joshstella

Author here. In reading this thread, I'm struck that most of the objections to emacs are both legitimate (as are the arguments for it) and focused on programmer-specific issues. Back when I wrote the original post, I was experimenting with using emacs as a CEO who writes little code these days, but was dealing with a maelstrom of disparate information and interruption. It's been a very successful experiment, which I'll document in a follow up post soon. Glad that it got some good conversations going!

Disclaimer: I spend very little time configuring emacs these days, as it's working well for me, and there are others around who are much better at emacs than I am. There are likely better ways to do everything than I have, but I shared what works for me.

I've got the `(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/lisp/")` pretty early in the file. You can put the `(require `ido) (setq ido-enable-flex-matching t) (setq ido-everywhere t) (ido-mode 1)` where you like. Basically, you just need the lines in your .emacs file - if you add the reference prior to creating the directory and populating it, you'll get an error, but nothing will break. Add the directory and do a `M-x eval-buffer` and it'll pick it up without restarting emacs. Or just restart emacs. Hope this helps. Someone will tell you a better way.

I'm hopeful that https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol will decouple some of these concerns. We've built support for it for our DSL, and it's pretty great so far (esp in VSCode). Emacs LSP support is still pretty slow, so I don't use it when in emacs at present, but it feels like the right direction for getting good language support into editors.

Author of blog post here. I take your point on being more accessible, and you're right about the wall of text. I didn't think anyone would care about my little paen to emacs, and this is one evening's work from a couple years ago.

Regarding organization, I don't have much of a system, other than the filesystem under ~/org with a handful of directories. Works just fine for me. It's more about not-caring than caring, regarding organization of information. We really shouldn't have to organize this stuff. Emacs + org-mode allows me to not care. I love that.

Author of post here. I have no agenda to convert anyone, but mapping caps lock to control is a good move when trying emacs IMO. If you love vi(m), more power to you!

Author here. I didn't, but I might now. Dig this.

It was originally *nix, and got changed to Nix and linked in the editing process somewhere. Thanks for the find!

OP here. It took me about three weeks to get back up to a high level of productivity in Emacs. At the time, I was learning a new keyboard (truly ergonomic) which was the greater challenge. My wrist tendons are thankful to me for those weeks of awkwardness. I think Emacs is wrong for the vast majority of CEOs, but for some (at least one) it's pretty great.

OP here. There are lots of great tools for editing text and code out there. Finger travel was a concern due to some RSI issues I was having, but not the most important factor which is that I like Emacs and enjoy using it. I like it's sensibilities, Lisp, and the cleanness of the interface. YMMV, and I'm not at all an Emacs partisan or evangelist, just a guy who made a blog post about stuff I like.

Passive,

Where do you think our approach will add overhead to your development? We'd love to know so that we can either explain better or get a better product match for you. With Fugue, you get a Conductor that continually monitors and conforms the environment to your declarations - we think that has a lot of value for operating your environment as opposed to just creating it.

- Josh

Radiofan,

It will indeed! And with a compiled language so you can get meaningful errors, etc. before spinning up resources that cost $.

- Josh

Mark,

Thanks for the comments and well-wishes! We chose to use some new terms to not overload existing ones where we are introducing new concepts (Conductor, Performers, etc.). The analogues to music conceptually were so strong they seemed the right way to go. We will have lots more in the way of howto's, screen recordings, etc. in the coming weeks as we recover from launching our beta at re:Invent. Sign up for the beta and we'll send out bits with examples and runnable code in <15 mins.

- Josh

Thanks for the question, curiousDog.

Disclosure: I am a founder and the CEO of Luminal.

In a distributed, and therefore often largely stateless system at the instance level, the system boundary is now outside the individual instance. The performer (a series of instances over time in Fugue) is roughly analogous to a process on an individual computer. Truth and trust are maintained by knowing and controlling the state of the instances themselves with Fugue. Think of the Conductor as analogous to the kernel in a traditional OS, where providing processes CPU time and resources is a regular course of business.

As for unnecessary work, we've found that maintaining systems in place, with all the failure, complexity and configuration drift that's inevitable is much more expensive than using some of the excess capacity of a given performer. Most systems target 70% or so utilization - we use some of that excess to lifecycle.

I hope this answers the question and we're really excited to get feedback on what we're doing so it's relevant to your work.

You might be interpreting the "claim" more rigidly than is warranted in a popular publication. Personally, I think children are born potentially smart, but intelligence must be developed constantly in my experience. I have found that many people limit their own intelligence by not stressing themselves, and I suspect the same is true for outside influences. There is a reason people associate bookishness with intelligence and I don't think it's a one-way relationship. I have known a few people whom I believe are not potentially smart, but not that many.

Having just done a round partially made up of Angels, I don't see this as having a major impact on fundraising which is still predominantly private. I'm skeptical that we are moving broadly towards public fundraising in Angel kinds of investments.