10 ms·

Two Years With Emacs as a CEO and now CTO (2018)

124 points by spudlyo 7y ago

DonHopkins 7y ago
I've heard of King George VI, and I know somebody who named their dog Emacs, but this title sounds like there's a person named Emacs!
- intuitionist 7y ago
  There was a person named Emack, who gave his name to the ice cream shop Emack and Bolio’s, which the editor may or may not be named after.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    That's in Cambridge near MIT, and it was a favorite of the MIT-AI Lab crowd too, so that may have influenced it! There's also a text formatting program named Bolio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs >Reynolds, Craig (1992-02-10). Wiseman, David G. (ed.). "The Emac Bolio Name Koan". David G. Wiseman: Stories of Computer Folklore. A cocky novice once said to Stallman: 'I can guess why the editor is called Emacs, but why is the justifier called Bolio?'. Stallman replied forcefully, Names are but names, Emack & Bolio's is the name of a popular ice cream shop in Boston town. Neither of these men had anything to do with the software.' His question answered, yet unanswered, the novice turned to go, but Stallman called to him, 'Neither Emacs nor Bolio had anything to do with the ice cream shop, either.' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18319124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18319124 >gumby 8 months ago on: Talking to the Mailman – Interview with Richard St... >The Flanders and Swan song ("I'm a gnu") was not a kid's song. >I'm not sure if Emacs and Bolio was open when the editor evolved, but the text formatting program (like runoff) called "Bolio" was definitely named after the ice cream store (since by the time it was written Emacs already existed). I wonder if there's any software named after Mary Chung's legendary Suan La Chow Show / Suanla Chaoshou? https://www.yelp.com/menu/mary-chung-restaurant-cambridge/item/suan-la-chow-show https://www.yelp.com/menu/mary-chung-restaurant-cambridge/it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suanla_chaoshou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suanla_chaoshou >Mary Chung's restaurant (鍾園川菜館, Pinyin: Zhōngyuán Chuāncàiguǎn) in Cambridge, Massachusetts serves a dish called Suan La Chow Show, which are dumplings in a spicy soy ginger sauce on top of a bed of raw mung bean sprouts. This popular dish is different from the suan la chao shou described by Fuchsia Dunlop, who studied at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Chengdu. Although somewhat similar, Dunlop's recipe includes a substantial amount of black vinegar in the sauce, making it much more sour.
black_puppydog 7y ago
I mean, I've heard that emacs is powerful, but filling the roles of both CEO and CTO? Kudos to the devs. I guess it is time to take another look at LISP as a platform for general AI.
- unfocused 7y ago
  That is one confusing title. How about: My Experience Usuing Emacs While CEO, and Now CTO.
- Isamu 7y ago
  It was really only a matter of time before Emacs reached sentience. I am surprised this isn't about Emacs reaching out to other editors in a bid to control cyberspace.
  - logicchains 7y ago
    Reaching out to Vim because it needs a decent text editor.
    - DonHopkins 7y ago
      The only VI command anyone ever needs to know it :q!
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    Emacs reached sentience on March 10, 1993, when it tried to analyze RMS's Natalism Flame. ;) http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-d... Richard Stallman may not have planned on reproducing himself, but he did make Emacs.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    "Emacs is an excellent fully-automated AI-driven corporation. Too bad it lacks a decent text editor."
jhbadger 7y ago
Just in case people were as confused by the reference as I was, the "Ludwig mode" that the author's team created for Emacs is for one of his own products called "Ludwig" rather than the machine learning framework called that.
- jarboot 7y ago
  I had the same moment of confusion, especially when there were two (uber) Ludwig documentation tabs open next to it.
rgoulter 7y ago
"[Emacs'] idioms are paths to discovering and creating your own, and that for me is the definition of creativity." What a great sentence which highlights a strength of Emacs: that it's natural for Emacs users to be able to extend it.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  I found out an old win95 computer with turbo pascal 7 on it. I was so amazed about the IDE .. yet hard coded keybindings made me suffer so much. I couldn't stop saying "if that was emacs I .."
