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Comment by submeta | Hacker News Reader

I used to use Alfred for these kind of workflows, for years. For opening apps, URLs, for triggering Python or bash scripts, and for searching files of course. It’s a wonderful app.

Until I started using Emacs seriously. Now I use Emacs for opening URLs, for triggering Google searches (and saving my searches via org-capture), for saving URLs via org-protocol and org-capture, for taking notes, for journaling, for task management (previously OmniFocus, then Things3), and for all kinds of workflows. It is the ideal application framework, with one of the most versatile programming languages I can think of (Lisp); it made me stop using Python for my day-to-day scripting (love Python!).

Emacs (and Lisp) is a tool for the next decades of my life.

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Everytime I read about some advanced emacs workflow, it just blows my mind. I mainly use Emacs (doom emacs actually) as a glorified note taking and task manager app with org-mode.

I think there is a big misconception about what Emacs is (or is not). Many see it as an editor with advanced capabilities, and then they start comparing it to IDEs or editors like VS Code and the like, and finally they think Emacs falls short in comparing to these tools.

The thing is: Emacs is so much more than editing. Just to give an example: I keep a list of meds for my retired parents in on org-table, and every few weeks I need to request a prescription from their doctor and order the meds from their pharmacist. I have a few lines of Elisp to select the meds that my parents need, generate a message for the pharmacist, generate a Fax document for the doctor, and a bunch of tasks (* TODO Send fax to Doctor, * TODO Waiting for prescription from Doctor, * TODO Send prescription to pharmacist, * TODO Waiting for meds from pharmacist, etc) in my org-agenda task list. Triggered with one key combo. By being able to start python or shell scripts from within Lisp code, I am able to automate everything that I run on my Mac, and pass data from one workflow to another.

That's amazing. What's special about emacs to do that vs any other scriptable editor? I don't think I've used an editor that's not scriptable since the late 80s. All the ones I've used could run script and those scripts could call out other programs. Is there anything emacs is doing here that they's other editors wouldn't do?

Short answer: Lisp! - I mean, been using "Sublime Text" some years ago, and "Sublime Text" is scriptable / extendable in Python, and although I am fairly familiar with Python, it never occured to me to extend "Sublime Text". - I can open a scratch buffer in Emacs, hack away commands, put them together in a Lisp function, put it in my `init.el` file , bind it to a shortcut very easily and keep extending my Emacs setup.

This wasn't easy in any editor I used. And none of these editors were meant to be used like that, because their main purpose was / is to edit files, not control Spotify with it, write emails, read rss feeds, and whatnot.

Yes, VS Code goes in that direction, but I don't know many laymans who extend VS Code. They are rather devs with a focus on JS.

Im also in group of people that moved to Emacs and never looked back.

After all, my workflow is to precious to put in any non-free ecosystem ;)

If you ever consider making a short demo video for this, I'd be eager to see this in action.

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