path: root/2025/captions/emacsconf-2025-python--interactive-python-programming-in-emacs--david-vujic--answers.vtt

WEBVTT

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So as we wait for people to drop

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in their questions and so on,

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I'll just kind of add a couple of thoughts.

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I'm not personally much of a Python developer,

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so I'm just curious as to your thoughts on using Emacs

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and kind of the development methodology you showed

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as a way to learn Python.

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Yeah, I think Emacs is perfect for it.

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If you're already an Emacs user

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and you have the keyboard commands

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and everything uploaded in your brain,

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then learning Python shouldn't be too difficult,

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because there's a lot of good packages.

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For Python, I'm using a thing called elpy,

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which is really good. for Python development.

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So you have this connection to a running backend,

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the Jedi Python backend that will give you autocomplete

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and some refactoring and things like that.

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So I think Emacs is really good for Python development.

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So what are some other...

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How long have you been using Emacs?

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Kind of a general question.

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Sorry if you covered this and I missed it.

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It's not that long actually.

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I think it was in 2019 or 2020.

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It's when I started to, I was really fortunate enough

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to join a team that had chosen to

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develop an app in Lisp, in Clojure.

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yeah and i didn't know anything about it

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i didn't know lisp at all so it was like brand new

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so i really had struggling to to learn it

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but at the same time i was looking for okay

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which editor should i pick to to do this

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and i was before that and like an ide person

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so i do use this big ideas

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and this time i figured maybe i should try something different.

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And I read this book about Clojure development

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and the author was really into Emacs

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and he was like, Clojure is really good for,

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Emacs is really good for Clojure development.

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So that's how I started.

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So I like to learn, rewired my brain

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to learn all how Emacs works

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as opposed to like the mainstream editors out there.

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So that's how it started. So like five years ago, maybe.

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Cool. Um, so did you, what were some other,

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what, what, what editor were you primarily using before you?

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Um, um, back, back then it was like,

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I think it was like Sublime Text.

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And also some IntelliJ, sorry, JetBrains, their tools.

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And before that, I was in the Microsoft world,

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so it's like Microsoft toolings basically.

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So I moved towards open source tooling

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and also open source development. Very cool.

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So I see we've got a couple people

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that have joined on the BBB here with us

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for the live question.

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You're welcome to just throw your question in this chat,

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or if you've got a microphone connected,

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you're welcome to come off mute

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and throw a question in that way as well.

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You can join on liberachat IRC.

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You can join pound emacs comp hyphen dev,

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and we would happily take your questions there.

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Meanwhile, I've got a question

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coming in on the pad right now, so take that next.

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I'll just read it out.

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I don't quite see how your setup works with IPython.

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Sorry if you already answered this.

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Do you have your Emacs connect to the IPython kernel

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over XMPP socket that IPython sets up? Oh, good question.

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So what I've done is I have two different connections.

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Like if I'm going to do this regular day-to-day Python work

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when I want to evaluate code

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without thinking about the external connection,

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then I just use IPython

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and I have my I'm using the LP Python package

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so that you can set up which of the REPLs

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you want to start when you evaluate code.

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So that's IPython. But in the second part of the talk

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where I connect to an externally running app,

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then I have set up the same configuration

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but to start Jupyter, the Jupyter console instead.

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And when I start it up, it's going to, it's like a dialogue

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that will ask for the ID of a running kernel.

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Because if you start a kernel,

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if you start something in a kernel,

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you will get this unique ID so you can connect to it.

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So that's kind of the difference.

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So I have two different ways

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of starting up the Python kernel. REPLs, either PyPython,

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which I do for most of my daily work,

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or if I want this connection to a running app,

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I'm using the Jupyter console, basically.

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Have you explored Org Babel at all?

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Can you talk about your approach

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compared to the Babel workflow? Oh, interesting.

