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Comment by todd8 | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for the detailed write up. (I hope the author sees this)

I'm always impressed with Emacs users that are capable of such discipline. I've use Emacs well over forty years, with only a few years of interruption, but I have never had a stable or well organized configuration. It's inspirational to see other's use of Emacs.

I'm disorganized, and I'm a hoarder (right now, my bedroom has at least 100 books stacked on the floor in different piles). Like my fluid Emacs configuration, the books are all attractive possibilities of what to read or try out next.

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Sounds like you have a flourishing Anti-library: https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antili...

> Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there.

> Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.

izzit me or is that total garbage? The only information of value is that which you can use, if it's in a book you've never read it's effectively nonexistent. I get text books to stuff them into my cranium, not have them sit around as handy doorstops.

Might as well leave them in the bookshop until you need them. They're just as unread and you have cash in your pocket for other things you actually need.

The information is more useful once read, but once you know it you don't need the book any more

Unless you anticipate wanting to check and re-check the contents. On a shelf right beside me (as opposed to the plethora of shelves in the room we call "The Library") is a copy of "Concrete Mathematics" by Graham/Knuth/Patashnik, because I am occasionally going through it again. Quite happy I have not decided to let it go.

Sorry for being dense, but I couldn’t deduce from the source; does the “anti” just mean “unread”?

Yeah. It comes off as a playful/tentative term, not a precise one. If a "library" is a collection of read books, an "anti-library" is a collection of unread books.

Most of the books in libraries are books most people haven't read, does that make every library an anti-library?

As a fellow emacser, I’m also incredibly scatterbrained and just kind of intuit my way through things. When I make plans, systems and processes I do better with less stress until the inevitable stressor completely wrecks my flow and I forget to get back on track.

Luckily emacs lets you save a bunch of useful processes and workflows in a VCS that works the same across multiple environments (modulo 15 minutes here and there to resolve major version conflicts)

It's not really the use of Emacs, it's the discipline. Emacs is a good tool, but the people who are super organized with Emacs would be super organized with anything, including a paper notebook.

I say this as an Emacs user who has used org-mode for project planning and task/time management.

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