hi david uh it feels like this is a longer
video uh encounter between you and me I
I see you talking about org-roam
and making videos about org-roam
and i'm so glad to meet you in uh the wanted place
that is EmacsConf. So thank you so much
for your presentation.
thank you so much
for having me I really appreciate being
invited to speak
all right great so tell me do you have
the pad in front of you now?
i do.
awesome so you know what uh i'm not the
star of the show you are so just take
the questions you want read the
questions onto them in your own time and
you have
let's say about 17 minutes which is a
lot of time to answer all the questions
you will be getting
all right let's see what i can do here
but first of all i just want to say
thank you all to the the organizers of
conference
leo amin uh sacha and the others who
have been working on this has gone
extremely well i think we've had a
number of really amazing talks and it's
super inspiring to see all the things
people are doing with emacs uh so uh
kudos to all of you who have put so much
effort into putting this thing together
uh we're really really thankful
so
First of all, in your opinion, what is
Emacs' achilles heel? it's obviously a
powerful tool but no tool is perfect
what would make your life easier in day
to day use with emacs either a package
you wish existed or a core emacs
infrastructure change
um
well for me a person who feels pretty
comfortable
digging into the internals or digging
into package code and trying to figure
out how to fix things i don't really
feel like there is particularly an
achilles heel i mean i guess you could
say things like you know better
multi-threading support or any of the
number of technical improvements people
have been waiting on over time could be
considered that but we can already do so
much
and when i mean that i mean that emacs
does many many things many more than
what you could do in other programs
so i don't feel like there's so much an
achilles heel but i do think there's
sort of like a blind spot where someone
opens up emacs the first time and they
really don't know what to do with it so
um i don't think the e-max necessarily
should change to be you know really
flashy would like to hold your hand and
you know
have a nice looking interface or
whatever uh but i do think that you know
we should all sort of do our best to you
know make sure the documentation is you
know leads people in the right places
and also to make sure that the community
is writing blog posts that draw more
attention to uh emacs for making other
content whatnot so uh really i don't see
that much of like an achilles heel so
much it's just like you know
um it's it's kind of hard to penetrate
at first but once you get it then i
think that you start to understand that
oh i can do way more than this than i
thought that i
could let's see comparing emacs to just
code editors is not a good measure as
emacs is so much more gtd word processor
reference organizer or recently
expressed on reddit as being a text
productivity platform well that's the
thing it's like what other program have
you ever seen that's like emacs i don't
really think there is one because i
think emacs is really the only
program that has really taken the the
list machine model or just that model of
a fully hackable environment and made it
a productivity tool and not just a
programming language uh so comex was
designed to have a fully hackable
language plus all the the sort of
text-driven model like everything's
buffers you're dealing with text editing
but all the user interface elements are
done in text um
it's it's a different thing entirely but
i think that's the reason why it's not
as popular quote-unquote popular as
other editors because people don't
really understand if you just open it up
you think it's just some ugly looking
text editor but in reality there's so
much hidden under the surface that you
can't really see unless someone shows
you i think
um
so yes it's not fair to compare emacs
against those editors but what else do
we have to compare it to
what is your opinion about the
documentation of emacs in other another
language in addition of english there
aren't too many uh non-english community
uh people from other non-english
countries should write documentation in
their own language or in english i don't
know is the
emacs manual uh translated i figured
that a lot of the new projects have
translated manuals but as far as like uh
native language communities for uh
various different spoken languages
um
i don't know i think that's really just
up to the community
to put those together i mean
having
various languages i know there is a lot
of content out there written in various
languages about emacs now obviously what
you could say is
uh your your effort on content doesn't
really go so far if you don't also have
it in english because
you know more of the emacs community can
actually enjoy your content if you uh
have it in english but um i don't think
that should
discourage people from also having
native natively written
content or documentation in a language
that uh you know there could be an emacs
community for so
uh i don't i'm an english native english
speaker so sorry for so just uh barging
in real real i'm not sure if your webcam
is still streaming to bbb it seems to
have dropped on my end can you confirm
that you see your weapon
i think it did drop you're right hold on
let me start it again okay thank you
all right also we seem to be having some
audio problem with everyone so
uh
people are making fun of me because i
uh it is turning on yes i do see your
video now apparently the video seems to
be the audio seems to be choppy but it's
not choppy on my end so apparently audio
is fine now so okay you know what
let's not uh do anything else your let's
just get back on track sorry about the
slide delay
no problem let me know because i think i
have internet issues that's probably why
things are choppy all right so let's see
um
do you think more effort should be made
to popularize hacking on the c parts of
emacs it seems like this is the achilles
heel for long term maintenance of emacs
if less and less people understand what
is going on underneath eval and apply
yes indeed uh this is probably the
biggest risk in terms of
long-term e-max development i mean
obviously i am not an e-max maintainer
and i have not been contributing to the
core for various reasons um
so
i can't say you know for certain what
the state of you know or how many people
are currently contributing to the sea
parts of things but what i would say to
people is
if you've ever been interested in toying
with an actual implementation of a
programming language you should go try
and contribute to the core
c elements of
emacs because that is basically an
implementation of a programming language
so if you want to learn more about how
you would do things like garbage
