[HN Gopher] EmacsConf 2022
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       EmacsConf 2022
        
       Author : hprotagonist
       Score  : 163 points
       Date   : 2022-12-03 14:27 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (emacsconf.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (emacsconf.org)
        
       | davidkunz wrote:
       | Right before NeovimConf: https://www.neovimconf.live/
        
       | usr1106 wrote:
       | Oh no, I missed half of it already when reading this.
       | 
       | Well, in theory I could watch a lot of recordings any time later.
       | But in practice I hardly ever do. If I decide to attend a
       | conference, I spend the day there, even if it's at my desk. (Or
       | the night, hello Linuxcon Australia). If I don't register and
       | attend real-time I will never find the time to watch most of it.
        
       | throwaway27084 wrote:
       | Can you watch it purely in Emacs?
        
         | donio wrote:
         | Depends on your definition of "purely". I will watch using an
         | mpv managed by EXWM so it will be showing up as an Emacs
         | buffer. Or you could use the embedded video player in EAF.
        
           | mark_l_watson wrote:
           | Please post a link for setting this up. Thanks.
           | 
           | EDIT: found https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EXWM I would
           | like to try that on an old Linux laptop
        
       | _eht wrote:
       | And EdConf tomorrow! Conference season is among us.
       | 
       | exit
       | 
       | quit
       | 
       | bye
       | 
       | /q ...
        
         | hestefisk wrote:
         | I heard VimConf was above standard.
         | 
         |  _ducks_
        
       | Wonnk13 wrote:
       | Good to know! For as much as I use Emacs I don't really follow
       | the Emacs community / ecosystem.
       | 
       | I saw version 29 was recently cut- is there anywhere I can get a
       | good overview of "best practices in 2022"?
       | 
       | I wouldn't mind dusting off my init.el and updating it. I haven't
       | had a good yak shave in five years or so :)
        
         | hprotagonist wrote:
         | https://blog.phundrak.com/emacs-29-what-can-we-expect/ has some
         | highlights.
         | 
         | eglot, tree-sitter are both very nice.
         | 
         | the sqlite integration is currently what i'd describe as
         | "cute", but maybe not the most featureful.
        
           | agumonkey wrote:
           | I'm shocked that ast based edition is back. Many people were
           | against this, lots of grammar based tools sadly failed (for
           | better or worse reasons). In a way it seems that the
           | mainstream rose above regex level tree manipulation, and that
           | even html/css made people start to think in subtrees rather
           | than linear data. This might reduce efforts a lot, whether it
           | is for edition or analysis.
           | 
           | And this fine grained source interaction was why I was so
           | enamoured with emacs in the first place. It was such a deep
           | feeling of control compared to anything I tried in the late
           | 90s.
        
             | hprotagonist wrote:
             | tangentially related, https://hazel.org/
        
               | agumonkey wrote:
               | Thanks a lot :)
        
           | signa11 wrote:
           | yup, here is the previous discussion:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33788208
        
         | tmtvl wrote:
         | The best way to set keybindings has been changed, from _define-
         | key_ and _global-set-key_ to _keymap-set_ and _keymap-global-
         | set_.
         | 
         | Some examples:                 (keymap-global-set "<remap>
         | <upcase-word>" #'upcase-dwim)       (keymap-set icomplete-
         | minibuffer-map "TAB" #'icomplete-force-complete)
         | 
         | You can also use package.el to install packages from version
         | control now, check the _package-vc-selected-packages_ variable.
        
       | Erlangen wrote:
       | The videos are pre-recorded, but after the video there is a live
       | Q&A section. Come and join the IRC channel. It's a lot of fun.
        
         | agumonkey wrote:
         | Was this an exceptional measure or a planned new kind of
         | organization ? It's interesting.
        
           | michaelanckaert wrote:
           | Fosdem has been doing prerecorded talks ever since the
           | "covid" edition.
        
           | bad416f1f5a2 wrote:
           | This format started in 2018 or 2019, I can't recall which.
        
