{"id":9737,"date":"2021-06-03T13:03:59","date_gmt":"2021-06-03T17:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9737"},"modified":"2021-06-03T13:03:59","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T17:03:59","slug":"emacs-in-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9737","title":{"rendered":"Emacs in 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tory Anderson has an <a href=\"https:\/\/tech.toryanderson.com\/2021\/05\/29\/what-can-emacs-give-me-in-2021-a-response-to-the-mother-of-all-emacs-papers\/#footnotes\">interesting take on modern day Emacs<\/a>. He starts by reviewing the problems that Emacs was created to solve. He starts with Bernard S. Greenberg\u2019s 1979 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.multicians.org\/mepap.html\">paper on Multics Emacs<\/a>, which I <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=7767\">wrote about two and half years ago<\/a>. He mentions the main problems that Greenberg and his colleagues had to solve:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"org-ul\">\n<li>Memory constraints<\/li>\n<li>Long program compilation times<\/li>\n<li>The arduous learning curve of existent text processing tools<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As Anderson notes, those are no longer problems. For example, memory scarcity from a text editor point of view long ago ceased to be a problem. So he moves on to consider what benefits Emacs offers us in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>His first and most important offering is what he terms \u201cstability\u201d. Emacs continues to provide programmers and other Emacs users with the tools they need to get things done. What worked 10, 15, or 20 years ago still works today and in basically the same way. There\u2019s no need a learn a new tool every year or two. At the same time, Emacs continues to evolve to support new programming languages and solve new problems.<\/p>\n<p>He also makes a point that always gets me labeled an elitist jerk when I mention it: because those looking for easy solutions shy away from Emacs, those that do take the trouble to learn and master it tend to be the smarter more talented engineers<sup><a id=\"fnr.1\" class=\"footref\" href=\"#fn.1\">1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n<p>The TL;DR is that Emacs is still solving problems and despite the snark there\u2019s plenty of reasons you might want to use software that\u2019s over four decades old.<\/p>\n<div id=\"footnotes\">\n<h2 class=\"footnotes\">Footnotes:<\/h2>\n<div id=\"text-footnotes\">\n<div class=\"footdef\"><sup><a id=\"fn.1\" class=\"footnum\" href=\"#fnr.1\">1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<div class=\"footpara\">\n<p class=\"footpara\">\nThis isn\u2019t a Vi vs. Emacs thing. The same can be said of Vi or Vim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tory Anderson has an interesting take on modern day Emacs. He starts by reviewing the problems that Emacs was created to solve. He starts with Bernard S. Greenberg\u2019s 1979 paper on Multics Emacs, which I wrote about two and half &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9737\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-9737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-emacs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9738,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9737\/revisions\/9738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}