collection or you know by compilation of
code or a lot of really interesting
stuff this would be a good opportunity
to learn that and also be able to help
out emacs and then you know ensure the
long-term life of emacs by helping to
support that code so definitely i think
that um
maybe
there should be some effort to
encourage people or inspire people to
actually work on that part of the code
maybe it's just a matter of people
making videos talking about the code and
or blog post talking about the code and
showing how you can contribute to it
excuse me
can you name a couple of or a few
features from other programming
languages that you miss in emacs lisp um
not really because i feel like i can be
pretty productive in e-max lisp because
it has everything i need for this type
of environment that it is it doesn't
need to be more complicated i mean
uh
yeah
i can't really think of anything at the
moment but uh you know you could say oh
yeah you could add like you know static
typing to the language but then it would
make
hacking emacs way more complicated you
could say oh you could add immutable
data structures you know more than just
you know const lists but even that might
make things more complicated so i don't
know that i would mess with it too much
a lot of people take issue with emacs
commitments to free software they claim
it holds it back and that it should be
more pragmatic what are your opinions on
this well i've talked about this a few
times on live streams
i think the only problem
is in the
inability for certain people to
contribute to the core of emacs because
of the
the contributor agreement that has to be
signed and there's a very practical
reason for why that's the case
it's harder to defend
the
uh copyright ownership of the code base
of emacs in court if emacs for some
reason has to go to court over you know
copyright troubles
if they don't have copyright assignment
done by every contributor to emacs now
you could say that's a philosophical
problem but no it's actually a legal
issue that they're trying to prevent
and it's all in the name of ensuring
that emacs continues to be free software
forever
so
um i i think that
it's sort of a misconception that uh
it's
that there's too much focus on
the philosophical aspect of free
software i think there's some very
practical aspects that go into this as
well
excuse me do you think that packages
like magit or org mode make people see
emacs as an obstacle to these
applications that they want to use uh is
this an issue or should it be seen as an
opportunity well i guess it depends on
what your perspective is here
um
if if they want if they've heard about
magit or orc mode and they want to use
it but they're not willing to try emacs
then probably they wouldn't really be
happy using emacs to begin with i mean
magit is an example of
a highly powerful package for
interacting with git repositories
but if you aren't the type of person who
would be really interested in using a
text driven or keyboard driven interface
then you're probably not going to want
to use magic anyway so
i don't know um
if if the obstacle is that emacs is the
problem or if they just wouldn't even be
interested in how you would have to use
emacs anyway now org mode is sort of
more in a gray area because
orgmat has org mode has tremendous value
to
uh researchers writers etc people who
aren't programmers who wouldn't know
something like emacs lists but
i feel that
they don't really know what
capabilities they could possibly get in
a program like emacs until they try org
mode and then realize so many things
they can actually do to improve their
own workflow there's so many things they
could automate there's so many ways they
could use the information they put into
their org mode documents etc so
um it's i think it also once again comes
down to the people like many of the
people who were giving talks yesterday
about work mode who are showing how to
use org mode and emacs in a different
light to inspire these people to try
using emacs for the sake of org mode and
then it's like a trojan horse it gets
them into using other things about emacs
as well
many people who never would have
considered themselves to be programmers
now actually write code because they
started using emacs and they started to
scratch their own itch little by little
writing excuse me
larger and larger chunks of code so
i think it's um
it's important to make sure that people
who might be interested in using emacs
because of org mode or magic don't get
lost and you know don't get the chance
to try it but i wouldn't worry about the
people who
need to be convinced i guess
yeah okay i'll barge in just so to give
you enough time to drink a sip because
you've been talking non-stop for the
last 10 minutes also
just thinking on this um what you were
saying was very insightful about uh you
know the philosophy in a way but
especially in regards to augment you
were saying that plenty of people were
interested from a perspective of
research or you know from perspective of
writing but i think that a lot of people
who are interested by such features what
they probably do not realize at the time
if they are interested by ognom by or
grown by og mode
is that those very modules were ushered
into the world by the philosophy of
emacs the philosophy of the framework
and
you know it takes a special philosophy
and a special framework to usher those
ideas and so when the people like the
ids it's so easy for them then to be
brought back into the framework but the
problem is we still have a lot of
trouble trying to get
people who do not have the experience
that we have with free software or we
get easily put off by
you know having to type their keyboard a
lot or looking at every spartan
interface so we still have a lot of work
to do on this but i think what you said
was beautifully said and thank you so
much okay i'll let you go now
thank you
uh yeah well also i think you know
one other way that people can actually
help to inspire others to use emacs is
also like giving talks at conferences
for for that are not software related
like if you go to a research conference
and you're giving a presentation on
research work that you've done and you
give the presentation with org mode and
you have you know code blocks and graphs
that are inside of the document people
will come up to you afterward and ask
you about it and that's another way to
sort of get more people interested in it
or maybe you could share information
online about the research you're doing
or maybe
like you know statistical models or
whatever that you're working on and you
know throw some things in about emacs
there too so it's just another way to
get people you know paying attention
uh let's see you should
just look
just to let you know we have about five
minutes left of question we might go a
little considering how many questions we
still have you might go a little longer
