[Speaker 1]: Yeah, we're live. So whoever's in the
background might be able to see you live in
about 10 seconds as soon as the stream
catches up. Hi Jacob, how are you doing?
[Speaker 0]: Got that? We're live. I'm doing well.
How are you doing today?
[Speaker 1]: I am doing well and this is the very last
talk of the day so I'm very excited not
because it finishes but because I am tired
[Speaker 0]: Yeah very understandable.
Well thanks for all of your hard work.
We all really appreciate it and all the other
organizers.
[Speaker 1]: and need some sleep. Well on behalf of all
the organizers thank you but you know it all
it makes it all worthwhile when we see the
valuable contribution that every single 1 of
our speakers are making,
not only for recording their talks,
which is a tough demand on people to say,
oh, if you want to go to EmacsConf,
you might want to record your talk.
But then almost all of you do it and you
spend a lot of time with us answering
questions. So we couldn't do it.
You know, we wouldn't be spending as much
energy, half as much energy,
if we didn't believe that it was worth it.
So now it's me thanking you on behalf of all
the speakers.
[Speaker 0]: Well thank you that's part of what I wanted
to get across in my talk was that coming
together and sharing ourselves and you know
not just putting little little essays out
there and single videos but coming together
as a community you know sharing ourselves our
faces our voices you know it really brings us
together and makes everyone stronger.
[Speaker 1]: Exactly, and I think it's been a recurring
theme. Most of the talks we have at
EmacsConf, they're usually about sharing,
obviously, sharing the knowledge that they've
acquired, either writing a package or
learning how to use Emacs as a professor in
academia or stuff like this.
But what I particularly like this year about
the different talks we've had is that they've
really made the sharing even more obvious.
We've had the mentoring this afternoon and we
have your talk about using videos as a
different medium to get into something.
And I really think in terms of accessibility
to Emacs, all of you who talked about this
topic are doing a wonderful job.
So, thank you again for all of this.
[Speaker 0]: Thank you. Yeah, do we have any questions to
be answering?
[Speaker 1]: Yeah, so only 1 for now and I'll invite
people as usual to please add their question
to the pad or to join us on BBB.
Now the chat is open if you want to join us
on BBB and ask your questions directly.
And in the meantime, I will read the first
question. So, Kroting,
are you using OxReveal to make your slides?
If not, what are you using?
They look very elegant,
and I concur.
[Speaker 0]: That's true. I am using OxReveal.
I have a whole entire video on it.
So if you're interested,
feel free to take a look.
It's very simple to get started with.
There are a lot of different packages to use
Reveal.js and Emacs. OxReveal or OrgReveal
seems to be pretty easy to use.
So try that 1 out. Yeah,
it's really nice.
[Speaker 1]: Awesome. I'm going to give a little bit of
time for the other people to finish writing
their answer. In the meantime,
I'll ask you 1 of my own.
So you said you were in college,
right? In com sci. Sorry,
[Speaker 0]: Yeah.
[Speaker 1]: computer science. I think it's great to find
people in computer science who have,
from the get-go, as soon as their bachelor,
an appetite for sharing and vulgarizing a lot
of knowledge. Because it feels like if you
get started like this,
you're gonna have a well over time as you
progress with the learning.
So I'm very excited to see what you do in the
coming years because of this.
[Speaker 0]: Thank you, thank you, yeah.
And Emacs has been like very central to my
education as well. It's a great way to sort
of organize myself and also it's a good way
to share with other people with Org Mode.
I can export my code, I can export notes.
It makes it so simple.
My peers are also impressed by my PDF
documents and whatever I can produce with
[Speaker 1]: Oh yeah. If only they knew how much time it
takes us to get LaTeX to behave properly.
[Speaker 0]: Emacs. Right, right. I see some more
questions coming in I can answer.
[Speaker 1]: Sure, I'll read it for you so that it's a
little more interactive.
So, second question. Videos can be very
inspirational to learn about something by
watching it used. I often find it,
I often find that I need to do some research
after watching a video to learn more.
Do you give people links to relevant
resources or etc?
[Speaker 0]: Yeah, that's something I could definitely do
more of. When I make a video I try to combine
all the relevant resources and make 1 sort of
cohesive video. I like to think of my video
as a jumping off point to the Emacs manuals
because the manuals are so so full but you
need to have a sort of a cursory
understanding to get started with them.
