3 ms·

Emacs also has Org-mode and org-babel, which can work a lot like a Jupyter notebook, and can even talk to jupyter kernels. I do a lot in Emacs, especially now t

by spudlyo 11mo ago

Emacs also has Org-mode and org-babel, which can work a lot like a Jupyter notebook, and can even talk to jupyter kernels. I do a lot in Emacs, especially now that I'm comfortable with GPTel. I open a poorly aligned, pixelated PDF scan of a 100+ year old Latin textbook in Emacs, mark a start page, end page, and Emacs lisp code shells out to qpdf to create a new smaller pdf from my page range to /tmp, and then adds the resulting PDF to my LLM context. Then my code calls gptel-request with a custom prompt and I get an async elisp callback with the OCR'd PDF now in Emacs' org-mode format, complete with italics, bold, nicely formatted tables, and with all the right macrons over the vowels, which I toss into a scratch buffer. Now that the chapter from my textbook in a markup format, I can select a word, immediately pop up a Latin-to-English dictionary entry or select a whole sentence to hand to an LLM to analyze with a full grammatical breakdown while I'm doing my homework exercises. This 1970s vintage text editor is also a futuristic language learning platform, it blows my mind.

slickytail 11mo ago
As a non Emacs user, I would be really interested in a full writeup of how this works.
- medstrom 11mo ago
  There's kinda not much to it. It's just that you have: 1. a full-fledged programming language 2. no namespacing (nothing is private) 3. no modern GUI concepts to take into account (no CSS `flex-direction`...) 4. no edit-compile-run cycle 5. people have written extensions for many decades 6. people always write extensions with the possibility in mind that their extensions may be extended Then you can probably see how it works, with just your imagination! Of course there's a number of epiphanies that may be needed... Like how the principle "compose many small Unix programs with text as the universal interface" is just like "compose many functions with return values as the universal interface", or that it isn't an editor and more like a terminal (with integrated tmux-like functionality) that you decided to turn into an editor, or that an editor waiting for text entry is just stuck in a `while`-loop of reading the next input character, what even is a shell, what even is a computer, etc etc.
  - kragen 11mo ago
    Yes, but what keystrokes and which packages are you using? Elpa versions or a fork from elsewhere?
- spudlyo 11mo ago
  I'm hoping to prepare a presentation on how I use Emacs for language learning for Emacs Conf 2026. There are a couple of talks for I'm very much looking forward to this year's conference[0] (happening in less than a month!) and specifically this talk[1] on language learning with Emacs. [0]: https://emacsconf.org/2025/talks/ https://emacsconf.org/2025/talks/ [1]: https://emacsconf.org/2025/talks/languages/ https://emacsconf.org/2025/talks/languages/
skeezyjefferson 11mo ago
> This 1970s vintage text editor is also a futuristic language learning platform, it blows my mind. and all it took was a deep understanding of software development, experience with lisp and a bunch of your own time coding and debugging! what a piece of software!
- spudlyo 11mo ago
  Many HN readers grok software development, would likely get a kick out of learning Emacs Lisp, and have time to invest in coding and debugging. Emacs is not as clumsy or random as modern user-hostile software -- it's an elegant tool for a more civilized age, and as such is not for everyone.
  - skeezyjefferson 11mo ago
    > Many HN readers grok software development, would likely get a kick out of learning Emacs Lisp, and have time to invest in coding and debugging. but why would they? what problems are they solving by being able to paste text into your web browsers address bar? or load a pdf into an LLM? or some other incredibly specific-to-you ability youve added? if simply adding a lisp interpreter to a program is enough to impress people, why not add it to something other than 1970s terminal text editor? surely an LLM plus lisp can do more of these inane tricks than a 70s text editor plus lisp?
    - resize2996 11mo ago
      > what problems are they solving programmatic text manipulation
    - OrderlyTiamat 11mo ago
      > or some other incredibly specific-to-you ability youve added? You're saying this with derision, but the ability to quickly add "incredibly specific-to-you" features is precisely what is so cool about it!
    - alfiedotwtf 11mo ago

by spudlyo 11mo ago

slickytail 11mo ago

As a non Emacs user, I would be really interested in a full writeup of how this works.

medstrom 11mo ago
There's kinda not much to it. It's just that you have: 1. a full-fledged programming language 2. no namespacing (nothing is private) 3. no modern GUI concepts to take into account (no CSS `flex-direction`...) 4. no edit-compile-run cycle 5. people have written extensions for many decades 6. people always write extensions with the possibility in mind that their extensions may be extended Then you can probably see how it works, with just your imagination! Of course there's a number of epiphanies that may be needed... Like how the principle "compose many small Unix programs with text as the universal interface" is just like "compose many functions with return values as the universal interface", or that it isn't an editor and more like a terminal (with integrated tmux-like functionality) that you decided to turn into an editor, or that an editor waiting for text entry is just stuck in a `while`-loop of reading the next input character, what even is a shell, what even is a computer, etc etc.
- kragen 11mo ago
  Yes, but what keystrokes and which packages are you using? Elpa versions or a fork from elsewhere?
spudlyo 11mo ago
I'm hoping to prepare a presentation on how I use Emacs for language learning for Emacs Conf 2026. There are a couple of talks for I'm very much looking forward to this year's conference[0] (happening in less than a month!) and specifically this talk[1] on language learning with Emacs. [0]: https://emacsconf.org/2025/talks/ https://emacsconf.org/2025/talks/ [1]: https://emacsconf.org/2025/talks/languages/ https://emacsconf.org/2025/talks/languages/

skeezyjefferson 11mo ago

> This 1970s vintage text editor is also a futuristic language learning platform, it blows my mind. and all it took was a deep understanding of software development, experience with lisp and a bunch of your own time coding and debugging! what a piece of software!

spudlyo 11mo ago
Many HN readers grok software development, would likely get a kick out of learning Emacs Lisp, and have time to invest in coding and debugging. Emacs is not as clumsy or random as modern user-hostile software -- it's an elegant tool for a more civilized age, and as such is not for everyone.
- skeezyjefferson 11mo ago
  > Many HN readers grok software development, would likely get a kick out of learning Emacs Lisp, and have time to invest in coding and debugging. but why would they? what problems are they solving by being able to paste text into your web browsers address bar? or load a pdf into an LLM? or some other incredibly specific-to-you ability youve added? if simply adding a lisp interpreter to a program is enough to impress people, why not add it to something other than 1970s terminal text editor? surely an LLM plus lisp can do more of these inane tricks than a 70s text editor plus lisp?
  - resize2996 11mo ago
    > what problems are they solving programmatic text manipulation
  - OrderlyTiamat 11mo ago
    > or some other incredibly specific-to-you ability youve added? You're saying this with derision, but the ability to quickly add "incredibly specific-to-you" features is precisely what is so cool about it!
  - alfiedotwtf 11mo ago