Monthly Archives: August 2024

What Is Emacs and Why Should You Use It

Posted on 2024-08-21 by jcs

Explaining Emacs to non-users is challenging. A first order explanation is that it’s a text editor but as we all know that’s a pitifully inadequate explanation. As you’re all aware, my default explanation is that it’s a light-weight Lisp Machine … Continue reading →

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Working From Home: Is The Dream Over?

Posted on 2024-08-20 by jcs

I am so tired of reading the same excuses and nonsense from psychopathic control freaks on why it’s absolutely necessary for the good of the company/city/country/world/universe that all workers return to the mothership office. The latest horrifying example is from … Continue reading →

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Elfeed Org Links

Posted on 2024-08-19 by jcs

As most of you know, I’m a huge fan of Elfeed and, of course, Org mode. I use Elfeed to read my feed and I do all my writing and note taking in Org mode. It’s natural, therefore, that I’d … Continue reading →

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Emacs Registers

Posted on 2024-08-18 by jcs

Over at the Emacs subreddit, kosakgroove has just learned about Emacs registers and considers it a game changer. His post is little more than a headline so all the action is in the comments. Surprisingly—at least to me—many of the … Continue reading →

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Marlinspike On What’s Wrong With Software Development

Posted on 2024-08-17 by jcs

Moxie Marlinspike is a legendary figure in security and software development. I last wrote about him and his fight to keep our data safe from governments and other prying eyes 9 years ago. He’s still at it. At the recent … Continue reading →

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WordStar

Posted on 2024-08-16 by jcs

Those of us of a certain age will remember WordStar. It was the first hugely popular “word processor” and was used by almost everyone who wanted to write prose of any sort. It was the default word processor in the … Continue reading →

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Why Isn’t Lisp Used More In Production

Posted on 2024-08-15 by jcs

nderstand2grow, over at the Lisp subreddit extols the benefits of the Lisp languages and wonders why it isn’t more widely used in production. It’s a question that all Lispers eventually ask themselves. Despite what people who don’t know Lisp tell … Continue reading →

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Opening Links In Emacs

Posted on 2024-08-14 by jcs

Nicolas Martyanoff has a really interesting post on Controlling link opening in Emacs. One of the things I like about Org mode is that you can put the point on a URL, type Ctrl+c Ctrl+o and Org will follow the … Continue reading →

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Asking For Confirmation

Posted on 2024-08-13 by jcs

Marcin Borkowski (mbork) has a really great post about arranging for certain commands to prompt for verification before executing. Usually, those prompts are simply annoying but sometimes they’re actually useful. For example, you can arrange for Emacs to ask you … Continue reading →

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The Beauty OF Vanilla Emacs

Posted on 2024-08-12 by jcs

As all Emacers know, there are several premade Emacs configurations available that allow a n00b to start using Emacs with a complete system that includes practically every package that they could need. One often sees new Emacs users who started … Continue reading →

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