EmacsConf 2021
Every year, I like to watch EmacsConf not only to learn about the latest and greatest in the Emacs world, but also to gain some new perspective as to why other people use Emacs and how it's benefited them.
It's been a few weeks since all the talks were posted online and after watching all of them I wanted to share my thoughts on which talks really stood out to me.
Emacs as Design Pattern Learning
In Emacs as Design Pattern Learning, Greta Goetz goes very philosophical and talks about Emacs in the context of self-education.
The first interesting point Goetz states is, with Emacs: "we can be our own persona."
"Personas" in this talk are meant to be the same as those that are used in product design. When designing products, personas are usually the first things that are developed. They help guide decision-making, such that products can be tailored to these manufactured identities. Designers build the "customer journey" around these personas which (for better or worse) constrain the experience of a product. Emacs on the other hand is designed contrary to personas. Goetz describes that instead of pre-designed constraints, users are intentionally given a rich context of tools and information (Elisp packages/apps/configuration). Providing this complexity is intended to eliminate constraints, allowing users to be their own personas, and create their own product. Instead of the user living an experience built around some notion of a person, the user is enabled to let their unique persona dictate their experience.
Goetz then continues to describe the most important point (in my opinion) that the ability to build our own experiences and extend our freedom is an important skill in life, as it helps us contextualize our own decision-making processes and is the first step in learning how to learn.
This is a mind bomb and reminded me of the ideas from the post "Emacs is a lifestyle" by Bozhidar Batsov. Just like how Goetz describes the Emacs experience as an exercise in contextualizing your own decision-making process, Bastov emphasizes the similar idea that Emacs offers one of the most valuable features, the choice to configure, which most other software doesn't.
This nugget of wisdom is a great snippet that represents the Emacs user experience. Instead of thinking of software as something you have to "gel" with, Emacs "gels" with you.
Emacs demonstrates that the UNIX philosophy isn't the only answer
In the short talk Why Emacs demonstrates the UNIX philosophy isn't the only answer, Daniel Rose talks about how Emacs fits within the UNIX philosophy. He also addresses the usefulness of software philosophies in general.
The most useful piece of advice to me was when Rose mentions: "philosophies don't mean everything." In the context of Emacs, Rose is implying that just because Emacs can accomplish a task doesn't mean it should. Rose relates to this point with a personal anecdote of using Android Studio over Emacs for development. Just as there are many tools better suited for Android development than Emacs, there are other situations where Emacs is the inferior tool.
My thoughts on this talk are extremely positive. I think every EmacsConf needs to have a talk that mentions the point "you should choose the best tool for the job." The half serious, half joke of Emacs being more of an OS than a text editor makes the community look big-headed. With all the talks mentioning the things that Emacs can do, grounding the conference by mentioning what it can't do is always a nice breath of fresh air.
Takeaways
Both of these talks from this years EmacsConf are worth mentioning because they highlight the simultaneous liberties and restrictions Emacs provides. I'm grateful EmacsConf releases all this free content because it gives me access to all the liberties of Emacs, and lets me acknowledge and internalize all its restrictions.
I've been using Emacs for ~5 years and although all the tweaking and tuning can be tedious, it's allowed me to reflect and rebuild my best user experience. The practice of constantly reevaluating what makes me effective not only keeps my brain fluid, but keeps me thinking how to continually evolve myself.
Emacs definitely isn't for everyone and I don't recommend it often. However if you really want to customize your workflow or can't find another tool that suits you, it just might be worth a try.
~(^-^)~