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    Other than things like the keybindings I still maintain that TP was one of the finest development tools I ever used, insanely fast builds (for the time) with fantastic documentation made for a really tight closed loop. Delphi managed to bring that to the graphical desktop and I think had it they not screwed up with the price would have done much better.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      yeah I was blown away by the amount of features packed into 600kB. I didn't realize as a kid that I was compiling native code .. now I understand the feat.
- m463 7y ago
  My version of embrace-and-extend is usually copy-paste-and-extend ;) (unless there are well-chosen customizable variables)
CalChris 7y ago
Longtime vi/vim user. I've tried emacs over the years (as well as Atom). I can get work done but inevitably when I need to do some power editing, I drift back to what I know best. I'm sure that if an emacs user went the other way, they'd also drift back to emacs for the same reasons. Basically, both (and other) environments are sufficient such that there isn't a killer feature on either side that would entice someone like me over the great divide for the duration. So for me, the editor wars are over.
- melling 7y ago
  Emacs is a great editor construction kit. That’s its killer feature. If you like the vi bindings, etc, you build a great vi editor in Emacs, for example. http://spacemacs.org/ http://spacemacs.org/
  - CalChris 7y ago
    The emacs bindings are fine (although I seem to recall hitting the escape key a lot). It's when you need to go past that and do power editing. I'm used to dropping into ex mode and using sed style regular expressions. Now I'm certain that there's a way to do that emacs. It's just that that was the point where I'd drift back to vim to get work done. I couldn't quite force myself to do things the emacs way.
  - m463 7y ago
    I've always wondered how you pronounce that. Is it space-y-macs or is it like dr spaceman (spah-chem-uhn) in 30 rock. :)
    - yellowapple 7y ago
      I've always pronounced it "space macs", both because that's intuitive and because it fits the original meaning of "EMACS" ("Editor MACroS", so "SPACE MACroS" in this case).
- zarkov99 7y ago
  Emacs vim bindings are really, really good, and there is widespread support for them in popular emacs packages (org, mode, magit, etc). Look for evil-* in the emacs package manager.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
Emacs has been a daily driver for me since the 1980s. That said, in modern times I also use alternatives. For about ten years I also relied on the Jetbrains IDEs. I have swapped out IntelliJ, PyCharm, and RubyMine for VSCode plus relevant extensions. I now use Emacs and Slime for all Common Lisp development, for a lot of Haskell work, and whenever I am working remotely via SSH on a leased server or VPS. Anyway, Emacs is fantastic but I don’t feel like I need to be all-in with one choice of editing framework.
omarhaneef 7y ago
This excerpt is a relief because it feels like I got permission to stop trying to use org-mode for to-do lists: "# I gave up on using Org-mode for schedules and to-do lists I spent some words in the original post on using Org-mode for schedules. I gave up on using Org-mode for to dos and the like, as I have to coordinate many meetings and calls every day with dozens of people, and I cannot ask the rest of the world to adapt to my choice of tools, nor do I have the time to transcribe or automate moving things to Org. We are primarily a Mac shop, use Google Calendar etc., and the native Mac OS/iOS tools do a good job for collaboration. I also use a plain old pen for note-taking during meetings, as I find laptop/keyboard use in meetings to be rude and limiting to my ability to listen and think. Therefore I've largely abandoned the idea that Emacs/org can help me with my schedule or organizing my life. Org-mode is great for lots of other things too though, and is my go-to for writing documents, including this one. In other words, I use it largely in ways the author didn't intend, and it's great at them. I hope someone says the same of our work at Fugue someday."
- komali2 7y ago
  Yea, same. I keep trying to figure it out but it just doesn't seem to have any advantages over checking my backlog for my todos. Maybe because I gave up trying to configure emacs on my own and ended up with spacemacs + evil mode, thus overcomplicating org mode (and overriding some of the keybindings people use in tutorials) beyond use?
  - omarhaneef 7y ago
    For me best solution is: paper and pad to take notes, and then any todo/note app to make a list in the cloud, so I can refer to it at home, the next day etc.
  - stefco_ 7y ago
