Author Archives: jcs

A Flush-lines Example

Posted on 2024-06-03 by jcs

I’m fond of telling stories about folks using Emacs to solve difficult—or at least complicated—problems but Emacs is probably used more often to solve simple, one-off problems. These problems typically don’t require anything fancier than, maybe, keyboard macros. Mario Jason … Continue reading →

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Emacs As Crack

Posted on 2024-06-02 by jcs

Jack Baty has a very amusing, but true, take on using Emacs and how resisting it is like resisting gravity: in the end you’re gonna lose. His story is that he hates futzing around with things, especially his Emacs configuration, … Continue reading →

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De-Googling: My Secret Weapons

Posted on 2024-06-01 by jcs

Neeraj Adhikari has a nice post on one of my favorite crusades: banishing Google from my life. I’ve been pretty successful at this because of two thing: Emacs and macOS. Most longtime readers know that the Irreal empire mostly runs … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: Emacs Doesn’t Have Plugins

Posted on 2024-05-31 by jcs

Note: I’m calling this a Red Meat Friday post because of the pushback I got the last time I broached the subject. It’s not really all that controversial. Over at the Emacs subreddit TheTwelveYearOld asks what makes Emacs and Lisp … Continue reading →

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Emacs For PhD Students

Posted on 2024-05-30 by jcs

Over at the Emacs subreddit, InstinctsInFlow says that he’s a PhD student in computer engineering who has been using Emacs for a couple of years because of its support for VHDL coding. He really likes Emacs and want to find … Continue reading →

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Casual Avy

Posted on 2024-05-29 by jcs

I’ve written many, many times about how Avy is one of my favorite packages. Probably 90 per cent of my Emacs navigation is done with Avy. As I’ve said before, you can think of Avy as a generalization Steve Yegge’s … Continue reading →

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Emacs and ATC

Posted on 2024-05-28 by jcs

The “ATC” in the title is Air Traffic Control. You might wonder what Emacs has to do with air traffic control other than some engineer writing code for the system with Emacs. The truth is much stranger and surprising. For … Continue reading →

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The Origins of Unix and C

Posted on 2024-05-27 by jcs

F/OSS Comics has a cute cartoon about the origins of Unix and C. If you want a quick précis of the Unix and C histories, this is a good starting point. There are a lot of inaccuracies—at least as I … Continue reading →

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Simplifying the Use of the Repeat Command

Posted on 2024-05-26 by jcs

Emacs Elements has a new video up. This one is about simplifying—perhaps “rationalizing” is a better word—the Emacs repeat commands. Those of you familiar with Vi(m) know that one of its nice features is a simple repeat command bound to … Continue reading →

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Full Screen Time and Date Revisited

Posted on 2024-05-25 by jcs

The other day, I wrote about a way to put the time and date on the modeline when Emacs is in full screen mode. The reason I cared was because full screen mode hid all the date widgets and I … Continue reading →

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