A big loss for the Emacs community! emacs-aio is great!
I see the author is spring cleaning:
> I've
turned over a new leaf (no more Openbox, Tridactyl, Xorg, xterm), and so
some of these things I no longer use. On Linux I now use KDE on Wayland
with a minimally-configured browser. I miss the power user features, but
I do not miss the friction and constant maintenance.
LLMs have inspired a similar change in me: with a big change in how I work, I feel I can and should be more flexible with adopting new tech, which involving freeing myself of previous choices.
FWIW, the age of LLMs made me build a deeper, more intimate relationship with Emacs, because it's a Lisp REPL loop with a built-in editor, not the other way around. When you give an LLM a closed loop system where it can evaluate code in a live REPL and observe the results, it stops guessing and starts reasoning empirically.
LLM that I run inside Emacs can fully control the active Emacs instance. I can make it change virtually any aspect of it. To load-test things, I even made it play Tetris in Emacs. And not just simply run it, but to actually play it without losing. It was insane.
Also, Emacs is all about plain text - you can easily extract text from anything - from the browser, terminal, CLI apps, Slack, Jira, etc., and you can do that on your own terms - context can appear in a buffer, in your clipboard, become a file or series of API requests. That is really hard to beat.
I am really loving working on a fun Elisp project with pi, a minimal and very extensible agent. I have the agent use emacsclient to control my session, showing me code, running magit ediff for me, testing, formatting, reloading -- it's all working great.
I'm still exploring all the ways the agent and I can collaborate using Emacs as a shared medium, but at the moment am super optimistic about it.
cool to see you in the wild, for me, it does work out of the box however, some sites will break or have too complex of a navigation, especially with iframes. and will have to swap to a mouse which is a bummer, which I understand is an inherent limitation of the tech, since web is not built today to do that.
Does anyone else not understand what people mean when they refer to the "friction" supposedly inherent to these power user tools? Almost none of the configs/scripts/etc I use for my heavily-customized and terminal-heavy setup get changed for years at a time.
>LLMs have inspired a similar change in me: with a big change in how I work, I feel I can and should be more flexible with adopting new tech, which involving freeing myself of previous choices.
Oh, LLMs made you more passive and less desirous to have control over your computing environment? Who would ever see that coming.
Our lives are much more than our computing environments. By surrendering a bit of control of our computing environments we free up our brains to devote to other things in life: loved ones, pets, gardening, home maintenance, other hobbies and sports...
Millions of happy Apple users can't be wrong on this.
Maybe, but for some of us, the peace of mind comes from stability and minimal friction with our tools.
Whenever I touch my config is because I get frustrated with one operation and tries to see if it can be done faster. If you use your computer like a toaster, then you wouldn’t care that much about power usage. But for me it’s a creative lab and I don’t want a generic cubicle.
The author is the developer of the RSS reader Elfeed, which a lot of Emacs users use several times a day. Though the article talks about a vibe-coded wxWidgets-based GUI application called Elfeed2 that he wrote as a replacement, Emacs afficionados would be loath to leave their Emacs environment and switch to that. Hopefully Emacs elfeed finds a new maintainer.
I tried Elfeed2 immediately after the announcement, well, it's nowhere near the experience of elfeed in Emacs. Elfeed2 doesn't load content for most of my feeds, elfeed does. I also integrated elfeed-tube, which shows previews of videos and their transcripts, making it no-brainer to get a summary without watching the whole video.
I've been retired from emacs for several years now but I'm still looking for a magit replacement that is independent of my editor. Vscode's magit extension is really good but i split my time between IntelliJ and vscode.
#!/bin/sh
if [ "$(git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree)" = "true" ]; then
exec emacs -nw -q --no-splash -l "/path/to/magit-init.el"
fi
It worked well for me because I can reuse all my keybindings (evil + leader keys with `general`) and my workflow is fully in the terminal. (I have since moved on to Jujutsu, and `jjui` is filling this gap for me right now, but it's not quite a magit-for-jj).
Why? What makes Spacemacs so different/special that it requires some kind of distinct opinion that would be extremely valuable? Spacemacs is the same old Emacs with some out-of-the box customizations atop - there's nothing fundamentally different about it.
Spacemacs "is not batteries-included" version of Emacs. You say that and people may get confused. It's not a "different version" of Emacs, it's not Emacs at all - it's an Emacs config you can configure - a meta config. It is more like a collection of recipes you can run on Emacs. That is an important distinction.
Hence my question, what Wellons (who's a seasoned veteran of Emacs) could ever say anything about Spacemacs (or Doom - which in this context makes no difference)? What kind of views one would be interested to hear? Using the Space key as the "Lead key", or something about local-leader key; or vim-navigation/Evil in general; or modules/layers architecture of Emacs config? He said in that post you shared that he believed he'd eventually end up using Evil - he doesn't need to use Spacemacs for that.
Spacemacs is great for beginners, for people who don't want to deal with learning Emacs native bindings - they are legit confusing. For someone like Chris, it makes little sense, they'd probably would just add modal editing packages to their existing config. Even though Spacemacs and Doom are still valuable - one can find many interesting gems there.
