent Emacs compiled from source and now with LSP, org-mode, Magit, tree-sitter, ivy/avy/counsel/swiper with ripgrep (thanks burntsushi) integration etc.
I had zero frigging idea what gfm and gfm-view for Emacs were.
But I'll look into it now!