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I have officially retired from Emacs
- turtleyacht 5mo agoWould have liked to see author's opinion on Spacemacs, if possible.
- iLemming 5mo agoWhy? What makes Spacemacs so different/special that it requires some kind of distinct opinion that would be extremely valuable? Spacemacs is the same old Emacs with some out-of-the box customizations atop - there's nothing fundamentally different about it.
- turtleyacht 5mo agoSearched by tags and found author may try Evil [1], but unsure if they followed through. You're right Spacemacs is essentially a batteries-included version of Emacs. [1] https://nullprogram.com/blog/2017/04/01/ https://nullprogram.com/blog/2017/04/01/
- iLemming 5mo agoSpacemacs "is not batteries-included" version of Emacs. You say that and people may get confused. It's not a "different version" of Emacs, it's not Emacs at all - it's an Emacs config you can configure - a meta config. It is more like a collection of recipes you can run on Emacs. That is an important distinction. Hence my question, what Wellons (who's a seasoned veteran of Emacs) could ever say anything about Spacemacs (or Doom - which in this context makes no difference)? What kind of views one would be interested to hear? Using the Space key as the "Lead key", or something about local-leader key; or vim-navigation/Evil in general; or modules/layers architecture of Emacs config? He said in that post you shared that he believed he'd eventually end up using Evil - he doesn't need to use Spacemacs for that. Spacemacs is great for beginners, for people who don't want to deal with learning Emacs native bindings - they are legit confusing. For someone like Chris, it makes little sense, they'd probably would just add modal editing packages to their existing config. Even though Spacemacs and Doom are still valuable - one can find many interesting gems there. Also, these projects may give you a good discipline for structuring your keys mnemonically - everything files related would be at "SPC f", search stuff on "SPF s", etc.
- TFNA 5mo agoThe author is the developer of the RSS reader Elfeed, which a lot of Emacs users use several times a day. Though the article talks about a vibe-coded wxWidgets-based GUI application called Elfeed2 that he wrote as a replacement, Emacs afficionados would be loath to leave their Emacs environment and switch to that. Hopefully Emacs elfeed finds a new maintainer.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- schmooser 5mo agoI tried Elfeed2 immediately after the announcement, well, it's nowhere near the experience of elfeed in Emacs. Elfeed2 doesn't load content for most of my feeds, elfeed does. I also integrated elfeed-tube, which shows previews of videos and their transcripts, making it no-brainer to get a summary without watching the whole video.
- Avamander 5mo ago> I tried Elfeed2 immediately after the announcement, well, it's nowhere near the experience of elfeed in Emacs. Isn't that kinda expected with a new software release, that it doesn't have a 100% feature parity?
- hegstal 5mo agoOn the other hand, given there is prior art in Elfeed, why wouldn't it rapidly converge on feature parity?
- Pay08 5mo agoProbably because it's closer to a reimplementation than anything else, and in Emacs you can use libraries with much less friction than in self-contained languages.
- rgoulter 5mo ago
- farfatched 5mo agoA big loss for the Emacs community! emacs-aio is great! I see the author is spring cleaning: > I've turned over a new leaf (no more Openbox, Tridactyl, Xorg, xterm), and so some of these things I no longer use. On Linux I now use KDE on Wayland with a minimally-configured browser. I miss the power user features, but I do not miss the friction and constant maintenance. https://github.com/skeeto/dotfiles/commit/df275005769b65461811fa9b9903ed0976088bbf https://github.com/skeeto/dotfiles/commit/df275005769b654618... > I am no longer using Mutt nor running my own mail server. In general less terminal stuff for me. https://github.com/skeeto/dotfiles/commit/e331e367c75f66aaa9d544f51a4e28df15b49f1c https://github.com/skeeto/dotfiles/commit/e331e367c75f66aaa9... LLMs have inspired a similar change in me: with a big change in how I work, I feel I can and should be more flexible with adopting new tech, which involving freeing myself of previous choices.
