WEBVTT
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Hello!
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My name is Daniel or Daniil Rose.
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I use Emacs in my everyday life,
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from programming in C or Rust for work,
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to writing reports for classes.
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I'd like to start by adding
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an overarching theme to this talk.
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If there's only one thing
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that you remember from today,
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I'd like you to walk away
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with the understanding
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that the philosophies or ideologies
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are just that.
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By trying to box yourself in with a concept
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you might be blind to other methods.
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We live in an ever-changing world,
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and I hope that you can appreciate
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being flexible and adaptable.
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UNIX philosophy? As a quick intro
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for those who don't know,
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the UNIX philosophy
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was written by Doug McIlroy.
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It's wordy, so there is
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a great summarization
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by Peter H. Salus:
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Write programs that do one thing
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and do it well.
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Write programs to work together,
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and write programs to handle text streams,
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because they are the universal interface.
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So enter Emacs.
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Emacs doesn't quite adhere
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to those principles.
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"Do one thing and do it well"
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surely doesn't apply,
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since Emacs does /a lot/ of things
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and does the majority of those things well.
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It might apply if you consider Emacs
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purely as a Lisp environment, however.
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"Write programs to work together?"
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Arguably the thing Emacs is best
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out of the three,
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proven especially
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by all the various packages
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that work with external programs,
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LSP, and whatever else.
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"Handle text streams?"
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Well, that one depends.
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So, Emacs versus the original ideas.
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The summarizations are good,
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but they aren't truly what was said.
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If we look back at the originals,
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we'll see that Emacs strongly adheres
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to the second rule:
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Design and build software,
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even operating systems,
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to be tried early,
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ideally within weeks.
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Don't hesitate to throw away
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the clumsy parts
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and rebuild them.
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The concept of LISP,
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self documentation of Emacs,
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and the "REPL" style all make it
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a shining example of this rule.
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But why compare to UNIX?
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Truly, why compare to the UNIX philosophy?
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Although the "rules" set down are good ones
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for most programs,
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Emacs isn't most programs.
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The rules and summarizations
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even were written decades ago,
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before we had REST APIs, JSON,
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or any other modern interface.
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If the world adapts,
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why too can't we adapt the past?
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This concept of breaking the rules
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and forging its own path
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has allowed Emacs to continue
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and be reworked for modern eras.
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Emacs /does/ work with the UNIX philosophy.
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By looking at both of these ideologies,
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why must they be mutually exclusive?
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Emacs does work with text:
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Magit is a wrapper for the git CLI
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Dired is a wrapper for ls,
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Consult grep for grep, and so on.
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Why rewrite poorly tools,
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when we can use the existing powerful ones?
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Well, that in itself
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is part of the UNIX philosophy.
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It seems that most strongly
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the UNIX philosophy
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applies to the command line.
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If we look at most graphical applications,
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these notions fall apart.
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But that isn't true for Emacs.
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It is a graphical application
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(at least for me)
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but it does use many other tools.
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Some have proposed
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that Emacs should be looked at
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alongside UNIX, as its own OS.
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It has windowing capabilities
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handles its own formats,
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and so on, but I disagree with this concept.
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Philosophies don't really matter
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in computing.
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It's true, they don't.
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As people, we like to group things.
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We like to have our set ways
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to describe them,
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but that doesn't always work.
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By sticking with a common concept
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in the Emacs community,
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do everything in Emacs,
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is it truly benefitting me and you?
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Android Studio. Here's an example.
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I work most often in Emacs.
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But I also have courses
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in Android and iOS development.
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I can absolutely install
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~android-mode~ and ~kotlin-mode~,
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and use ~adb~ in Emacs,
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but at that point,
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I am creating more work than it's worth.
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When unmaintained,
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things tend to fall apart,
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and many features of ~android-mode~
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no longer work for me.
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So I have two main options:
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fix the existing mode or write my own,
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or use the assumed tools for the job,
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like Android Studio and/or IntelliJ.
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Looking at Android Studio:
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I have plenty of plugins for colour themes,
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just like Emacs.
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I have Emacs keybindings built in,
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and other quality-of-life features.
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According to the UNIX philosophy,
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in a round-about way,
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I should be using one tool
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that does its job well.
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While not minimal,
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Android Studio accomplishes this job.
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Does that mean that I shouldn't use Emacs at all?
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Of course not!
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And while it may seem obvious,
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I feel we in this group
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often get caught up
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finding solutions
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in the one particular way
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we want it.
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This is where being adaptable
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comes in again.
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I need to learn how to mold my tools
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to my workflow,
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but also mold my workflow
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to the tools available.
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Window Managers.
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Another example of this is window managers.
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Although I've probably dabbled
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in window managers or desktop environments
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as much as the next person,
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I have usually stuck with DWM.
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But DWM doesn't follow
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any of the Emacs concepts:
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it has different keybindings--
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you can sort of do Emacs ones,
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no REPL (it's a C program after all).
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But I can still mold it to my workflow.
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If I run Emacs as a daemon and a client,
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what difference is it?
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My WM is essentially a wrapper
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for Emacs and my other vital programs.
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I don't need to make Emacs my WM,
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and bring along all the other issues.
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Browsers are a similar conversation.
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Initially, I understand the value
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of having my browser in Emacs, but why?
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If a tool exists that works well,
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ignoring the UNIX philosophy for a moment,
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why should I take the effort to rewrite it?
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Now, don't misinterpret what I'm saying.
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If you have a better way to do something:
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you can make it faster, easier to use,
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that I understand.
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But if I have, say, Nyxt or Firefox?
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Why would I take the effort
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to try and rewrite that into Emacs?
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Instead, this is a scenario
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where using a different tool
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alongside Emacs might be better.
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There's a talk later on in the conference
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about that from someone else.
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Vim. Even vim, jokingly,
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is the enemy of our community,
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but it's a good tool.
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Sometimes I just don't want to
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run Emacs as a daemon with evil-mode
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and I just want to quickly do something.
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And most people come from
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a power user terminal background,
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or at least I would assume s,.
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and those I have spoken with.
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If I need to quickly edit something,
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it might benefit me to
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just run a quick vim ./file
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in the terminal.
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I often have terminals open anyway
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due to the graphic acceleration
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from things like Alacritty.
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Speaking of terminals,
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this is the main tool I don't use in Emacs.
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While vterm might be nice,
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I often want to use a TUI tool.
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I most often write programs in C or Rust
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due to those being my main languages
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that I use professionally.
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If I can write a faster C or Rust program
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in half the time it'll take for me
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to write a slower Elisp one,
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I might prefer to do just that.
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Especially in the case of a TUI program,
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Alacritty helps me develop them faster
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but also run them.
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So if you've been using systemd
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or running commands in the terminal for years,
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it might take more effort to learn
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the way to do it in an Emacs frontend
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than in the terminal.
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And remember, most shells come with
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Emacs key bindings by default
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and macOS, for example,
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can use Emacs keybindings in most places
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including browsers.
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Do what helps you most,
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not what a philosophy or group tells you to do.
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I hope this illustrated some ways
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that Emacs is a tool in your belt,
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but not the belt itself.
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Do what works best for you,
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as being the most efficient
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doesn't always grant the best results.
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If you're used to doing something one way,
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consider still doing it that way
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while learning new skills
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and being adaptable. And after all,
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this is an Emacs conference
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so maybe consider learning a tool
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for both Emacs and the terminal,
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and then you might be
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just a little bit more flexible
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in the future.
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Thank you for listening to my talk today.