    I found the main problem was at the interface with other people. I never got org's iOS app working properly and generally missed the multimedia flexibility of Notes (nothing beats scanning PDFs and instantly having them show up in your document, ready to share with others from your phone). It's messy, but in practice it's actually lower friction. I ended up generally dropping org mode and just using LaTeX to-do lists based on a template I wrote.
agumonkey 7y ago
I always dreamed of an Emacs as control center .. still a dream.
- iLemming 7y ago
  Have you seen EXWM? What do you mean by "control center" anyway?
  - m463 7y ago
    I can't help but imagine Johnson Space Center with a giant Text Mode Mission Control.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    think magit level of features for different parts of your system (proced, etc) Some people made things like systemd-mode but I couldn't wrap my head around it so far. And I wanted to build it from scratch.
submeta 7y ago
So many words about an editor as a CEO? I would like to cite Peter Drucker‘s „The Effective Executive“: „Effective executives focus on outward contribution. They gear their efforts to results rather than to work. They start out with the question, “What results are expected of me?” rather than with the work to be done, let alone with its techniques and tools.“ I am guilty myself falling in love with tools (Emacs, vim, iTerm, Notability, Evernote and whatnot). But I founded and led companies myself. The time budget of a manager is extremely tight. You need to cut back on those things that do not contribute to your key result areas. On the other hand you have someone like Stephen Covey who reminds us to sharpen the saw to get better results (i.e. invest time in the infrastructure as well). But I try to imagine an Elon Musk writing a blog post about how to use Vim effectively.
- gitrog 7y ago
  Elon Musk does manage to make time to write a bunch of drivel on Twitter from time to time though.
- m463 7y ago
  Well, I can't help but think back to the recent post by Stephen Wolfram: https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-productive-life-some-details-of-my-personal-infrastructure/ https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-producti...
ggm 7y ago
Good for him, making this work. I think a version of this about Markdown/Pandoc or VI(M) would be similar; If you head to content-not-interface focussed models, you're forced to think about what you want to say a lot more than which transition animation to use to say it. I found his comment about calendars/scheduling hard to believe. I've done one Apple iCal server deployment, never want to do that again. Google calendar, talks well to itself. Cross scheduling into O365 is a nightmare.
pgcj_poster 7y ago
Well, I'm obviously an idiot. I saw the headline and thought that this was going to be about Emacs being the CEO of a company. Maybe it can't do everything.
- qdot76367 7y ago
  M-x create-unicorn
- gpderetta 7y ago
  For what is worth you are not alone.
- ryanolsonx 7y ago
  M-x run-a-company Also, There is company-mode. ;)
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead https://everything2.com/title/M-x+psychoanalyze-pinhead https://everything2.com/title/M-x+psychoanalyze-pinhead
- mhd 7y ago
  "Go away, or I shall replace you with a very small elisp snippet!"
- m463 7y ago
  You could probably customize org mode. call it decentralized-autonomous-org mode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organ...
vincent-toups 7y ago
I'm an absolutely dedicated Emacs user. Cannot imagine moving to another editor. Strangely enough, about 3 years ago I nuked my huge library of custom configurations and complicated Emacs Lisp thingamajigs and just use vanilla Emacs (for the most part) now. The one thing I can't do without is Paredit and ido, but other than that, its very much just a "can't be bothered" thing anymore. Never got into org mode. Most people with big org files that I have met have a serious inability to let go, and their org file is actually just a giant burden and illusion about what they are going to do in life. My organizational philosophy is do one thing at a time until each thing is done and never with a sense of urgency. When the thing is done, stop and think carefully about the next most important thing. Repeat.
AJRF 7y ago