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No, I haven't actually, I haven't done that,

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but I think it's similar to Jupyter notebooks,

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so you can do some interactive, you can run Python there,

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but I haven't,

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I have too little knowledge about it to elaborate on that.

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Sorry. Very good. All right.

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I'm just going to peek over to the other chats

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and make sure I'm not missing questions.

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Sorry, I got a lot of screens. A little dance here.

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All right, and I do see a few people in the chat.

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I'll just say again, if you've joined us on the BBB,

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you're more than welcome to jump in with your questions

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or put questions into the chat here.

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I'm not a big Python person,

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so I can't get into the really interesting questions

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that are probably more relevant,

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just because a lot of it's kind of over my head.

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Have you seen the miramo.io notebooks?

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These use standard Python?

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Oh, yes, I've seen, I haven't tried it myself,

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but I've seen it.

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It's very, I think it's a very interesting approach

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that probably will solve a lot of these things

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with interactive development in general,

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but because I think it's basically Python files

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and not the, not this other file format that you have

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for the regular notebook setup.

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So I have that in my list of things to try out in future,

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but it looks really, really cool. Awesome.

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Yeah, I'm hesitant to just ask you really boilerplate questions.

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You get an expert, a souffle chef,

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and you ask about making pasta or some other sort of thing.

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No, go ahead. Go ahead. I'm glad to ask any questions.

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So just generally about Emacs as a coding developer,

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what are the features

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that you tend to lean on more heavily?

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you know completion or you know what what have you

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maybe I could put it better

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as what have you spent more time configuring for Emacs

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to facilitate development?

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Yes initially it was basically taking away

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some of the UI features

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basically disabling it and and but fairly quickly

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for for both closure development

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where i was using cider which is like a really good uh good tool um

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and for python when i quickly found lp elp

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i'm not sure how to pronounce it

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but you you get so much uh good things from these tools

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so what i've done additionally is like theme

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and maybe having this environment

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that is without disturbance.

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So I really like the code to have my full attention.

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So I rarely have, maybe I have like a preview sometimes,

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but mostly it's the window or the buffer where I have my code

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and I've minimized the running REPL buffer.

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So sometimes it's, I'm hiding it, but it's still active.

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So basically that's how I configured,

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spent my configuration doing that.

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And also lately, trying out some LLM tools.

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So I think I have two packages

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that I'm using actively today.

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And my favorite is a tool called ECA,

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which is a LLM chat assistant, which is really good.

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The developer is also an Emacs enthusiast.

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So are you the type of person that tends to work with

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like a master builder, build your own Emacs?

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Are you using the system packages?

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What's your approach to just get Emacs

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up and off the ground for yourself?

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I'm not there yet with doing my own builds.

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Currently, I'm on macOS,

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so I'm installing Emacs through broom basically, homebrew.

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I've yet so much Emacs things to learn

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because I'm not even using org yet.

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I'm exploring the this editor.

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So I feel like I'm very much a beginner.

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I'm not using Emacs to its full potential yet.

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So I'm counting on that I will be more and more using Emacs

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for more and more different tasks basically.

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And I'm just seeing a comment.

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Ed Stallthroat says, thank you

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for publishing your configuration and offers a link.

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Oh, great. Great.

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Yes, those things that I showed in my talk,

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I haven't made any, I haven't packaged it yet,

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but everything is on my GitHub,

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and I've tried to separate each feature

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in separate LSP files.

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So it should be, I hope that it's fairly straightforward

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to understand how it's set up. Very good.

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Let me just scroll down,

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make sure I'm not missing questions here.

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Okay, I think those are the questions that we have.

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We can take a couple more minutes if you're open to that,

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just for people to consider.

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I know we're coming up on the lunch hour,

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so it may be that people are jogging off to get some food.

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Yeah, in Sweden, it's dinner time.

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It's like 6 p.m. soon. That fits.

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So are you involved with local Emacs meetups?

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I know that your part of the world

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has a really brisk community,

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you know, a lot of, just a lot going on.

