Author Archives: jcs

Karl Voit on Key Bindings and File Hierarchy

Posted on 2018-07-24 by jcs

Karl Voit has a couple of nice posts in which he discusses his key binding and file hierarchy strategies. If you’re like me, these things develop in an organic—a nice way of saying haphazard—way. They just evolve over time without … Continue reading →

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Find Commits Affecting a Function

Posted on 2018-07-23 by jcs

Here’s a really useful tip from Wildred Hughes’ Emacs Command of the Day: Want to know all the commits that affected a function?@magit_emacs as of version 2.13 provides M-x magit-log-trace-definition for this! For any language that git log understands, it … Continue reading →

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Afterword to Kernighan’s Grep Video

Posted on 2018-07-22 by jcs

Speaking of Brian Kernighan, grep, and codas, there’s a (very) short afterward to Kernighan’s excellent video telling the story of the origin of greps’s name. At the end of that video (if you haven’t watched it, you definitely should) Kernighan … Continue reading →

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A Q&A with Brian Kernighan

Posted on 2018-07-21 by jcs

If you enjoyed Brian Kernighan’s video on the genesis of the name “grep”, you will probably also enjoy the three-part Q&A with Kernighan in which he discusses programming, C, and C’s successors. Kernighan is personable and a great speaker so … Continue reading →

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Three Emacs Modes for Note Taking

Posted on 2018-07-20 by jcs

Irreal readers can’t help but know that I’m a fanatical Org mode addict. I use it for almost everything that doesn’t involve coding and sometimes, via code blocks, even then. I’m an inveterate data gatherer and note taker and all … Continue reading →

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DHH on Open Offices

Posted on 2018-07-19 by jcs

David Heinemeier Hansson has a nice article on open offices: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. He cites the usual research showing that purported gains in interaction and communication just don’t happen and that … Continue reading →

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More YASnippet Templates

Posted on 2018-07-18 by jcs

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a YASnippet user and really like the system. Not everyone agrees but you owe it to yourself to give them a try. If you are a user, you might not be aware, as I wasn’t, … Continue reading →

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Building an Initial Emacs Configuration

Posted on 2018-07-17 by jcs

One of the problems—perhaps the major problem—that a new Emacs user faces is building an initial configuration. One would think that a vanilla install would be a good starting point for a new user but we all know that that … Continue reading →

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Emacs As an Editor

Posted on 2018-07-16 by jcs

Over at the Emacs reddit, honeywhite wonders why anyone would use the Emacs default key bindings. He’s an Emacs user but can’t understand why anyone would prefer the standard Emacs key bindings to one of the Vi emulation modes. As … Continue reading →

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Run a Raw Git Command From Within Magit

Posted on 2018-07-15 by jcs

There isn’t much git work that you can’t do from within Magit but occasionally it’s convenient to call git directly. In another great tip from Wilfred Hughes’ Emacs Command of the Day we have: Want to run a raw git … Continue reading →

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