I wasted two years on emacs. I write code, so I thought emacs would be the learn-once-editor-of-a-lifetime but it was just always an exercise in frustation and wrestling bad defaults. If your using it to write code, emacs is, by default, worse than $IDE because its not built for the write, debug, run cycle an IDE excels at. I only mention this because a lot of programmers and hackers seem to hold it up as a hallowed piece of technology and I the elitism makes you want to try it so you can be up there amoung the gods. Everytime I wanted to write code, I would have to cobble together little scripts to shoe horn in build steps and it was always more work than VSCode would make me do. I want to write code, not make my editor work in a sane way. Org mode is oft touted as the 'killer app' - its entirely unportable. Android and iOS don't have clients that are useable by modern standards. You will hear "oh but you can install this plugin and then it will automate converting your todo list to HTML and it can then run that on a serv...". No thanks, I just want to sign in once, and everything to be synced. It doesn't have the idea of syncing and its totally uncollaborative. I can't share it in any meaningful, interactable way. The world has moved on, emacs is a relic of the old world and I finally feel fine in saying that.
- lliamander 7y ago
  I had spent several years wanting to learn Emacs without actually making much progress. I only really learned Emacs when I had to use a programming language for which Emacs had the best IDE-like experience (Erlang). I think for many niche languages, it's a lot easier (or at least a lot more common) for the developers to offer an Emacs mode than to try and leverage one of the existing large IDEs like Intellij Or Visual Studio. I think it's because, for many projects, a few simple code-aware editing features (syntax highlighting, go-to definition, etc.) and decent command line build tools are enough to suffice[1]. Now that I develop in Java, I definitely use Intellij, but with Emacs bindings. I then use Emacs for note taking, writing shell scripts, etc. I find that this provides me with the best of both worlds in terms of IDE features plus pure text-based productivity (which is where Emacs shines). [1] Visual Studio Code seems like it's taking over the role of "good enough" editor for languages that don't have full-featured IDEs - a place that's previously been dominated by Emacs and Vim. I like VSC well enough, but I don't think it's Emacs bindings are good enough...yet.
iLemming 7y ago
Whatever you do, no matter what field you specialize at, if you use a computer, you need to try to minimize the frustration. Frustration comes (mostly) from repetitive, mundane tasks. Whatever can be automated, should be automated. And Emacs is an excellent tool to help you with that. Yes, it has a steep learning curve, just like any other professional tool. Would you get into a cabin of an industrial excavator and complain about controls being un-intuitive? Or would you attempt to pilot a helicopter without proper training? Why nobody ever said: "ah, the interface of an airliner is cumbersome, we need to make it intuitive for newbies"? There is a strong correlation between the efficiency of a tool and the learning curve. The more efficient is a tool in the professional setting, the steeper is its learning curve. Learn Emacs. But be prepared for a long (maybe a lifetime) journey. Be ready for challenges. I promise you - one day it will change your subjective view of the world.
- tossAfterUsing 7y ago
  > Or would you attempt to pilot a helicopter without proper training? No... not unless i had to. But where does a coder find emacs gurus to teach them the ropes?
  - m463 7y ago
    https://www.emacswiki.org/ https://www.emacswiki.org/
  - iLemming 7y ago
    https://www.masteringemacs.org https://www.masteringemacs.org is the best books on Emacs I have ever read. But truly, is just about doing things in Emacs. Start using Emacs and whenever you need to get something done, just google it. After a few days, you'd have sufficient vocabulary to navigate yourself around. Don't be obsessed with configuring and adjusting it to your needs at that point. Jump into that rabbit hole later, when you feel you know what you're doing.
Myrmornis 7y ago
If you're the sort of programmer who enjoys configuring your tools using lisp and devoting a bit of time to it then there's a happy and productive future for you. If you're not, then I wouldn't bother with Emacs. But let's stop discussing Org-mode when we're discussing Emacs. You don't have to appreciate Org-mode to appreciate Emacs. Org is a bit of an antithesis to the typical programmer's mindset -- as programmers we value modularity, whereas Org is a vast universe of amazing kitchen sinkery. It's nice for simple TODO lists and its beautiful table editor (available as M-x orgtbl-mode in any other mode).
dyoo1979 7y ago
I misparsed this as Two Years (With Emacs as a CEO and now CTO) as opposed to Two Years (With Emacs) as a CEO and now CTO. and it greatly confused me: how could Emacs act as a CEO? It's not that smart, is it? (Or conversely, being a CEO can't be that trivial, right?) Perhaps rephrase to: "Using Emacs for two years as a CEO and now CTO". The parse tree is still ambiguous, but a little less so.