And then yeah, if there are other sort of
GitHub links or something like that,
I like to put those in the description.
[Speaker 1]: Good question. Right. And I think it's arcing
back also. I keep using the word arcing back.
I'm sorry. It's my... Every EmacsConf I have
1 word or 1 phrase that I keep saying over
and over again and this 1 is not leaving but
don't worry we only have about 1 more hour
and then you're done with me arcing out,
arcing back to stuff. I think this is
reminding me of both the mentoring talk we've
had today about onboarding people basically
so that they can have a well of a time on
their own on Emacs and I'd agree with you,
you know, as much as we like to rave about
Emacs as a self-documenting editor,
about how complete the documentation is,
As you've mentioned in your talk,
it's not accessible directly to the people.
We can yell as much as we want to people on
IRC, you just need to RTFM or you just need
to do Ctrl-H-V for the variable or Ctrl-H-F.
What is a variable? I am not for computer
science. What does it mean?
It is really blocking a lot of people right
from the get-go. And I think the element of
interactivity, as you've mentioned in your
talk, that is introduced by video just makes
the hand-holding that much easier.
And it's great to do it like this.
All right, I think we've got another
questions. What are your fellow codes of
students using for their editors?
What kinds of feedback do you get from them
when they learn about you using Emacs?
[Speaker 0]: That's a great question.
I think professors want to make things,
the entry as simple as possible.
So for the first computer science course and
the second, at least at Columbia,
They use Codeo, which is 1 of those online
whole IDEs. Now in the third course,
which is sort of more the weed out as they
call it, the professor gives you a choice and
he says you can use Emacs or you can use Vim.
And everyone uses Vim.
Not a single person I know is using Emacs,
simply because the professor's using Vim and
that's what he shows on screen and that's
just what everyone else falls into.
And it's also, like, they're totally in the
terminal, and that can be a big barrier of
entry. So I think they see Emacs as like
something like Vim, but it's not sort of the
same idea. It's not what everyone uses
because it's not what's being shown up on
screen. So if you're not following,
like if you're a new learner,
if you're not following with Vim,
you might have a little bit of a harder time
in these classes because everyone else is
also using Vim.
[Speaker 1]: Right. And I'm kind of reminded again,
it feels like this is the last talk,
so I'm reminiscing of all the different talks
we've had on the general chat,
at least. And you know,
it feels like we had, you know,
this 1 talk, I can't remember the first name
at the presentation, but it was about forcing
people to use Emacs and not giving them the
choice to do this. And I found it to be such
a powerful move to do because usually people,
maybe some classes are actually forcing Vim
because it's a little more palatable I guess.
Do you have something to say on this?
[Speaker 0]: Yeah let me actually, I've remembered 1
thing, I know there's another course,
a fourth course you'd say in assembly and the
professor suggests Emacs.
However I know that's just 1 professor so I
think broadly Vim is more of the standard and
yeah what were you, can you repeat what you
said about Vim being more sort of friendly?
[Speaker 1]: Yeah, because it's not,
okay, I'm quoting the opinions of other,
you know, I would hate to insult Emacs and
give myself a bad rep at Emacs comfortable
things. But it feels like because modal
editing is usually something that people hear
from when it starts looking into how to be
more efficient when they read text.
It feels like the first door,
the closest door to this is Vim.
And so a lot of professors,
because there's very little on-boarding,
I mean, I'm going to say the word on-boarding
and then I'm going to modulate,
but there's very little on-boarding to get
into modal editing. You just have your H's
and your J's and your K's and your L's and
everything works. You know,
it does something, yes,
the arrows are in weird places,
but it does something that is vaguely
logical. Whereas with Ctrl-Meta,
Hyper, Super, J and then Ctrl-C and Meta 4
for good measure, you know,
It already feels a little more opaque in
terms of how people are going to use this.
So, I think it's also 1 good thing about the
videos is that people can see you're not
contorting your hands in very difficult
shapes to use Emacs as the bad rep usually
is. But yeah, to come back to what I was
saying about Vim, I just feel like they've
won the battle in terms of looking very
accessible. And for us with Emacs,
from the top of our ivory tower,
we see the ease of getting into Vim,
but we always think, but Vim script is shit,
we've got Elisp for us,
We can do so many things on our end.
