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EmacsConf 2024 Notes

by JNRowe on 12/28/24, 2:22 PM with 154 comments

• by uludag on 12/28/24, 3:48 PM

  > EmacsConf feels like a nice, cozy get-together where people share the cool things they've been working on and thinking about.

  Emacsconf was indeed executed great this year, and nice and cozy were my feelings too. It's interesting to compare and contrast the ambience between Emacsconf and that of the other editors' like neovim conf and the release "parties" of Visual Studio Code and Jetbrains.

• by krylon on 12/28/24, 3:57 PM

  There was supposed to be one talk about an attempt to re-vitalize a Guile-powered Emacs. I am not sure if it's in there somewhere or not (but I haven't looked yet).

  I imagine Emacs gaining native compilation capability took some pressure off that. But the appeal of scripting Emacs in languages other than Elisp still has some appeal, I think. Scheme or Lua would very nice for that purpose.

  EDIT: There it is - https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/guile/

• by eigenspace on 12/29/24, 5:24 PM

  I was hoping to see something about EAF[1] this year, as I think the big thing emacs is still missing is a good way to drive interactive graphics, but EAF is still super janky and underdocumented.

  It'd be good to see this (or something better!) make progress.

  [1]: https://github.com/emacs-eaf/emacs-application-framework

• by globular-toast on 12/28/24, 10:22 PM

  Ah man, I'm gutted I didn't "attend" this. Been an Emacs user more than 15 years and people like Sacha were there at the beginning for me and a huge reason why I got into Emacs back then. I feel so lucky to have got into it back then. I see colleagues struggling with their tools which they can't fix or even tweak, but I can't imagine any of them putting in the time now to learn Emacs. It's truly the editor of a lifetime.

• by Vekz on 12/28/24, 5:19 PM

  I was really impressed with the online presentation of EmacsConf 2024. Everything captured and published in org-mode: Transcripts, Comments, QA, Video links. Was really nice to peruse.

• by emptybits on 12/28/24, 9:40 PM

  Wondering if the Lem project is “accepted” (or worth a test drive) by the Emacs community. I’m a long time Emacs user, occasionally leaving but always returning. Lately, Lem has my attention. https://github.com/lem-project/lem

  For those not familiar, Lem is very approximately an Emacs, natively written and extendable in Common Lisp, multiplatform, NCurses & SDL2, etc. LSP. And fast.

• by sourcepluck on 12/29/24, 12:28 AM

  I loved browsing the emacsconf videos this year, really nicely presented, and such cool stuff happening. Still have lots to watch, but so far in particular the infrastructural and UI type stuff seemed amazing, there's loads happening! Favourites included:

  https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/casual/ -- Charles Choi designing UIs for human beings rather than octopuses (this jibe is meant fondly, I am a happy octopus)

  https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/literate/ -- Howard Abram, literate programming

  https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/gypsum/ -- Emacs and emacs lisp clone in Guile

  https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/rust/ -- Rune, an experimental Emacs core in Rust

  https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/julia/ -- lovely talk about the synchronicity between Julia and Emacs

  https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/guile/ -- Robin Templeton relaunches Guile-Emacs!

  https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/mcclim/ -- eh, this talk accepted questions from lambdaMOO?

• by iambvk on 12/29/24, 6:26 AM

  > The total hosting cost for the conference was USD 42.92 + tax and the BBB testing in the lead-up to the conference was USD 3.11 + tax, so a total of USD 46.03+tax. The web node and the livestreaming node are kept as 1GB nanodes the rest of the year (USD 5 x 2 servers + tax, so USD 110). Very manageable.

  How does this compared to all other conf costs?

• by mark_l_watson on 12/29/24, 4:06 PM

  I have followed Sacha for a long while, love her frequent Emacs updates. I am a rabid Common Lisp enthusiast, and I bought the Mastering Emacs book last year, I just need to pull the trigger and try doing a project in Emacs Lisp.

• by amichail on 12/28/24, 4:37 PM

  Do you think TeXmacs should be included in EmacsConf, even though it is based on neither Emacs nor TeX, but merely inspired by them?

• by duozerk on 12/28/24, 3:44 PM

  As someone who exclusively uses emacs for all their editing, some nice topics there; though a bit miffed it's all video only.

  Although this, from the page linked, was pretty fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urcL86UpqZc

• by zkry on 12/28/24, 4:13 PM

  I really enjoyed the conference this year! It had a good mix of project updates, emacs internals, configuration, Emacs rewrites in different languages, org-mode applications, community, interesting packages, and things that went over my head.

• by lysace on 12/28/24, 4:07 PM

  I wonder how many users Emacs has lost to VS Code over the past few years. I'm one of them.

  Feels sad. And also potentially shortsighted.

• by djaouen on 12/28/24, 9:59 PM

  I can’t see myself leaving Emacs. Maybe for LunarVim, in an extreme case. But otherwise, no.

• by ajbt200128 on 12/28/24, 3:52 PM

  Amazing work again! EmacsConf was as fun as ever this year

• by beanjuiceII on 12/29/24, 4:45 PM

  Sacha is awesome!!!