feat(web/blog): Add draft blog post on Emacs r/524

This post is a draft, i.e. not linked from the index. It's not a
secret, but if you do find it through this commit before its
publication please don't share it too widely yet.

2 files changed, 223 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/web/blog/posts.nix b/web/blog/posts.nix
index 7d510b0611..d7949fa341 100644
--- a/web/blog/posts.nix
+++ b/web/blog/posts.nix
@@ -1,6 +1,13 @@
 # This file defines all the blog posts.
 [
   {
+    key = "emacs-is-underrated";
+    title = "Emacs is the most underrated tool";
+    date = 1581286656;
+    content = ./posts/emacs-is-underrated.md;
+    draft = true;
+  }
+  {
     key = "best-tools";
     title = "tazjin's best tools";
     date = 1576800001;
diff --git a/web/blog/posts/emacs-is-underrated.md b/web/blog/posts/emacs-is-underrated.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..054bf927a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/web/blog/posts/emacs-is-underrated.md
@@ -0,0 +1,216 @@
+TODO: Hello, and thanks for offering to review my draft! The intention
+of this post is to convey to people what the point of Emacs is. Not
+with the intention of converting them to use it, but at least with
+opening their minds to the possibility that it might contain valuable
+things. I don't know if I'm on track in the right direction and your
+input will help me figure it out. Thanks!
+
+There are two kinds of people: Those who use Emacs, and those who
+think it is a text editor. This post is aimed at those in the second
+category.
+
+Emacs is the most important piece of software I run. My [Emacs
+configuration][emacs-config] has steadily evolved for almost a decade.
+Emacs is my window manager, mail client, terminal, git client,
+information management system and - perhaps unsurprisingly - text
+editor.
+
+Before going into why I chose to invest so much into this program,
+follow me along on a little thought experiment:
+
+----------
+
+Imagine you have a computer running a standard, proprietary operating
+system.
+
+On it, you use a proprietary spreadsheet program. You find that there
+are features in it that *almost, but not quite* do what you want.
+
+What can you do about this? You can file a feature request to the
+company that makes it and hope they listen, but for the likes of Apple
+and Microsoft chances are they won't and there is nothing you can do.
+
+Let's say you are also running an open-source program for image
+manipulation. You again find that some of its features are subtly
+different from what you would want them to do.
+
+Things look a bit different this time - after all, the program is
+open-source! You can go and fetch its source code, figure out its
+internal structure and wrangle various layers of code into submission
+until you find the piece that implements the functionality you want to
+change. If you know the language it is written in, you can modify the
+feature.
+
+Now all that's left is figuring out its build system[^1], building and
+installing it and moving over to the new version.
+
+Realistically you are not going to do this much in the real world. The
+friction to contributing to projects, especially complex ones, is
+often quite high. For minor inconveniences, you might often find
+yourself just shrugging and working around them.
+
+What if it didn't have to be this way?
+
+-------------
+
+One of the core properties of Emacs is that it is *introspective* and
+*self-documenting*.
+
+For a simple example: A few years ago, I had just switched over to
+using [EXWM][], the Emacs X Window Manager. To launch applications I
+was using a program called Helm, which is similar in spirit to dmenu,
+that let me select installed programs interactively and press
+<kbd>RET</kbd> to execute them.
+
+This was very useful - until I discovered that if I tried to open a
+second terminal emulator while one was already running it would
+display an error:
+
+    Error: urxvt is already running
+
+Now if this had been dmenu, I might have had to go through the whole
+process described above to fix the issue. But it wasn't dmenu - it was
+an Emacs program, and I did the following things:
+
+1. I pressed <kbd>C-h k</kbd>[^2] (which means "please tell me what
+   the following key does"), followed by <kbd>s-d</kbd> (which was my
+   key binding for launching programs).
+
+2. Emacs displayed a new buffer saying, roughly:
+
+   ```
+   s-d runs the command helm-run-external-command (found in global-map),
+   which is an interactive autoloaded compiled Lisp function in
+   ‘.../helm-external.el’.
+
+   It is bound to s-d.
+   ```
+
+   I clicked on the filename.
+
+3. Emacs opened the file and jumped to the definition of
+   `helm-run-external-command`. After a few seconds of reading through
+   the code, I found this snippet:
+
+   ```lisp
+   (if (get-process proc)
+       (if helm-raise-command
+           (shell-command  (format helm-raise-command real-com))
+         (error "Error: %s is already running" real-com))
+     ;; ... the actual code to launch programs followed below ...