if you're willing to do so uh but yeah
uh what you taught is a very well
well-known secret in the emacs world
that's called the trojan horse when you
do this especially in the academic
circle they see you typing really fast
on your keyboard and a lot of stuff
happens that takes the minutes to do
it's the 200 dollars and then you have a
white well you can take try basically
and convert them to emacs okay i'll stop
there five minutes
exactly all right so let's see um should
emacs continue to present itself as an
esoteric program and culture or should
we try to dispel the myth and make clear
that anyone can use it not extreme
enthusiasts or is this needed to
motivate people to invest time into
properly learning emacs um i would
personally like to see more people
promoting emacs as a way to get into
programming because uh many people i've
seen who are not in the software
development field
have this sort of mindset that i'm not a
programmer and because of that they
don't bother trying to learn a language
that
is not necessarily that hard to learn
like emacs lisp so
like i was saying in the talk
there is a progression path for people
who start using emacs if you start to
use emacs and learn the basics about how
to configure it using set q to set
variables and maybe writing your own
little functions here and there
gradually over time you'll get more and
more ambitious especially if you learn
the help system the info system etc
you can learn how to teach yourself more
and more how to program and then you
realize oh programming is mainly just
like thinking about how to solve a
problem and just writing the steps down
and then you know
making sure that the code works so
people who think they can't be
programmers actually can learn how to
program just by using emacs
and if you if you want to get
people to use programming for a
practical purpose
making an editor or a an interface or
like something like using org mode
that's one way to say here's something
where you can do programming but also
get some useful result for yourself out
of it without having to write a whole
program by yourself so uh i think that
we should not uh promote emacs as a
program i think we should be upfront
about the fact that you're going to be
surprised by it at first but there are
definite benefits to it especially if
you are not a programmer already
do you think there could be changes made
to the core of emacs that would betray
the ethos you and most people here
appreciate i'm thinking of points that
some of emacs critics demand to
allegedly make emacs more popular do you
think this is a realistic threat or do
we save ourselves by forking
um
well i mean the the changes that would
ruin emacs are the ones that would make
it less
powerful and less free for the user to
do what they want and i don't think that
would ever happen it just doesn't make
any sense what would happen
so i have no concerns about that
uh the kids want to know when and when
is an ongoing joint video collaboration
between david wheel and protesting house
uh that will happen i i have not been in
a position to do much video making
recently because of me moving degrees so
uh eventually it's going to happen so
just just keep a lookout for that
if you had to choose between graphics
later layer 2d and 3d or real browser
support within emax which would you
choose
um
i don't know that you really need real
browser support so much
the more that i tried to cram into emacs
and do everything in emacs the more i
realized that like it just gets
sometimes a little bit too complicated
eww is a good middle ground where you're
like using like a really minimal browser
but if you're trying to like put a full
browser
inside of emacs like built into emacs
i don't know
um
i i might change my opinion on that but
i think a graphics layer could be
interesting just to give possibilities
for user interfaces but
i think that if you do anything that
changes how we
do purely from text or primarily by text
then uh the programming model becomes
more more complicated
how do you feel being an emacs focused
youtuber do you think youtube generates
a lot of new users
um i enjoy it because the only reason i
make these videos is because i'm
interested in talking about it i
basically was talking about it to people
around me and they're not so interested
about emacs so i just started making
videos instead so uh it's just a way for
me to talk about something i'm
interested in um
i don't know if youtube generates a lot
of new users but i do see a lot of
people who say that um videos that i've
made have unblocked them in their
journey on learning emacs or learning
how to configure emacs better so that
definitely feels good but um yeah i
think that there is a barrier to some
people
figuring out how to use emacs
effectively and um
that's one area where many more people
could try to contribute by making
content making videos making blog posts
etc like trying to reach out to people
who don't really know much about emacs
or the model and try to explain it to
them david you should allow me to just
bargain for a second uh the last one you
said about you know encouraging people
to uh make more videos write more blog
posts about emacs is something that
we've been really encouraging a lot of
people especially with sasha uh well to
do more of because the more emacs there
is out there the more you unblock people
and you make them commit to trying the
the ecosystem actually and once they are
in this ecosystem it is so easy for them
to
live with the philosophy and become
containers aware of their own or just
you know configuring their content
that's already a pretty good start okay
so i just want to give you the
opportunity so we are technically at the
end of the time we i told you we would
keep you for the q a uh we do have
obviously more questions uh not too much
more though so would you be able to go
uh five uh ten extra minutes
on stream on main to answer them
sure no problem
okay cool and for the folks in the chat
i would please ask you to keep the
questions done do not ask like the five
questions right now because we need to
get towards the close
yeah
all right so let me go to the next one
here so there might have once been a
debate about whether to add more type
setting capabilities to emacs to make it
more of a word processor or work on the
core performance issues the current work
on native compilation and the
communities response network show users
are actually very interested in
performance enhancements what is your
opinion on it i think that the work that
andrea carrallo did
uh on native compilation may be one of
the most critical improvements that have
been made to emacs in
a very long time i can't really tell you
how many years because i haven't really
been following you know emacs
development for that long but
performance has always been a nagging
concern for a lot of people so
uh any major gains in performance is
