path: root/2020/subtitles/emacsconf-2020--20-omg-macros--corwin-brust.vtt

WEBVTT

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Good evening again. I think

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I have a little time here

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to talk about macros.

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Is there still room in
our schedule for that,

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or should I just jump to some of

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my thoughts on the day?

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([Amin:] Pretty sure we

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have some time.)

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[Corwin:] All right. Great.
([Amin:] Yeah, go for it.)

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Well, I'll just drive into my

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prepared thing here then.

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(Amin: yeah, actually, you're
right on time, so...)

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[Corwin:] oh what an amazing thing.

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I just... You know, I have been
trying to do what I...

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I've got a big thank you planned

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at the end, but let me just say,

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it's been really cool to watch the

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way that people work together.

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([Amin:] Absolutely. It's...
This whole event today has been

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nothing but awesome, and

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no little part thanks to all of the help

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from all of you guys and everyone.

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Yeah, it's awesome.

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With that, I'll just shut up
for now.

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Take it away, Corwin.)

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[Corwin:] Who knows how to make

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make that the default in good old smex?

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All right. So I'm gonna try to continue

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my theme from the previous talk.

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I'm a longtime Emacs user,

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but I'm a pretty new person

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to trying to really understand

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what's going on within Emacs and make

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my customizations to it--simple for

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what I tend to just think of will work.

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And maybe that's a nice bow

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to put on that earlier talk.

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Let's see here now. It's C-x M-i.

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That's right.

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And let's try that again. Okay, good.

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So demoing is fun,

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but I will save most of that

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for tomorrow where my

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dear friend and co-collaborator

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in bringing you the dungeon-mode project,

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which is sort of the exciting thing

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that we hope you'll be interested in,

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gets a little more of a reveal.

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Tonight, I'll just close saying

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a few things about the process of

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making it and continuing my theme of
community.

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First of all, a specific and upfront
shout out

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to tv's wasamasa who

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absolutely shaped and guided this

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this program. I may have taken out

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a slide with your name on it,

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but thank you.

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So when we think about Emacs macros

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and the power that they give us,

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I think about them as a really

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deep rabbit hole. They confuse

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people a lot. And so, to try to center

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myself on that, I remember first that

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they're going to be talking to us
about code.

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Excuse me, I realize I hadn't
set my timer.

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Here we are.

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So a simple macro syntax is

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going to generate

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something that is implicitly confusing

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to somebody that knows the syntax

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of Emacs Lisp well.

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We see something like this

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and a veteran eye says

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"That x isn't quoted. What's going on?"

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but it can be hard to miss.

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A lot of the functions (as we'll talk

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about in a moment) that are built
into Emacs

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really are macros, so a lot of

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Emacs features work this way.

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It might be scary, but we have to look at

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it closely if we really want to get

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friendly with Emacs.

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Let's just jump right into defmacro,

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which is our key entry point.

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The notes from this talk

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include the link to that,

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which... Definitely

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read through a couple of times.

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That may take you through

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into the cl-def macro, which adds

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the Common Lisp extensions.

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Definitely challenging.

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I've struggled there,

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as we'll take a look at

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in a moment.

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So I haven't played too much with

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cl-maclet. Perhaps success in

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in that keyword space

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and figuring out what
the right balance is there

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will give me the confidence to try

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some more lexical macros.

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Let me also briefly introduce

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the comma (,) and back quote (`).

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If you have allowed your eyes

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to cross when you see these,

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that's not a shameful,
shameful thing.

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It's confusing, and we should be

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alerting each other

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when we stick macros in,

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often by putting them in

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different library spaces

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for complicated projects,

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or otherwise warning people

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that this is not an interactive function,

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even if you get away
with using it like one.

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Watch your back.

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The manual itself talks about macros

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as being a way of evaluating,

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as being an evaluator that will take

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our Emacs Lisp expression

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and the set of forms that

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will feed to it our code,

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but it also provides us with

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this concept of an environment.

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That's really where the power
comes in.

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Through that, we can have

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lexical variables and

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think about--bring in some of the

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capabilities that

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can be harder to reach with

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a pure declarative statement that

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doesn't allow for top level

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asynchronous... Asynchronicity...

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I'm gonna basically

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ignore the byte-compilation phase

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for this talk

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in order to have any prayer

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of getting through it in the

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remaining 9 or 11 minutes or whatever.

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But suffice to say,
that's a scary space,

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and that's really

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the thing that you want to

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start learning about

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as you think about

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taking macros on in earnest.

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Coming back to the comma syntax,

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then, having given ourselves a

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working definition for the Emacs Lisp

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runtime environment, then we can say that

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macros are going to

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inject code back into that stream,

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whereas backquote (`)

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is going to give code back.

