EmacsConf 2020 Talks

https://emacsconf.org/2020/talks/

by AlexeyBrin • 6 years ago

386 79 6 years ago

emacsconf.org

Kaze404• 6 years ago

Wow, I had no idea this was a thing. Looks like I have a lot of material to go through. Thank you for posting.

nahuel0x2• 6 years ago

No talk on lsp-mode / eglot?

jrockway2• 6 years ago

What's there to talk about? You install it and suddenly you have the same programming language features that everyone else does, but in an editor that can actually manipulate text.

zarkov992• 6 years ago

Do you really? I have been trying to get it to run properly for years for c++ and I found it buggy to the point of uselessness.

nahuel0x2• 6 years ago

For me it was easy to configure and use. But IMHO is a big game changer for Emacs, so was surprised not seeing a talk about it in the conf.

hereisdx• 6 years ago

Q. Would you mind sharing your Emacs configuration files?

Richard Stallman: Configuration files are personal and will not be shared.

This cracked me up! xD

neilv3• 6 years ago

It can be (consider that some Emacs power-users used to do most things in Emacs, including email, Usenet, etc.), but this reminded me of something...

Many years ago, some new founder I knew asked to see my elaborate .emacs file. I was reluctant, because it had some slightly sensitive info in it , as well as unreleased bits I might turn into packages. But he reassured me he just wanted to see how I'd done some things, to inform some non-Emacs thing he was about to build, and he'd keep it private.

Sometime later, one of the developers at his startup happened to mention that "everyone" uses my .emacs file.

Today, that person I let see my very personal .emacs has sold the original startup, and is CEO of a different business you've heard of, but I received nothing from the indiscretion. :)

downrightmike• 6 years ago

Wow, send a bill to the company and ask them to renew their site license for the emacs config. Or opensource what you can of it and remove the competitive advantage they have.

harrygeez• 6 years ago

Are you swedish by any chance?

npsimons2• 6 years ago

(consider that some Emacs power-users used to do most things in Emacs, including email, Usenet, etc.)

We still do. Consider that I have coordinates for weather in my .emacs, and yes, I should probably externalize that, but FFS, sharing my own incredibly personalized and personal configuration files was not first on my mind when I did that.

You want snippets, that will be useful to someone other than me? Fine. But there's no contradiction in arguing for openness in infrastructure and privacy in personal affairs.

gumby• 6 years ago

EMACS was developed on ITS, a multi user timesharing operating system with no security. I developed a complex init file (in TECO of course) which was a compiled module in my home directory.

One day I changed something in an incompatible way and received complaints. Unbeknownst to me there was a community of people who linked (symlinked) directly to my init file and whose workflows were disrupted by my change.

EdwardCoffin• 6 years ago

Were there any interesting consequences? Like did you consequently avoid making disrupting changes to your own init file, or did people agree to make copies instead of rely on links?

lebaux• 6 years ago

Folks sharing conf files are the reason I was able to switch to linux on desktop (i3wm).

alexott• 6 years ago

I simply separate user/machine specific things into separate files, and don’t commit them to public repository (https://github.com/alexott/emacs-configs - it wasn’t updated for a long time, and it needs to be rewritten to modern stuff - first line was written 25 years ago)... But this may allow sharing, and even contributions...

a_e_k• 6 years ago

I take advantage of the fact that a .emacs file has higher precedence than a .emacs.d/init.el file for this. All the common stuff lives in the .emacs.d directory and is under source control. The little bit of work/machine specific stuff I have goes in the .emacs file, which wraps a

    (load "~/.emacs.d/init")

My home machines don't need anything special, so there's no .emacs file and the .emacs.d/init.el file just gets loaded directly.

submeta• 6 years ago

Wonderful topics. Lot of videos to watch. - Thanks to all the contributors.