- bovine3dom 5mo agoI wonder what friction/maintenance he found with Tridactyl For me the friction always comes when I try to use the internet without it
- blourvim 5mo agocool to see you in the wild, for me, it does work out of the box however, some sites will break or have too complex of a navigation, especially with iframes. and will have to swap to a mouse which is a bummer, which I understand is an inherent limitation of the tech, since web is not built today to do that. solid extension, big fan
- krautsauer 5mo agoWe're talking about https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tridactyl-vim/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tridactyl-vim...? One example: it disables the default Ctrl-F search function but its own search function is subpar (no match counts/hlsearch, e.g.) and often clashes with website's built-in search (on Github, e.g.). It doesn't work on the default newtab either, and changing the default newtab somehow makes opening a new tab slower (that's FF's fault, I guess)…
- lowsong 5mo ago> With my newly-acquired superpowers I could knock out the last two pieces in a few days’ work From the linked post:[0] > I left an employer that is years behind adopting AI to one actively supporting and encouraging it. As of March, in my professional capacity I no longer write code myself. My current situation was unimaginable to me only a year ago. Like it or not, this is the future of software engineering. Turns out I like it, and having tasted the future I don’t want to go back to the old ways. It's deeply distressing to watch people fall into AI psychosis. Being smart, accomplished, or experienced is no defence. After the bubble pops and the industry realises the damage these tools can do to people, folks like the author will have to confront that they were taken in by a lie. Many won't be able to confront that. [0]: https://nullprogram.com/blog/2026/03/29/ https://nullprogram.com/blog/2026/03/29/
- iLemming 5mo ago> Being smart, accomplished, or experienced is no defence. Perhaps you're confusing "not using AI" with "not being dependent on AI", those are very different things. The edge isn't from avoidance, it's from using AI as leverage on top of real skill. A strong developer + AI beats a strong developer alone, and massively beats a weak developer + AI. The edge doesn't come from avoiding a tool - it comes from being the kind of person who doesn't need it but uses it anyway. That's leverage. Refusing to use it is just leaving leverage on the table to make a philosophical point. > After the bubble pops People like Chris (who is enormously capable engineer) would just move onto different tools, different techniques and paradigms. That is the essence of being a software developer - many of us choose this path specifically because it forces you to learn something new, every single day. That is (I suspect) also another reason why Wellons decided to migrate away from Emacs - he just learned it so deeply, perhaps it's no longer giving him the satisfaction of learning. Which to be honest is hard to believe - Emacs is a boundless playground, there's always something new to learn there.
- computably 5mo ago> It's deeply distressing to watch people fall into AI psychosis. It's unclear what you're saying here... Yes, AI-induced psychosis is a real problem and the frontier labs' mitigations are ineffective, to put it mildly. But using AI as a coding tool doesn't have anything to do with psychosis.
- mattdeboard 5mo agoI've been retired from emacs for several years now but I'm still looking for a magit replacement that is independent of my editor. Vscode's magit extension is really good but i split my time between IntelliJ and vscode. Anyone know of something like this?
- cmrdporcupine 5mo agohttps://github.com/altsem/gitu https://github.com/altsem/gitu
- throw567643u8 5mo agoIt doesn't have the (any?) diffing capabilities of magit, so it's not usable for me yet.
- cmrdporcupine 5mo agoFWIW the lem editor (basically emacs in common lisp) has its own version of magit, called legit. https://github.com/lem-project/lem/blob/main/extensions/legit/README.md https://github.com/lem-project/lem/blob/main/extensions/legi... But I guess if you're leaving GNU emacs, you're probably not eager to jump into another emacsen.
- throw567643u8 5mo agoThanks, I left due to rsi from the chords.
- cmrdporcupine 5mo agoI mean, both have the ability to do modal or CUA combinations instead.
- throw567643u8 5mo agoI know, I tried modal emacs for a while there.
- fazalNiazi 5mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- shaky-carrousel 5mo ago> Like it or not, this is the future of software engineering. For you, perhaps.
- compiler-devel 5mo agoWhat is the future of software engineering in the age of LLMs?
- anthk 5mo agoTo toss them because the level of damage they have done it's astounding. Tons of companies are still fixing the losses from vibe coding. What we need it's better code analizers, lexers and the like. And LLM's are practically the opposite because they can't never, ever give a concise answer by design. Worse, they rot over time. https://smsk.dev/2026/04/26/ai-cannot-self-improve-and-math-behind-proves-it/ https://smsk.dev/2026/04/26/ai-cannot-self-improve-and-math-...
- anthonyrstevens 5mo ago>> the level of damage they have done it's astounding. Tons of companies are still fixing the losses from vibe coding. This sounds like unsubstantiated hyperbole - can we keep HN grounded in reality, please? My alternative hypothesis - you don't like agentic coding or maybe LLMs in general. Not helpful for the group.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- nh23423fefe 5mo agoThat link doesn't support your statement. It's analysis is bad and irrelevant.
- weakfish 5mo agoWhy is the analysis bad? Burden is on you to explain that.