going to be very welcome and the thing
that is impressive about the performance
improvement that andrea made is that
it doesn't actually make the usage of
emacs any less smooth there's a lot of
native compilation that goes along in
the background after you
update packages or if you maybe get a
new build of emacs you have to recompile
all the natively compiled packages you
have
but
once that finishes it it's no different
really than using emacs with by
compilation or without by compilation at
all so uh these the smoothness of that
experience and the fact that you don't
really even have to think about it
in most cases is uh is a huge benefit i
think to having the actual uh
performance increase
now for things like type setting um for
a text focused program i think that
having
improved type setting capabilities would
be fantastic i think that emacs did get
half buzz support in 27 i want to say
which it would actually improve that a
lot but
i don't really know what else we could
ask for
aside from maybe some greater control
over positioning of text and whatnot but
uh yeah for a very text-focused program
any improvements to type setting
capabilities could be great because it
could give us a
better looking program and also the
ability to do more wysiwyg type editing
for documents
someone asked can you give us a sneak
peek of what's coming in the youtube
channel soon well
probably it's a letdown to people here
who are interested in emacs but i'm
going to be focusing more on guile and
geeks probably in the next year however
i will be doing a lot of emacs content
still and you know live streams and
whatnot and everything will be done
within emacs so
um
that's kind of a big area i'm also going
to be doing more
live coding on another channel at some
point which i'll be using emacs as
basically the primary interface for
building up
various different types of multimedia
applications like you know
audio editing tools video editing tools
etc but using emacs as a primary
interface and not so much for like you
know turning knobs and stuff but
actually writing code that that creates
the content
so um
emacs will be a primary uh
element of what i do it will be front
and center in my all of my content but
the actual you know
soul focus on emacs will probably uh go
to more like 50 50 50
um content on that uh in 2022 but
it's mainly because i've covered so much
already that you know there's not
i don't have as many like hot pressing
issues that i want to uh make videos
about currently
let's see
uh let me see what any what people are
saying in the irc as well because i
think i've covered all the the the pad
questions yeah uh honestly david i think
we've uh
uh i mean by all means if people on ic
if you want to answer people on ic in
your time feel free to do so but you've
been on stream for i see the level of
water in your glass going down
steadily
i've seen it going down steadily for the
last 30 minutes and i think uh we owe it
to you to let you rest for now i'm the
one who's expected to go live for two
two days in a row i'll just you know
i'll just show you something that's one
drink that's two drink that's three and
that's four that's what it takes to run
imax confidence the entire day
it
talking for two hours on my regular live
streams already makes my throat go crazy
and i think that if i was to do what you
did i would probably not be able to
speak after like a third talk so kudos
to you for being able to keep it
together
well thank you from streamers who are
video maker to another you know it's
very appreciated and i appreciate the
recognition
okay well thank you so much david uh
though if you want to keep answering
questions you know what we can do is
that we can leave you in a bbb room and
you can start answering questions in the
l stream but for us uh it's getting
pretty late as you know uh for us in
europe and that's why i was
you know i'm offering tonight
it's been nice so
yeah so i'm offering you the possibility
to do so but if you say no now i think
no one will hold you uh you know people
will feel bad but they will just wait
until your next appearance in youtube so
do you want to stay in dbb on some more
questions i'll say for another 10
minutes
okay awesome so what we'll do then uh as
usual oh i did say it would be the last
time before well i get to do it one more
time then uh if you go look up right
there and if you go to david wilson's uh
speech sorry talk at the end and if you
click there you will be able to find the
link to the live q a room in which we
are currently sitting
um on that note uh david thank you so
much for your time thank you oops i got
the wrong room sorry uh thank you so
much for your time thank you for
everything you're doing for emax you
know bastian was thanking us and sasha
muslim for you know the community work
that we do which is kind of like
community maintenance in a way but i do
firmly believe that you are also part of
that crew and we thank you dearly for
this
thank you very much i appreciate it that
means a lot
all right so i'll let you stay in this
room us right now on the stream we're
going to move on to the closing remarks
so bye bye david
all right let's see we got some folks
here in the chat some familiar names i
see
let's see um
see if i missed anything in the
irc
i lemming said in the in the chat any
philosophy that has no compromises is
indistinguishable from religious
fanatism well yeah i mean definitely you
can't hold too hard on principles
because then
you know there's always going to be
something that will require you to bend
them somewhat but you know principles
are good to have
uh ian says i think people who know
other programming languages are more
resistant to using emacs list than those
who have never programmed that's
possibly true i mean
if you come into emacs lisp and you
perceive it to be a
subpar language because you have some
sort of skepticism about lisp or about a
lisp that's written as a extension
language to an editor then i guess that
it could be a barrier to someone being
willing to try it but
um
yeah i don't know i mean i think that a
person who understands the value of
emacs and a programmer is probably more
likely to understand the value than
another person
um who is not a programmer so i don't
know i would hope that they would
actually have the ability to
uh get past any reluctance they have and
try to learn e max list for the sake of
uh uh all that is good uh those of you
who are joining in on the meeting please
feel free to ask questions uh let's see
oh there's chat here cool
hey thanks alpha papa
uh opal vault says curious if you'll do
a video showing your personal workflow
yeah i should probably do that um
maybe that's a good opener video to uh
to 2022 how i use emacs in 2022 or
something like that
um
my workflow is probably not super
interesting
excuse me but uh i don't know i guess
it's good to see another person's