             | hprotagonist wrote:
             | 2019, just in time _not_ to be a covid adaptation.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | spenrose wrote:
       | As with the high vote totals for Firefox-related links, the
       | presence of a link on an ancient* text editor at #1 on HN (as I
       | write) reveals that HN voters are a bit ... old school. These
       | tools' relative importance has declined over the last 15 years.
       | 
       | * (I am a graybeard who used Emacs daily for a long time)
        
         | G3rn0ti wrote:
         | > These tools' relative importance has declined over the last
         | 15 years.
         | 
         | I would say to the contrary. There has been a flurry of new
         | development on Emacs in the recent years initiated by a new
         | generation of developers. New (and simpler) search and
         | autocompletion frameworks (Ivy, vertico), native compilation of
         | Elisp, the rise of Org and the advent of LSP clients (thx
         | VScode). In the coming years Treesitter might render LSP
         | obsolete some day. Exciting times ahead.
         | 
         | And what does it mean to be an old piece of software anyway?
         | 
         | Software may age but compared to hardware it has the advantage
         | of being able to evolve. I hate it to break to you: Windows and
         | Linux kernels are over 30 years old written in a language that
         | was invented 50 years ago. The whole design principle of state
         | of the art operating systems was invented in the 1970s. MS
         | Office kernels are probably older than 30 years and the leading
         | X86 platform looks back on an over 40 year old history. The
         | first Python version was released back in 1991, that's 30
         | years. JS almost has 27 years (1995 afir). Chrome BTW was
         | released back in 2008, that's already been 14 years. Safari's
         | engine comes closer to 20 years.
         | 
         | Does it even make any sense to compare Emacs 29 with versions
         | from the 80s?
        
           | spudlyo wrote:
           | > In the coming years Treesitter might render LSP obsolete
           | some day.
           | 
           | While LSP can support semantic highlighting, it's often used
           | for navigation, ala goto-definition. I think there is little
           | overlap between Tree-sitter and LSP.
        
             | G3rn0ti wrote:
             | > It's often used for navigation, ala goto-definition
             | 
             | Yes, that's LSP's primary use case, either to jump to a
             | definition or show inline documentation from around the
             | definition as well as for autocompletion based on symbols
             | in the execution environment accessible to a static
             | analyser at least. I think that could all be done by a
             | tree-sitter based parser, too, no need for a separate
             | language server process. The LSP server can't do much
             | beyond static analysis anyway. That's what makes me think
             | it could be well replaced by a more sophisticated language
             | mode. Check out the tree sitter talk, he demonstrates how
             | easy TS makes querying the source code (using the tree
             | sitter query builder) -- similarly how you query the DOM
             | using a selector engine.
        
               | pxc wrote:
               | There's an Emacs mode for Scala development inspired by
               | SLIME called ENSIME, which antedates the LSP servers for
               | Scala.
               | 
               | There are things ENSIME could do that back when I did
               | Scala development were not supportable via the LSP
               | protocol because it didn't have rich enough metadata to
               | encode certain kinds of contextual information. The
               | contemporary ENSIME maintainer, who was burning out on
               | the project at the time, wrote about this and the growing
               | but, in his view, native excitement around LSP efforts
               | with a lot of frustration. In a few blog posts or tweets
               | he pointed out specific issues the developers of one
               | language server were running into which he'd anticipated
               | and pointed out, to no avail.
               | 
               | I like the multiprocess approach with standard protocols,
               | despite its complexities, because it lets different
               | editors share smarts. It's good when Vim users and Emacs
               | users can participate in development with huge numbers of
               | users of whatever is the trendy editor of the day, and
               | share code in the form of LSP servers to benefit from
               | IDE-like features. But I think it's likely we'll see an
               | evolution beyond what LSP is capable of, and maybe
               | standardization for some languages will be around
               | something other than LSP.
        
               | G3rn0ti wrote:
               | > I like the multiprocess approach with standard
               | protocols, despite its complexities, because it lets
               | different editors share smarts.
               | 
               | Yes, the benefit LSP brings is putting editors/IDEs on
               | equal footing with respect to a specific language. Also
               | the multiplicative effect when the author of a new
               | language provides a language server so nobody needs to
               | switch their IDEs to try it out.
               | 
               | However, seeing how ,,straight forward" a tree-sitter
               | specific language grammar looks in practice (1) makes we
               | wonder if by providing a TS grammar for a language would
               | realize (almost) the same benefit. Based on such a
               | grammar and TS' selector engine figuring out a syntax
               | highlighting scheme, code folder, a docstring or symbol
               | scanner might not be such a huge endeavor any more as you
               | described for ENSIME.
               | 
               | So, yeah, in the end LSP might be dead end at some point,
               | especially because TS promises to be very fast and avoids
               | any IPC. Performance seems to be the biggest problem of
               | LSP clients in Emacs and probably other editors as well.
               | 
               | (1) https://github.com/Wilfred/tree-sitter-
               | elisp/blob/main/gramm... -- of course, the example being
               | ELISP makes it look easier than said, if you compare it
               | with the grammar of Perl5 that's not yet finished
               | unsurprisingly.
        
