Emacs and agency

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Two things I really like about Emacs are its longevity, and the agency it gives you. (In a way I guess longevity is a type of agency - you are not forced to stop using something when it stops being maintained).

Steve Yegge recently wrote about how "[b]ackwards compatibility keeps systems alive and relevant for decades" and mentions Emacs as a prime example.

He also has a great tl;dr of Emacs:

GNU Emacs […] is a sort of hybrid between Windows Notepad, a monolithic-kernel operating system, and the International Space Station. It’s a bit tricky to explain, but in a nutshell, Emacs is a platform written in 1976 (yes, almost half a century ago) for writing software to make you more productive, masquerading as a text editor.

Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy is Killing You

BSAG recently wrote about how easy it is to customise Emacs for your own needs:

One of the delightful and surprising things about Emacs, as you get to know it better, is the depth of customisation which is available. Emacs can be a completely different editor for different people and for different purposes. Being able to tweak things on the fly and try them out before you commit to them, or even as a temporary fix to solve the particular problem you have right now, is empowering.

BSAG » Advising Emacs

Emacs is not perfect, and the barrier to entry is for sure a problem (there's an epic thread on the org-roam Discourse discussing that). But it's got some amazing qualities.

1. Elsewhere

1.1. In my garden

Notes that link to this note (AKA backlinks).

1.2. In the Agora

1.3. Mentions

This page last updated: 2023-03-17 Fri 16:15. Map. Recent changes. Source. Peer Production License.