workflow no matter what it is in the end
because it will give you some ideas or
maybe make you feel better about your
own workflow because this other person
like me
does things really stupidly
um let's see timothy says what do you
think about geeks or nixos plus emacs
videos i do need to make a video about
how you can use uh emacs packages
installed from geeks because there are
some
details that are needed to know about
that um not too many but it's just you
know so some pointers are probably
effective to help people with that
uh let's see obvious says it's nice to
watch your videos and grab ideas from
your workflows or your code whereas i
would not have thought about it
otherwise yeah that's one of the
problems with a program like emacs is
that it's so flexible that oftentimes
you sort of just like
opt to not even do anything because it's
like okay i can do anything but
i don't know i'm not really motivated to
do anything but that really it comes
down to
having a specific thing that you're
trying to solve like
you know i'd really like it if when i
open a project with projectile it
creates a new
uh
perspective.el workspace so that i have
a clean workspace for all the files that
i'm working on things like that i mean
just just doing small little
workflow improvements of that nature is
good enough to
get you thinking about how you can do
bigger improvements as well and maybe
like a full end-to-end workflow i think
david
yes
um
hey
uh
i i don't think he ever mentioned that
in your videos can you is it possible i
i mean like unless you sign some ndas
can you
talk about like your
uh actual like work work like you know
are you uh are you consultant what
what's your primary
uh programming language or languages you
use like it's just
interesting like just curious if you if
you can
give some insight into that that would
be awesome thanks yeah i'm a software
engineer for a uh large corporation that
will remain nameless
and i use typescript primarily and
node.js um i work on developer tools
primarily so like
right now i'm working on a
tool for
writing
service specifications
uh that's more like actually a
programming language than a spec
language so
it's kind of fun to work on that kind of
thing but uh you know i've got plenty of
other ideas for things i'd like to do
myself so i'm hoping one day i will uh
be uh gainfully unemployed and have my
full-time efforts be focused on the
things i'm doing with youtube and also
uh the projects that i'm working on
myself so
yeah i'm hoping i can not be employed
soon i want to fire myself let me just
put it that way
let's see uh
i thought i saw something else in the
chat
but i do use emacs um for my my everyday
job as well as all my personal stuff as
well so it's it's a lot of fun to try to
you know make emacs work in both
contexts i have to use windows every now
and then unfortunately um
but mostly i'm using geeks all the time
even at work so
i'm lucky in that regard i don't get
forced to use certain software for doing
my job so it's pretty nice from that
perspective
what about vs code a lot of people who
use typescript they
claim like you know sooner or later you
have to try vs code and supposedly it's
amazing for typescript have you have you
ever tried that
yeah i used vs vs code actually wrote
one of the first language extensions to
vs code uh back when vs code first came
out
and it's great for typescript but
because
vs code
invented the language server model or at
least the language server protocol not
really the lame server model per se um
now we have the same functionality in
emacs via lsp mode or e-glide or
whatever so i don't really have to use
vs code for typescript development
because i run most of the commands i
need to do for the compilation or
testing or whatever just through
[Music]
the compile command in emacs
and then i have lspmo to give me all of
the language intelligence i need for
getting completions or navigating around
the code etc so
at least for typescript the experience
is good enough that i don't really need
vs code at all
and i guess you could say that's thanks
to vs code actually coming up with the
language server protocol
and and making that sort of pattern
available to other editors as well
what about your colleagues um
do you
do they use emacs as well or um
like if you collaborate
do you collaborate with somebody do you
have to i guess you you don't have to
pay a program
on daily basis or if you do like you
know how does it work i'll do how do
they see you like you know um as like do
you
see yourself as like
is it difficult to work with a team
where like not too many people use emacs
or
no because i mean if you know enough
about emacs and and
how to configure it to do what you
needed to do then you don't really need
someone else to help you to do it um now
if you if you had to work with tools
that
were not so friendly to being run as
like shell commands or
didn't have um
interfaces that could be
consumed from emx like let's say a json
based interface or something like that
then it would be difficult but
for me as a person who collaborates with
people who you primarily use vs code
i don't really have any trouble like i
just don't get to use the same well i
suppose i could use the same like
debugging configurations they have for
the vs code
stuff but i don't really use debugger
like that
for typescript anyway um and i don't
really do any pair programming the the
team that i'm working on is mostly like
senior level people so we're all just
off doing our own stuff most of the time
um
so yeah i don't really don't really have
a problem with
using emacs in fact there's there's one
co-worker of mine who does use emacs
here and there for various things but
not necessarily for typescript
development and i've inspired a couple
of co-workers to try emacs but i don't
know that they use it primarily they
just sort of play around with it uh just
out of curiosity
that's awesome that that was my next
question i was uh i wanted to ask like
if you if anybody actually got inspired
by watching you or like you know
uh because
somebody
one day
they looked over the shoulder and they
were like well it seems whatever you're
doing takes a lot of typing or like a
lot of uh pressing keys but
it truly looks magical whatever like
happens when you do like certain like
it's uh it seems like you're typing
incantations or something it is truly
it's it's amazing i i'd love to do uh
learn how to how do you do this and it's
just uh
it just looks awesome
um
i've given a number of presentations at
work using this basically the same setup
that i use on the system captures videos
and i always get questions afterwards
especially for the people who actually
use emacs are usually like wow i've
never actually seen emacs look that way
before so even people who know emacs are
kind of like
it kind of gets gets them a little bit
jazzed to play around with their emacs
