The GNU Emacs Architecture: Unlocking the Core [pdf]

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:2052282/FULLTEXT01.pdf

by cenazoic • 21 days ago

186 16 21 days ago

cenazoic• 21 days ago

This is a bachelor's thesis from University of Uppsala submitted in March 2026.

I was having trouble accessing the Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet site (linked in headline) directly, so uploaded it here (link expires in 3 days):

https://temp.sh/CVzcQ/emacs-arch-thesis.pdf

goodmythical• 21 days ago

Maximum download limit reached

LargoLasskhyfv• 21 days ago

Confirmed. Headline is working for me, though. (Meanwhile?)

gwern• 21 days ago

https://gwern.net/doc/cs/lisp/emacs/2026-karlsson.pdf

iLemming• 21 days ago

It looks great. I have not read it to completion just yet, but merely scrolling through the document leaves me with a feeling that the author got tired and decided "this is a good stopping point."

To be fair, writing a book about Emacs is a Sisyphean effort by definition - this sea is a bottomless abyss of hackery abundance, and any meaningful effort to explain it is worth a celebration.

FergusArgyll• 21 days ago

I have a silly little vibe coded extension where I can star certain HN commenters so I know who to look for in which threads (just puts a small symbol next to the username)

You are for emacs, happy to see you here... :)

aquariusDue• 17 days ago

Reminds me of RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite) which I used to use a long time ago to do the same thing. One cool thing RES used to do was (if I remember right) when you clicked on the tag/note placed on the user it would take you to the comment when you first attributed that tag/note.

On one hand I kinda miss doing stuff like that and would like a RES for Hacker News but on the other hand I feel like cyber stalking is out of fashion these days.

anthk3• 21 days ago

The Emacs' bundled documentation on Elisp (both the intro and the rest) are pretty much complete enough.

On Elisp and multithreading/processing, well, just look at bordeaux-threads in Common Lisp where the support is not universal for Clisp. SBCL and ECL work, but...

shawn_w• 17 days ago

Lots of things don't work with clisp.

shakow• 17 days ago

the author got tired and decided "this is a good stopping point."

Or the deadline was closing in, as this is a university thesis ;)

bjourne• 17 days ago

Correct. The thesis is worth 10 weeks of full-time work by someone on their third study year.

hgp22• 21 days ago

Love to see that Emacs can still capture the atention of new CS students.

anthk3• 17 days ago

Emacs is like a hackers' playground. It's an editor, it has a Lisp, networking support, tools, IRC, Email, Usenet and more by default, a PDF reader, a calculator (with gnuplot support it has graphs), a doc generating platform, an agenda, a silly chatbot...

tra3• 17 days ago

One of the oldest open source projects in the existence?

It makes building custom UI workflows so easy, I think it’s both obvious and flies under the radar.

aaptel• 17 days ago

This is great! You should make a web version or add it to the wiki.

I started the Hacker's guide on the emacs wiki many years back. I think this doc was much needed.

The GNU Emacs Architecture: Unlocking the Core [pdf]

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