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Livin’ la Vida Emacs

Posted on October 27th, 2006 by Sacha Chua

Squee! <bounce, bounce, bounce>

Democamp10: Back at Mars

Last, and certainly not least was Sacha Chua. If we could harness it I’m pretty sure we could power a few small cities of the energy that’s contained in this one, tiny person – especially when you get her talking about Emacs. Sacha’s demo, entitled, “Livin’ la vida Emacs” was hands down the most entertaining of the evening. Sacha has basically taken this simple, extendable text editor and pushed it about as far as it can go – at DemoCamp10 she pulled back the curtain and showed us all her little systems and apps she’s created in it. I like my GUI/Windows so the whole text-based thing isn’t for me but it certainly was interesting to see just how strung out she’s got that machine.

DemoCamp10: Congratulations

DemoCamp 10 was held last night, and three of the five presentations were from U of T. Sana Tapal (now at Jonah Group) and Andrey Petrov led off with the Online Marking tool; Jonathan Lung (who was part of the student team that presented at DemoCamp 5) showed us all how productive PHP procrastination can be; and Sacha Chua tried to convince us that Emacs isn’t actually bad for you. The other two demos were a social networking/quotes site called Quotiki.com, and Broken Tomb, which advertises itself as the world’s first commercial Smalltalk host. There wasn’t any new technology, but the presenters were entertaining, and it was fun to read the stuff that flashed by on the screen during their demo; the Smalltalk demo had a lot of technical and other difficulties.

Demo Camp Toronto 10 : The return to MARS

Sacha Chua showed off what can be done in the scriptable environment, in this case emacs, as she went from Text editor, to a.i. doctor, to game engine to task / email organizer and beyond. Sacha was six feet tall on that stage, even though she did not actual levitate at anytime (although she came close, as always). A Tour de force of the Emacs, a text editing tool built in a interpreted lisp language environment, bascially a personalized productivity platform which allows for massive customization. Sacha had the crowd entertained and enthralled. (Sacha blogged her own impressions and mentions that Emacs was speaking to her!)

What would you do with Sacha Chua?

Within Toronto’s Web community, Sacha Chua has become one of the leading “personalities”. Armed with infectious enthusiasm, charm and smarts, she would be an excellent person to hire once she graduates from UoT. The key question is how best to use her talents. It would probably be as a “super customer service rep, who can come into a bad situation and get everyone happy by the time she leaves. If I was an HR person from Microsoft, IBM,, etc. I’d be knocking on Sacha’s door ASAP.

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