EmacsConf 2019 - 26a - Emacs: The Editor for the Next Forty Years - Perry E. Metzger (pmetzger)

Notes from pad:
• parallel/concurrent code is critical for future
• "so far, only Rust has a good story on concurrency"
• "C is dying"
• "C cannot be written safely by mortals"
• "C has to go"
• Current language slows down Emacs evolution
• Incrementally replace C with Rust
• displaying not-text
• currently, can't render web pages properly
• native PDF rendering
• HTML done right is complicated: security/privacy features
• proper rendering of HTML is crucial for Emacs future
• emails, …
• Debug Adapter Protocol
• Emacs should be more like an operating system
• better Email experience
• IMAP
• PIM integration
• view Org or Markdown as rendered?
• Issue: Org is separate from Emacs
• needs to be pervasively integrated?
• better chat clients
• instead of Slack, Discord, …
• rendering of web widgets (video, …)
• Hacker-friendly user interface
• Emacs bindings everywhere!
• macOS vs. KDE/Gnome
• Using emacs for everything
• everything should feel like Emacs
• bad
• keyboard design/layout
• priority
1. HTML rendering
3. modern email, PIM, …
4. concurrency model + future extension language
• Q&A starting with 2019-11-02T21.45.10
• Web rendering and daily updates
• Future non-programmers as Emacs users
• JavaScript-intense sources and Emacs support
• default Emacs config to help new users
• Is Rust also a candidate to replace Elisp or just C? No, just C.
• Running Emacs within a browser
• Mobile Emacs
• Emacs in Rust
• lovely but no user-basis and therefore bad situation
• better to use it from inside and not as a fork
• Long-term competitors except vim

related:

[ilemming]

Not only Rust and Erlang have good concurrency story these days. Clojure as well. And Clojure (being dialect of Lisp) is by nature has a better fit. Elisp has borrowed many ideas from CommonLisp, I think it is time for it to steal some good ideas from Clojure - immutable datastructures, destructuring, transducers, concurrency primitives, Clojure.spec, generative testing, etc.

[jorge]

26:25 I think this is being addressed by the remacs project (Emacs core rewritten in Rust that replicates Emacs bug by bug)

[MohdIsmailAnsari]

This talk was quite different than the previous one from 2014 but was sort of more technical and hence interesting. I found quite a lot of things very relatable and being an Emacs user on Mac, I can't express how "at home" I felt near the end of the talk. I just loved it!

[lassekliemann]

I agree there are lots of issues that should be improved in Emacs. I'm particularly annoyed with the slow syntax highlighting performance and the terrible performance with larger files (e.g. a 10 MB XML file). Hopefully, your call for action will be heard. Emacs is a great system and certainly worthy to survive the next 40 years. I have already moved most of my activities to Emacs, using Eshell, the Notmuch extension for e-mail, Org mode, Magit, ESS, SLIME, ... A web browser and PDF viewer are essentially the only programs I use regularly besides Emacs.

[hexa]

I think trying to make emacs even more of an os is a mistake. Creating a modern extension language in a new implementation language is already hard enough. Spending man power on creating a web browser and pdf viewer inside emacs when there are and will be better alternatives. I think it is totally ok to create these, and I for one will sure as hell start using such programs if they are created for emacs, but to make these as some of the central goals of this "emacs reformation" it will only hinder our progress is much more important matters. We can leave creating those programs to others so that the project itself won't be hindered.

[exstasis]

54:38 Ok, I really disagree that this older Mac keyboard is symmetrical.

On the left side of the spacebar, the decide between the Command key and the spacebar is directly beneath the D key, where your middle finger rests.

On the right side, the divide between the spacebar and the Command key is directly beneath the L key, where your ring finger rests.

How is that symmetrical?

[driden]

Have any of the recommendations made by Perry being addressed from 2019 to now?

[CaribouDataScience]

Are there any Emacs clones, writing in a different programming language?

[phil]

Great lecture... particularly the keyboard rant. Thanks!

[jonmannella]

thank you thank you thank you for putting this up without the crowd

[exstasis]

As a budding software engineer, I find myself torn between Emacs and VS Code because I see VS Code as Emacs done right, but with a less mature 3rd party 3rd party extension community. And by that I mean, I can't really do all the things I've heard I can do in Emacs Org-mode that I can do in the hobby project that is the Org-mode extension for VS Code. So for now I am trying to suck it up and will myself into Emacs because it's the only "text editor" that I can live in, but that could change if VS Code gets an Org-mode equivalent with feature parity to Emacs.

[ashikurrahman]

I used vim, neovim, emacs and the only problem with emacs i have is the user base telling me "you can do anything in emacs". I know that. I can do anything in neovim (if not vim) too. But the fact is vim is easily extensible. If i want to do something, i am going to find the resources easily that would let me do what i want. In my experience, that is not the case with emacs. Instead of resources i just get people telling me i can do anything in emacs. Man it's annoying

[romankrv]

Hey, How will to co-live Emacs and Neuralink™ in the near future?

[bies_moron]

> C is dead
> Rust better then C
> We need web renderer in emacs
> We need chat in emacs
Who is your dealer, dad?

[aryakiran]

The problem is FSF treats rust as non free due to trademark restrictions. This means the only way is to fork emacs

[tcroyce]

Let it keep doing the text editing part in a snappy and much more efficient way first. Every other feature can and should be thrown our if it cannot perform as a text editor in it's core.

[noam]

There are multiple, possibly in the thousands, of *nix distros. If you really want your shopping list of features in your OS, why not create your own hackers edition of Linux?

As emacs is free, start that project. rewrite the code base in rust. write the lisp compiler in rust also.

I am new to emacs, and I like most of your ideas. I'd love to see it done.

[sargijapunk]

No. Deeming from how your voice sound, you seem to be an older person. Do you remember TCL? Remember all writing, and papers and whatnot about how badly TCL needs this and that and whatnot (back then it was most about object-oriented programming support, classes and such). Well, guess what: TCL has extremely powerful object oriented system now. It is just that nobody uses TCL any more. You are just repeating history. According to how emacs-devel list sounds, and how hostile some of key-devs seems to be to each other and to outsiders, I woudn't be surprised if Emacs/Elisp go same destiny as Tcl/Tk when Osterheut left it :-(.

[winter_light]

It's sad how the stubborn nature of Emacs community has led to its demise. Hopes they'll wake up someday and realise there is good competition out there. Good talk regardless.

[SenthilBabuji]

Go Lang is another system programing languages which is fully safe.