WEBVTT

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My name is Corwin Brust and I

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will be talking about getting started

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with Emacs today.

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I have been an Emacs user for a long

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time. First of all, thanks and a huge

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welcome to the conference

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from me and

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and on behalf

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and back to the other people that

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have been helping to organize.

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It's been amazing just to be involved

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with that and just, kind of, see

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backstage.

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So I've used a lot of different editors

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in my time. That's

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about 25 years as a professional

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software engineer.

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And most of that time I've been using

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Emacs. I'll talk a little bit in a minute

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(if I can ever find my slides)

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about how I got into Emacs

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but I think if you've used Emacs and a

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lot of other editors for a long time,

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something that you notice right away is that

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you get good with it in a way that stays

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meaningful.

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You learn new things. Those things

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stick with you. You learn how to

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make it do new tricks and then

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keep doing those tricks.

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I want to mention that this

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conference--oops,

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this talk isn't about

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how to adjust your

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configuration specifically. I don't have

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a bunch of good code samples in here.

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There are other great talks at the

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conference, particularly Andrew's,

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that I looked at, that looked

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like they might be more aimed at that

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"hey, I'm just getting started with Emacs,

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what are some things to try to make

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it more comfortable for me starting?" This

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is about how to think about the problem

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space.

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Hopefully, a good warm up as we

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start thinking about some of the

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lightning talks a little later on.

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I'm just gonna quickly make sure I

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can see my IRC buffer in case I run into

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time. I didn't get my stopwatch started

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for this one.

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So all right, let's dive in.

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We assume that we want to install

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packages

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and maybe configure some features. This

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is particularly from the perspective of

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where we're working

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with a bunch of people on a team and we

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want to get something done.

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Some of us probably already have mature

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Emacs workflows.

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Others are installing it for the first

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time.

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So the first question is, you know,

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in that context: what's the value

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proposition? Why should I mess with my

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machine, my mature Emacs

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configuration, and impose my

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ideas over the way somebody else is

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learning Emacs? Well,

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it can be.. I'm off my slides here a

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little bit.

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It can be a little bit

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tricky

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to learn Emacs. One thing that

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helps us a lot

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is if people that we're working with

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can tell us, kinda, keystroke for

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keystroke at times, what to do and

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explain what everything is doing.

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Using the same packages can really

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help us working together on a project.

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Speaking from my personal

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experience,

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it took me decades to get to the point

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where I was excited to program in Emacs

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Lisp. I've programmed in a lot of programming

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languages,

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but Lisp wasn't on my list. I looked at

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my config that I was copy-pasting around

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from generation after generation of 

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.emacs file or

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recrafting it from hand and from Internet

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searches,

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to get the things that I needed when

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I would quickly go install Emacs at some

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new job or contract,

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and 

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be able to to quickly get through that

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workflow that caused me to install the

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program.

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You know, just

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little simple one-liners that that

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got committed to memory over decades

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eventually just led me to a sort of "hey what's going on

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here." And I credit

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Jeff Goff, my good friend who died

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earlier in 2020,

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for my lifelong love of Emacs.

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Perhaps EriK and I will talk about that

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a little bit more in another talk we

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have

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scheduled, but Jeff was a huge

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influenceo on us 

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in a number of ways and a huge

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contributor to the Raku programming

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language 

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which is very cool.

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So, understanding how

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to make a good decision about splitting

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up configuration in a way to share it

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across

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people with really different uses of

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Emacs... That's actually a

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complicated topic and I want to

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sort of back off and stare at it for a

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second.

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I think Emacs is about people, so that

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means it's about community.

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And community means we're going to

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invite disagreement.

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In fact, that disagreement

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isn't necessarily a road-block to our

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project. In fact, 

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some of the work that a community

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project can invite us to do

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is to get closer to each other by

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inviting those disagreements, by

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learning from them--learning from

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different people's

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styles and from how they argue,

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and thinking about why they have that

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perspective and 

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what technical benefits that

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perhaps radical point of view might

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carry away. Some people are really

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aggressive arguers, and others

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are very passive and really

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couch their ideas

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in distancing terms, to say, "well

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probably, this is a good idea" or

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"please double check me."

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Those don't always necessarily indicate

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how certain a person is, because we're

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different. We have different ways of

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communicating

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ideas like certainty or excitement.

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[Music]

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When we think about a bunch of really

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diverse programmers approaching Emacs,

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probably one of our our first really big

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challenges is just

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to pick what we're going to go

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after. There are a lot of

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existing kit

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installs and things like this.