+     )
+   ```
+
+4. I deleted the outer if-expression which implemented the behaviour I
+   didn't want, pressed <kbd>C-M-x</kbd> to reload the code and saved
+   the file.
+
+The whole process took maybe a minute, and the problem was now gone.
+
+For those to whom this means something: Emacs is the closest we can
+get to the experience of Lisp machines on modern hardware.
+
+---------------
+
+Circling back to my opening statement: If Emacs is not a text editor,
+then what *is* it?
+
+The Emacs website says this:
+
+> [Emacs] is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp
+> programming language with extensions to support text editing
+
+The core of Emacs implements the language and the functionality needed
+to evaluate and run it, as well as various primitives for user
+interface construction such as buffers, windows and frames.
+
+Everything else that people think of when Emacs is mentioned is
+implemented *in Emacs Lisp*.
+
+The Emacs distribution ships with rudimentary text editing
+functionality (and some language-specific support for the most popular
+languages), but it also brings with it two IRC clients, a Tetris
+implementation, a text-mode web browser, [org-mode][] and many other
+tools.
+
+Outside of the core distribution there is a myriad of available
+programs for Emacs: [magit][] (the famous git porcelain), text-based
+[HTTP clients][], even interactive [Kubernetes frontends][k8s].
+
+What all of these tools have in common is that they gain the
+introspectability and composability of everything else in Emacs.
+
+If magit does not expose a git flag I need, it's trivial to add. If I
+want a key binding to jump from a buffer showing me a Kubernetes pod
+to a magit buffer for the source code of the container it only takes a
+few lines of Emacs Lisp to implement.
+
+As proficiency with Emacs Lisp ramps up, the environment becomes
+malleable like clay and evolves along with the user's taste and needs.
+Muscle memory learned for one program translates seamlessly to others,
+and the overall effect is an improvement in *workflow fluidity* that
+is difficult to overstate.
+
+In addition, workflows based on Emacs are *stable*. Moving my window
+management to Emacs has meant that I'm not subject to some third-party
+developer deciding that my window layouting features will now change
+(as they often do on systems like MacOS).
+
+To illustrate this: Emacs has development history all the way back to
+the 1970s, continuous git history that survived multiple VCS
+migrations [since 1985][first-commit] (that's 22 years before git
+itself was released!) and there is code[^3] implementing interactive
+functionality that has survived unmodified in Emacs *since then*.
+
+---------------
+
+Now, what is the point of this post?
+
+I decided to write this after a recent [tweet][] by @IanColdwater (in
+the context of todo-management apps):
+
+> The fact that it's 2020 and the most viable answer to this appears
+> to be Emacs might be the saddest thing I've ever heard
+
+What bothers me is that people see this as *sad*. Emacs being around
+for this long and still being unparlleled for many of the UX paradigms
+implemented by its programs is, in my book, incredible - and not sad.
+
+How many other paradigms have survived this long? How many other tools
+still have fervent followers, amazing [developer tooling][] and a
+[vibrant ecosystem][] at this age?
+
+Steve Yegge [said it best][babel][^5]: Emacs has the Quality Without a
+Name.
+
+What I wish you, the reader, should take away from this post is the
+following:
+
+TODO(tazjin): Figure out what people should actually take away from
+this post. I need to sleep on it. It's something about not dismissing
+tools just because of their age, urging them to explore paradigms that
+might seem unfamiliar and so on. Ideas welcome.
+
+---------------
+
+[^1]: Wouldn't it be a joy if every project just used Nix? I digress ...
+[^2]: These are keyboard shortcuts written in [Emacs Key Notation][ekn].
+[^3]: For example, [functionality for online memes][studly] that
+    wouldn't be invented for decades to come!
+[^4]: ... and some things wrong, but that is an issue for a separate post!
+[^5]: And I really *do* urge you to read that post's section on Emacs.
+
+[emacs-config]: https://git.tazj.in/tree/tools/emacs
+[EXWM]: https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm
+[helm]: https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm
+[ekn]: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/efaq/Basic-keys.html
+[org-mode]: https://orgmode.org/
+[magit]: https://magit.vc
+[HTTP clients]: https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el
+[k8s]: https://github.com/jypma/kubectl
+[first-commit]: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?id=ce5584125c44a1a2fbb46e810459c50b227a95e2
+[studly]: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?id=47bdd84a0a9d20aab934482a64b84d0db63e7532
+[tweet]: https://twitter.com/IanColdwater/status/1220824466525229056
+[developer tooling]: https://github.com/alphapapa/emacs-package-dev-handbook
+[vibrant ecosystem]: https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs
+[babel]: https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/tour-de-babel#TOC-Lisp