Emacs in Odd Places (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Emacs in Odd Places (2020)

eigenbahn.com

87 pointssusam21 comments

This is why I stick to a terminal based editor. You can use it practically anywhere with minimal resource usage. You can use it remotely so any machine is your workstation. You can use it on a machine without a GUI at all.

With the new AI plugins I doubt even Jet Brains will be able to offer much over what Vim and Emacs can provide with fugitive, magit, fzf, etc. providing best in class features while still running on actual terminals.

You can sandbox it more easily, too.

As regards both AI plugins as you mention, and “Emacs anywhere”, I compiled a list of Emacs ChatGPT plugins[0] along with each having an easy issue/tasks for others to help linked below, and on the next installment of this newsletter I’m planning to feature among more AI plugins things like controlling Firefox from within Emacs (if I can reach that plug-in’s author to get permission to feature.)

0: https://generativereview.substack.com/p/tasks-open-source-em...

I think there is no problem using an editor like VisualCode or Notepad++. But you should have an editor like Emacs or in my case VI at hand. It is a lethal weapon to solve any problem in inhospitable environments where speed and power are required. I want to believe that VI or Emacs is like that gun that James Bond or Jim West has up his sleeve, and at the push of a button it deploys to your hand in case of emergency. Subtle, fast, and effective in emergencies.

yes, so true. as an avid Emacs user, still, I love vi for being available everywhere and impressing people on production machines to adjust config files. somehow the muscle memory of my teenage years is still there. a weapon for a more noble age.

I have state-of-the-art gear and I mostly do everything in the terminal. Why? Because I run months long sessions in tmux that I attach to from all sorts of places and machines, including whatever notebook my youngest left around or from my phone (via Terminus) to quickly check on something.

Being able to resume exactly where I left off is more important to me than fancy colors and fonts (and the mouse to too slow and imprecise anyway).

ssh with tmux make a good default, and lately I have been trying out tramp with slime-connect and am excited about using that combo more.

I used to try installing emacs on many systems, but now I use tramp.

It's super-easy to edit files over ssh on a remote system that doesn't need to have an editor installed:

  c-x c-f /remotehost:filename

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode

Likely you want to use:

        C-x C-f /ssh:remotehost:filename RET

and hope that you haven't broken it by using a weird prompt on the other end. Emacs expects to get a standard bash shell when it connects over ssh.

And for the record, it's 2023 and you can't just assume someone's keybindings. I use something more like:

    SPC f f /ssh:foo@bar:baz@quux:/etc/motd

What’s the baz@quux part for?

Jump host, equivalent to using -J with ssh since quux is visible to bar but not visible to the emacs box

Thanks TIL

You can configure autofs to access your networked filesystem seamlessly without the tramp mode qualifier in the path.

So happens, the "dumb terminal" he depicts as a dumb terminal is a VT320, one of the quintessential smart terminals. If you want a dumb terminal, go find a picture of an ADM 3a. (I first used emacs on a VT220, IIRC.)

I had a job where I used an ADM 3a hooked up to a Sun 3. It worked, but I don’t miss it. A vt320 is a lot fancier.

The defining requirement for my first ever notebook (circa 1991) was that it had to be able to run the One True Emacs. That was met by a Toshiba T1800 w/4 MiB 386/sx @ 16 MHz, running a very early Slackware Linux. Wasn’t powerful enough to run X (in practice), but having Emacs means I can be productive.

It still sets the lower bar for what I consider useful, but indeed, 2nd best thing is a terminal into a computer running emacs.

Logseq is a very nice Org app for your phone as well.

https://github.com/logseq/logseq

Oh and there's now a native Emacs port for Android, with touchscreen support.

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsOnAndroid

https://sourceforge.net/projects/android-ports-for-gnu-emacs...

That ATC story is as legend as the blackbird speedcheck.

I was hoping to see an emacs macro operating a water pump or something.

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25108697

Reply on news.ycombinator.com