124 points by spudlyo 7y ago

I've heard of King George VI, and I know somebody who named their dog Emacs, but this title sounds like there's a person named Emacs!

intuitionist 7y ago
There was a person named Emack, who gave his name to the ice cream shop Emack and Bolio’s, which the editor may or may not be named after.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  That's in Cambridge near MIT, and it was a favorite of the MIT-AI Lab crowd too, so that may have influenced it! There's also a text formatting program named Bolio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs >Reynolds, Craig (1992-02-10). Wiseman, David G. (ed.). "The Emac Bolio Name Koan". David G. Wiseman: Stories of Computer Folklore. A cocky novice once said to Stallman: 'I can guess why the editor is called Emacs, but why is the justifier called Bolio?'. Stallman replied forcefully, Names are but names, Emack & Bolio's is the name of a popular ice cream shop in Boston town. Neither of these men had anything to do with the software.' His question answered, yet unanswered, the novice turned to go, but Stallman called to him, 'Neither Emacs nor Bolio had anything to do with the ice cream shop, either.' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18319124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18319124 >gumby 8 months ago on: Talking to the Mailman – Interview with Richard St... >The Flanders and Swan song ("I'm a gnu") was not a kid's song. >I'm not sure if Emacs and Bolio was open when the editor evolved, but the text formatting program (like runoff) called "Bolio" was definitely named after the ice cream store (since by the time it was written Emacs already existed). I wonder if there's any software named after Mary Chung's legendary Suan La Chow Show / Suanla Chaoshou? https://www.yelp.com/menu/mary-chung-restaurant-cambridge/item/suan-la-chow-show https://www.yelp.com/menu/mary-chung-restaurant-cambridge/it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suanla_chaoshou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suanla_chaoshou >Mary Chung's restaurant (鍾園川菜館, Pinyin: Zhōngyuán Chuāncàiguǎn) in Cambridge, Massachusetts serves a dish called Suan La Chow Show, which are dumplings in a spicy soy ginger sauce on top of a bed of raw mung bean sprouts. This popular dish is different from the suan la chao shou described by Fuchsia Dunlop, who studied at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Chengdu. Although somewhat similar, Dunlop's recipe includes a substantial amount of black vinegar in the sauce, making it much more sour.

black_puppydog 7y ago

I mean, I've heard that emacs is powerful, but filling the roles of both CEO and CTO? Kudos to the devs. I guess it is time to take another look at LISP as a platform for general AI.

unfocused 7y ago
That is one confusing title. How about: My Experience Usuing Emacs While CEO, and Now CTO.
Isamu 7y ago
It was really only a matter of time before Emacs reached sentience. I am surprised this isn't about Emacs reaching out to other editors in a bid to control cyberspace.
- logicchains 7y ago
  Reaching out to Vim because it needs a decent text editor.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    The only VI command anyone ever needs to know it :q!
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Emacs reached sentience on March 10, 1993, when it tried to analyze RMS's Natalism Flame. ;) http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-d... Richard Stallman may not have planned on reproducing himself, but he did make Emacs.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  "Emacs is an excellent fully-automated AI-driven corporation. Too bad it lacks a decent text editor."

jhbadger 7y ago

Just in case people were as confused by the reference as I was, the "Ludwig mode" that the author's team created for Emacs is for one of his own products called "Ludwig" rather than the machine learning framework called that.

jarboot 7y ago
I had the same moment of confusion, especially when there were two (uber) Ludwig documentation tabs open next to it.

rgoulter 7y ago

"[Emacs'] idioms are paths to discovering and creating your own, and that for me is the definition of creativity." What a great sentence which highlights a strength of Emacs: that it's natural for Emacs users to be able to extend it.

