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Bare Metal (The Emacs Essay)

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197 points hpaone | 3 comments | 14 Oct 25 20:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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billfruit ◴[21 Oct 25 08:31 UTC] No.45653702[source]▶
While I still use emacs, I find that that despite the "batteries included" narrative about emacs, the things which are not included are causes of major frustration.

Such essential functionality like grep-find and LSP servers which is required for out of the box auto complete are not bundled with emacs. Most modern IDEs/editors have these functionality baked in.

If you install emacs for windows you find that grep-find doesn't work, because it depends on support from environment. A full text search should be built into the editor.

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1. pton_xd ◴[21 Oct 25 13:07 UTC] No.45655291[source]▶
I don't think I've ever heard emacs described as "batteries included" -- maybe more like "batteries available." If anything it has the opposite reputation, that doing anything requires extensive and continual config adjustments, which isn't accurate either.

There are plenty of emacs "starter kits" that do aim to provide more of a batteries included experience. My favorite is doom, it's worth checking out and does setup all the features you mention.

Pointing new users at those more advanced default configs as an option would be pretty helpful, I think.

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2. billfruit ◴[21 Oct 25 15:12 UTC] No.45656830[source]▶
But many features, even obscure ones are packaged by default in modern emacs, including I think a pdf viewer.
3. binary132 ◴[21 Oct 25 15:13 UTC] No.45656841[source]▶
Tbh even though I got my start with Emacs Live I really do think at this point the simplest way to get started is to start vanilla and stay as vanilla as possible as you slowly build up your config based on simple and straightforward examples. The main problem is the utter lack of such examples in the community. I had to figure it out for myself for the most part. KISS!