Irreal

Rakhim Davletkaliyev is back with another Emacs podcast. As I said in my first post about his podcasts, using a podcast to discuss Emacs may seem odd but it actually works pretty well.

Davletkaliyev starts by telling us what’s changed in his configuration and approach since the last podcast. The major changes are the addition of Helm and Projectile. With them he was able to recreate some of the functionality that he likes best in Sublime. In one case he was even able to expand on that workflow. Another example of how you can make Emacs work your way.

The majority of the podcast is about Org mode. I was a bit surprised at how much Org functionality he was able to harness as a n00b. It certainly took me a lot longer. Of course, as he makes a point of saying, there’s no need to be intimidated by the vastness of Org. You can start off with just a few of the basic functions and discover new capabilities as you need them.

The first thing he liked about Org is its ability to link to other files (or parts of other files). That makes it easy to tie together related files and topics in the usual hypertext way. He reminds us several times that the magic of Org is that it has all these capabilities but is just plain text. You can read it—or even create it—with any editor.

He especially likes Org tables. They’re easy to use and create and bring along spreadsheet capability for free. That seems like almost a throwaway but almost every Org table I create uses that functionality in some way. It’s just too convenient to ignore.

Like me, he really likes the Babel functionality. The ability to add code blocks and export (or not) the code and embed the result in your document all without leaving Org mode can not be overpraised. It’s one of the centers of my workflow.

He also talks about TODOs, one of the fundamental functions of Org. He likes how they can distributed among many different files and summarized in the agenda. He also likes that it integrates the functions of three other applications that he was using for the same thing: Things, the Mac Notes app, and iA Writer. He especially likes how all the information is available to each of the three functions in Org, which is not the case with the three separate applications.

Finally, he describes how he implemented a list of browser links and automatically exports it to HTML so that it is available to his browser. He finds that much nicer and easier to navigate than using the native browser bookmarks.

The podcast is a bit over 29 minutes so you’ll have to schedule some time. I enjoyed it; perhaps you will too.

For the last year, Matus Goljer (fuco1) has been working on a static analyzer for Elisp. Although still in its early stages, the project is promising and I’ve been following it with interest. Goljer has made good progress and can now analyze the main file in the smartparens code base. There was a problem, however.

It was slow. Very slow. Analyzing smartparens took about 42 seconds even though the smartparens.el file is only about 9500 lines. Goljer was expecting it to be a bit slow because he used EIEIO and CL generics. While they’re a natural fit for the problem, they have notorious performance issues. What to do? Goljer did what we all do: he assumed the problem was with EIEIO and generics and started changing his code. That turned out to be a mess so he did what we all promise ourselves we’re going to do in situations like this but rarely actually do: he fired up the profiler to see were all the time was going.

The answer was surprising. The problem turned out to be in a function that he would never have thought would cause difficulties. I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you what it was; you’ll have to read his post to see. In any event, he replaced the problem function with some code that accomplished the same end and reduced the running time to 5 seconds.

The moral here is what it always is: don’t assume you know where all the cycles are being spent. You’re probably wrong. Almost every environment has a profiler and they’re the go-to method for determining where your application is spending its time.

Be sure to take a look at Goljer’s post. It’s an interesting story and a nice illustration of the power of profilers.

Almost three years ago, I wrote about Josh Stella, a former programmer who had become the CEO of his company. Stella found that he really hated all the context switching required as he moved from application to application. So he decided to return to Emacs but as a CEO rather than technical user. His original post discussed why he was doing that and what his experience was like.

Now, Stella is switching roles and becoming the CTO of his company and decided to revisit his Emacs post in light of the 3 years experience he’d had using it as a company officer rather than one of the technical staff. All-in-all, he concludes that the experiment was successful and that using Emacs made him happier and more productive. He liked the way Emacs stayed out of his way and wasn’t constantly demanding his attention.

He also liked that Emacs was more ergonomic than other applications. We Emacsers don’t often hear that but Stella says that using an ergonomic keyboard combined with a much reduced reliance on mouse operations cured the RSI problems he was having. He discusses that at some length so if you’re an Emacser who’s suffering from RSI problems, you should take a look at what he did.

He also wrote that he gave up trying to use Org mode to keep his calendar and TODO lists. That, he said, was because he shares that information with many people who weren’t Emacs users. There are, of course, packages that move entries between Emacs and Google/Apple calendar but he decided it was simpler to just use Google calendar like everyone else at his company.

The post is an interesting retrospective on the experiences of a CEO using Emacs and well worth a read.

Rakhim Davletkaliyev is a new Emacs user who has decided to document his journey into the world of Emacs with a series of podcasts. Using a podcast for this might seem like an odd choice given that the subject matter is intrinsically visual but it turns out to work pretty well.

So far, there are two podcasts. The first doesn’t really discuss Emacs but serves as an introduction to Davletkaliyev and why he’s making these podcasts. Davletkaliyev is an experienced developer who uses Sublime in his day-to-day work. Lately, though, he’s been experimenting with Emacs and learning how to use it effectively. He’s still in the learning phase and not even certain he’ll switch in the end.

The second podcast is about his configuration. He’s already using an Org file for his configuration but, so far, has loaded only a few packages. This is in keeping with his experimental approach to Emacs; he trying things out and seeing what works for him.

One of the most interesting aspects of his configuration is his choice of key bindings. While he’s pretty much content to go with the defaults, he made some choices that I never would; you can listen to the podcast to discover what they are. This merely shows that Davletkaliyev has discovered early on that Emacs lets you have it your way. He can make what you or I might consider outlandish choices without affecting the rest of us.

The podcasts are 21:59 and 25:26 minutes long so you’ll need to schedule some time if you’d like to listen.

Bill over at ATMakers has a short video on Why I Use Emacs. He’s a long term user and the reasons are many, he says, but the video is just one example showing how Emacs can make repetitive tasks easier.

The problem is that he has a list of two columns that he wants to mark up with HTML. The video shows how to do this using keyboard macros. It’s a natural solution and the video shows how easy it is. To be sure, it’s an elementary application of keyboard macros so the video is most suited for someone asking “Why do you use Emacs?” Still, even more experienced folks may enjoy it.

The video is only 6 minutes and 15 seconds so it should be easy to find time to view it if you’re interested.