3 ms·

> I am convinced the Unix way (do one thing and do it well, connect them via pipes and text) is the way to go. I was convinced too, but after the amount of wor

> I am convinced the Unix way (do one thing and do it well, connect them via pipes and text) is the way to go. I was convinced too, but after the amount of work required to convince terminal, tmux and neovim to be friends I thought “It would be nice if all of it would be in one sane configuration language and actually debuggable!” These days, if I need unix tools (use rg a lot) I plug them into emacs.

iLemming 1y ago
Yup, exactly this. The Unix philosophy has limits - text pipes work great for linear data processing, but often break down for interactive stateful workflows. Many modern tasks require rich data structures, not just text streams. Also, context switching between tools loses state and mental flow. Advocates of "Unix philosophy" often lay it out as if it's the exact opposite of the "Emacs way", which is pretty inaccurate - Emacs can actually be viewed as "Unix philosophy+" - it does do one thing well: text manipulation+extensibility. You can still use Unix tools from within Emacs - shell commands, compilation, etc. Moreover - you can pipe the result of a command into an Emacs buffer and the content of that buffer into another command, etc. And unlike pure terminal workflows, you gain persistent state, shared buffers and unified keybindings across all operations. Unix philosophy is brilliant for system administration and data processing, I would never try to convince anyone not to use, e.g. Neovim, I myself reach for it when I see the need. Emacs philosophy is brilliant, for example, for knowledge work and creative tasks, like the example in the OP's blogpost. These tools - Emacs, Neovim, and Unix - embody some of the greatest ideas in computer science throughout its relatively short history. One would have to be extremely short-sighted not to recognize the immense value in any of them. Frankly, mastering all three of them may make you feel like the Chuck Norris of computing.

iLemming 1y ago

Yup, exactly this. The Unix philosophy has limits - text pipes work great for linear data processing, but often break down for interactive stateful workflows. Many modern tasks require rich data structures, not just text streams. Also, context switching between tools loses state and mental flow. Advocates of "Unix philosophy" often lay it out as if it's the exact opposite of the "Emacs way", which is pretty inaccurate - Emacs can actually be viewed as "Unix philosophy+" - it does do one thing well: text manipulation+extensibility. You can still use Unix tools from within Emacs - shell commands, compilation, etc. Moreover - you can pipe the result of a command into an Emacs buffer and the content of that buffer into another command, etc. And unlike pure terminal workflows, you gain persistent state, shared buffers and unified keybindings across all operations. Unix philosophy is brilliant for system administration and data processing, I would never try to convince anyone not to use, e.g. Neovim, I myself reach for it when I see the need. Emacs philosophy is brilliant, for example, for knowledge work and creative tasks, like the example in the OP's blogpost. These tools - Emacs, Neovim, and Unix - embody some of the greatest ideas in computer science throughout its relatively short history. One would have to be extremely short-sighted not to recognize the immense value in any of them. Frankly, mastering all three of them may make you feel like the Chuck Norris of computing.