path: root/2021/captions/emacsconf-2021-mold--moldable-emacs-a-step-towards-sustainable-software--andrea--main.vtt

WEBVTT

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Welcome to my talk,

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Moldable Emacs: A Step Towards

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Sustainable Software.

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Who am I?

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I am Andrea.

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I work as a Clojure software engineer

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somewhere in the middle of the UK.

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I inherited my passion for Emacs

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from my Ph.D. supervisor,

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and from that moment on,

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I got in synergy with it.

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You can learn more about my interests

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and my Emacs adventure

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at ag91.github.io.

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So let's get in the talk.

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Why moldable development?

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There is too much information to read it all.

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Reading is very difficult.

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It's a very slow activity.

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You need to go word by word

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or paragraph by paragraph,

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if you speedread.

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But anyway, you take a lot of time

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to absorb that information.

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And we urgently need

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to stand on the shoulders of giants,

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so the idea is we should stop

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doing always the same errors

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and we should be able to

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absorb as much of the good ideas

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that the bright people around us generate.

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For example, if I create

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a magnificent program in COBOL,

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and nobody knows any more

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how to learn or read COBOL,

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(and in order to read,

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you take a lot of time),

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well, that fantastic idea

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should be easily translatable

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to C, or to Clojure,

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or to Common Lisp,

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or to a language that will come after.

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The idea shouldn't be lost

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in a codebase somewhere in an old mainframe.

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It should be still accessible.

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Let's get in practice. What does it mean?

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It means that, for example,

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the proponents of moldable development

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prepare this slide to give a sense.

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So the idea is... Look at this.

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What is here? You will see

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that all these little things

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look like the same.

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The first time I looked at it,

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this was looking like a class diagram.

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This is actually code

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describing a little system.

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If you look and if you read,

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you can see that there is a numerator,

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a denominator... So this, you see,

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is interactive, because it's code.

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It's something that is running,

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and it's an object

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because this is Smalltalk --

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Pharo, a dialect of Smalltalk --

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but in the next slide,

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since this is a moldable tool,

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you can see that you can...

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there is a representation

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of the same software

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in a human way.

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So, for example,

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here you can see

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there is a mathematical formula.

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The other object, the second one,

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was a file system kind of thing.

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The third one was an image.

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And the last one was sort of a graph.

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So you can see that

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there is a better way to learn,

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to distinguish, to intuitively get a sense.

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And there is not only a single way.

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It's custom to what you need.

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For example, this is

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a very general way

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to understand what is this object about

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and maybe you want to see

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some other little things.

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For example, the documentation of the code,

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because you are interested

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in developing with it.

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For example, an image,

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you can see there's a path

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on the filesystem,

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or as a hexadecimal representation.

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In a sense, there is not only one view.

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You need to have the view

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that you need at the moment,

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and your tool needs to

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make this easy for you.

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So, why moldable Emacs?

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I wanted to bring that idea

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of having multiple view representations

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of what you need

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to understand better in Emacs.

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And so I want to create immediate story telling.

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Immediate, because it needs to be very quick,

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and story telling is

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because you want to allow connection

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from something that you needed

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to develop it into something new.

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So you are really telling a story:

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what is this mathematical formula

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I created because I need this,

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or this numerator and denominator

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produce this number.

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So this is a story that you are telling

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in my mind.

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And I want multiple views for buffers.

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Buffers is the main concept in Emacs,

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and so buffers are what I want to

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integrate in a story.

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I create a buffer

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and I start manipulating it,

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creating a view and then another view

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in order to tell something to myself,

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in order to learn,

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but also to tell something to others.

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So, for example, let's start

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from a use case: learning better.

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I had, at work, a list of changes

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for a pull request,

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so a code change,

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and I was very tired.

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I couldn't understand

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what this much text was about.

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So what I generate,

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I create a value for myself

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to understand it easily.

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And for me, understanding it easily,

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for example, was a little flow diagram.

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It showed me, okay, there is first

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this, this, and this,

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and so I could follow.

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having it next to the change.

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Having this image next to the change.

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And this is describing

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an Italian recipe for pasta with butter,

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so if you want to try, you're welcome.

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It's very tasty.

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Anyway, the other thing that we can do

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is query text -- structured text.

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So for example, this presentation

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is an Org Mode buffer.

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So when I call the Playground

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(that is one of the molds

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that lets me write some Elisp to query

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the original buffer,)

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if I evaluate this,

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you will see that

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I have just asked

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my Org Mode buffer

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to tell me the content length

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of the headings

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with some interesting content.

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So all the headings at third-level.

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Do you understand? I've just asked a file

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to tell me its contents

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without reading it.

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Or we can do something similar for code.

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We can do... I don't know...

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No idea what is written there,

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but I want to know

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which function is the most complex

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or is overcomplicated.

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I have defined in red,

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(so again, I don't need to read the number

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to know either what it is about!)

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So, I've written in red,

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I've shown in red

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the function with more complexity,

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and I can jump to it.

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So everything is very accessible

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to facilitate my operation

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and my understanding.

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Or I can take notes.

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For example, I can annotate something,

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and you see the note

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is again structured text,

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because you will know

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that I'm going to query my notes

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at some point.

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For example, I can show all my notes,

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for example, by mode, or I can show

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all the notes by mode in Org Mode.

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Because it's structured text,

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I can manipulate it very easily.

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So these are all my notes.

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Finally, the superpower

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of this moldable Emacs

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is the fact that you can compose molds.

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So, for example, let's go in

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showing all my notes.

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Let me show you all my notes.

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And then let's say that I want to know

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how they are... how many lines

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are these notes?

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Look, this is the answer.

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So of all the notes I take,

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I can actually query it and say

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"What are the lengths?"

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But let me show something more.

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Which one is the longest note?

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Now there are lots of notes in there

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so it's difficult to know

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but what if I can, in a click,

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generate a view that is very immediate?

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Look, there is a note that is very long.

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It's about 35 lines.

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Do you understand?

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I didn't read any note.

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This is all coming from

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being able to query your text

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and having multiple representations.

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My presentation is very short.

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What is next?

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Next is to integrate molds with other software

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like code-compass.

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I did a presentation last year

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and I want to make those nice diagrams

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available for small molds

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so that you can use them,

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for example, for notes

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or text that you have.

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To integrate better

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with Nyxt, the Common Lisp browser,

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because there's a lot of opportunity there

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to make funny things,

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a browser accessible for molding,

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and then having some interaction with Smalltalk

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through Glamorous Toolkit,

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so that we can have the best tools,

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Emacs and Glamorous Toolkit and Nyxt

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and others, to work together

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to make our learning easy.

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Then... You've seen the tool;

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my molds that I have shown

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were basically by buffer.

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I want project statistics.

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What about... Give me the complexity

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of all the functions

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in a project,

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of all the paragraphs, whatever.

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And then there is a nice issue on

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my issue-tracker for moldable Emacs

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is about: "Emacs: tell me how can I

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compose the molds that I have

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to make new things?"

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It is a sort of a research-y thing

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that is pretty cool.

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So if you want to learn more,

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just check out at ag91.github.io,

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check out moldable Emacs on GitHub,

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and enjoy the rest of the conference.

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Bye.