Author Archives: jcs

M-x Occur

Posted on 2024-11-14 by jcs

Kristoffer Balintona has a nice post on Emacs occur. If you have moderate familiarity with Emacs, you have probably used occur on occasion. I use it all the time but still wasn’t aware of everything it could do. Happily, Balintona … Continue reading →

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Is Emacs Practical For Real World Use

Posted on 2024-11-13 by jcs

In another in a seemingly unending sequence of such questions, sav-tech, over at the Emacs subreddit asks if Emacs is useful in practical life. I’m not sure what he thinks all we Emacs users are doing if it’s not practical … Continue reading →

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Compile Angel

Posted on 2024-11-12 by jcs

James Cherti has announced a new package, Compile Angel. The idea is to keep all your Elisp files compiled with both the byte compiler and the native compiler. It has modes to compile any outdated “binaries” when a modified Elisp … Continue reading →

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Profoundly Ignorant And Proud Of It

Posted on 2024-11-11 by jcs

It’s easy to be snarky about management—especially the suits—and Irreal has certainly indulged itself often. In case you think such snark is unwarranted, I offer this sad example for your consideration. It demonstrates everything that can go wrong when people … Continue reading →

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Why Programmers Need Doors

Posted on 2024-11-10 by jcs

Talk about carrying coal to Newcastle. It is, I think, safe to say that every Irreal reader already knows why programmers need doors that can be closed. It’s well plowed ground involving familiar concepts such as “being in the flow” … Continue reading →

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Travelling With A Smartphone

Posted on 2024-11-09 by jcs

If you’ve been reading Irreal for a while, you know that one of my goals is to be able to leave my house with nothing but my iPhone. That’s possible right now if you live in the right state, have … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: Emacs For Word

Posted on 2024-11-08 by jcs

In what has to be the silliest question of the week, Kiiwyy, over at the Emacs subreddit, asks do you use Emacs as a substitute for Word. In particular, he’s wondering if people use Emacs for class or project notes. … Continue reading →

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Why Isn’t There An Emacs 2?

Posted on 2024-11-07 by jcs

Over at the Emacs subreddit, Available-Inside1426 asks why there isn’t an Emacs 2. By that he means a rewrite of Emacs to address what he sees as problems with Emacs. Those problems include the usual silliness like a better GUI … Continue reading →

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The End Of The Story (Finally)?

Posted on 2024-11-06 by jcs

If you’re a younger engineer, this probably won’t mean much to you but if you’ve been around since, say, the turn of the century it’s a huge story. Darl McBride has died and, oddly, no one seems to have noticed. … Continue reading →

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CFPB: Customers Own Their Bank Data

Posted on 2024-11-05 by jcs

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) has ruled that, essentially, consumers own their banking data and banks must make it easy to retrieve that data and, if they wish, transfer it to another institution. That’s big news and another chapter … Continue reading →

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