So yeah, does that evoke anything to you with
regards to Vim versus Emacs in terms of
apprehension?
[Speaker 0]: Yeah, I think that Emacs might be more
straightforward if you just plop someone down
in front of their computer because you press
H, you're going to see an H on the screen,
right? And Vim is a whole new modal mindset.
So for a student who wants to like gain
efficiency, then yes, I think that Vim is
definitely like, it feels like a more
friendly introduction.
But I think that Emacs doesn't get enough
credit around here. And I'd like to see it
more often, because a lot of students,
they're not looking to fix the efficiencies
in their text editing.
They're looking to fix the efficiencies in
how they do homework or how they do their
programming assignments,
and they would save time if they,
or at least the mentality for a student,
is that if you can just get it done more
quickly, like it's more,
you know, you do what you're used to,
and Vim is just a barrier towards you know
getting your work done like how do I copy and
paste something it's a whole new set of
challenges to learn so I think both have
their deficiencies and abilities.
[Speaker 1]: Yeah it's funny because I'm just 1 last thing
on this it feels like modal editing because
it is already weird from the get-go,
perhaps it might do a better job of making
people uneasy. You know how we say that
constraints breeds creativity.
Well, Vim constrains you from the get-go.
If you do not press I,
nothing is going to show up in the buffer
that you're currently editing.
Whereas Emacs give you this full sense of
security by when you press J,
[Speaker 0]: Yeah, true.
[Speaker 1]: it actually inputs J. All right,
moving on to another question.
And by the way, we've got some time.
We have technically about 6 more minutes,
but I see Sasha on the other track is already
answering questions that I'm in about
EmacsConf. So we can go a little longer,
as long as I let the organizers know.
So we've got about, let's say,
6 minutes for now. And we'll see if more
questions crop up. All right,
moving on to the next question.
Did you start those university classes using
Emacs, I suppose, in your first year?
[Speaker 0]: Yes, yeah, I did. I started with Emacs 2
years before entering college,
so my junior year of high school.
And I've basically over time built up a
workflow of how I will take my notes,
how I will organize my classes.
And now that I'm taking programming classes
where Emacs might be more acceptable.
It's even enhanced my workflow.
Taking notes in Ouro for program assists,
everyone talks about it,
but from the source, It doesn't get better
than that, being able to write with
highlighting, with syntax highlighting,
with easy exports, running inline code
blocks. And a lot of these programming
classes, they make you code on a server.
And they just say, oh,
SSH, and you can use Vim.
I can use Tramp, and I can use Emacs,
and I'm perfectly at home.
It's just such a seamless transition.
It's a really amazing way to do school.
Professors, you know, all they want is a PDF
at the end of the day.
They just want the paper on their desk.
They're not so picky about how you get it
there. They just want it in their hands.
So, so Emacs is, it's very usable.
It's very doable.
[Speaker 1]: Right. I've got a little anecdote on this
because you're speaking about the topic of
Emacs at university from the perspective of
someone who is in computer science.
But for me, in the humanities,
I just remember those professors who just
required you not to use your laptop.
And I started with Emacs roughly at the same
age as you did. And I was just using it for
absolutely everything,
for my organization, for producing papers.
And to be told that I could not use Emacs for
a class for my note-taking,
I felt utterly naked in the face of what I
needed to do. And yeah,
it's great to see those different
experiences. And it just,
you're always going to be weird.
Like I was the weird guy using Emacs in the
humanities, but I would have been weird using
Vim or any kind of computers with fancy
editing.
[Speaker 0]: Oh yeah, yeah. And I'm in humanities classes
as well, I'm not in a strictly engineering,
so people will see me writing an essay about,
you know, a philosophy essay,
I was working on an essay about Plato and
Aristotle, and they say,
what are you coding, why are you coding your
essay? And I say, well it's just the font
looks a little bit different.
Everything else is the same words,
just the font looks a little different.
This is how I like to do it.
[Speaker 1]: Oh, those pesky monospace fonts are making us
pass as hackers. But for everyone who is
behind us, looking at our monitors.
[Speaker 0]: Exactly.
