Is anyone still using Emacs?

In a recent discussion at the orange site sparked by the Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I’m Already Daily Driving article, people were asking themselves “Is anyone still using Emacs?” and then providing their own perspective.

For me, the answer is a resounding yes… but the interesting part is that I’m not still using Emacs: I’m actually using Emacs again. And instead of burying my answer to the opening question in a long discussion thread, I thought I’d explain my journey with and without Emacs for the last… almost 30 years. At the end, I’ll unveil the specific feature that I feel gives me superpowers and that keeps me hooked.

June 19, 2026 · Tags: blogsystem5, emacs, essay, workflow
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Visual Studio Code: A modern editor

On April 14th, 2016, Microsoft announced the 1.0 release of their open-source Visual Studio Code (VSCode) editor. I’ve been drive-testing it for a few months and have been quite pleased with it, so here go my impressions.

How did I get here?

Let’s backtrack a bit first. I’ve been a Vim and Emacs user for many years. Yes, I use both regularly depending on what I have to achieve. For me, Vim shines in doing quick single-file changes and repetitive edits through many files, while Emacs shines in long-lived coding sessions that involve numerous open buffers. These editors are well-suited to my remote-based coding workflow because they run just fine in the terminal. However, sometimes I just would like to take advantage of the desktop environment and the GUI of these two editors on OS X… err.. sucks… so I’ve been wanting to find something else.

April 19, 2016 · Tags: development, software, workflow
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My coding workflow

How would you best organize your work environment for maximum productivity if you were tasked to develop a type of application you had never developed before?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could witness how an experienced developer manages the tools of the craft so that you could draw ideas and incorporate them into your own workflow?

This post aims to answer the above for the type of work I do by sharing how my workflow looks like. I want to compel you to share your own story in the comments section, and by doing so, create a collection of stories so that others can benefit from them.

September 7, 2015 · Tags: best-practices, development, essay, featured, workflow
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Get a handle on email subscriptions

Do you have any idea which online services and stores have you given your email address to? Are you able to quantify the effort it would take to fully migrate to a different email account if you ever wanted to?

(Cover image courtesy of http://www.startupstockphotos.com/)

Three years ago, I was not able to answer these two simple questions when I decided to move my email account to our new family-owned domain. Today? I trivially can, and so can you.

June 6, 2015 · Tags: best-practices, email, essay, featured, workflow
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