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to the stream--or interject, sorry,

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it's going to interject

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back into the stream.

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Sort of an exclamatory "Excuse me,

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I'd like to have a value here."
We can take that value

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from the environment as it exists

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when our macro is evaluated.

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Backquote, on the other hand,

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takes the result from that

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and returns it back to the stream

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for evaluation at the

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processing level that invoked us.

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So in other words, perhaps back up to

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a top-level eval expression where our

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macro is invoked.

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I'm going to briefly bring

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you back to the game

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for just a moment.

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I won't linger on this slide,

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but briefly: this is a

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role-playing, pen and pencil,

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physical dice tradition

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that dates back a long time

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from a technology perspective.

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It's old in the same way

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that other tools that I like
are old.

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It's simple to understand.

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I can communicate a lot with it

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with a simple amount of typing

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or scribbling something
on a piece of paper.

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It has a complicated problem space
of its own.

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Again, I don't want to

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get too much into the game here,

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but in this talk,

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for the last five minutes,

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I'll focus on the process

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that we took to

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automate getting data out of

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the Org Mode tables
which eventually

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(as we'll talk about more
tomorrow)

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are used to draw

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game maps and other things.

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Here I talk about why we did
that.

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I'm going to skip briefly past that,

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and say instead that at a high level,

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it's symbolic informatics.

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We're giving a symbolic name

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to a tile set,

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and then assigning that tile set some

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some characteristics

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like physical speeds, screen space

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(a variable that we might

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want to swap in), and so forth.

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You know, our project rests heavily on

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Org Mode and its
fundamental capabilities.

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The code I'm going to show here

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is focused around a sticky

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problem space in

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information technology.

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I'm a professional software engineer

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turned technology architect.

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I support the websites for

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a recognizable financial services brand

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that I don't identify

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just so I don't accidentally end up

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inadvertently misrepresenting my firm

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in some financial perspective

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if I let some other

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companies' name slip, or my own.

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It's certainly no representation

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of an opinion other than my own.

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So ETL has to do with moving data around.

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We have the idea of

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a pipeline where we'll be able to verify

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certain assumptions,

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nominally about data quality,

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but it could be about anything.

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Before the pipeline starts, okay,

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we've got a state where we think

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it should work if we run it.

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We have some extraction where we'll

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get our sources, and we may have

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the opportunity to

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make some assertions there.

00:11:47.327 --> 00:11:50.510
In the transform stage,
as well as the load,

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things get a little dicer,

00:11:52.720 --> 00:11:54.079
to the point where we come out of the

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load stage and we should have some

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really solid assertions again

00:11:56.676 --> 00:11:57.724
that we can even go back

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and compare to the extract stage.

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From this, we have the rudimentaries

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of a data quality practice.

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In this case, we have a number of

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Org Mode files that will all

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be distributed across a

00:12:12.639 --> 00:12:16.720
number of players' computers,

00:12:16.720 --> 00:12:18.959
so we might not want to update every

00:12:18.959 --> 00:12:20.320
part of every buffer.

00:12:20.320 --> 00:12:22.720
I think it's a complicated problem space.

00:12:22.720 --> 00:12:24.560
So we tried to take

00:12:24.560 --> 00:12:27.839
a long-term view of

00:12:27.839 --> 00:12:30.321
the solution that we needed.

00:12:30.321 --> 00:12:32.160
So I'll go ahead

00:12:32.160 --> 00:12:36.279
and open up the function
that...

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Let's actually start with the one

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that's pretty easy to read.

00:12:41.680 --> 00:12:46.800
I'm gonna go ahead and
just crank it up huge,

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in case anybody's watching in 480.

00:12:51.680 --> 00:12:57.733
This program is not a work of art

00:12:57.733 --> 00:13:01.120
It's a simple implementation
of the idea that

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an alist of functions

00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:06.633
that return maybe some data,

00:13:06.633 --> 00:13:10.399
maybe some data and an entry
back into that alist,

00:13:10.399 --> 00:13:13.040
can be done quite extensively with

00:13:13.040 --> 00:13:15.680
very few lines of code.

00:13:15.680 --> 00:13:17.586
Neither is it an especially tight

00:13:17.586 --> 00:13:19.600
or thrifty implementation.

00:13:19.600 --> 00:13:22.000
It's just trying to get the job done

00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:25.056
with a doc statement for everything.

00:13:25.056 --> 00:13:28.595
At the heart, we see a call to

00:13:28.595 --> 00:13:32.067
this macro called dm-coalesce-hash,

00:13:32.067 --> 00:13:33.714
and that's what I'd like
to focus in on.