[Speaker 1]: All right. A little bit of a remark,
I guess, towards me and what I said about
Vim. So, quoting, before NeoVim,
you had to do as much or more configuration
to get basic editing done than in Emacs.
It's also slower with modal editing compared
to Emacs key bindings because you have to
press escape and 2 keys to get things done.
While in Emacs, you only have to press Ctrl
or Meta something to move or search or
whatever, and then write.
And I tend to agree, I'm not familiar with
the ages before NeoVim,
But I think we are mostly talking in terms of
reputation and communication,
like how is Vim considered nowadays or for
the last 10 years in the mindset of people
choosing or about to choose an editor.
And, You know, I keep spitting the fact about
VimScript being bad, but I'm going to be
honest, I've never actually written any
VimScript. I'm just parroting whatever the
giants with shoulders I'm standing have been
saying to me. And it's not very intelligent,
I know, but We also have a very limited pool
of time, and I also think that this is a
point that your talk addresses in a way.
Yes, we could be starting the massive quest
of reading the Emacs manual or the ELISP
introductory guide or the ELISP complete
guide. A lot of people are trying,
very highly motivated,
I'm going to get started on Emacs and I'm
going to do things right.
But the fact of the matter is,
it's not necessarily a good use of your time
to get started like this,
because there are so many things you're not
going to understand, it kind of goes back,
didn't say iBug this time,
I stopped myself, it kind of goes back to
this I plus 1 Vigoski proximals on
development stuff that I was talking about
before. The manual is I plus 999.
Your video might be I plus 3 or I plus 2 and
the hand-holding really does wonders for
people to eventually get closer to reading
the manuals and stuff like this.
[Speaker 0]: Yeah it's a great way just something about
giving someone those practical
demonstrations, that's something I really
appreciate. A lot of these really nice
presentations we've had today and yesterday
show real life use cases and we get to see
people typing and they're working how they
would normally work. And that's a great way
to begin to understand how you can apply a
tool to yourself because at the end of the
day Emacs is a tool for us.
You know we might take joy in it,
it helps us be more productive,
it's fun but we're using it for a certain end
and you know if we how we can understand to
get to those ends and what those ends might
even be. It's just great to see other people
bring that forth for you.
[Speaker 1]: Okay, great. Well, I don't see any more
questions in the chat currently,
and I don't see anyone who's joined us on the
blue button. We are near the time that I said
we've got about 40 seconds to go until we
were due to end. Jacob,
I kind of want to give you the microphone for
the end. Do you have anything to say?
Like you've talked about your YouTube
channel, we've already ensured that the links
will be everywhere on the talk page,
in the pad, on IRC. But is there anything
else you'd like to add?
Because you're the last speaker of EmacsCon,
and you've got the tough responsibility of
finishing it.
[Speaker 0]: Oh, well, that's not tough at all when we've
had 2 days. I mean, so many people,
so many presenters coming together and like I
said right at the beginning to Leo,
putting your face out there,
putting your voice out there,
putting yourself out there,
it's such a great way to come together
because Emacs is not the standard.
You know, I've tried to teach my friends
Emacs, I've tried to show it to them.
You know, some people you get it or you
don't. And the people who get it,
we're not all in the same place.
And it's great.
[Speaker 1]: I'm interrupting you for a second because I
think we were supposed to kill the the cron
which starts the next meeting and it hasn't.
Let me try to fix it. I'll talk to production
[Speaker 0]: Do I wait or keep going?
[Speaker 1]: in a second. Just wait a bit.
I'm very sorry. I've given you the mic and
then it just... Okay let me just check your
production.
What? All right, Jason.
All right, Jacob, I'm going to put us
manually back on track.
So give me just a second.
[Speaker 0]: Right.
[Speaker 1]: I'm going to manually type the URL,
because it's a janky setup that we've got
right now, when whenever it's not working.
All right. So tps slash slash bbb emacs first
dot org html. No, that's not the 1.
Let me try to type it.
Probably. Bbbemaxfirst.
L5H, R5D, BH0 Okay, we're getting back Okay,
sorry folks about this We are,
Jacob, We're back online.
I'm really sorry about this.
It's just that Sasha's script kicked in.
I did tell you we were supposed to finish at
30. And because Sasha is busy presenting in
the other room, sadly,
we got yanked again. So Jacob,
I'm very sorry for the interruption.