         | pxc wrote:
         | Idk. I started using Emacs at my second internship as a
         | software developer, thanks to the current generation of fancy,
         | IDE-like starter kits (Spacemacs in particular). I was in my
         | 20s, and it was less than a decade ago.
         | 
         | I experienced Emacs in that first encounter as hip and
         | exciting! Setup was extremely easy, and the workflow was such a
         | joy and such a shock that it changed what I want out of
         | computer interfaces forever. The discoverability and in-band
         | documentation blew my mind, and made the incredibly complex
         | bundle of functionality and keybindings in front of me feel
         | shockingly approachable and learnable. The Vim emulation was so
         | good that Emacs is where I learned Vim, and even as a
         | relatively unsophisticated Vimmer, few Vim emulation plugins
         | have ever lived up to what I experienced with Evil.
         | 
         | I don't think Emacs is about to take over the world, but it
         | seems to be doing quite well. It seems a clear and ongoing
         | source of inspiration for the trendiest applications that
         | people use to edit code today, like VSCode. Important Emacs
         | plugins like Magit have inspired the creation of some really
         | nice TUI applications like lazygit and lazydocker, etc., and
         | continue to be excellent.
         | 
         | It may not be for everyone, but Emacs still still has a lot to
         | offer. For a significant minority of developers in current and
         | future generations, I think it will continue to 'click'. For
         | developers of other software development tools, it will
         | continue to be a source of friendly competition and
         | inspiration, and in that way it will continue to anchor and
         | influence the landscape.
        
         | tuukkah wrote:
         | What do you use now and how is it better than Emacs?
         | 
         | I thought I was behind the times and learned VSCode but I've
         | been underwhelmed so far. You still need to choose, install and
         | configure extensions but these extensions are not of the same
         | quality as Emacs extensions. For example, the Git extensions of
         | VSCode fail as soon as something a bit unexpected happens. With
         | no Magit around, you end up using Git command line which is not
         | known for great ergonomics.
        
         | markdeloura wrote:
         | Editor wars are right up there with tabs vs spaces, right? I
         | too was an Emacs devotee once upon a time. On of the CS
         | professors at our school in the late 90's was even more so,
         | known for doing all his work from inside of Emacs. But these
         | days VS Code is really making life easy. It's impressively
         | feature-rich with a minimum of futzing.
        
         | hprotagonist wrote:
         | you say old school, i say "prefers battle-hardened tools"
         | 
         | it is kind of amusing to use an editor every day that is
         | significantly older than me, i have to admit.
        
         | gpderetta wrote:
         | Emacs might be old school, but it will be still around when the
         | current crop of editors of choice will have been forgotten.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | ducktective wrote:
       | >You can view streams using the watch pages or in a streaming web
       | player such as MPV. If you need to reverse the video for easier
       | viewing (ex: turning dark mode into light mode), try a command
       | like mpv --vf=negate URL.
       | 
       | Love attention to details like these
        
       | jhallenworld wrote:
       | Check out HHC, the HP Handheld Conference. It's just like
       | EmacsConf, but the people are older :-)
       | 
       | https://hhuc.us/
       | 
       | The presentations are on YouTube, some I like:
       | 
       | "Don't make me wait" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPJdAvQpsGc
       | 
       | "Book binding 2.0" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAnkiaefcB8
       | 
       | "Know thine enemy (TI)"
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIN2y-SnA6c (TI fast mode)
        
         | sph wrote:
         | Cool, but completely off-topic.
        
           | agumonkey wrote:
           | Only partly so, I'm stretching it a bit but HP Calc's RPN is
           | inspired by lisp, and emacs calc is in turn stack based, just
           | like RPN :) It's a big cross pollinization fest.
        
             | zasdffaa wrote:
             | RPN is forth not lisp, and I seriously doubt HP got their
             | idea from emacs. I think HP's RPN precedes the first
             | release of emacs anyway. Edit: 1st release of emacs was
             | 1976 so I take that last bit back.
        
               | agumonkey wrote:
               | Sorry, I mistyped. I was thinking about HP42 and above
               | RPL not the basic RPN. RPL is a blend of lisp idiom on
               | top of good old stack based RPN (list, map, numerical
               | tower). It goes so far that they even added quoted lambda
               | expressions. You could push << a -> + a a >> on your
               | stack.
        
               | jhallenworld wrote:
               | RPL is like LISP in that it's all about quoting. ' and
               | eval are primary (unshifted) keys on these calculators.
               | 
               | There was a LISP based pocket computer: the Casio
               | AI-1000:
               | 
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-yuZ2pejGU
        
             | Jtsummers wrote:
             | It's use of RPN wasn't, but RPL was with one meaning for it
             | being "Reverse Polish Lisp".
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPL_(programming_language)
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-03 23:01 UTC)