00:13:33.714 --> 00:13:35.360
You can see... I think

00:13:35.360 --> 00:13:38.800
that something unpleasant is
happening here.

00:13:38.800 --> 00:13:43.991
I've got an eval in what is...

00:13:43.991 --> 00:13:49.519
I will share a fairly central function

00:13:49.519 --> 00:13:52.160
that those implementing
this ETL pattern are

00:13:52.160 --> 00:13:54.933
welcome to derive from.

00:13:54.933 --> 00:13:57.680
That is, this is a
default transform

00:13:57.680 --> 00:14:00.959
that you can get when loading
certain kinds of

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org-mode tables that have been

00:14:04.560 --> 00:14:06.399
properly adorned. Again, we'll get

00:14:06.399 --> 00:14:09.120
into that all tomorrow.

00:14:09.120 --> 00:14:11.900
So, keeping an eye on time.
Couple minutes left.

00:14:11.900 --> 00:14:13.760
Let's look at the macro itself.

00:14:13.760 --> 00:14:15.000
I have a slide on this,

00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:24.639
but let's go ahead
and risk getting off page.

00:14:24.639 --> 00:14:27.199
Oh boy. Here we go. So this is my

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utilities bucket.

00:14:28.959 --> 00:14:31.920
It has such basic features as "give me a

00:14:31.920 --> 00:14:34.000
hash table with some defaults, I'll think

00:14:34.000 --> 00:14:36.000
about that later,"

00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:44.720
and "add to list," a special version

00:14:44.720 --> 00:14:47.600
that enables us to be a little cavalier

00:14:47.600 --> 00:14:49.360
in experimenting with alist versus

00:14:49.360 --> 00:14:50.967
hashes versus plists.

00:14:50.967 --> 00:14:53.178
We've made a right mess for
ourselves

00:14:53.178 --> 00:14:54.399
in the proof of concept area,

00:14:54.399 --> 00:14:57.433
and it's ripe for someone to write a

00:14:57.433 --> 00:14:58.560
whitepaper about

00:14:58.560 --> 00:15:00.240
when to prefer these things.

00:15:04.800 --> 00:15:08.000
The merge alist...

00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:12.959
Same work here.
Let's get down to business.

00:15:12.959 --> 00:15:14.667
This function has quite a...

00:15:14.667 --> 00:15:17.467
This macro has quite a doc string.

00:15:17.467 --> 00:15:20.720
I think I mentioned earlier
that I got myself into

00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:22.088
trouble with the keyword properties.

00:15:22.088 --> 00:15:23.519
You can see that we have

00:15:23.519 --> 00:15:27.359
not only quite a number of them,

00:15:27.359 --> 00:15:31.155
but a lot of default values,

00:15:31.155 --> 00:15:35.446
many of which may be relying on

00:15:35.446 --> 00:15:37.264
the values that are passed in here.

00:15:37.264 --> 00:15:40.000
This is complicated. As it turns out,

00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:44.000
I wasn't brave enough in most cases

00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:45.485
to try to write a lambda

00:15:45.485 --> 00:15:47.279
that could understand and

00:15:47.279 --> 00:15:49.300
replace its own local variable.

00:15:49.300 --> 00:15:50.399
I just didn't...

00:15:50.399 --> 00:15:53.519
It didn't save me enough time. This was

00:15:53.519 --> 00:15:56.532
really easy to read and write and
understand

00:15:56.532 --> 00:15:58.240
as I thought through my problem,

00:15:58.240 --> 00:16:00.000
but now, as I use it,

00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:02.486
I've lost a little ground with
this.

00:16:02.486 --> 00:16:04.079
I'm not even sure

00:16:04.079 --> 00:16:06.453
I like what I got from

00:16:06.453 --> 00:16:09.341
the many keyword properties
when it...

00:16:09.341 --> 00:16:11.920
And we can look, perhaps if we have

00:16:11.920 --> 00:16:17.340
the time, at what that looks like in

00:16:19.920 --> 00:16:22.720
Oh, all right, I have to separately

00:16:22.720 --> 00:16:24.480
dismiss and restart that.

00:16:24.480 --> 00:16:27.519
So that's just about my time.

00:16:27.519 --> 00:16:29.600
Being respectful of that, I want

00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:31.920
to invite presenters to just jump in at

00:16:31.920 --> 00:16:35.519
any of the many large pauses I leave.

00:16:35.519 --> 00:16:38.079
I'll just leave up the doc string

00:16:38.079 --> 00:16:40.160
for a moment and maybe split the screen

00:16:40.160 --> 00:16:45.199
and pull open an item.