And you were retelling people about something
you told me during the check-ins.
Do you mind restarting this?
[Speaker 0]: Yeah, sure. Well, you said I have the no
small task of making the last words from
presenters and not the organizers at
EmacsConf. And I said,
well, that's not hard at all.
How many speakers have we had?
30? And it's so incredible these past,
you know, today and yesterday to have all
been able to come together and not just share
our ideas and our code and how we do things,
but to share our faces and our voices and our
lives, you know a little bit of our lives.
You know to have the passion to even spend
the time to on your weekend to watch this
means that you have some sort of care about
Emacs and it adds to your life.
And you know those Emacs people aren't
everywhere. I've tried to bring my friends
onto Emacs and it seems like you know you're
an Emacs person or you're not really an Emacs
person. And those Emacs people can be really
spread out. So it's great that we're able to
come together and share a little bit of
ourselves, a little bit of how we do things.
And like I said in my talk,
just increase our own joy in Emacs by coming
together and being able to share our joy in
Emacs. And of course, thank you to all the
organizers and everyone who's contributed in
any way. It means a lot to even the smallest
member, the biggest member of our community.
We're all really glad to be able to come
together like this and share and meet each
other and give nice talks.
[Speaker 1]: Well, thank you so much,
Jacob. And perhaps to reassure people,
because yes, right now it feels like we are
legions, all of us here in the same room
watching the same thing.
We are the Emacs' and that's a very good
feeling to have. But you know,
first, there's 1 thing that is certain,
almost 99% certain, it's the fact that next
year there'll probably be another EmacsConf
and there will be more Emacs versions,
there will be more augmented versions,
there will be more people doing cool stuff on
Melpa, on ELPA, etc. So it is still a vibrant
community. But in case you're craving this
little extra in-person stuff,
Sash and myself, we are maintaining a list of
all the Emacs user group.
This is on the Emacs wiki.
This is what I'm sharing on my screen
currently. And we try to organize them by
regional region, sorry,
parts of the world like North America,
South America, Europe,
Africa, Asia. And we have a list of upcoming
events and a lot of them are still online.
Ever since we had the entire pandemic stuff,
a lot of the workshops moved online and,
sorry, I had someone whispering in my ear.
A lot of them moved online and they are still
online now because they've realized it's a
very great way to get more people in the same
place. And whilst it's great to have
in-person meetings, We do this with Emacs
Paris. Emacs Paris actually is happening is
it? I think, oh I'm going to need to tell
Sasha that apparently yes we do not have the
next event for Emacs Paris which is next
Tuesday and it is in person but for everyone
and including you Jacob if you find a
workshop in North America that is working for
you, I'm thinking about Emacs SF,
which I've attended multiple times,
and Emacs Austin as well,
that I've been to once,
I think, It would be a lovely experience and
a way to, most of them are every month,
it would be a good way for you to stay in
touch and to continue this sense of
in-person-ness about Emacs.
[Speaker 0]: Wonderful. All right, thank you so much.
Should I drop off of our call now and let you
close things up?
[Speaker 1]: Yeah, we're probably gonna close thing up.
Let me just check on Sasha.
Sasha is obviously answering many many
questions about how we are organizing
EmacsConf. So Jacob, I'm gonna let you go.
Thank you so much for your presentation and
your answers. And maybe we'll see you next
year. Or maybe a workshop.
[Speaker 0]: Who knows? I'm so lucky I got you as my Q&A.
When I saw you at my first Emacs Conf 2 years
ago, I thought, maybe this guy will do mine.
[Speaker 1]: Very nice. Thank you. I'm glad I was able to
generate such a feeling.
All right, I'll get going now.
Jacob, have a wonderful evening.
[Speaker 0]: And here you are. You too,
see you later.
[Speaker 1]: Bye-bye. And folks, what are we going to do
right now? I'm going to set everything up so
that we can get Sasha finished on the talk.
If you're watching, squinting with both
streams, you can go to Sasha's room,
I mean, the development track,
to maybe catch some of the answers by Sasha.
Otherwise, we'll be back in roughly 5 to 10
minutes to do the closing remarks on this
channel. In the meantime,
I'll put on some music.
So bear with us and I'll see you shortly.
And closing here. This BBB recording.
Yay!