John Cook is a Mathematician and an Emacs user. He recently posted some thoughts on Emacs that serve as a nice coda to my previous post on the usefulness of Emacs for scientists. If you read that post you know that many of the commenters were mathematicians so Cook’s thoughts fit right in—sort of.
I say “sort of” because his reasons for appreciating Emacs are not what you usually see. His post consists almost entirely of a short list of reasons he appreciates Emacs so I don’t want to step on his post by listing them all but the first is “It doesn’t track me” and the last is “It doesn’t stop working if my internet connection stops working.” They’re all like that. A good summary is that Emacs runs locally and is completely under your control.
That’s a recurring theme here at Irreal. I’m usually ranting about control of your data when I take up that theme but control of your tools and environment is also important and helps with controlling your data.
Cook’s list are not the usual reasons we think of for using Emacs but they are advantages and shouldn’t be underestimated. They’re another example of how Emacs works for you instead of the other way around.