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The "toil" is anything involved in software development that's boring and repetitive. There's a computer right there that's for that stuf. My biggest frustratio

The "toil" is anything involved in software development that's boring and repetitive. There's a computer right there that's for that stuf. My biggest frustrations come when I'm prevented from bringing the power of that computer to bear on a problem that isn't one of the ones envisioned or prioritised by the makers of my tools, and they didn't think to make it easy for me to extend them myself. Emacs isn't an editor, it's a (very) rapid development environment for textual UI applications. Text editing is a large class of such applications but there are plenty of others. Case in point: at work we use a job scheduler with a horrid web UI. I knocked something together in a couple of hours in emacs that eliminated that pain from my life and allowed me to explore our environments much more freely. If more of my colleagues used emacs they could share in the joy. I don't have anywhere near the time I would need to make something they could use without it. Meetings, reporting and "social stuff" isn't much of an issue for me as I've been very clear in every interview I've had that I have no desire to take on managerial responsibilities at any stage of my career.

oblio 4y ago
> Case in point: at work we use a job scheduler with a horrid web UI. I knocked something together in a couple of hours in emacs that eliminated that pain from my life and allowed me to explore our environments much more freely. If more of my colleagues used emacs they could share in the joy. I don't have anywhere near the time I would need to make something they could use without it. Other devs would (and regularly do) just whip up something using shell scripts and command line tools, or write their own CLI/TUI/GUI/web service/app for the exact same thing. There are myriad viable ways to automate things. > Meetings, reporting and "social stuff" isn't much of an issue for me as I've been very clear in every interview I've had that I have no desire to take on managerial responsibilities at any stage of my career. Meetings, reporting and "social stuff" happen as an individual contributor because you need to sync with customers, peers, bosses, plus customers and bosses also expect you to report your progress. Social stuff isn't going out to lunch or dinner, it' just regular interaction or support. I'm glad that you get what you want, not everyone does. I'm just pointing out that there are many ways to happy coding and Emacs is just one of them.
- omnicognate 4y ago
  A needlessly crabby response. I don't think anybody claimed emacs was the only way to code happily. I was just explaining what the "toil" is in my life and how emacs materially alleviates it. The examples you give don't, in my experience, allow a useful interactive UI to be knocked together anywhere near as quickly as it can be done by an experienced user in emacs. YMMV - use whatever tools you like and manage your career how you please.
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago
  > Other devs would (and regularly do) just whip up something using shell scripts and command line tools, or write their own CLI/TUI/GUI/web service/app for the exact same thing. The difference is time of development and flexibility of tge emacs result using the same universal plain text interface you use in emacs every day for me.
  - oblio 4y ago
    True, but you're giving up composability outside of Emacs. Think of CI/CD pipelines, for example. I mean, you could probably run Emacs as part of your CI/CD pipeline, but it would be a bit... weird?

oblio 4y ago

> Case in point: at work we use a job scheduler with a horrid web UI. I knocked something together in a couple of hours in emacs that eliminated that pain from my life and allowed me to explore our environments much more freely. If more of my colleagues used emacs they could share in the joy. I don't have anywhere near the time I would need to make something they could use without it. Other devs would (and regularly do) just whip up something using shell scripts and command line tools, or write their own CLI/TUI/GUI/web service/app for the exact same thing. There are myriad viable ways to automate things. > Meetings, reporting and "social stuff" isn't much of an issue for me as I've been very clear in every interview I've had that I have no desire to take on managerial responsibilities at any stage of my career. Meetings, reporting and "social stuff" happen as an individual contributor because you need to sync with customers, peers, bosses, plus customers and bosses also expect you to report your progress. Social stuff isn't going out to lunch or dinner, it' just regular interaction or support. I'm glad that you get what you want, not everyone does. I'm just pointing out that there are many ways to happy coding and Emacs is just one of them.

omnicognate 4y ago
A needlessly crabby response. I don't think anybody claimed emacs was the only way to code happily. I was just explaining what the "toil" is in my life and how emacs materially alleviates it. The examples you give don't, in my experience, allow a useful interactive UI to be knocked together anywhere near as quickly as it can be done by an experienced user in emacs. YMMV - use whatever tools you like and manage your career how you please.
ParetoOptimal 4y ago
> Other devs would (and regularly do) just whip up something using shell scripts and command line tools, or write their own CLI/TUI/GUI/web service/app for the exact same thing. The difference is time of development and flexibility of tge emacs result using the same universal plain text interface you use in emacs every day for me.
- oblio 4y ago
  True, but you're giving up composability outside of Emacs. Think of CI/CD pipelines, for example. I mean, you could probably run Emacs as part of your CI/CD pipeline, but it would be a bit... weird?