2019-08-02 Use of Emacs

Two Years With Emacs as a CEO (and now CTO) is the followup to A CEO's Guide to Emacs. The author talks about life with Emacs.

Two Years With Emacs as a CEO (and now CTO)

A CEO's Guide to Emacs

So many cool quotes in that article!

On using a tool that isn’t designed to do a task (an application) but on using a tool help you do your task. Emacs is a tool, not an app.

Emacs is a portal into the power of the computer itself, and that is a rabbit hole worth descending. Its idioms are paths to discovering and creating your own, and that for me is the definition of creativity. One of the sad things about modern computing is that it is largely made up of black boxes with shiny interfaces that provide momentary gratification rather than real satisfaction. This makes us into consumers rather than creators/makers of technology. I don’t care who you are or what your background is; you can understand your computer, and you can make things with it.

On not using Emacs for shared todo items and calendar stuff:

I gave up on using Org-mode for to dos and the like, as I have to coordinate many meetings and calls every day with dozens of people, and I cannot ask the rest of the world to adapt to my choice of tools, nor do I have the time to transcribe or automate moving things to Org.

On not using Emacs for takin notes during meetings because it’s often better to use a pen (unless the point of the meeting is to write a document).

I also use a plain old pen for note-taking during meetings, as I find laptop/keyboard use in meetings to be rude and limiting to my ability to listen and think.

Ah yes. At work, I usually joke that Emacs is just my IRC client... 🙂

​#Emacs