agumonkey 7y ago
I found out an old win95 computer with turbo pascal 7 on it. I was so amazed about the IDE .. yet hard coded keybindings made me suffer so much. I couldn't stop saying "if that was emacs I .."
- noir_lord 7y ago
  Other than things like the keybindings I still maintain that TP was one of the finest development tools I ever used, insanely fast builds (for the time) with fantastic documentation made for a really tight closed loop. Delphi managed to bring that to the graphical desktop and I think had it they not screwed up with the price would have done much better.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    yeah I was blown away by the amount of features packed into 600kB. I didn't realize as a kid that I was compiling native code .. now I understand the feat.
m463 7y ago
My version of embrace-and-extend is usually copy-paste-and-extend ;) (unless there are well-chosen customizable variables)

CalChris 7y ago

Longtime vi/vim user. I've tried emacs over the years (as well as Atom). I can get work done but inevitably when I need to do some power editing, I drift back to what I know best. I'm sure that if an emacs user went the other way, they'd also drift back to emacs for the same reasons. Basically, both (and other) environments are sufficient such that there isn't a killer feature on either side that would entice someone like me over the great divide for the duration. So for me, the editor wars are over.

melling 7y ago
Emacs is a great editor construction kit. That’s its killer feature. If you like the vi bindings, etc, you build a great vi editor in Emacs, for example. http://spacemacs.org/ http://spacemacs.org/
- CalChris 7y ago
  The emacs bindings are fine (although I seem to recall hitting the escape key a lot). It's when you need to go past that and do power editing. I'm used to dropping into ex mode and using sed style regular expressions. Now I'm certain that there's a way to do that emacs. It's just that that was the point where I'd drift back to vim to get work done. I couldn't quite force myself to do things the emacs way.
- m463 7y ago
  I've always wondered how you pronounce that. Is it space-y-macs or is it like dr spaceman (spah-chem-uhn) in 30 rock. :)
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    I've always pronounced it "space macs", both because that's intuitive and because it fits the original meaning of "EMACS" ("Editor MACroS", so "SPACE MACroS" in this case).
zarkov99 7y ago
Emacs vim bindings are really, really good, and there is widespread support for them in popular emacs packages (org, mode, magit, etc). Look for evil-* in the emacs package manager.

mark_l_watson 7y ago

Emacs has been a daily driver for me since the 1980s. That said, in modern times I also use alternatives. For about ten years I also relied on the Jetbrains IDEs. I have swapped out IntelliJ, PyCharm, and RubyMine for VSCode plus relevant extensions. I now use Emacs and Slime for all Common Lisp development, for a lot of Haskell work, and whenever I am working remotely via SSH on a leased server or VPS. Anyway, Emacs is fantastic but I don’t feel like I need to be all-in with one choice of editing framework.

omarhaneef 7y ago

This excerpt is a relief because it feels like I got permission to stop trying to use org-mode for to-do lists: "# I gave up on using Org-mode for schedules and to-do lists I spent some words in the original post on using Org-mode for schedules. I gave up on using Org-mode for to dos and the like, as I have to coordinate many meetings and calls every day with dozens of people, and I cannot ask the rest of the world to adapt to my choice of tools, nor do I have the time to transcribe or automate moving things to Org. We are primarily a Mac shop, use Google Calendar etc., and the native Mac OS/iOS tools do a good job for collaboration. I also use a plain old pen for note-taking during meetings, as I find laptop/keyboard use in meetings to be rude and limiting to my ability to listen and think. Therefore I've largely abandoned the idea that Emacs/org can help me with my schedule or organizing my life. Org-mode is great for lots of other things too though, and is my go-to for writing documents, including this one. In other words, I use it largely in ways the author didn't intend, and it's great at them. I hope someone says the same of our work at Fugue someday."

komali2 7y ago
Yea, same. I keep trying to figure it out but it just doesn't seem to have any advantages over checking my backlog for my todos. Maybe because I gave up trying to configure emacs on my own and ended up with spacemacs + evil mode, thus overcomplicating org mode (and overriding some of the keybindings people use in tutorials) beyond use?
- omarhaneef 7y ago
  For me best solution is: paper and pad to take notes, and then any todo/note app to make a list in the cloud, so I can refer to it at home, the next day etc.
- stefco_ 7y ago
  I found the main problem was at the interface with other people. I never got org's iOS app working properly and generally missed the multimedia flexibility of Notes (nothing beats scanning PDFs and instantly having them show up in your document, ready to share with others from your phone). It's messy, but in practice it's actually lower friction. I ended up generally dropping org mode and just using LaTeX to-do lists based on a template I wrote.