haakonhr• 6 years ago

I also discovered this a few days before the event. Great stuff! Following it live was really cool. Special shoutout to `andrea with "Your Code as a Crime Scene/Analyze code quality through Emacs"

bitwize• 6 years ago

The talk about gaming in Emacs is particularly interesting to me, because I think there are possibilities here that haven't been adequately explored. With XELB, the X client library used by EXWM, it's possible for Emacs to quickly draw arbitrary geometry at screen resolution without a C or dynamic library extension. Some testing I did when I fooled around with it showed that it would be fast enough to use as a simple 2D game engine.

monroewalker• 6 years ago

Thanks for sharing! For anyone that's gone through these, which are most worth watching? I haven't made emacs a regular part of my work yet, but I'm always curious to see what's going on in the community for it.

mark_h• 6 years ago

I haven't watched any myself yet, but there's a thread on r/emacs on just that question: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/k77k6a/what_are_your...

tmalsburg2• 6 years ago

Over the years I have exchanged messages and worked with many of the speakers at this conference, but I have never had the opportunity to meet any of them in real life. It is so nice to finally see their faces and hear their voices. Thanks, Covid, I suppose.

sachac• 6 years ago

You might like the videos from last year's conference too, then! =) https://emacsconf.org/2019/talks/

sjg007• 6 years ago

I never used emacs beyond simple text editing. I’ve seen people do quite a lot of cool stuff with emacs though so I do want to start using it. Are there any good tutorials to look at? I’m mostly interested in the software dev pipeline.

diehunde• 6 years ago

Great to see a couple of talks on org. I know a couple people (including myself) who don't use Emacs as a main editor but use org to manage tasks, ideas, projects, etc.

rasengan0• 6 years ago

Big fan of Sacha Chua: much to learn by way of emacs, productivity and org life https://sachachua.com/blog/emacs/

na85• 6 years ago

I've been dabbling with emacs for a number of years now, and I felt that my init/config file was pretty hefty at (currently an all-time high of) 186 lines. Then a few years ago I encountered Sacha's and my mouth literally dropped. I've always wanted to ask, and here's as good a place as any. Is her config an outlier in its size and breadth? I feel like it almost has to be.

metroholografix• 6 years ago

I've been using Emacs for ~15 years and my configuration is more than 20k lines of code that I've personally written plus comments. Occasionally, I will factor out parts of my config and release them as Emacs Lisp libraries.

I would expect any heavy Emacs user, fully immersed in the Emacs-is-an-extensible-environment paradigm to operate in similar fashion.

jasomill• 6 years ago

Ten years and just north of 1,000 lines of self-written code; 1,500 if you count the ~300 lines of custom.el and ~200 for a hastily copy/pasted copy of find-dired hacked to do Spotlight searches.

To be fair, I try to go through it every year or two and mercilessly cull everything I haven't recently used, and refactor what I do; including everything that has been in my init at some point or another would easily double, and possibly even triple, this number.

dakra• 6 years ago

If you live in Emacs and interacting with it every day there is always something to tweak and it just grows organically. I don't think a big config file is an outlier. Not because it's necessary but simply because it's so much fun to scratch a small itch with a few lines of elisp which you couldn't do in other editors.

My config[0] for example is 10k lines with >1k commits.

[0] https://github.com/dakra/dmacs

auganov• 6 years ago

Keep in mind the org stuff makes that config file look much bigger than it really is.

Though, 186 does sound surprisingly low if this is truly just 186 lines applied to vanilla Emacs.

My bindings file is a little over 200 (one binding per line). custom-set-variables block is 170. Total across a few files is around 3-4k. But some of that is config code, patches/modified versions of functions from other packages and simple wrappers. It accrues rather easily. Actual original code that does something non-trivial is probably below 1k.

tarboreus• 6 years ago

My config is sitting at 2046 lines or so. Not as tidy as one of these published configs, but also not a mess either.

bloopernova• 6 years ago

Mine is about 6 months old, after I switched from Spacemacs to Vanilla Emacs. Currently wc says there are 487 lines in init.el, and 37 in custom.el.