- jeffrallen 5mo agoDude only made it 20 years with Emacs. Weak. I've been using it since 1994. Whoa, shit, I'm old.
- fzil 5mo agoDang, your emacs config is older than me.
- fastaguy88 5mo agoLugaru (??) emacs (epsilon) on CP/M in the early 1980’s
- 1313ed01 5mo agohttps://lugaru.com/ https://lugaru.com/ They are still around. Most recent epsilon update was last month (but no real release since 2020?). It was my first experience with emacs as well, but in MS-DOS, ca 1990. Did not know there was a CP/M version.
- NetMageSCW 5mo agoSame on DOS. It is still available today. (Epsilon is a reimplementation of the emacs concept with a C based extension language.)
- jnpnj 5mo agoI was wondering how people feel about this trend. LLM allow you to free yourself from foundations (frameworks, programmable programs) to just generate any support layer you want from old or new libs. This is all very understandable.. yet I find it a loss, in the lisp world, having a core model and semantics shared by all the upper layers means ease of reuse (for instance people leverage emacs calc classes in other places), llm allows for easier fragmentation..
- Avamander 5mo ago> llm allows for easier fragmentation.. I also suspect it allows easier consolidation. Moving from a deprecated lib to a new (and better) one for example. Implementations will likely homogenize a bit as well, but on the other hand boy am I glad not to see an increasing amount of bizarre naïve hand-rolled implementations for some things.
- jb1991 5mo agoI used emacs full-time for many many years. Then I switched to Vim or other editors with Vim modes, also for many years. I have to be honest, I don’t see a particularly clear winner between them. Model editing is a bit unusual in many ways. There are some things that it certainly makes easier, but I personally found that the overall process of editing and writing code in real time for me was more efficient in a single mode emacs.
- parasti 5mo agoMy vim muscle memory has paid off more for me than my emacs muscle memory. Emacs was the better editor, though. Anything that doesn't have Vimscript is an automatic winner IMO.
- kstrauser 5mo agoI use ^a to go to the beginning of a line and ^e to go to the end nearly everywhere. Many Emacs keystrokes are so pervasive that they're not often thought of as Emacs keystrokes.
- happysadpanda2 5mo agoAren't they actually readline keystrokes, and emacs is "readline-aware"?
- wwarner 5mo agoMy usage of emacs is so vim-like that I’ve tried switching a few times. Vim is definitely faster, and overlays and cursor placement is much simpler and more intuitive. But there were still feature gaps and configuration issues that prevented full adoption.
- fingerlocks 5mo agocan you elaborate? Heavy vim user here, have considered using emacs in vim mode to quell a decades long nagging curiosity. Just need a compelling nudge.
- cyphenatic 5mo ago+1
- jwrallie 5mo agoCheck out Doom Emacs if you are looking for a good starting point. The defaults make sense coming from Vim.
- MiiMe19 5mo agoI don't know how much this applies to everyone else, but the ability to display images inline is really nice for notetaking. I cannot write properly, so org-mode (a notetaking tool that can export to a variety of formats) with embedded rendered latex equations makes it really easy to take notes and write things up in a plaintext format without needing to export every 30 seconds to view equations. The ability to embed code that can actually run is also very nice.
- kqr 5mo agoEmacs is primarily a platform for developing Lisp applications. Lisp applications are immensely hackable, meaning an Emacs configuration can be tailored in detail to specific desires. There is also an ecosystem of applications for Emacs that are really good. They don't require you to use Emacs as your editor (you can run, say, Magit as a standalone instance) but if you do, they integrate really well with each other.
- 5mo ago
- prewett 5mo agoIf the author is on, I'm curious why he chose wxWidgets instead of Qt; I'd be surprised if it is that much lighter weight than Qt. (I even wrote my own cross-platform toolkit with "more lightweight" as one of the reasons, and if you use all the features, it weighs in about the same size as Qt, I think.) Also, the last time I used wxWidgets, many years ago, it had a clunky MFC style to it, limited feature, along with a rather Windowsy look and feel. Have those things changed?
- chroma_zone 5mo agoMy experience with wxWidgets based apps is that they tend to not handle DPI scaling well. Audacity is a good example, IIRC that's one of the reasons they're moving to Qt.
- em-bee 5mo agodid you publish it? i'd use wxWidgets because it is the only cross platform toolkit i am aware of. if you can share your alternative then maybe this could help some people.
- shevy-java 5mo agoBut ... why?
