# Trivial Emacs Kits
Corwin Brust
[[!template id=vid src="https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/emacsconf-2020--06-trivial-emacs-kits--corwin-brust.webm" size="114M" duration="13:41" subtitles="/2020/subtitles/emacsconf-2020--06-trivial-emacs-kits--corwin-brust.vtt"]]
[Download compressed .webm video (12M)](https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/smaller/emacsconf-2020--06-trivial-emacs-kits--corwin-brust--vp9-q56-video-original-audio.webm)
Techniques to help new users bootstrap a more gentle introduction to
Emacs, one (short) init.el file at a time.
[[!inline pages="internal(2020/info/dm-notes)" raw="yes"]]
[[!inline pages="internal(2020/info/06-transcription)" raw="yes"]]
<!-- from the pad --->
- Actual start and end time (EST): Start: 2020-11-28T10.45.48; Q&A
2020-11-28T10.57.38; End: 2020-11-28T10.59.48
# Questions
## What makes the Emacs community unique (special/different?) from other communities (if anything)? And/or, are there other communities that are similar in your view?
## Do you use Emacs as a community building tool?
- Yes, Corwin uses Emacs as a community building tool.
- Corwin: "Heck yeah, Emacs is a community building tool"
## Are you suggesting there is value in "Emacs for scientists", "Emacs for programmers", "Emacs for writers" etc. – i.e. different defaults for different groups?
[Corwin] Implicitly, yes. My argument is that we should rethink the
problem of building and maintaining Emacs configuration sets each
time we assemble a team to work on something. That gives us a new
chance, each time, to maybe produce new data that helps us make more
informed decisions about how to make our own personal approaches more
robust (and easier to read), but also to help "chip away" at the huge
work of making Emacs more easily configurable for new users.
## What is the background you are using? What is the tool you are using to present?
[Corwin] Wallpaper Engine on Steam is probably the thing that's
grabbing attention. I haven't tried it under GNU/Linux. My family
are (mostly) Windows users right now ****heavy sigh**** I don't want
to get into my tool chain a huge amount, but I will talk about it some
as/during the Welcome to the Dungeon talk tomorrow. For now I will
say I'm using a mix of free (free and not-free but too easy to avoid
tools on my one pretty good computer). I would love to have the time
to invest to use more (only) free stuff but sometimes we can't afford
the freedom, in terms of the learning curve. I think this is the most
important problem space in free software, FWIW.
# Notes
- <https://github.com/dungeon-mode/game> co-founder
- Initial "trolling" by showing presentation notes in different
editors: vim, Notepad++, VS Code, Sublime Text.
- LISP wasn't on the list.
- Disagreement is not the barrier.
- Emacs is threatening as something that addresses many different needs/use-cases.
<a name="transcript"></a>
# Transcript
Following is a somewhat hasty self-transcription of my talk. Please
don't hesitate to [mailto:corwin@bru.st](ask for clarification) or to
add any clarifications you feel helpful back into the EmacsConf wiki.
There is a visual gimmick underlaying the initial remarks. We are
looking at the first (first-slide ("Welcome") showing how the org
markdown looks on other editors, including cygwin emacs, Notepad++,
Sublime, VS Code, and cygwin vim. As each is closed we see the next,
until we reveal GUI Emacs running org-mode in a full-both frame.
My name is Corwin Brust and I will be talking about getting started
with Emacs Today. I have been an Emacs user for a long time-
First of all thanks and a huge welcome to the conference..(_15s_)
On behalf of and back to the other organizers. It has been cool to
have a peek backstage.
