Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

This essay is amazing and delightful, but it is rather densely allusive, like classical Chinese literature; ultimately it is more allusion than plain language. I suspect that most people will find it somewhat impenetrable. But if you want to see Emacs explained by references to Dune, Harry Potter, Gormenghast, Star Wars, A Rape in Cyberspace, Neuromancer, The Matrix, Crowleyian magick, and so on, this essay is for you.

Ultimately such storytelling seems to be the best means that we as humans have to convey our subjective experiences, which purely objective descriptions are not very good at. (This is one of the weak points of the engineering mindset that I was criticizing in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45650941.) So I sympathize with the project. But I wonder if it may end up preaching to the choir a bit: if you remember the intoxication of reading Barlow's Declaration of Independence, probably you already have a settled relationship with Emacs, whether intimate or traumatic, or both?

I was shocked by the reference to Navidson's house from the House of Leaves. The ending to your first paragraph is also interesting in that HoL starts with "This is not for you."

House of Leaves is something I've been wanting to read since I first saw it, but I've never had the chance. Unlike most books, I feel that I'd be missing out on a lot if I didn't read it in physical form.

Emacs, too, is bigger on the inside.

Yes, it's definitely something you want to experience in the physical form! It's hard to describe what reading it feels like towards the latter parts of the book- you feel like you're lost in the book like how the Navidson gets lost in the house.

See, I feel like that in Emacs sometimes, too. The debugger helps.

I keep track of my Emacs with a Tractive GPS collar, and I have an app on my phone that shows the trails and a heat map of everywhere he's been. And I debug him with Frontline, but that doesn't prevent him from coming in with slugs in his fur. (Emacs is my cat's name.)

"I've also been diagnosed with severe hostility towards Vim users but that's not a real disease of course. The real disease is Vim."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urcL86UpqZc

Is he bigger on the inside? Does he represent a bet that didn’t pay off, on a future that will never, ever be allowed to come? Does he embody the charming but mistaken belief that creating tools to make people freer will begin a movement toward freedom?

Silly. The only people who are hostile to Vim users are vi users, because Vim is a vi clone that is secretly Emacs.

Reminds me of Richard Stallman and how he used to do a character "St. igGNUcias of the Church of Emacs" who would answer questions like "Is using Vi a sin?" with "Yes, but one that is its own penance!"

Oh, did he stop?