emacsconf 2019: evil-mode disappointment

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

diff --git a/content/posts/emacsconf-2019.md b/content/posts/emacsconf-2019.md
index 10531afcfa32757e89437d4ed27d284de9abd725..8bded44982457090ffaa9099e8f59cb39cdc94eb 100644 (file)
--- a/content/posts/emacsconf-2019.md
+++ b/content/posts/emacsconf-2019.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 ---
 title: "EmacsConf 2019"
 date: 2019-11-03T15:40:09+05:30
 ---
 title: "EmacsConf 2019"
 date: 2019-11-03T15:40:09+05:30

-lastmod: 2019-11-03T15:40:09+05:30
+lastmod: 2019-11-04T15:40:09+05:30

 tags : [ "free-software", "emacs" ]
 categories : [ "conferences" ]
 layout: post
 tags : [ "free-software", "emacs" ]
 categories : [ "conferences" ]
 layout: post


@@ -88,17 +88,7 @@ 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.
 
 of work (e.g. org-mode has 120k lines of elisp). The importance of concurrency
 and parallelism in the new language is also stressed.
 

-### Replacing Shell Scripts?
-
-One of the talks was about trying to automate tasks using Elisp as a replacement
-for shell scripts (Emacs as my Go To Script Language - Howard Abrams). The idea
-is interesting but probably wouldn't entice a Perl hacker to try and use Elisp.
-I have done this myself in the past but the speaker went a bit further in
-building a framework for doing ad-hoc text processing and piping using Emacs.
-The hard reality is that text processing using macros or Elisp is very slow as
-compared to using a Python or Perl script.
-
-### Miscellaneous
+## Miscellaneous

 
 Most of the talks were about how people were using Emacs in their daily life and
 about the cool applications they built on top of Emacs.
 
 Most of the talks were about how people were using Emacs in their daily life and
 about the cool applications they built on top of Emacs.


@@ -117,8 +107,14 @@ people presenting it within Emacs and others using exported PDFs.
 
 Just like the Quake-inspired terminals Guake and Yakuake, there's one called
 [Equake](https://gitlab.com/emacsomancer/equake) that launches a drop-down eshell.
 
 Just like the Quake-inspired terminals Guake and Yakuake, there's one called
 [Equake](https://gitlab.com/emacsomancer/equake) that launches a drop-down eshell.

-You can also use the racket shell called rash, which is crazy powerful. This has
-very good integration with StumpWM.
+You can also use the Racket shell called Rash, which is crazy powerful. Equake has
+good integration with StumpWM.
+
+I was aware of the existence of Yasnippet, but never really used it much. I am
+more motivated to use this important productivity tool after watching the talk
+"Don’t wait! Write your own (yas)snippet" by Tony Aldon.
+
+### Accessibility

 
 There was a talk by Parham Doustdar, a blind developer who uses Emacs as his
 daily driver. There were some interesting insights on how neglecting
 
 There was a talk by Parham Doustdar, a blind developer who uses Emacs as his
 daily driver. There were some interesting insights on how neglecting


@@ -127,3 +123,48 @@ vision-impaired users. Some features can be completely inaccessible. Though the
 W3C is doing some work to improve accessibility in browsers, most HTML is
 rendered by client-side JavaScript these days which makes life even more
 difficult for blind users.
 W3C is doing some work to improve accessibility in browsers, most HTML is
 rendered by client-side JavaScript these days which makes life even more
 difficult for blind users.

+
+### Replacing Shell Scripts?
+
+One of the talks was about trying to automate tasks using Elisp as a replacement
+for shell scripts (Emacs as my Go To Script Language - Howard Abrams). The idea
+is interesting but probably wouldn't entice a Perl hacker to try and use Elisp.
+I have done this myself in the past but the speaker went a bit further in
+building a framework for doing ad-hoc text processing and piping using Emacs.
+The hard reality is that text processing using macros or Elisp is very slow as
+compared to using a Python or Perl script.
+
+### Language Server Protocol
+
+I've always imagined non-IDE editors like Emacs to be ideal for programming in
+scripting languages. I tried using Emacs for Scala or Java earlier, but always
+end up switching back to IntelliJ. I think the new LSP implementation for Java
+is a game-changer. Though I am not a big fan of Java, it is the open-source
+language that competes with Microsoft C# and has a lot of Apache projects
+written in it. Being able to use Emacs for Java programming with all the
+features of an IDE is definitely a big win for free software. Kotlin doesn't
+have LSP support yet. Maybe it's a conflict of interest for JetBrains.
+
+The conference had an excellent live-coding demonstration of LSP by Torstein
+Krause Johansen in his presentation titled "How Emacs became my awesome Java
+editing environment".
+
+### Evil mode
+
+I was kinda disappointed that only one user used EViL mode. I expected that
+there were at least one talk on Evil mode itself. There was one talk by Zaiste
+about Doom Emacs but the title was too click-baity and showed no code. Maybe I
+should do a talk focussed on evil-mode in the next EmacsConf.
+
+
+## Diversity
+
+The conference seemed to have a good racial mix of speakers. There was a blind
+speaker too. I am happy to see some representation from non-programmers among
+the speakers. The conference can do better in terms of gender diversity.
+
+## Conclusion
+
+The conference was totally worth losing a night's sleep over. I had to stay up
+till 5 am due to timezone differences. I am now more motivated to write some
+Elisp myself and customize Emacs to my specific needs.