Emacs: The Final Frontier

This past week I spent a good deal of time experimenting with XMPP, a messaging protocol that works kinda like email when it comes to it's design. In that journey I re-encounterd Joshua Blais in a few channels, as well as his IRC channel #technicalrenaissance. I was curious, as I can't say I've really tested IRC, so I joined. In the conversations I was also reminded of how Joshua uses Emacs, and his numerous YouTube videos on the topic. Again Emacs was something I had seen in passing, mostly the debates between Vim and the jokes that it was more of an operating system. Curiosity bit me again, and I took the plunge to start learning what Emacs is and how it works. I was not prepared for what I would find, yet in other ways I was. My technical journey has been leaning towards minimalism and self sufficiency, as many of you have probably seen. My side project Andromeda was one of those efforts, trying to build my own minimal apps do remove distractions and subscription tools. As the…