Sacha Chua - tag - braindump Emacs, sketches, and life https://sachachua.com/blog/tag/braindump/feed/atom/index.xml 11ty 2013-04-02T07:00:00Z Brainstorming ways to help build the Emacs community 2013-04-01T01:49:26Z 2013-04-02T07:00:00Z https://sachachua.com/blog/?p=24633 John Wiegley and I had lots of fun brainstorming ways to help move Emacs forward, particularly as I’m carving out more of my time to focus on Emacs. Here’s what we talked about:

A rough outline of things to flesh out into articles/chapters:

  • productivity, org-mode
  • development
    • emacs lisp
    • haskel, rails, java, and other languages…
  • writing
  • e-mail
  • IRC/Twitter/FB
  • web
  • games and diversions
  • documentation
  • learning and discovery

Learning Emacs development:

  • tools
  • cons cells
  • macros, quoting
  • control structures
  • Emacs structures: windows, buffers, text properties, etc.
  • lambdas
  • libraries

Ideas for visualizations:

  • #emacs word cloud or URL frequency/analysis
  • IUseThis for Emacs, maybe with annotations

Cookbook:

  • PLEAC for Emacs? Emacs Lisp cookbook?
  • Coding patterns

IDE challenges:

  • IntelliSense
  • Excellent project browsing
  • Refactoring
  • Integrated test harnesses
  • Asynchronous operation
  • Performance (especially of code analysis and navigation tools)

Target communities/audiences?

  • Emacs beginners: getting more into Emacs, learning more about packages, customizing Emacs; learning path through packages, maybe with time estimates?
  • Emacs intermediate: tweaking Emacs, getting into Emacs Lisp, contributing upstream; need to update Writing GNU Emacs Extensions
  • Keyboard enthusiasts: keyboard shortcuts, customizability
  • Non-developers (writers, scientists, mathematicians, etc.): Context-specific functionality, starter kits, easy installs, articles, screencasts – learn from Aquamacs, Ready Lisp. Pre-built Org starter kits? screencasts, interactive tutorials, games as introductions
  • Users of defunct editors: migrated features, migration guides
  • IDE users: integration with other parts of life
  • Vim users: configurability envy, migration/emulation

Emacs performance: elp, memory-use-counts, garbage collection, algorithms, cookbook, core work

Discovery:

  • packages: popularity, reverse dependency graph, URL log for #emacs, 24 packages for Christmas and other blog series, IUseThis, reminders to be lazier / stories for inspiration
  • EmacsWiki: guided tour, CSS design

Imagining awesomeness in 5 years: Responsive editor that’s easy to set up; SEO so that people can find useful resources; context/goal-specific documentation; regular virtual show&tell

Imagining nonawesomeness: Weak async; marginal/niche; people moving away to other editors because of growing gaps; performance issues; unmaintained code; developer burnout

EmacsConf: mailing list for next year, venue?

 

Here’s what I’m looking forward to devoting some of my time to:

Write and draw

  • EmacsWiki page updates
  • Guided tours
  • Emacs Lisp cookbook
  • Package reviews
  • Interviews with people so that they can share their tips (incl. screencast and transcript)

Analyze

  • Package use
  • Performance
  • Logs

Learn

  • Performance optimization (Emacs Lisp and core)
  • Package descriptions and use

Code

  • Issues
  • Feature requests
  • Integration
  • New code

Lots of possibilities!

You can view 19 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

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