Also, these projects may give you a good discipline for structuring your keys mnemonically - everything files related would be at "SPC f", search stuff on "SPF s", etc.
> With my newly-acquired superpowers I could knock out the last two pieces in a few days’ work
From the linked post:[0]
> I left an employer that is years behind adopting AI to one actively supporting and encouraging it. As of March, in my professional capacity I no longer write code myself. My current situation was unimaginable to me only a year ago. Like it or not, this is the future of software engineering. Turns out I like it, and having tasted the future I don’t want to go back to the old ways.
It's deeply distressing to watch people fall into AI psychosis. Being smart, accomplished, or experienced is no defence.
After the bubble pops and the industry realises the damage these tools can do to people, folks like the author will have to confront that they were taken in by a lie. Many won't be able to confront that.
> It's deeply distressing to watch people fall into AI psychosis.
It's unclear what you're saying here... Yes, AI-induced psychosis is a real problem and the frontier labs' mitigations are ineffective, to put it mildly. But using AI as a coding tool doesn't have anything to do with psychosis.
It's not AI psychosis, you're interpreting what he said to the extreme.
Anyone who has actual corporate team lead or management experience understand AI as effectively a junior dev who doesn't have great persistent memory. These devs using AI are reviewing, guiding, and validating the work given to them by AI just as they would from a junior dev.
The inverse of your statement is more apt; it's distressing to see people so angsty about AI usage. There are going to be skilless vibecoders and then there are going to be experienced devs (like OP) who figured out their AI workflow to multiply their productivity 2-5x.
What the future holds for AI model pricing-- that is a valid concern. But I don't think that's what you intended.
AI psychosis is to have a toxic relationship with a chatbot as if though it was a real person. It has nothing to do with engineering. You're muddying your own point by conflating all LLM use with some kind of delusion. There is a lot of nuance in this space and you're not doing yourself any favors by ignoring it if you're an engineer. There is no bubble pop, other than a straight up apocalypse, that is going to put this genie back in the bottle. Models are trained. Tools are built. There isn't a single industry that cares about artistry more than efficiency. It's here to stay, it's getting better, and if you don't know how to use it, you're going to have trouble finding work.
I just wonder how jobs like that won't replace their employees. Seems too good to last. In a few years OpenAI will just sell $1,000 per month Human-free Agent Coding for businesses.
Saying they have psychosis is a rude exaggeration.
> Being smart, accomplished, or experienced is no defence.
Perhaps you're confusing "not using AI" with "not being dependent on AI", those are very different things.
The edge isn't from avoidance, it's from using AI as leverage on top of real skill. A strong developer + AI beats a strong developer alone, and massively beats a weak developer + AI. The edge doesn't come from avoiding a tool - it comes from being the kind of person who doesn't need it but uses it anyway. That's leverage. Refusing to use it is just leaving leverage on the table to make a philosophical point.
> After the bubble pops
People like Chris (who is enormously capable engineer) would just move onto different tools, different techniques and paradigms. That is the essence of being a software developer - many of us choose this path specifically because it forces you to learn something new, every single day. That is (I suspect) also another reason why Wellons decided to migrate away from Emacs - he just learned it so deeply, perhaps it's no longer giving him the satisfaction of learning. Which to be honest is hard to believe - Emacs is a boundless playground, there's always something new to learn there.
No. AI is a must for software development. It's non-negotiable. The productivity gains are too great. The era of 100% human-written code is over. People will still do it as an idle curiosity, for personal projects only they intend to use. But even those open source projects with significant user bases that forbid the use of AI (like, afaik, NetBSD) will be eclipsed by those that support it in terms of features, capability, and security. And the commercial world? Forget it. You cannot keep pace with your employer's expectations unless you learn to use these tools well. This is not up for debate. It's reality.
Plenty of accomplished devs are getting good results and accomplishing tasks with unheard-of speed using AI, so if you're still not, that's a PEBKAC. You are not using the tools correctly. Figure it out before you complain.
LLMs may be a must for programming, but not for engineering. Writing code is the easy part once you figure out what actually needs to be built in the first place.
Indeed. But figuring out what actually needs to be built is the systems analyst's job, not the programmer's. It takes people skills and holistic thought, something programmers are generally poor at (and AI certainly is no good at, at least not today).
I see the author is spring cleaning:
> I've turned over a new leaf (no more Openbox, Tridactyl, Xorg, xterm), and so some of these things I no longer use. On Linux I now use KDE on Wayland with a minimally-configured browser. I miss the power user features, but I do not miss the friction and constant maintenance.
https://github.com/skeeto/dotfiles/commit/df275005769b654618...
> I am no longer using Mutt nor running my own mail server. In general less terminal stuff for me.
https://github.com/skeeto/dotfiles/commit/e331e367c75f66aaa9...
LLMs have inspired a similar change in me: with a big change in how I work, I feel I can and should be more flexible with adopting new tech, which involving freeing myself of previous choices.