config again which is pretty funny and
i've also given a presentation to um
uh the
corporate vice president of my division
using emacs but i don't think that she
really paid attention to what i was
using for that but
you know it's kind of funny
that's what happens whenever i use magic
measure to work yep basically go ahead
yeah it's it's incredible it's like
um
i think it was a quote from
uh
jackie chan or somebody who
they said like something like the
that's the problem with the
[Music]
uh really good fighting that
uh when it's efficient you can't see it
it's not like cinematic you know the
same thing with emacs it's efficient but
when you show it it's like it looks like
well something happened here i i didn't
catch it but like you know i just i
don't understand what's happening but
it's look it looks uh
cool i just like you know this is not
my thing i guess like you know it just
looks like that
yeah they they're like wow you're one of
those movie hackers or something you
just press keys and things happen on the
screen
yeah
uh morgan says any thoughts on the idea
that the best tool to use is the one
that is easiest to leave possibly this
is not even more relevant with that
there's a heavy push to cloud service
um
well i would say that a tool that is
easy to leave probably doesn't have much
value to you to begin with because that
means you're not really using the
features of the tool to start with like
if if if you're talking about tools that
are easy to leave then probably all
you're using are just basic text editing
functionality and text files
and syncing them with cloud services
which you know is perfectly fine but i
think you're missing out on a lot of
other stuff that probably would be
pretty useful
so
i think it's better to
find a tool that can grow with you over
time
completely unbounded by
anything other than your own motivation
and ambition with the tool which emacs
can do i mean obviously there's
limitations to what you can do with
emacs but they are far fewer than
basically any other program in existence
so
um i don't know i think that uh
you get more value out of learning
something deeply and invest investing in
it then like just sort of like flitting
around between tools because you don't
really want to you know find a home i
guess
i cannot agree with you more on that
it's uh
you see there's a i see it it's a
there's a big correlation between things
that are easy to start
and uh
[Music]
they usually become cumbersome uh later
but something that is
seems to be complicated at some point it
may actually uh give you more
productivity and if that we that we have
tons of examples in real life like you
can you cannot go to uh like i don't
know uh
down to uh into the the
like
nuclear submarine and say like oh
there's someone so many knobs and like
you know uh
you know things and buttons and like you
know can can you just replace it with a
single uh touch-based interface like you
know like tesla did wouldn't be like so
much intuitive and it would be like are
you crazy like this is the most uh
efficient interface we we we we've been
like you know uh we've come out it's
it's very intuitive for us but yes it
takes like years of training you have to
pass like certain certifications it's
like you know it's not it's not easy to
start with but that's the hands down the
most efficient way of doing things uh
and like you know and we can see that
with uh
some uh
point of sale terminals right they they
don't use mouse they don't like usually
use touch-based interfaces it's like
keyboard driven it's very fast it's very
efficient but you have to learn it you
have to go through the steps of uh you
know getting through the like uh it's
hard it's it's not easy and
yeah and in in the end it offers you the
unmatched
efficiency just like you can't get
efficient uh any other way
unfortunately it is
the flip side of that actually is even
though it can be considered to be more
complicated to use a
heavily keyboard driven interface like
emacs the fact that you have the ability
to figure out the command that any key
combination calls at any time and also
see a list of all command bindings under
a certain prefix gives you
huge insight into what uh keys you have
at your disposal so you can actually
learn it yourself if you didn't have a
capability then it would be completely
impenetrable and you would have to just
go based on memory alone
but the fact that you can go and look
that stuff up just using the built-in
help system is uh the saving grace of
having such a
powerful key driven
interface i think
let's see ashraf says
do you think there should be an updated
initial configuration for fresh emacs
installations with more modern ui
features or even cool like shortcuts i
definitely wouldn't turn on the cool
thing by default even though
it's obviously a stumbling block to most
people who start using emacs and who
have been
taught how to use control c control
x control v
as far as modern ui features
i don't know it's a slippery slope i
guess because do you turn things on or
do you turn them off i mean i prefer to
just turn things off i would not have
the toolbar visible but i think toolbar
is kind of helpful for a lot of people
so
i mean the the first thing you could do
is try to make sure that emacs has nice
looking icons and doesn't look like a
1990s application but it's hard to
enforce that sometimes across various
linux distributions because they all
have their own icon themes
so
i don't know how easy it would be to
make
an out of the box fresh looking
uh
ui i mean if you maybe you had a better
font by default
i don't know maybe that would help
but really we kind of come down to
the people packaging emacs for various
distributions to kind of help with that
but then you have another problem which
is basically emacs looks different by
default on various um distributions so i
don't know it's it's difficult to
imagine
what changes you could actually make
that are
technically feasible
to make emacs look better out of the box
maybe the one thing you could do is
actually make the home screen the
welcome screen
less busy just take some of that text
off even though it is helpful
have like one or two lines that you can
go to like specific info pages still
have a nice more modern looking emacs
logo
as a banner
and basically make the welcome page look
more like that dashboard package and
then maybe that will be enough to get
people to be like oh okay this might be
actually cool to try because right now
it just looks like
in 1995 so i don't know
um
it's difficult i i can see why the
maintainers are reluctant to change it
i got time for one more question i think
hi david uh can you hear me yes i can
hear you
okay well i thought it was nice to make
a pass and first to say thank you for
all the work you do
i think it's very important to have the
quality content that you produce uh
and it's something that has been kind of
