EmacsConf 2024 Notes

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

EmacsConf 2024 experience & format

  • Many commenters enjoyed the “cozy” feel and smooth organization of EmacsConf 2024.
  • Talks are available as video, audio, slides, captions, and transcripts; some initially thought it was “video only” but were corrected.
  • Automation and Emacs Lisp tooling are heavily used to schedule, stream, caption, and publish talks; small incremental improvements accumulate year to year.
  • The conference runs on a very small hosting budget (under US$200/year), but setup time and technical complexity (e.g., BigBlueButton) are noted as the real cost.

Comparison with NeovimConf and other editor events

  • EmacsConf is much smaller than NeovimConf in viewer numbers, which participants think makes self‑hosting and careful scheduling manageable.
  • NeovimConf is seen as more stream/YouTube/twitch‑oriented, with some complaints (elsewhere) about ads, schedule slippage, and meme‑heavy chat.
  • Commenters like cross‑pollination of ideas between Emacs, Neovim, Helix, and others; several explicitly browse other editor conferences for workflow inspiration.

Emacs vs VS Code and other editors

  • Some long‑time Emacs users moved to VS Code, often citing:
    • Better “out of the box” UX and packaging.
    • GitHub Copilot integration.
    • Easier onboarding for teams and new grads, especially around shared extensions, linters, and remote editing.
  • Others tried VS Code and returned to Emacs, mainly due to:
    • Deep custom Elisp workflows they can’t easily replicate.
    • Strong preference for full customizability and keyboard‑driven workflows.
    • Concerns about Microsoft’s telemetry, cloud tie‑ins, and long‑term “enshittification.”
  • Some use both: Emacs for notes/org/magit and VS Code for language tooling or remote work.

Lisp, Elisp, and alternative runtimes

  • Strong defense of Lisp as the core of Emacs’ power; skepticism toward “rewrite Emacs in Lua” ideas, though some argue Lua is essentially Lisp‑like with a different syntax.
  • Discussion of Guile‑powered Emacs and desire for a “proper runtime” for Elisp; some would even accept Elisp-on-Guile only.
  • Fennel (Lisp-to-Lua) is praised as a nicer way to script Lua ecosystems (Neovim, hammerspoon, etc.).

Alternative Emacs-like editors

  • Lem (Common Lisp–based, Emacs‑ish editor) attracts interest:
    • Praised for responsiveness, threading, and potential to surpass Emacs.
    • Criticized for missing features (multiple frames, theming issues, config/docs) and a very small ecosystem compared to Emacs.
  • Talks on Guile-Emacs, an Emacs core in Rust (Rune), and other emacsen are highlighted as exciting experiments.

Use cases, community, and longevity

  • Many emphasize Emacs as a “lifetime editor” and general computing environment, not just for programming: email, writing, note‑taking, document authoring, and more.
  • Non‑programmer or “writer” use is surprisingly common; people list thesaurus, spellcheck, translation, dictionaries, reading‑ease analysis, and LLM integration as examples.
  • Some argue that even if many developer‑only users move to VS Code, core usage and development are driven by people who use Emacs for much more than coding, so the ecosystem remains vibrant.

Performance, concurrency, and remote work

  • Emacs’ single‑threaded nature and global mutable state are widely seen as a structural limit, causing UI freezes on heavy tasks (e.g., large diffs, big LSP operations).
  • External processes and tools (e.g., LSP servers, rsync-based sync, Emacs LSP booster, native compilation) mitigate some issues but don’t solve core concurrency problems.
  • VS Code’s remote development is often described as far more reliable and polished than TRAMP; others counter that VS Code requires non‑free server‑side components and more resources, so comparisons are not strictly fair.