FWIW, the age of LLMs made me build a deeper, more intimate relationship with Emacs, because it's a Lisp REPL loop with a built-in editor, not the other way around. When you give an LLM a closed loop system where it can evaluate code in a live REPL and observe the results, it stops guessing and starts reasoning empirically.
LLM that I run inside Emacs can fully control the active Emacs instance. I can make it change virtually any aspect of it. To load-test things, I even made it play Tetris in Emacs. And not just simply run it, but to actually play it without losing. It was insane.
Also, Emacs is all about plain text - you can easily extract text from anything - from the browser, terminal, CLI apps, Slack, Jira, etc., and you can do that on your own terms - context can appear in a buffer, in your clipboard, become a file or series of API requests. That is really hard to beat.
My .emacs config has improved and I wrote my own Emacs based coding agent https://github.com/mark-watson/coding-agent
I'm still exploring all the ways the agent and I can collaborate using Emacs as a shared medium, but at the moment am super optimistic about it.
This is what gives me the most pause.
For me the friction always comes when I try to use the internet without it
solid extension, big fan
this exactly. most people can’t set it up that well.
Oh, LLMs made you more passive and less desirous to have control over your computing environment? Who would ever see that coming.
Millions of happy Apple users can't be wrong on this.
Whenever I touch my config is because I get frustrated with one operation and tries to see if it can be done faster. If you use your computer like a toaster, then you wouldn’t care that much about power usage. But for me it’s a creative lab and I don’t want a generic cubicle.
For you, perhaps.
Anyone know of something like this?
https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.aganzha.Stage
The IntelliJ git client is my favorite by far, I am curious what do you not like about it?
You're right Spacemacs is essentially a batteries-included version of Emacs.
[1] https://nullprogram.com/blog/2017/04/01/
Hence my question, what Wellons (who's a seasoned veteran of Emacs) could ever say anything about Spacemacs (or Doom - which in this context makes no difference)? What kind of views one would be interested to hear? Using the Space key as the "Lead key", or something about local-leader key; or vim-navigation/Evil in general; or modules/layers architecture of Emacs config? He said in that post you shared that he believed he'd eventually end up using Evil - he doesn't need to use Spacemacs for that.
Spacemacs is great for beginners, for people who don't want to deal with learning Emacs native bindings - they are legit confusing. For someone like Chris, it makes little sense, they'd probably would just add modal editing packages to their existing config. Even though Spacemacs and Doom are still valuable - one can find many interesting gems there.
Also, these projects may give you a good discipline for structuring your keys mnemonically - everything files related would be at "SPC f", search stuff on "SPF s", etc.
From the linked post:[0]
> I left an employer that is years behind adopting AI to one actively supporting and encouraging it. As of March, in my professional capacity I no longer write code myself. My current situation was unimaginable to me only a year ago. Like it or not, this is the future of software engineering. Turns out I like it, and having tasted the future I don’t want to go back to the old ways.
It's deeply distressing to watch people fall into AI psychosis. Being smart, accomplished, or experienced is no defence.
After the bubble pops and the industry realises the damage these tools can do to people, folks like the author will have to confront that they were taken in by a lie. Many won't be able to confront that.
[0]: https://nullprogram.com/blog/2026/03/29/
It's unclear what you're saying here... Yes, AI-induced psychosis is a real problem and the frontier labs' mitigations are ineffective, to put it mildly. But using AI as a coding tool doesn't have anything to do with psychosis.
Anyone who has actual corporate team lead or management experience understand AI as effectively a junior dev who doesn't have great persistent memory. These devs using AI are reviewing, guiding, and validating the work given to them by AI just as they would from a junior dev.
The inverse of your statement is more apt; it's distressing to see people so angsty about AI usage. There are going to be skilless vibecoders and then there are going to be experienced devs (like OP) who figured out their AI workflow to multiply their productivity 2-5x.
What the future holds for AI model pricing-- that is a valid concern. But I don't think that's what you intended.
Saying they have psychosis is a rude exaggeration.
Perhaps you're confusing "not using AI" with "not being dependent on AI", those are very different things.
The edge isn't from avoidance, it's from using AI as leverage on top of real skill. A strong developer + AI beats a strong developer alone, and massively beats a weak developer + AI. The edge doesn't come from avoiding a tool - it comes from being the kind of person who doesn't need it but uses it anyway. That's leverage. Refusing to use it is just leaving leverage on the table to make a philosophical point.
> After the bubble pops
People like Chris (who is enormously capable engineer) would just move onto different tools, different techniques and paradigms. That is the essence of being a software developer - many of us choose this path specifically because it forces you to learn something new, every single day. That is (I suspect) also another reason why Wellons decided to migrate away from Emacs - he just learned it so deeply, perhaps it's no longer giving him the satisfaction of learning. Which to be honest is hard to believe - Emacs is a boundless playground, there's always something new to learn there.
Plenty of accomplished devs are getting good results and accomplishing tasks with unheard-of speed using AI, so if you're still not, that's a PEBKAC. You are not using the tools correctly. Figure it out before you complain.