David Wilson over at the System Crafters YouTube channel is starting off the year with a video that gives you 5 Reasons to Learn Emacs in 2021. He begins by noting that Emacs is not a text editor or at least not just a text editor. That’s not news to Emacs oldtimers, of course. As most of you know by now, I think of Emacs as a sort of lightweight version of a Lisp Machine and the working/development environment that they provided.
Wilson has a Linux laptop so he can run EXWM, which serves as an Emacs based window manager and increases the feeling of running in a Lisp Machine-like environment. All of that is important because it means you can customize your environment to be exactly what you want it to be. The source code is there, the documentation is there and they’re both easily available right from Emacs. There’s no need to be online or to go to an external site.
Wilson also calls out the advantages of Emacs’ keyboard-based UI. You can leave your mouse at home and still have full and easy control of your environment. That is, I suppose, even more true if you’re running EXWM. Of course, if you’re fond of rodents, Emacs supports your mouse just fine.
Finally, there’s Magit and Org-mode. They’re most people’s idea of Emacs’ killer apps and Wilson spends a bit of time on Org and Magit demonstrating a few of their features.
The video is 26 minutes, 38 seconds long so plan accordingly. It’s a nice video and worth spending the half hour on. If you know someone who’s wondering if they should invest in Emacs, this is a good place to point them.