6 ms·
What's special to emacs is that you can monkey patch all thrthe apps you're using on the go and modify them so easily.
by gkya 9y ago
What's special to emacs is that you can monkey patch all thrthe apps you're using on the go and modify them so easily.
- klibertp 9y agoYeah. The customizability of a whole computing environment of Emacs is unparalleled, except by some Smalltalk or Common Lisp ones. From `defadvice` to dynamic scoping to `edebug` and `find-function`, everything in Emacs is optimized for extension development, from the tiniest 3-line long advice to N kloc full-fledged programs. And it got even better once I started using StumpWM, since now I can really control everything from inside Emacs (with window management accessible via SLIME/CommonLisp REPL) - no matter what it is, if I find something irritating I can disable or change it almost immediately. Pure bliss! :)
- sumduud14 9y agoYeah, StumpWM is great. There was this blog post I saw once which was very helpful for getting set up, but I can't find it (not very helpful, I know). What's great is that the .stumpwm is just Lisp code (just like .emacs) and every window management function is available (just like in...Emacs). If there's an error somewhere, you get the full power of the condition/restart system, so your WM doesn't just crash, you can recover interactively. And with quicklisp, there are so many Common Lisp libraries available, it becomes very easy to script StumpWM however you like...all without leaving Emacs or restarting the WM or anything inconvenient like that. I feel like this philosophy (editing a program while it's running) isn't really found in non-Lisp languages. Which is such a shame, since I think it's really useful and cool.