agumonkey 7y ago

I always dreamed of an Emacs as control center .. still a dream.

iLemming 7y ago
Have you seen EXWM? What do you mean by "control center" anyway?
- m463 7y ago
  I can't help but imagine Johnson Space Center with a giant Text Mode Mission Control.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  think magit level of features for different parts of your system (proced, etc) Some people made things like systemd-mode but I couldn't wrap my head around it so far. And I wanted to build it from scratch.

submeta 7y ago

So many words about an editor as a CEO? I would like to cite Peter Drucker‘s „The Effective Executive“: „Effective executives focus on outward contribution. They gear their efforts to results rather than to work. They start out with the question, “What results are expected of me?” rather than with the work to be done, let alone with its techniques and tools.“ I am guilty myself falling in love with tools (Emacs, vim, iTerm, Notability, Evernote and whatnot). But I founded and led companies myself. The time budget of a manager is extremely tight. You need to cut back on those things that do not contribute to your key result areas. On the other hand you have someone like Stephen Covey who reminds us to sharpen the saw to get better results (i.e. invest time in the infrastructure as well). But I try to imagine an Elon Musk writing a blog post about how to use Vim effectively.

gitrog 7y ago
Elon Musk does manage to make time to write a bunch of drivel on Twitter from time to time though.
m463 7y ago
Well, I can't help but think back to the recent post by Stephen Wolfram: https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-productive-life-some-details-of-my-personal-infrastructure/ https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-producti...

ggm 7y ago

Good for him, making this work. I think a version of this about Markdown/Pandoc or VI(M) would be similar; If you head to content-not-interface focussed models, you're forced to think about what you want to say a lot more than which transition animation to use to say it. I found his comment about calendars/scheduling hard to believe. I've done one Apple iCal server deployment, never want to do that again. Google calendar, talks well to itself. Cross scheduling into O365 is a nightmare.

pgcj_poster 7y ago

Well, I'm obviously an idiot. I saw the headline and thought that this was going to be about Emacs being the CEO of a company. Maybe it can't do everything.

qdot76367 7y ago
M-x create-unicorn
gpderetta 7y ago
For what is worth you are not alone.
ryanolsonx 7y ago
M-x run-a-company Also, There is company-mode. ;)
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead https://everything2.com/title/M-x+psychoanalyze-pinhead https://everything2.com/title/M-x+psychoanalyze-pinhead
mhd 7y ago
"Go away, or I shall replace you with a very small elisp snippet!"
m463 7y ago
You could probably customize org mode. call it decentralized-autonomous-org mode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organ...

vincent-toups 7y ago

I'm an absolutely dedicated Emacs user. Cannot imagine moving to another editor. Strangely enough, about 3 years ago I nuked my huge library of custom configurations and complicated Emacs Lisp thingamajigs and just use vanilla Emacs (for the most part) now. The one thing I can't do without is Paredit and ido, but other than that, its very much just a "can't be bothered" thing anymore. Never got into org mode. Most people with big org files that I have met have a serious inability to let go, and their org file is actually just a giant burden and illusion about what they are going to do in life. My organizational philosophy is do one thing at a time until each thing is done and never with a sense of urgency. When the thing is done, stop and think carefully about the next most important thing. Repeat.

