Last night, over a glass of bourbon, I had the pleasure of introducing a friend to a new idea. In preparation for schooling, he ought to adopt a new methodology for storing and accessing his knowledge. Rather than spin his wheels trying to adopt a system for note-taking, time-tracking, flashcards, searching, etc., he ought to do the research ahead of time in order to make the transition smooth and easy.
In a previous article titled The Esoteric Magnificence of Org , I touched on a few of the practical things you could do in the Emacs editor, including organizing your mind with Org-Roam, allowing yourself to work uninterrupted with capture templates, and providing the best documentation for your code with literate programming.
It was only by taking a breath and stepping back that I realized just how much of my life now flows through and around this text editor.
My personal data has never been more secure, controlled, future proofed, searchable, automated, and well understood as it is now. It’s a truly magnificent feeling - one I would encourage everyone to approach. No more mysteries involving cloud services and “how do I get my data out of X?” type questions. Just tranquility and text editing. All of this is thanks to the authors of the Emacs text editor and the community of maintainers and hackers surrounding it.
I am of course biased here, but in all honesty, every single professional I know, whom I can count as an Emacs power-user or even a master; Every single one of them is truly an incredible hacker.
Could be explained as selection bias, instead of a causal factor. (link )
The way of Emacs is a good way. It encourages growth, introspection, and structured thinking. Like any good tool - you will shape it, and it will shape you.
If I can’t convey this to my friend, that is fine. Every man’s choice of tools is a highly personal one. Having a flexible organizing system is a huge advantage in any learning or corporate environment, and there are many good options - though in this hacker’s opinion, none so good as Emacs. My friend has other time constraints, and school begins soon, and I’d rather he settle on Obsidian or Notion than a backpack full of loose papers like the good old days.
Emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish.
-– Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning was the Command Line (1998)
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