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I'm always seeing in Sacha's Emacs News,

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all of the different meetups and so on.

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I'm curious if you're plugged

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into a local community there at all, No, I haven't.

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Not in any community. I haven't done that yet,

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but we are like friends that I've gotten to know

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through work and through like open source work that also use Emacs.

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We talk and share our conflicts

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basically on a regular basis,

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because we are, at least in the Python community,

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we're like a minority,

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like other editors are like the standards.

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And at work, I'm sharing what I'm doing,

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just like my talk here to my fellow co-workers

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that are not on Emacs, but I hope to get their interest up.

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So many of us Emacs users are Emacs evangelists.

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Yeah. It's the Venn diagram of Emacs user

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and Emacs evangelist is a circle, I think.

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Yeah, I think so too.

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Well, David, I super appreciate your talk

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and thank you so much also for...

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I'm sorry, I saw another question here. Let me cover that.

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Can you repeat the name of the LLM

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that you specifically mentioned there?

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Oh, it's a tool called ECA, E-C-A.

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It's basically a server and clients,

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and it's not only Emacs. It has support for other editors,

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but I think the primary support is for,

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at least the developer who does it is an Emacs user,

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and so it's like Emacs first, basically.

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And his name is Eric Dallo.

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He's a great developer in the Clojure community.

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He has done some LSP work in the Clojure world, too.

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What was the last name? What was Eric's last name?

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Eric Dallo, D-A-L-L-O. Yeah.

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So I think that's a great tool, but I also use another tool

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that for some reason I forgot to have this interactive way of,

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because I think they are developing that feature too,

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but I have another LLM that has support

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for requests and callbacks basically.

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So you can do something programmatically.

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So that's how I've solved my LLM thing

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where I select some Python variables

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and tell the LLM to populate it with some fake data

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so I can send that to the REPL.

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But for some reason, I forgot the name of it.

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I can look it up. Just give me one minute, sorry.

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oh yeah gptel gptel that's that's the name of the other tool

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which is uh also a good tool yeah

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but ECA is more like a more chat companion

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and this you can also you can tell it to write code and things like that

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but i mostly use it for reviews and research

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and like asking questions

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because i want to my I don't have a problem with typing code.

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I don't think that slows me down,

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but maybe getting some quick feedback

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on the actual work that I'm doing,

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that's what I'm using LLM for,

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on LLM for two, mostly today. That really hits for me.

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I don't mind typing either.

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I think somehow having things be so simple

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and in many cases just automated,

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Emacs just does the right thing.

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It makes me hungry to type. I want to type more.

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It feels like every keystroke does a little more.

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Speaking of evangelism, thank you. Thank you

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pop up for the for the question.

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I'm just going to peek one more time through

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and I don't see a backlog.

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There are a couple more comments here

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linking linking to the ECA Emacs and gptel.

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Comment also saying very cool setup.

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So I suppose I'll I'll hand it over to you

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if you have kind of final thoughts or.

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additional wisdoms you want to share

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I really appreciate your taking the time to prepare this presentation

00:18:05.400 --> 00:18:11.079
especially to do the live Q&A with us. Thank you

00:18:11.080 --> 00:18:13.919
and I haven't anything more than that I will

00:18:13.920 --> 00:18:19.479
of course I will continue like have evolving my setup

00:18:19.480 --> 00:18:21.359
because there's like new tools

00:18:21.360 --> 00:18:24.759
and maybe new ideas also coming up

00:18:24.760 --> 00:18:28.719
and my What I'm aiming for in Python development

00:18:28.720 --> 00:18:30.479
is the great developer experience

00:18:30.480 --> 00:18:34.519
of what's called Lisp programming, basically.

00:18:34.520 --> 00:18:41.699
So that's what I'm aiming at for Python 2.

00:18:41.700 --> 00:18:44.359
Thank you. Thank you so much.