kickingvegas

OP here. Happy to answer any questions about my post in this thread.

OP here. This post resonated far more than expected. Thanks all for the feedback!

In retrospect, the name `emacsclient` was a poor one because in 2026 most folks new to Emacs expect it to act like a REST client, where runtime state is synchronized between the client and server over a network. Emacs' usage of ‘client’ and ‘server’ here refer to the usage of a Unix local domain (i.e. file system) socket for simple control commands from the socket client. This was later extended to support a network socket, but the client still only sends simple control commands.

For your consideration, two Elisp packages I've written that focus on feature discoverability and use: Casual and Anju, both available from MELPA. You can read more about them at the following links: https://github.com/kickingvegas/casual https://github.com/kickingvegas/anju

NGL, I find the Dired UX out of the box to be frustrating given its reliance on remembering key bindings, so much so that I ended up writing both a Transient menu and a context menu for it, both available in the Casual and Anju packages on MELPA, respectively. If interested, you can read more about them in the following links: https://kickingvegas.github.io/casual/Dired-Usage.html https://kickingvegas.github.io/anju/Dired-Mode-Context-Menu....

Same. HP should sell a replacement battery door.

(Edited) Actually it's not so much the door but the housing.

After seeing a video of the Canon Cat in action, I thought “so, this is a lot like Emacs”.

Oh dang, thanks for catching that. Will amend.

Perhaps related, I'm maintaining a "cheatsheet" to let Python programmers see what an Elisp equivalent to typical Python functions/methods are.

https://kickingvegas.github.io/elisp-for-python/

NGL, Worg is terrible at explaining what it does and what it is for. And this sentiment is coming from someone who uses Org mode daily and has contributed to Worg.

Announcing Casual Ediff, with enhancements to support viewing changes to a version-controlled file and to resolve merge conflicts from Emacs.

FWIW, I started a project last year to build Transient menus for major Emacs modes called “Casual” to address discoverability. Interested readers can find more info about it here: https://kickingvegas.github.io/casual/

We are out here.

Nostalgia no more! Midnight Commander/4DOS style file management can be achieved with Emacs Dired today and then some.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Di...

For your consideration, I built a keyboard-driven menu interface for Dired called Casual to help with discovery. https://kickingvegas.github.io/casual/Dired.html

FWIW, for just "using" Emacs, I wrote a number of keyboard-driven menus for different modes called Casual. Read all about it here: https://github.com/kickingvegas/casual

For understanding Elisp, I wrote an "Elisp Cheetsheet for Python Programmers" to help as a reference.

https://github.com/kickingvegas/elisp-for-python

For me, make is definitely in the “stop worrying and learn to love it” bin. It will outlive all of us, so accept it and move on.

Obligatory mention of Emacs Eshell. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/eshell.h...

You're not wrong. Building a TUI is basically the same as mainframe forms programming.

While I didn't submit this link to HN, I wrote the OP. Thanks for the compliment on Casual! It's been an exercise in re-litigating my user experience with Emacs this Summer, which I've decided early on to share publicly. For folks interested learning more about the Casual packages, here's a link to Casual Suite (https://github.com/kickingvegas/casual-suite). At my blog you can find all my posts on the different Casual packages. http://yummymelon.com/devnull/

TIL.

Side note, if you use Emacs you can get the phases of the Moon by pressing “M” in either calendar or Org Agenda.

FYI, there's an alternate clipboard in macOS called the kill ring (influenced by Emacs) that lets you cycle through previously killed text. The default property is called NSTextKillRingSize. There's a bit of config to do but it still works (Sonoma 14.5 as of this writing) for native macOS apps. https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...

If you need to mess with semantic versioning, `python -m semver`.

Related: if you use Emacs it has the Calc package which supports computer algebra. I recently published an interface for Calc that makes it significantly easier to use and wrote about it here. http://yummymelon.com/devnull/mathing-in-emacs-with-casual.h...

Recently I've been making Transient-based porcelains for some venerable Emacs packages. - For calc, there is Casual https://github.com/kickingvegas/casual - For isearch, there is cc-isearch-menu https://github.com/kickingvegas/cc-isearch-menu - For Dired, there is Casual Dired https://github.com/kickingvegas/casual-dired

All can be run in a TTY to get that TUI experience.

Since it hasn't been mentioned here yet, Emacs is deeply tinkerable. With Emacs, you are given an embarrassing amount of leeway to customize or even replace existing behavior to make it do what you want.

Personally, I'm not a fan of key-bindings of the form <modifier sequence>-<some symbol that requires a shift key>. That said, what I find intriguing about including the Transient package in Emacs is the potential for supporting menu-driven Transient interfaces to existing commands in a way that doesn't break their default behavior. Such future Transient menus could be shipped as a default and obviate the need to learn complex key bindings.

Hi folks! Great to see all the interest in my post. Feel free to ask me questions/post observations related to it.

Thanks for sharing! You might find this post of mine interesting which extends view-mode to have common navigation keybindings. http://yummymelon.com/devnull/enhancing-navigation-in-emacs-...

Hello! See that my post has gotten interest on HN. Happy to answer any questions about it here!