overseen in the past years
uh i think it really helps to like fill
the gap
between users and actual developments
and uh and to yeah
i think is extremely important and my
question is do you have
any idea uh first for the future
or now to
like getting
like introduce even more people to imax
development
uh
yeah i think that's my question
well i guess it's actually a better
question for you because i from what i
understand you aren't a programmer by
trade but you still figured out how to
add you know native compilation to emacs
so the question really is
how hard is it to get into the native
code side of emacs
uh
well
it depends on the level of motivation i
guess
i agree 100 yeah
uh
i don't think it's that hard to
understand the principles at least i did
my best trying to
uh
present it in various places
uh
how it works the basics
uh
so in general uh
i think maybe asking a couple of
questions to get some entry point into
it it shouldn't be that hard to get the
picture and to start to working into it
but maybe to be more precise on my
question have you ever thought about
inviting people maybe senior developers
or things like that in your into your
channel
uh i think it it might be very
interesting for people to watch this uh
these shows i i would i would be very
interesting i cannot agree more uh
andrea
like this is this is amazing you like
somebody needs to do what sasha uh did
like years ago
those videos are still like what i like
about emacs content
it's
it stays forever and stays relevant for
a very long time because like you know
just things stay true to their their
nature it's
just like things uh it's a
relatively slow moving world but that
would be amazing it's it's a great idea
you should definitely try doing it um
yeah it would be amazing it would be
very i mean like thank you guys both of
you i mean like it's uh i'm sorry uh
andre i i i i you know i missed your
talk i'll i'll be watching the video and
i
um it's just that
saturday's on sunday
precious for me i mean like i don't i
don't have control over them my family
does um but uh
i i i couldn't
but thank you uh for
all the work you you guys done it's uh
thank you for making my world a little
bit better thank you
you're amazing
so i'll go back to the point about
having people on the streams to talk
i've been wanting to do that for a while
but i've been procrastinating because
it's complicated to line up people's
schedules to be able to have you know
people from from
like the emacs community is all over the
world and it's difficult to get people
in different time zones to be able to be
available
at the time that i normally stream so
it's just like some logistical things i
need to figure out but i absolutely want
to get people on because i think there's
a lot of really awesome conversations
that can be had and you're right like
those old satishua
interviews that she did like john wigley
and
uh i'm blanking on his name right now
but anyway there's a lot of folks that
she interviewed that were really
interesting so i want to
um
do something like that as well so thanks
for for reminding me about that but uh
also thank you very much andrea for your
your nice comments and i also say to you
you know it's like the work you've done
is super super critical to the future of
emacs so so thank you every time i
mention it i'm always telling people
it's like the most important thing to
happen
since like meta x or something
it was yeah it was a nice journey and
seeing people uh
happy about this work uh
it really gave me the motivation to do
it but yeah i i let you answer all the
other questions it's uh it's your show
ciao david thank you very much thank you
so much all right all right
i can do one more let me just do one
more here
tv says i really appreciate the live
video format non-edited live thinking in
loud videos compared to the polished
super edited artificial videos that uh
more of a show of as opposed to want to
actually share knowledge yes that's sort
of a
thing i keep thinking about uh with
making content because it takes a lot of
effort to
prepare
very specific
flow of information from start to finish
and also try to keep it bounded within a
specific period of time
it's important to do that i think
because you know some people don't want
to watch a two-hour livestream recording
but um i think a lot of interesting
stuff does come out of those live
streams uh one thing i do want to start
doing at some point is take those live
streams that i have that are longer like
two hours or whatever and cut them down
into like summary videos in case there's
things that people want to check out
without having to watch the full
recording but um
i don't know like i'm trying to figure
out
uh a good strategy for that going
forward because um you know it's been
nice doing nothing but live streams the
last few weeks i kind of
regret not being able to make recorded
videos because i haven't had time uh but
i think we've had some pretty good
streams a lot of people have watched the
recording surprisingly like you know
over 3000 views on a couple of them
which is a lot for uh live stream
recording for me
uh ashrae says will you do live pair
programming in the future i believe you
did that with jt some weeks ago yeah i
need to get back with jt actually and
finish what we were working on and once
again thank you for contributing to that
effort um
yeah live peer programming is fun uh
it's also fun whenever i'm trying to do
my own programming in a stream and
people are telling me the answer to
questions uh which is why it's important
to have people like ashraz there in the
chat uh reminding me of the things i'm
doing wrong
but uh yeah
i i i definitely look for more feedback
like that like you know what types of
streams that i'm doing that are actually
more
valuable than the others i mean there's
lots of times we'll have like discussion
streams which i think are pretty good
people are pretty engaged i kind of want
to do more programming streams but
sometimes i feel like when i actually do
a programming stream people are less
interested uh you know i did some
hacking streams recently and
i don't get as many views on those
mainly because i think people aren't as
interested in watching me fumble around
with emacs code for uh two hours so
um
david i would like to do more of that
yep
sorry to interrupt you uh have you heard
about john lindquist uh
have you heard the name ever so john
lindquist was a guy who created egghead
aisle it had that io so he initially
started just like you you did he was uh
he was working on angular projects back
in the day and he started like making
small videos and then he decided like
you know instead of like uh doing like
two hour like a stream or one hour like
a tutorial uh or like uh he would just
like
make focused tutorial on specific
feature and it's like you know would be
like 15 20 minutes and they've become