00:16:45.199 --> 00:16:48.720
([Amin]: Thank you very

00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:50.720
much for your talk, Corwin.

00:16:50.720 --> 00:16:53.839
I think you still have

00:16:53.839 --> 00:16:55.027
maybe three or four more minutes,

00:16:55.027 --> 00:16:57.680
if you want to quickly wrap up.)

00:16:57.680 --> 00:17:00.644
[Corwin:] Okay, so three or four
more minutes

00:17:00.644 --> 00:17:05.439
I can easily spend on thank yous.

00:17:05.439 --> 00:17:07.280
I might switch to that if there aren't

00:17:07.280 --> 00:17:08.270
questions on the pad.

00:17:10.160 --> 00:17:12.559
([Amin:] Would you like me to pull up the pad,

00:17:12.559 --> 00:17:14.079
or are you looking at it?)

00:17:14.079 --> 00:17:16.777
[Corwin:] I am. I bookmarked it.

00:17:16.777 --> 00:17:30.840
I am pulling the tab
and I'll bring it in.

00:17:30.840 --> 00:17:38.799
Okay. All right. This is the wrong
Etherpad.

00:17:38.799 --> 00:17:44.480
Thanks for the link.

00:17:44.480 --> 00:17:54.880
All right. So I think I'm
looking for macros.

00:17:54.880 --> 00:17:57.630
Okay. Key message. Sure.

00:17:57.630 --> 00:18:01.679
So, the key message is that it's

00:18:01.679 --> 00:18:02.960
a jungle out there.

00:18:02.960 --> 00:18:05.912
Macros, along with any other design,

00:18:05.912 --> 00:18:08.559
can leave you in a position

00:18:08.559 --> 00:18:11.919
where you have a nice API. I can show

00:18:11.919 --> 00:18:13.600
you other examples (you can find them in

00:18:13.600 --> 00:18:14.960
the dungeon-mode source)

00:18:14.960 --> 00:18:18.480
of many, many other places where I use

00:18:18.480 --> 00:18:20.820
this exact same formula,

00:18:20.820 --> 00:18:23.840
quickly sketching out
how a character sheet

00:18:23.840 --> 00:18:26.180
or another big data set

00:18:26.180 --> 00:18:28.480
needs to figure out
what tables are

00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:29.320
going to be interesting

00:18:29.320 --> 00:18:30.720
from the collection of files,

00:18:30.720 --> 00:18:33.967
and then load up the tile set,

00:18:33.967 --> 00:18:38.880
and the layout file from that.

00:18:38.880 --> 00:18:40.542
And I mean, it works.

00:18:40.542 --> 00:18:42.677
The project is moving forward
with this.

00:18:42.677 --> 00:18:44.799
I have the flexibility that I need.

00:18:44.799 --> 00:18:46.559
But here I am evaling my own code

00:18:46.559 --> 00:18:48.640
to make darn sure even if I get

00:18:48.640 --> 00:18:52.400
byte-compiled, this macro

00:18:52.400 --> 00:18:55.440
does get evaluated in the user's real

00:18:55.440 --> 00:18:57.684
run time. Clearly a design fail.

00:18:57.684 --> 00:18:58.890
So that would be...

00:18:58.890 --> 00:19:00.880
The key point of my talk is to

00:19:00.880 --> 00:19:05.600
present this design fail and

00:19:05.600 --> 00:19:08.320
thank the community, but especially

00:19:08.320 --> 00:19:10.942
wasamasa for some patience.

00:19:10.942 --> 00:19:13.280
Let me add at this moment that

00:19:13.280 --> 00:19:13.333
he was so frustrated with me.

00:19:13.333 --> 00:19:17.115
They were sort of frustrated with me

00:19:17.115 --> 00:19:20.400
(I think I didn't qualify pronouns)

00:19:24.240 --> 00:19:26.287
with doing this. The first...

00:19:26.287 --> 00:19:27.985
This was one of our first
interactions,

00:19:27.985 --> 00:19:29.919
and the feedback was,

00:19:29.919 --> 00:19:34.240
"Why is this a macro. Full stop."

00:19:34.240 --> 00:19:36.640
And that's a great message, actually.

00:19:36.640 --> 00:19:39.520
I hope that maybe this
can encourage

00:19:39.520 --> 00:19:42.720
further talks across the subject about,

00:19:42.720 --> 00:19:43.808
you know, "Hey, wait a minute,

00:19:43.808 --> 00:19:45.549
macros are really fantastic,"

00:19:45.549 --> 00:19:47.018
as I hope I made clear.