- fridder 5mo agomeanwhile I've just started learning it after being in the GUI for decades
- orsenthil 5mo agoOn the topic of Emacs. I have long struggled to learn emacs and use it effectively. Just for the fun it, If I were to use claude as I my teacher, how can I ask it to teach me to use Emacs? I don't like to ask questions and go back to try it. I want it to be a drive that will assist me with the usage. Has anyone tried such an approach to learn emacs?
- kstrauser 5mo agoThere's a nice built-in tutorial for actually editing text with it. Press control-h then t to launch it. But that's just for using the editor. For actually configuring it, I've found that Opus 4.6 (inside Droid) is exceptionally good at tweaking my init.el. Yesterday I typed "Set the default YAML indentation to 2 spaces." It came up with (use-package yaml-mode :defer t :config (setq yaml-indent-offset 2)) (add-hook 'yaml-ts-mode-hook (lambda () (require 'yaml-mode) (setq-local indent-line-function #'yaml-indent-line))) Now I can hit tab to indent YAML by 2 spaces, and I learned a little in the process. I'm delighted with this setup.
- orsenthil 5mo ago> I've found that Opus 4.6 (inside Droid) What does (inside Droid) mean ? Do you use any package to integrate to claude code in emacs?
- kstrauser 5mo agoDroid is my employer's alternative to Claude Code, which I personally prefer. But the general point is that LLMs are really good at Emacs Lisp these days. I've started using Droid inside Emacs via the agent-shell package I learned about here a few days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45561672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45561672). It handles quite a few other agents, too.
- kqr 5mo agoMy advice is to use a base, vanilla Emacs for a little while to learn where its boundaries go, before installing a bunch of modes. That makes it easier to troubleshoot problems later.
- Beijinger 5mo agoEmacs is an outstanding, extremely powerful piece of software. It just lacks a decent editor.
- michaelsbradley 5mo agoevil-mode
- kqr 5mo agoI know this is the joke, and I know Evil is the jokey reply, but ... both sides of the joke carry a grain of truth, as good jokes do. I know a lot of people become comfortable with the default editing tools in Emacs, and many of them are good, but on the whole, vanilla Emacs does not ship with a great editor. The Vim family makes up amazingly well designed editors. Evil is a Vim implementation in Emacs. It is the best of both worlds, and not just on paper. It actually works.
- iLemming 5mo agoNot ever remotely true. Emacs has one of the best plain and structured text editing ever known to humans. Buffer abstraction alone is a godsend. Indirect buffer editing allows you to edit any piece independently - e.g. I can edit code comments treating them as completely different thing - with different highlighting, fonts, behaviors, etc. In what editor can you peak&edit folded text without unfolding it? Answer - only Emacs. Ask someone who needs to write texts in Arabic or Hebrew - Emacs has far, far better RTL support. Org-mode is just light-years ahead of anything else, nothing even comes close to it. So, your stupid joke (if you really believe it) is on you, truly.
- openclawclub 5mo ago[flagged]
- kqr 5mo agoThe previous post alludes to Evil being the long term plan. That seems sensible: it ought to be easier to use an implementation of Vim in Emacs rather than port much of Emacs to independent applications. Yet the author ended up doing the latter and it's not really made clear why. Why?
- zingar 5mo agoAbsolutely baffled too. I was expecting that they preferred the vim philosophy of small tools that do one thing well, but no. So you like modal editing, well you’ve got it right there in emacs. Why that of all the potential gripes you might have with emacs?
- Alex63 5mo agoJust a guess, but I think the answer may be in another post he links to. He wants to move to a tool that will work out of the box. He's deliberately moving away from an editing tool that is super-customized. That seems to be consistent with other changes he is making in his work habits. Personally, I can relate to this. I don't edit very often these days and each time I do it seems like I have to do a bunch of dot file and package maintenance.
- blks 5mo agoBig loss, sorry to see him getting taken by the hype and stopping doing software engineering.
- whacked_new 5mo agoI work a lot in the terminal and so vim/nvim is what I open the most, but the rise of LLMs has actually increased my use of Emacs recently. It fits in a niche of rapid interactive text processing. For example, I just found myself having to sort through a bunch of markdown files in a directory. While a tool like ranger could give dynamic preview, I wanted the preview to work with a todo list so I could mark which files still remain. In the past, coding up this interaction would be a chore, but Gemini makes quick work of the elisp. After a minute, it's doing exactly what I need: cursor on markdown link, open to right pane, C-c C-c toggles the todo item and closes the pane; C-u C-c C-o opens in obsidian. This functionality can be achieved in any number of ways but Emacs is fantastically well suited for a problem like this.