like very popular he created the whole
company on top of that and like now he
uh invites other
software developers experts uh you know
uh all sorts of people and they uh
actually they earn money uh by doing
that it's it's it's a big um
they have uh revenue model and like you
know it's
subscription of things
i i don't see why you cannot do that
because your videos are
uh
what's nice and unique about them that
the insight that comes from q a
and you know when like people interrupt
you and they're like oh yeah let me try
that like you know and that's uh
that's difficult to replace even with
like very quality videos like you know
then when you stream when you have
prepared when you have like you know the
entire
uh
plot of the video like written down and
you go like just just by
buy it by the script right
uh
your videos are unique because because
of that like you know the fast feedback
loop and you you feel like you know you
just improvise on the way and
you feel good about it and that's that's
amazing uh maybe you should try those
like you know short videos i don't know
uh
people i don't know maybe like you know
it will be
nice
definitely maybe
give it a try and see how it goes
so basically what you're saying is uh in
the live streams whenever these sort of
random things come up where i do
something that
was sort of unplanned i could actually
make a shorter video out of just that
specific uh
moment in time or whatever topic was
being discussed at that moment
right
you know like little tip like you know
oh like 50 minute tip how to like you
know do projectile uh do this you need
like you know here's a little mx list
code like you know you can uh here uh
you can do this or like you know and
it's like
10 15 minutes i don't know like you know
it can be even five minutes maybe i
don't know uh see how this model works
for you um maybe we'll it will get some
uh you know um that's the thing about
emacs videos as i said like you know
people sometimes you can find like two
three five year old video and it's still
relevant you still can learn something
from it and it's it's nice and uh
sometimes people they don't have time
now i'm i'm like you know my
most used button on youtube is
uh
what you call them the
the pause button no not the pause button
the buttons that make you speed up like
twice wow yeah like you know the larger
than uh button uh
so
you just like tap it and like you know i
i don't watch videos uh
at their normal speed anymore
which reminds me when like you know
first time i went
to an actual conference and i heard rich
hickey
speaking like life on stage i was like
whoa this guy's voice so soothing and
it's so like and then i realized i never
heard them like
in real life i always like listened to
them in 2x and i was like oh yeah speak
that way actually it's like so it's it's
he speaks a lot slower than in real life
i was like oh wow that's uh that's
interesting yeah
so uh it's funny you mentioned egghead i
actually talked them at some point maybe
two three months ago about making some
content with them and i was very uh
interested in the model that they
uh promote which is actually
like that they want videos that are like
five minutes or two minutes and they
want a whole course that's made out of
these short videos and basically their
concept is they want to respect people's
time
and give you something useful in a very
short
video that if you only have two to five
minutes you can watch and learn
something
um
i i want to do more of the short form
videos i did one shorts video on youtube
which i thought was pretty well received
but you know sometimes it's hard to find
topics that you can cover in a minute
and a half so i mean one minute to five
minute videos that's probably a good
area for me to focus on a little bit
this year um just as there's many many
many little things that you could do in
five minutes on emacs on various
different packages
um so it's probably a better use of my
time even because you know it's better
bang for the buck for anybody who
watches them and also it's less time for
me to have to prepare because i i spend
like any
any video that you see me do like like i
said let's say a 20 minute video is
probably taking me at least
anywhere from three to eight hours to
prepare that in advance so if i could
just shorten my production time then uh
that would be great
emac shorts indeed
all right i think i got to get out of
here i'm actually using my mother and
father-in-law's bedroom to do this right
now and they're they're asleep on the
couch so i need to go and wake them up
and tell them to go use their bed now
oh my god
i know this is what it's like whenever
you're in a small place in athens
waiting to find a home
all right so thank you all so much for
being here i really appreciate all the
questions and the comments and whatnot
it was nice to to speak to a couple of
you
on voice chat for the first time i mean
we've interacted probably on twitter and
whatnot before but never on on voice
chat and i'll definitely take that
suggestion into account about having
people on the live streams because i
think that there's a lot of people i
want to talk to i've already got a list
actually people i want to talk to so
i'll start trying to get that happening
uh pretty pretty soon here i think
because we're missing out on a lot of
useful conversations that we could be
having
yeah i just i just wanted to add to that
i know it's uh
it's very demanding it's very difficult
it's uh sometimes you're like it's it's
really but you should you should
continue please please keep making those
videos because
uh
i mean they're really good
you you're good what you're doing uh you
know what you're doing you they're i'm
like you know i'm being honest uh
they're very uh educational they're fun
uh
it's it's good content and it's content
that with the
uh
would inspire generations to come like
you know uh it's uh for a long time it's
not like something that you can throw
away like you know and have to like redo
every two three years that's that's
great content and uh
yeah and i i i know it's a lot of work
uh and it's a huge responsibility but
you've picked up this flag and uh you
should have you have to carry it on i'm
responsible for it now oh boy yeah well
no i mean
it's it's it's kind of hard to stop
making these videos so like i could have
stopped multiple times in the past and
i've thought about it multiple times in
the past but i just can't stop so i
don't think that it's going to happen
anytime soon
thank you for doing that thank you yeah
yeah no problem all right folks thank
you so much i really appreciate you all
uh being here today and thanks all for
the the great feedback on the videos and
the uh the the presentation as well uh i
will see you all around definitely check
out the live streams because we have
talks like this uh every friday so we'll
see you there bye bye thank you thanks
dave