Daniel Gopar has started a series of Emacs interview podcasts called Emacs.el. His first subject, fittingly, is Sacha Chua. Gopar and Chua have a far ranging discussion on Emacs. Gopar starts off by asking the obligatory “How did you get started with Emacs?” question. As part of her response, Chua mentions how she leveraged Emacs Speak and ERC to tell her when someone mentions her on the IRC Emacs channel.
From there the discussion moved to how to learn Emacs. As we’ve all found out, that’s a never ending process and Chua says she learns things a little at time. I think it’s that way for most of us. We want to add something to our workflow or we see how someone else is doing things and we learn the bit of Emacs that makes that possible.
For me, the most interesting part of the interview was their discussion of Emacs Chats and Emacs Hangouts. Chua explains her rationale for the videos and how they differ. Many people will be surprised that Chua mentions her anxieties about the videos: that she won’t have a question to ask or that there will be awkward silences. She always seems so engaged and on top of things during the videos that it’s easy to miss the fact that, like most of us, she worries about her public performances.
It’s a nice chat. It lasts just shy of 42 minutes so you’ll have to schedule some time to watch it but it’s very worthwhile.