00:19:47.018 --> 00:19:48.559
You can do a tremendous amount

00:19:48.559 --> 00:19:51.039
with them, and we rely on them

00:19:51.039 --> 00:19:55.200
for almost all the fun goodies,

00:19:55.200 --> 00:20:02.159
from defun, setq...

00:20:02.159 --> 00:20:04.639
I want to get to my thank yous.

00:20:04.639 --> 00:20:18.840
Let me just peek back at the pad.

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:22.080
Well, that was actually a scratch buffer,

00:20:22.080 --> 00:20:24.720
so I'll have to read it cold off
my notes.

00:20:27.919 --> 00:20:30.320
But I'll switch to... I'll also...

00:20:30.320 --> 00:20:31.600
I'll say a couple of thank-yous if you

00:20:31.600 --> 00:20:34.320
don't mind, Amin.

00:20:34.320 --> 00:20:36.080
In addition to the big thank you that I

00:20:36.080 --> 00:20:39.360
hope was implied by my shout out
to wasamasa,

00:20:39.360 --> 00:20:42.720
I also want to thank you, Amin, for

00:20:42.720 --> 00:20:46.640
your kindness in extending

00:20:46.640 --> 00:20:51.360
to the project as well as to me, the

00:20:51.360 --> 00:20:54.320
the chance to present here.

00:20:54.320 --> 00:20:56.358
You've also done a lot of great stuff

00:20:56.358 --> 00:20:59.360
for our project. Thank you very much for
that.

00:20:59.360 --> 00:21:03.400
Sacha Chua (I'll get there),

00:21:03.400 --> 00:21:15.919
thank you so much for

00:21:15.919 --> 00:21:17.200
the inspiration that you are to our

00:21:17.200 --> 00:21:18.320
whole community.

00:21:18.320 --> 00:21:22.400
I also want to thank the presenters

00:21:22.400 --> 00:21:25.600
for just being so flexible and

00:21:25.600 --> 00:21:27.600
nagging back through the whole thing,

00:21:27.600 --> 00:21:29.120
and especially to Leo

00:21:29.120 --> 00:21:32.159
who has done so much to
drive the show today.

00:21:32.159 --> 00:21:37.242
This is a fractious tent at times,

00:21:37.242 --> 00:21:39.800
and sometimes it is indeed

00:21:39.800 --> 00:21:41.360
a little bit of a circus,

00:21:41.360 --> 00:21:44.746
but I am learning so much so fast.

00:21:44.746 --> 00:21:46.880
I'm just inspired by how much

00:21:46.880 --> 00:21:49.333
Emacs can teach us.

00:21:49.333 --> 00:21:52.901
([Amin:] thank you, Corwin,
for your kind words

00:21:52.901 --> 00:21:54.960
about me, of course,

00:21:54.960 --> 00:21:56.000
about all of us

00:21:56.000 --> 00:21:58.000
and the conference...

00:21:58.000 --> 00:22:02.400
Indeed, thanks to everyone who's helped,

00:22:02.400 --> 00:22:04.159
including the speakers, of course,

00:22:04.159 --> 00:22:05.840
without whom EmacsConf really

00:22:05.840 --> 00:22:08.960
wouldn't have been a EmacsConf.

00:22:08.960 --> 00:22:10.640
It's been a pleasure

00:22:10.640 --> 00:22:12.366
knowing you and
working with you,

00:22:12.366 --> 00:22:15.743
from afar for the most part

00:22:15.743 --> 00:22:17.360
on dungeon-mode,

00:22:17.360 --> 00:22:19.937
helping with small things
here and there

00:22:19.937 --> 00:22:21.796
but yeah, it's been my pleasure,

00:22:21.796 --> 00:22:23.840
and it's great to have you and

00:22:23.840 --> 00:22:26.582
everyone else part of the
community,

00:22:26.582 --> 00:22:29.180
and for me to be part of the
community.

00:22:29.180 --> 00:22:30.559
It's been a lot of fun.

00:22:30.559 --> 00:22:33.679
Thank you.)

00:22:33.679 --> 00:22:35.206
[Corwin]: It's an honor.

00:22:35.206 --> 00:22:37.428
I don't use that word an awful lot

00:22:37.428 --> 00:22:39.867
because I sort of smirk at it.

00:22:39.867 --> 00:22:43.941
It gets us in a lot of trouble,
honor does,

00:22:43.941 --> 00:22:46.904
but this will be a sure time
to use it.

00:22:46.904 --> 00:22:48.840
([Amin:] Thank you.)

00:22:48.840 --> 00:22:51.840
[Corwin:] Likewise.