I don't do the org-babel->tangle->init.el thing (yet?). That would probably triple the amount of text involved.

I do have a bunch of nice-to-have todo items that would mean writing code for my Emacs instance. If I had to guess I'd say it would add another 1,000 to 2,000 lines somewhere.

I also share my config between 3 different operating systems; Mac, Windows, and Linux. So a small amount of those lines are just "(when os-is-mac)(when os-is-win)(when os-is-gnu)" choices.

justinhj2• 6 years ago

Your config should be as big as you need it to be. I’ve been using Emacs for 20 years and I tend to use features with default keybindings and stick to a small number. There’s no right way to do it

zascrash2• 6 years ago

I would like to use emacs and org mode to organise my life. But I think without it being useful on mobile phone, for me is a no go. I will keep using Google calendar for now.

nunodonato• 6 years ago

you can use it on your phone. I stored my org files in dropbox, and used Orgzly[0] to do the same in the phone.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orgzly

zascrash2• 6 years ago

I will check that. I appreciate everyone for their replies. Is there anything like that for iPhone?

BoysenberryPi• 6 years ago

I use Orgzly for my phone.

http://www.orgzly.com/

jcynix• 6 years ago

You can install Termux on Android devices and use Emacs there. I use it on more or less read only on the smartphone and actively on a tablet. Both rsync with my desktop from inside Termux.

And Orgzly has already been mentioned.

Wildgoose2• 6 years ago

I do this on a Gemini PDA-phone with an integrated keyboard. It's great!

rethab• 6 years ago

Do you know about organice? https://organice.200ok.ch/

g8oz• 6 years ago

I want that in a desktop Electron app.

ashton314• 6 years ago

I was very much in the same boat. I’m on iOS, and found beorg, and it is simply splendid. Very active development, powerful customization available, etc.

Check it out: https://beorgapp.com/

npsimons2• 6 years ago

Some of use use Emacs+OrgMode in Termux. Then synchronize with git+ssh. Works well enough for my needs.

obilgic• 6 years ago

Honestly that "Emacs News Highlights" video is great for non-contributors or just users.

https://emacsconf.org/2020/talks/01/

posharma• 6 years ago

I've been a long time emacs user and switched to vscode recently. Seriously, vscode is so much easier to configure and use.

lmedinas• 6 years ago

Well thats the thing with Emacs, its an extremely good Tool: Editor, browser, file manager, git frontend, notes, calendar, etc.. etc... you call it! but its also extremely old and outdated tool.

I used Emacs for years and one day i realized i had a huge .emacs file and spend lots of time maintaining it, that's when i was conviced it was not the editor for me or I was using it wrong. I moved to sublime, vscode and now im giving vim/neovim a try.

As much as i liked Emacs i dont see myself using it again soon.

PaulDavisThe1st• 6 years ago

Well thats the thing with my table saw, its an extremely good Tool; ripping, cross cutting, router table, many different materials, coving cuts etc. etc. you call it! but its also extremely old and outdated tool.

I used my table saw for years and one day realized I had accumulated a lot of very detail knowledge of how to use it and spend lots of time maintaining it, thats when i was convined it was not the tool for me or I was using it wrong. I moved to a hand-held jigsaw, then a crosscut saw, and now im giving a handsaw a try.

As much as I liked my table saw, i dont see myself using it again soon.

Spinnaker_• 6 years ago

I used vscode since 2015 and have now switched to emacs. Yes, vscode is easier to configure and use right away, but that's not always a good thing. I was fully dependent on so much tooling which I didn't understand in the slightest. When you're cranking out react apps that's probably fine.

With emacs I actually need to read documentation. I need to have some sort of understanding of what I'm actually installing. It's frustrating at first, but overall has made me much more aware of what's going on. I've learned so much throughout the process and it has made me a better developer.

