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  "path": "/posts/2026/03/emacs-mistakes-and-misconceptions-that-held-me-back-in-2018/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-30T05:44:01.000Z",
  "site": "https://christiantietze.de",
  "tags": [
    "my pal Sascha Fast",
    "Emacs Carnival March 2026: Mistakes and Misconceptions",
    "I’m not joking!",
    "Emacs to complement and complete computing all around",
    "Sacha Chua’s blog",
    "Xah Lee’s blog and Elisp reference",
    "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs",
    "Hire me",
    "Buy",
    "Receive"
  ],
  "textContent": "It took me a decade to try Emacs again, for reasons totally unrelated to computer programming (task management!), and a lot of effort by my pal Sascha Fast. In hindsight, I realize I had to learn a couple of things first.\n\nThis is my contribution to Emacs Carnival March 2026: Mistakes and Misconceptions, hosted by Philip Kaluđerčić.\n\n  * **Emacs is clumsy and old.** I didn’t know that a GUI Emacs version existed, could display images and scroll somewhat smoothly, coming from an IT department with SUN terminals where we used Emacs on the command-line to edit some `.c` source files. By modern standards, it’s lean and snappy and can do interesting things using your OS’s window manager for multi-frame workflows (like displaying a ‘Speedbar’ for symbol navigation). In 2026, Emacs will learn to efficiently draw at 60+ FPS to a canvas, multiple in parallel even, to display movies and play video games. I’m not joking!\n  * **Text is not enough.** Text, I realized eventually, is plenty! The customizable Org Agenda got me hooked: filter through tasks, display a magic ‘UI’ that fits my needs, amazing. That’s all possible because Emacs deals with (not necessarily file-backed) buffers all the way down. With directory listings, server management, and using Emacs to complement and complete computing all around, the game has changed. Instead of TUI, I read for … EUI?\n  * **I’ll only use this for to-do’s.** I absolutely didn’t. 7 years (oh god) later I’m still discovering new excused to use Emacs for new things. Starting with task management, I also made this my Writeroom-like writing workspace, used it for copy-editing books and innumerable blog posts in various projects, tweaked and learned to love a custom key binding mechanism, moved light scripting over, then more and more programming and web development tasks. Email, chat, eventually LLM chat interfaces and Agentic Engineering; everything is being swallowed by the Universal Paperclip machinery that is this weird Lisp interpreter.\n  * **I will copy and paste config snippets most of the time.** I used StackOverflow, Sacha Chua’s blog, Xah Lee’s blog and Elisp reference as stepping stones. I still grab stuff from other people’s configurations and test-drive them. But I also found a strange joy in writing Lisp, and got into reading Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs and finally understood the mechanics and beauty of the composition so much better. In a way, it helped me think more clearly about functions, composition, and what makes good software.\n\n\n\nI didn’t sign up for all that happened at first. But I got sucked in, and as I mentioned in passing so many times, Emacs is an isle of computing freedom in an environment of ever tighter sandboxes, locking-down and dumbing down computers, making the operating system UI ugly as sin – it’s not great to be in love with computers unless you find your way onto a capable Linux machine. Or, like me, who’s stuck on a Mac for work, use Emacs to maintain their sanity. (That’s probably not a line any longer-term Emacs user ever said.)\n\n* * *\n\nHire me for freelance macOS/iOS work and consulting.\n\nBuy my apps.\n\nReceive new posts via email.",
  "title": "Emacs Mistakes and Misconceptions That Held Me Back in 2019",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-30T05:44:01.000Z"
}