Irreal

That's not accurate. They retired SICP and added a new introductory course [1] based on Python to placate the suits. Neither Sussman nor any of the other SICP folk is involved with that. Sussman created a follow-up course to SICP [2] which is still based on Lisp and still being offered today. [1] https://irreal.org/blog/?p=11127 [2] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6.945/

Hey congrats, this looks great for macOS! Trying it now! With a similar mindset and an Emacs background, I wanted a scratch-like experience on iOS, so I built one https://xenodium.com/scratch-a-minimal-scratch-area. Seems to work for others too https://irreal.org/blog/?p=11202 While there's a new built-in iOS journaling app, I'm building one to save to plain text (and no lock-in). https://xenodium.com/an-ios-journaling-app-powered-by-org-plain-text

We changed the url from https://irreal.org/blog/?p=11127 to the source it points to. It's worth reading too!

On Mac Os you can also add some other ones that are not enabled by default, there's various write ups on how to do this. https://irreal.org/blog/?p=259 I really missed C-w for delete word personally. There's also a vim plugin by tim pope that adds a few readline keys that don't clash. https://github.com/tpope/vim-rsi And if you use the fish shell you can have both vi and Emacs shortcuts activated at the same time for the best of both worlds.

Time was that this sort of thing was covered in courses such as: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-comp… but they've since switched to Python for reasons: https://irreal.org/blog/?p=2331

PSA: Use The Lucid Toolkit https://irreal.org/blog/?p=12672 https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1hlj04t/emacs_using_the_lucid_…

Nice to see this on HN from the app creator. Intrigued to try it (vs BeOrg) after seeing coverage at irreal, one of my usual emacs oriented blogs. https://irreal.org/blog/?p=12894

Relevant to which processors go supports, is this section (1). Base x64 support includes SSE and SSE2. I don't know if the go compiler produces it, though. Unlike extremely complex compilers like gcc, where performance is the top priority, the go compiler favours simplicity in a Wirthian(2) fashion favouring a simple, fast compiler. (1) https://go.dev/wiki/MinimumRequirements#amd64 (2) https://irreal.org/blog/?p=7075 https://smartgo.blog/2024/01/06/niklaus-wirth/

Similar recent post on Irreal: https://irreal.org/blog/?p=8663 Personally I have found dark modes with color schemes like, say, Dracula are visually pleasing immediately but over time become tedious and I notice a pattern of decreased mood that doesn't happen with light modes. So, I use software that adjust screen light based on the time of day rather than dark modes.

Emacs isn't really a terminal app, though. CLI is just one of several frontends. And there are good reasons to prefer the gui version: https://irreal.org/blog/?p=5835

I'd say the most satisfying experiences I have with lisp are a cross between clean abstractions and light code-golfing. To call out specific approaches, I'd highlight anaphoric macros, code-walking via (symbol-)macro-let [1], and the freedom to control when expressions evaluated (generally at read-time, compile-time, or run-time) for optimization [2][3]. [1]: https://letoverlambda.com/index.cl/guest/chap5.html#sec_ [2]: Compiler macro chapters aren't free, but I guess read-time is covered here https://letoverlambda.com/index.cl/guest/chap4.html#sec_1 [3]: https://irreal.org/blog/?p=809 / https://web.archive.org/web/20140711171755/symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=1352

Apparently Kernighan is also updating his Awk book of 1988 this summer too. https://irreal.org/blog/?p=10746

A nice bonus of being on macOS is that native Cocoa applications/controls understand a handful of Emacs bindings by default, and can be tweaked [1] to understand far more Emacs keys [2]. [1] http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html [2] https://irreal.org/blog/?p=259

Watching Tom Tromey's talk on the future of Emacs is a better use of your time I suspect - https://irreal.org/blog/?p=8687 He addresses many of the "obvious" ideas many of the casuals that appear in these hn threads have.

Org mode is really awesome. A chemist basically does his work with org (http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu) and recently another guy showing his colleague’s poster done with org and Beamer ( http://irreal.org/blog/?p=7651). I find org and mu4e really make mundane stuff easily done. On a mac and iOS system to get email, calendar, to do list, and notes done, it is usually 4 different programs, with emacs it is just org and mu4e and beorg on mobile.

> and I doubt many authors know anything about emacs... You'd be surprised. There's a list of writers who use Emacs floating somewhere around the interwebz, Vernor Vinge being a notable example. I can't find it right now, but few of those authors are mentioned here: http://irreal.org/blog/?p=4651.

> When I'm ssh'ed into one of my boxen, I can do a simple scp and have all my configs for IRC, eww, org-mode, EmacsWget, my custom scripts, etc, everything in one place and managed under one system ecosystem, and from a terminal without having to touch/forward X And you don't even have to bother with that, thanks to TRAMP mode, which lets you open files on a local emacs from a remote system. You can even do it with sudo[1]! I believe vim does have rudimentary sftp/scp support, but tramp can make it seem like a remote system is just an extension of your local system. ---- [1] http://irreal.org/blog/?p=895

s-expressions (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?XmlIsaPoorCopyOfEssExpressions) are another option. Even people who prefer JSON recognize the advantages: http://irreal.org/blog/?p=713

Interestingly, relatedly, a lot of the emacs style keybindings (ctrl-a, ctrl-e, ctrl-k, etc) are system-wide in OSX. I prefer vim as my daily editor, but it is often useful. You can also make the bindings even more emacsy if you want. http://irreal.org/blog/?p=2063

Emacs Golf should be in it (derived from VimGolf) Golfing is trying to create/modify some data in the smallest keys sequence possible. It's fun and uber efficient to acquire knowledge about editors (and also other people workflow/habits) A set of videos http://vimeo.com/timvisher/videos/page:1/sort:newest Some blog article http://irreal.org/blog/?p=293 Google returns a few more links, suit yourself.

Oh sweet summer child. http://xahlee.info/emacs/misc/emacs_macos_emoji.html Color emoji was deliberately disabled on macOS (2016): policy first, parity later. Emacs 25 turned off multicolor fonts on the Cocoa port even though they worked, with a NEWS note saying they’d be re-enabled "once it is also implemented in Emacs on free operating systems." This was widely read as a political parity requirement that penalized macOS users for years. https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html "Prefer GNU/GNU-Linux" development time: an explicit guideline. GNU’s own standards advise spending time on features "useful on GNU and GNU/Linux, rather than on supporting other incompatible systems." That guideline has often been cited in Emacs discussions to argue against platform-specific work that would land only on macOS. https://irreal.org/blog/?p=13137 https://xenodium.com/emacs-send-to-aka-macos-sharing-merged-upstream macOS-only features face extra process friction, or must be generalized. The "send-to" (macOS Sharing) patch was finally merged in 2025 -- but only after a lengthy debate and a rework into a cross-platform framework to satisfy GNU policy concerns about adding features that target a non-free OS first. (The end result is good! -- but the path illustrates the extra hurdles for macOS-first work.) https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac Long-running reliance on mac-specific forks to get a polished UX. For years, many mac users have depended on Mitsuharu…