[blog.git] / content / posts / emacsconf-2019.md

---
title: "EmacsConf 2019"
date: 2019-11-03T15:40:09+05:30
lastmod: 2019-11-03T15:40:09+05:30
tags : [ "free-software", "emacs" ]
categories : [ "conferences" ]
layout: post
type:  "post"
highlight: false
---

![EmacsConf logo](https://emacsconf.org/s/emacsconf-logo1-256.png)

I attended the [EmacsConf 2019](https://emacsconf.org/2019/ "EmacsConf 2019") on
2nd November. It was offered as a video stream that anyone can watch over the
internet, with audience conversations over IRC. The conference was powered
entirely by free software tools. RMS and some FSF members were also among the
audience.

One of the speakers called Emacs the mother of all free software. When RMS
started the free software movement, one of the first tools he built was Emacs,
using which all other free software was developed, starting with glibc. A lot of
free software development is done on 40+ years old Emacs even to this day.

The core of emacs is written in C with Elisp offered as an extension language.
All of the elisp source code that is running on your Emacs is available easily
through Emacs itself. Elisp is designed to be an easy-to-use minimalistic
language that non-programmers can use to create small improvements in their
workflow.

The most controversial talk and the one that generated the most conversation at
the conference was a talk titled "Emacs: The Editor for the Next Forty Years" by
Perry E. Metzger. It was quite a ranty talk by an Emacs user of over 20+ years.
He mentioned that MacOS has better Emacs-everywhere keybindings as compared to
mainstream GNU/Linux distributions that come with Gnome and KDE. I have to agree
on this particular thing. But having used Emacs on MacOS myself, I had way too
many segfaults and bad GUI experience. This was a much worse user experience in
my opinion. My problems can be easily dismissed as user faults, well so can his.
One might simply say that he could've used StumpWM or something that has better
Emacs keybindings (I picked up StumpWM from B. Slade's talk at the same
conference). The speaker goes on to recommend gradually replacing parts of Emacs
with better languages that can stand the test of time, using a concept from
philosophy called the Ship of Theseus. The core of Emacs can be changed from C -
a dangerous language according to the speaker - to a relatively safer language
like Rust. Elisp is not such a great language either with all the functions
staying in the global scope. Maybe a better Lisp would do well as a replacement.
I have to agree on both. The speaker says that we should put in the effort to
design a programming language specificially for the use case of Emacs and not
settle for a general purpose language. Also, the new language should
interoperate with elisp since there's too much of it to replace without decades
of work (e.g. org-mode has 120k lines of elisp). The importance of concurrency
and parallelism in the new language is also stressed.

Though most of the talks were about people doing cool things with Emacs, I was
more emotionally touched by these two talks - "GNU Emacs as software freedom in
practice" by an FSF member Greg Farough and "How to record executable notes with
eev - and how to play them back" by Eduardo Ochs. These two talks emphasized
the freedom that Emacs gives to its users, whether they are programmers or not.
Both the speakers use Emacs the way it is meant to be used. They truly used
Elisp as an extension language. I highly recommend watching the talks after
they're posted. This got me thinking. Though I am primarily a programmer and use
Emacs for almost all text editing, I barely programmed anything in Emacs - the
programmable text editor. This is mostly because I think that my newbie elisp
scripts are not as good as the ones already available as Elisp packages, so I
refrain from writing elisp at all. I realized that this is not how Emacs is
meant to be used. Emacs is all about taking the free software editor built by
the community, making it your own through customization and contributing your
improvements back to the community if you can.
Commit	Line	Data
ed914293 JN	1	---
	2	title: "EmacsConf 2019"
	3	date: 2019-11-03T15:40:09+05:30
	4	lastmod: 2019-11-03T15:40:09+05:30
	5	tags : [ "free-software", "emacs" ]
	6	categories : [ "conferences" ]
	7	layout: post
	8	type: "post"
	9	highlight: false
	10	---
	11
	12	![EmacsConf logo](https://emacsconf.org/s/emacsconf-logo1-256.png)
	13
	14	I attended the [EmacsConf 2019](https://emacsconf.org/2019/ "EmacsConf 2019") on
	15	2nd November. It was offered as a video stream that anyone can watch over the
	16	internet, with audience conversations over IRC. The conference was powered
	17	entirely by free software tools. RMS and some FSF members were also among the
	18	audience.
	19
	20	One of the speakers called Emacs the mother of all free software. When RMS
	21	started the free software movement, one of the first tools he built was Emacs,
	22	using which all other free software was developed, starting with glibc. A lot of
	23	free software development is done on 40+ years old Emacs even to this day.
	24
	25	The core of emacs is written in C with Elisp offered as an extension language.
	26	All of the elisp source code that is running on your Emacs is available easily
	27	through Emacs itself. Elisp is designed to be an easy-to-use minimalistic
	28	language that non-programmers can use to create small improvements in their
	29	workflow.
	30
	31	The most controversial talk and the one that generated the most conversation at
	32	the conference was a talk titled "Emacs: The Editor for the Next Forty Years" by
	33	Perry E. Metzger. It was quite a ranty talk by an Emacs user of over 20+ years.
	34	He mentioned that MacOS has better Emacs-everywhere keybindings as compared to
	35	mainstream GNU/Linux distributions that come with Gnome and KDE. I have to agree
	36	on this particular thing. But having used Emacs on MacOS myself, I had way too
	37	many segfaults and bad GUI experience. This was a much worse user experience in
	38	my opinion. My problems can be easily dismissed as user faults, well so can his.
	39	One might simply say that he could've used StumpWM or something that has better
	40	Emacs keybindings (I picked up StumpWM from B. Slade's talk at the same
	41	conference). The speaker goes on to recommend gradually replacing parts of Emacs
	42	with better languages that can stand the test of time, using a concept from
	43	philosophy called the Ship of Theseus. The core of Emacs can be changed from C -
	44	a dangerous language according to the speaker - to a relatively safer language
	45	like Rust. Elisp is not such a great language either with all the functions
	46	staying in the global scope. Maybe a better Lisp would do well as a replacement.
	47	I have to agree on both. The speaker says that we should put in the effort to
	48	design a programming language specificially for the use case of Emacs and not
	49	settle for a general purpose language. Also, the new language should
	50	interoperate with elisp since there's too much of it to replace without decades
	51	of work (e.g. org-mode has 120k lines of elisp). The importance of concurrency
	52	and parallelism in the new language is also stressed.
	53
	54	Though most of the talks were about people doing cool things with Emacs, I was
	55	more emotionally touched by these two talks - "GNU Emacs as software freedom in
	56	practice" by an FSF member Greg Farough and "How to record executable notes with
	57	eev - and how to play them back" by Eduardo Ochs. These two talks emphasized
	58	the freedom that Emacs gives to its users, whether they are programmers or not.
	59	Both the speakers use Emacs the way it is meant to be used. They truly used
	60	Elisp as an extension language. I highly recommend watching the talks after
	61	they're posted. This got me thinking. Though I am primarily a programmer and use
	62	Emacs for almost all text editing, I barely programmed anything in Emacs - the
	63	programmable text editor. This is mostly because I think that my newbie elisp
	64	scripts are not as good as the ones already available as Elisp packages, so I
65	refrain from writing elisp at all. I realized that this is not how Emacs is
66	meant to be used. Emacs is all about taking the free software editor built by
67	the community, making it your own through customization and contributing your
68	improvements back to the community if you can.