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My argument is that you could actually

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get pretty far

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just trading files around. Maybe the

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more valuable

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conversation to have is making the

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hard decisions about, well,

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"should we have vertical completion,"

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should that be the out of the box,

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and the people that want

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the traditional splayed out over a

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single line completion

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for example in the mode line, those

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people are going to

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add a line of config 

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to their own setup?

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The way to get there? I mean, how do we

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find out what works? We don't want to

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slow down the people that

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are super productive with Emacs by

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asking them to completely break their

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workflows and make it easier for new

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folks.

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At the same time, we do

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want to make sure those new people are

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excited by Emacs and not turned off by

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having to learn

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the entire jungle of Emacs

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history in the form of its

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unique technical stylings for

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things like frames,

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buffers, and other unique

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Emacs viewpoints on important

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interface concepts, especially.

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The encouragement here is to keep

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the initialization for a project team

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together as a crucible.

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Rather than necessarily following our

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defaults of

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finding the simplest configuration

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that generally work and letting people

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customize it,

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what if we tried to look

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for fairly specific configurations that

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we'll expect essentially all of our

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developers to be using,

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at least when they submit bug reports.

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In particular, with this,

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I think that degree of

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experimentation

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can drive back into the Emacs

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development process. In the development

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mailing list...

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I'm hoping I'll get a timing cue

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here.

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In the context of Emacs development as a

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greater

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entity, we see some of these struggles.

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Should we change this default?

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Sometimes we can have the

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sense that defaults in Emacs will never

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change. The conversation is too difficult.

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I think one thing that can help us get

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there is evidence

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that says, "hey my 30- to 40-person project

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is using this set of bindings and

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here's what we learned about

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brand new Emacs users trying to come in

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and get work done with that."

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(Amin: Yeah you still have

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a couple more minutes)

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Oh, beautiful. Okay, great. I will try to

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get through my last few slides that i

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cut 

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in my last walkthrough, but I think i'm

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going quicker today thank you.

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Thank you.

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So let's just recap real quick:

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in theory, Emacs works

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out of the box. That means we're 

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free to experiment. We can 

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throw it all away and start over.

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As an organizational principle...

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I don't know what I was thinking on that

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slide, excuse me.

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Bringing it back around

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to the free

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and open source software community,

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our goal

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is to enable users

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to unlock their computers, to do as much

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with them as possible.

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That's the context to take with project

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initialization, but sometimes

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it could make sense to put...

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[Music]

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to put some gloves on. I've thrown up on

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the screen here just a couple of other

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ideas, ways to maybe think outside of the

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box.

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As you're putting together project

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nets,

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my words of encouragement are to experiment

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with it,

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try different things, and think really

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specifically about how

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different the development users

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might be from each other as you

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define standards for configuring

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the user environment of Emacs

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specifically for developing

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on a project. That's pretty much my talk.

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If there's any time, I would take a

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couple questions.

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Thank you for your awesome talk,

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Corwin.

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I think we have one or two

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minutes for a few questions.

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Do you have the pad open or would you

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like me to read the questions for you?

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Oh, I managed to close the

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pad

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and I am trying to open it again. All

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right, there it opened.

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Bringing it onto a screen where I can

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see it. Will you read me the

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first question while I drag windows

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around, please?

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(Amin: Sure. It says, "do you use Emacs as a

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community building tool?")

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Do I use Emacs as a community building

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tool, or how do I?

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(Amin: It just says do you.) Yes, absolutely.

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I think Emacs is an ambassador to

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the GNU tool chain.

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I think that in the fullness of time, we

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will see an Emacs

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that makes

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and that makes iOS and Android and other

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closed-source

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tools dream. That's why they mock us

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and call

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Emacs an operating system. It's because

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it could be, if we cared for it to be.

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It's quite a threatening product

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from the perspective of how many problem

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spaces it can address, how many types of

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users it can satisfy,

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the things that we can do to make

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it robust in those

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environments. I mean, we're always

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thinking about the weak points, but

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is Emacs a community building tool? Heck

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yeah.

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(Amin: There's like one or two more

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questions.

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I think they're more long-form so it

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might be better

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if you took them off stream so you

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could keep the schedule on time.)

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i would love to take those questions

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offline. I will respond to you in

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writing if we don't get to it in a

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breakout room.

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Thanks so much for joining us. I

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can't wait to see the rest of the

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conference. See you there!

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(Amin: Awesome. Thank you again so much, Corwin.)