AJRF 7y ago

I wasted two years on emacs. I write code, so I thought emacs would be the learn-once-editor-of-a-lifetime but it was just always an exercise in frustation and wrestling bad defaults. If your using it to write code, emacs is, by default, worse than $IDE because its not built for the write, debug, run cycle an IDE excels at. I only mention this because a lot of programmers and hackers seem to hold it up as a hallowed piece of technology and I the elitism makes you want to try it so you can be up there amoung the gods. Everytime I wanted to write code, I would have to cobble together little scripts to shoe horn in build steps and it was always more work than VSCode would make me do. I want to write code, not make my editor work in a sane way. Org mode is oft touted as the 'killer app' - its entirely unportable. Android and iOS don't have clients that are useable by modern standards. You will hear "oh but you can install this plugin and then it will automate converting your todo list to HTML and it can then run that on a serv...". No thanks, I just want to sign in once, and everything to be synced. It doesn't have the idea of syncing and its totally uncollaborative. I can't share it in any meaningful, interactable way. The world has moved on, emacs is a relic of the old world and I finally feel fine in saying that.

lliamander 7y ago
I had spent several years wanting to learn Emacs without actually making much progress. I only really learned Emacs when I had to use a programming language for which Emacs had the best IDE-like experience (Erlang). I think for many niche languages, it's a lot easier (or at least a lot more common) for the developers to offer an Emacs mode than to try and leverage one of the existing large IDEs like Intellij Or Visual Studio. I think it's because, for many projects, a few simple code-aware editing features (syntax highlighting, go-to definition, etc.) and decent command line build tools are enough to suffice[1]. Now that I develop in Java, I definitely use Intellij, but with Emacs bindings. I then use Emacs for note taking, writing shell scripts, etc. I find that this provides me with the best of both worlds in terms of IDE features plus pure text-based productivity (which is where Emacs shines). [1] Visual Studio Code seems like it's taking over the role of "good enough" editor for languages that don't have full-featured IDEs - a place that's previously been dominated by Emacs and Vim. I like VSC well enough, but I don't think it's Emacs bindings are good enough...yet.

iLemming 7y ago

Whatever you do, no matter what field you specialize at, if you use a computer, you need to try to minimize the frustration. Frustration comes (mostly) from repetitive, mundane tasks. Whatever can be automated, should be automated. And Emacs is an excellent tool to help you with that. Yes, it has a steep learning curve, just like any other professional tool. Would you get into a cabin of an industrial excavator and complain about controls being un-intuitive? Or would you attempt to pilot a helicopter without proper training? Why nobody ever said: "ah, the interface of an airliner is cumbersome, we need to make it intuitive for newbies"? There is a strong correlation between the efficiency of a tool and the learning curve. The more efficient is a tool in the professional setting, the steeper is its learning curve. Learn Emacs. But be prepared for a long (maybe a lifetime) journey. Be ready for challenges. I promise you - one day it will change your subjective view of the world.

tossAfterUsing 7y ago
> Or would you attempt to pilot a helicopter without proper training? No... not unless i had to. But where does a coder find emacs gurus to teach them the ropes?
- m463 7y ago
  https://www.emacswiki.org/ https://www.emacswiki.org/
- iLemming 7y ago
  https://www.masteringemacs.org https://www.masteringemacs.org is the best books on Emacs I have ever read. But truly, is just about doing things in Emacs. Start using Emacs and whenever you need to get something done, just google it. After a few days, you'd have sufficient vocabulary to navigate yourself around. Don't be obsessed with configuring and adjusting it to your needs at that point. Jump into that rabbit hole later, when you feel you know what you're doing.

Myrmornis 7y ago

If you're the sort of programmer who enjoys configuring your tools using lisp and devoting a bit of time to it then there's a happy and productive future for you. If you're not, then I wouldn't bother with Emacs. But let's stop discussing Org-mode when we're discussing Emacs. You don't have to appreciate Org-mode to appreciate Emacs. Org is a bit of an antithesis to the typical programmer's mindset -- as programmers we value modularity, whereas Org is a vast universe of amazing kitchen sinkery. It's nice for simple TODO lists and its beautiful table editor (available as M-x orgtbl-mode in any other mode).

dyoo1979 7y ago

I misparsed this as Two Years (With Emacs as a CEO and now CTO) as opposed to Two Years (With Emacs) as a CEO and now CTO. and it greatly confused me: how could Emacs act as a CEO? It's not that smart, is it? (Or conversely, being a CEO can't be that trivial, right?) Perhaps rephrase to: "Using Emacs for two years as a CEO and now CTO". The parse tree is still ambiguous, but a little less so.