JohnL4• 6 years ago

I'm a heavy org-mode user. I'll also pop into emacs for comment formatting, macro-running, and the occasional column-based copy/paste. Plus an auto-numbering function I wrote when I wore a younger man's clothes. Plus a colorful highlight mode (which I wrote) + htmlize for sharing said highlights, also from my callow youth.

Other than that, yeah, 100% VS Code for typescript and regular VS + ReSharper for my regular life.

Oh, also, emacs for Haskell. And whatever other weird language.

Siira• 6 years ago

VSCode is also a lot weaker in general text editing and extensibility, and doesn’t have a TUI. (I use both extensively.)

dmm• 6 years ago

It matters a lot to me that several of the interesting parts of vscode are proprietary and not free or open source. In particular the liveshare and remote features are proprietary. Many extensions contain proprietary parts, like the c# debugger.

ssivark• 6 years ago

The talk by Sid Kasuvajhula is an absolutely fascinating presentation about extremely flexible object-oriented interfaces, organized in a multi-hierarchial manner -- so very nicely exploiting the compositional structure inherent in the content we operate on.

Epistemic mode, A scalable UI paradigm https://emacsconf.org/2020/talks/07/

aoeuhtns• 6 years ago

Thanks for the pointer, it was very interesting! Not sure I've come across anything like this before.

yewenjie• 6 years ago

Wow. This is so cool. Sometimes you come across concepts that makes total sense once you know it, but then keep asking yourself why wasn't it discovered way before. This a great example of that.

yodsanklai• 6 years ago

State of Retro Gaming in Emacs

I love to see that there is still room for fun in our field.

madballster• 6 years ago

It's great to see there were new Emacs users and developers coming on board, judging by the age of some of the presenters. Emacs has been proclaimed dead many times, I think it has long future ahead of itself. Yes its aged, and dated. But also very powerful. And cools things can still happen (gccemacs as an example).

stephen_cagle2• 6 years ago

Peaked by "Your life in plain text" -> https://emacsconf.org/2020/talks/09/ I ordered and in the last week watched his udemy class on the same -> https://www.udemy.com/course/getting-yourself-organized-with... . I enjoyed jump starting my org-mode journey and consider it money well spent.

omaranto• 6 years ago

You probably mean "piqued" instead of "peaked", and also probably don't mean you were "piqued", but rather that your curiosity was.

kgwxd• 6 years ago

Maybe you underestimate just how hot "Your life in plain text" is.

stephen_cagle2• 6 years ago

This comment is peak piqued'ness.

Blackthorn• 6 years ago

"Extend Emacs to Modern GUI Applications with EAF"

I hadn't heard of this one before, and it's hugely interesting. A shame that it can't ever make it into core because of licensing issues.

Similarly I'd love it if it was more possible to embed Emacs into other applications, like IDEs. That way IDEs could focus on what they do well, and still have a good text editor.

someguy101010• 6 years ago

lsp mode has come a long way and that feels like i am embedding and ide inside of emacs. With dap mode I get a debugger too but I havent really gotten around to learning how to set that up.

wool_gather• 6 years ago

It is extremely nice, but still feels a bit hemmed in by the "everything is a grid of characters" paradigm. Just a soupçon here and there of actual GUI elements (some kind of popover for LSP highlights, for example) would go a long way for making Emacs even better, IMO.

totetsu• 6 years ago

Today's Emacs experience. "I have a lot of stuff I have to study for work.. I wish there was an efficient way to make my notes into an anki deck.” ” oh theres a blog post about org mode captures too export in anki readable HTML” .. half a day and no study later I have something not half as good as the blog described kind of working.. the blog just says look at my init.el of you don't get it.. who has the time

stinkytaco2• 6 years ago

Have you tried org-drill? I believe it's in the org-plus-contrib and it works pretty well, but like all things emacs, requires some setup.

EmacsConf 2020 Talks

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