So. I've used a lot of different editors in my time. That's about 25
years as a professional software engineer. And most of that
time I've been using Emacs. (~54s_)
I'll talk a little bit in a minute (if I can ever find my slides)
about how I got into Emacs, but if you've used Emacs and a lot of
other editors for a long time, something that you notice right away is
that you get good with it in a way that stays meaningful. You learn
new things, those things stick with you. You learn how to- how to
make it do new tricks and then keep doing those tricks. (~1m26s_)
I want to mention this conference isn't about (whoops: "this talk")
how to adjust your configuration specifically. I don't have a bunch
of good code samples in here. There are a bunch of other great talks,
especially Andrew's that I think may be aimed more at that "hey, I'm
just getting started with Emacs what are some things to try to make it
more comfortable for me starting?" [subject/audience? cezb]. (~2m07s_)
This is about how to think about the problem space more. (_2m10s_)
Hopefully a good way to warm up as we start thinking about some of the
lightning talks later on. (I'm going to bring up my IRC buffer
[offscreen] in case I run into time- I didn't get my stopwatch started
for this one.) (_2m25s_)
So, alright: let's dive in. (_2m30s_)
We assume that we want to install packages, and maybe configure some
features. This is particularly from the perspective of where we're
working with a bunch of others on a team and we want to get something
done. (_2m42s_)
Some of us probably have mature Emacs workflows, others may be
installing it for the first time. (_2m50s_)
So the first questions is, you know- in that context: what's the value
proposition? Why should I mess with my machine, my mature Emacs
configuration, impose my way of thinking and ideas over the way
somebody else is learning Emacs? (_3m09m_)
It can be [laugh] I'm off my slides here a little bit.. (_3m13s_)
It can be a little tricky to learn Emacs. One thing that helps us a
lot is if people that we are working with can tell us, kinda,
keystroke-for-keystroke at times what to do and explain what
everything is doing. (_3m30s_)
And using the same packages as others can really help us working
together on a project. (_3m36s_)
Speaking from my personal experience, it took me decades to get to the
point where I was excited to program in Emacs Lisp. (_3m26s_)
I've programed in a lot of programming languages, but Lisp wasn't on
my list. I looked at my config, that I was copy-pasting around from
generation after generation of .emacs file or re-crafting it by hand
and from Internet searches, to get things that I needed when I would
quickly go install Emacs to start some new job or contract, and
quickly get though that work-flow that caused me to go install the
program. (_4m15s_)
You know, just simple little one-liners that got committed to memory
over decades eventually just lead [me] to a sort of "hey, what's going
on here". (_4m27s_)
And I credit my good friend Jeff Goff who died earlier in 2020 for my
lifelong love of Emacs. Perhaps Erik and I will talk a little more
about that at another talk we have scheduled but Jeff was a huge
influence on us in a number of ways and a huge contributer to the Raku
programming language which is very cool. (_4m52s_)
So, understanding how to make a good decision about splitting up
configuration in a way to share it with people with really different
uses of Emacs. That's actually a complicated topic, and I want to off
and stare at it for a second: (_5m11s_)
I think Emacs is about people, so that means it is about community.
And community means we're going to invite disagreement. In fact that
disagreement isn't necessarily a road-block to our project, in fact
that some of the work our project can invite us to do is to get closer
to each other by inviting those disagreements, by learning from people
of different styles, and from how they argue, and thinking about why
they have that perspective and what technical benefits that perhaps
radical point of view might carry away. Some people are really
aggressive arguers others are very passive and really couch their
ideas in distancing terms, "well probably this is a good idea" or
"please double check me". Those don't always indicate how certain a
person is. Because we're different. We have different ways of
communicating ideas such as certainty or excitement. (_6m23s_)
When we thinking about a bunch of really diverse programmers
approaching Emacs probably one of our first really big challenges is
just to pick what we're going to go after. There are a number of
existing kit installs and things like this. My argument is that you
can get pretty far just trading files around. And maybe the more
value conversation to have is making the hard decisions, e.g. "should
we have vertical completion", should that be out of the box and those
that want the traditional splayed-out over a sing line such as the
mode line will have to add a line to their configuration. (_7m26s)
The way to get there?
How do we find out what works?
We don't want to slow down the people who are super productive with
Emacs, and ask them to completely break their workflows to make it
easier for new folks, at the same time we do want to make sure those
new people. (_7m42s_)
At the same time, we do want to make sure those new people arre
excited by Emacs and not turned off by having to learn the entire
jungle of Emacs history in the form of it's unique technical stylings
in terms of frames, buffers, and other unique Emacs viewpoints on
interface concepts, especially. (_8m15s_)
The encouragement here is to keep using the project team as a
crucible. Rather than following the defaults of, um, finding the
simplest customizations that generally work, what if we tried to look
for fairly specific configuration that we'll expect basically all of
our developers to be using, at least when the submit bug
reports. (_8m48s_)
In particular with this, I think that degree of experimentation can
drive back into the Emacs development process. In the development
mailing list.. [] In the context of Emacs development as a greater
entity, we see this struggle. We have the sense that some things can
"never" be change. I think one thing that can help us get there is
evidence that says "hey, my 30-40 person team is using this set of
bindings and here is what we learned about new Emacs users coming in
and trying that". (10m)
So let's just recap real quick: in theory Emacs works out of the
box. That means we are free to throw it all away and start over.
[trouble with slides, again]
Our goal is to enable users- to unlock our computers, to do as much
with them as possible. My work of encouragement is experiment with it.
And think really specifically about how the development users may be
different from each other, as you are configuring the development
environment of emacs for developing on a project.
That's my talk, etc, answer any questions.(_12m09s_)
Do you use Emacs as a Community Building Tool? (_13m15s_)
Do /i/ use Emacs a community building tool? Or *how* do I use Emacs as a
community building tool. [amin: "it doesn't say"]
Yes, absolutely. I think Emacs is an ambassador to the gnu
tool-chain. in the fullness of time we will see an Emacs that will
make others, Android and iOS, dream. That's why that mock us and say
that Emacs is an operating system. It's because it could be, if cared
for it to be. It's quite a threatening product in terms of the number
of problem spaces it can address, how many types of users it can
satisfy. (_13m01s_)
And the things that we can do to make it robust in those environments.
We're always thinking about the weak points but is Emacs a community
building tool? Heck yeah. (_13m13s_)
[we agree that I'll write my answers to the remaining questions, I say
thanks more, and we're done. ps, I'll get to your question or
comments I can find a response to within the next week, I expect]
