Interview with an Emacs Enthusiast [Colorized]
Kai LentitCited 14× on HN, 2023–2026
comedy · general · evergreen · 2023–2026 on HN
Kai Lentit's comedy sketch parodies a retro documentary interview with an Emacs enthusiast, joking about Emacs's endless configuration and devotion.
Shared as a joke whenever Emacs obsession and configuration come up.
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12 comments from Hacker News
> This is so important. I've seen so many fellow technologists (and I've skated this myself) obsess about their setup to the point that they're spending more time on that than the actual thing they're building. ▶ this video
Deldo - Vibration Control and Teledildonics Mode for Emacs link Interview with an Emacs Enthusiast [Colorized] ▶ this video Writing an Emacs implementation in C (Gosling Emacs) | James Gosling and Lex Fridman link
I've been a fan of Kai Lentit ever since he accurately portrayed me (Emerald McS. et al, PhD) in my office at the University of Texas Instruments a while ago. [ ▶ this video ] The sad thing is a) TI had an amazing LISP team in the 70s and 80s and b) while Emacs users are perhaps not that weird, we do get a little excited about the cool things we can do with our TEXT EDITOR .
My cat is named Emacs, so I take those knocks against Emacs personally. Interview with an Emacs Enthusiast [Colorized] ▶ this video
"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." ▶ this video
I think Emacs definitely has a certain uncool vibe about it. Like, this comedy video from "Programmers are also human" sums it up pretty well: ▶ this video . And I think this mental image would have to give way for Emacs to become more popular. Now whether or not popularity for popularities sake is a good thing is another question.
As someone who exclusively uses emacs for all their editing, some nice topics there; though a bit miffed it's all video only. Although this, from the page linked, was pretty fun: ▶ this video
>Functional + universal data structure + homoiconic = power >It everything used TSV or tabular data, But is not the case. With lisp you can always be sure. basic unix kit is built around line-separated lines which are field-separated and you even get to choose your own separators and not get locked into tab. You can use this kitset, a common one, or other different kit. But with this kitset, yes, everything is indeed a table Re: emacs ▶ this video
Interview with an Emacs Enthusiast in 2023 [Colorized]: ▶ this video Interview with a GNU/Linux user - Partition 1: link Deldo - Vibration Control and Teledildonics Mode for Emacs: link
I'm basically this guy once I sit down at the computer. ▶ this video So I've invested more times in Emacs than I'll probably ever get back in timing savings from ripgrep'ing through my notes. However, they're nice to have when I need them.
I know this is a joke, but people should really give Emacs a try. Check out this interview about Emacs if you’re not convinced: ▶ this video
Obligatory video "Interview with an Emacs Enthusiast in 2023 Colorized" ▶ this video . "Emacs is a part-time job". I agree.