Hello, everyone. My name is Protesilaos, also
known as Prot. In this video, I'm not sure what
I will talk about exactly, but we will see. So
we will talk with Christian and figure it out.
This is how I start my day, basically. I take
a look at my agenda and depending on what I have
to do, I will organize my day accordingly. I
will see a message. For example, I am reading
my email. Of course, I can reply to those emails
from here. I can... set a date of when I wanted
to do it. So let's say I will do it today at
21 hours. And you will see it's right here. That's
what you hear everywhere nowadays. You know,
if I watch a movie on Netflix in a series, I
see drugs being recommended everywhere, like
marijuana. That's very common. And I used to
do it a lot in the past. I don't do anymore.
So what are your thoughts on alcohol and overall
substance abuse? If you're listening to this
as a podcast, remember that it was originally
recorded as a video. If you're not following
along, you can go to my YouTube channel. My username
is Linkarso. And if you want to support me to
keep this podcast going, you can donate in Ko
-fi. I'm going to leave a link in the description.
All right. So let's get started with this chapter
then. So Prat, we're live. Really appreciate
that you're here. Thank you very much for your
time. Just to give a little bit more context
to the people that is watching this, you know,
so I did a NeoVim versus Emacs video a few days
ago and a name showed up in the comments, not
only in the video comments, but also in the Reddit
comments. You should... bring Pratt. You should
talk to Pratt, Pratt, Pratt, Pratt, Pratt. A
lot of people brought it up. And I was like,
what are these guys talking about? Because I
don't know too much about Emacs, right? So they
mention your name in a lot of different places,
you know, like if it's Emacs related, you should
talk to Pratt. So I reached out. You were kind
enough to agree to this interview. So thank you
very much. How are you doing, by the way? I'm
fine, thank you. And thank you for inviting me.
And I saw some of your readers. I didn't know
about you either because of the non -overlapping
work that we do. And I watched some of your readers
and I thought, oh, this is very good. High quality
and also interesting things. And I'm like, yeah,
of course, I'm on board. I am doing well. Last
week, we had wildfires here and they were too
close for comfort. But the situation is under
control and everybody is back to normal and so
am I. So yeah, that's good. Were you affected
by the wildfires? I watched your video, the one
about the wildfires. Me and my wife also watched
other videos to see how the situation was there.
It was pretty bad, right? The closest they reached
was 300 meters, give or take, away from here.
So I had to leave my place and get to higher
and safer ground. And eventually I came back
at night. So I basically left for almost a full
day. Okay. But yeah, not to dramatize it, it
would have been much worse. So it was just an
inconvenience in the end. It didn't affect you
directly, right? No, no. It was just that for
those two days where the wildfires were raging,
I didn't get any sleep. And I just had to walk
under the heat. But yeah, in the grand scheme
of things, that's not a problem. Oh, and what
did you do? You were carrying your backpack,
your dogs and just walking? Or what did you do
for those? Yep, yep, yep. So the backpack, puppies
in arm and the other two dogs, the older ones
were following along. And yeah, we went further
away from here in successive steps. It's not
like I couldn't go like 10 kilometers in one
go carrying the puppies. But we went in successive
smaller journeys until we reached the point where
we were about 10 kilometers away at the spot
over there from where I could see the valley
here. And as soon as I saw that things were under
control and the wind was shifting, I was like,
okay, time to go back. Okay, cool. So you have
four dogs, two big dogs and two small ones, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, correct, correct. So the older
dogs are about 10 years old each, and the puppies
are two months old. Oh, okay, okay. Now, can
I ask you a favor, Prat? Would you mind saying
your intro, the one that you do on every video?
Hello, everyone. My name is Protesilaos, also
known as Prot. In this video, I'm not sure what
I will talk about exactly, but we will see. So
we will talk with Christian and figure it out.
Awesome. Awesome. Let me bring up our names here
because I have our names. Where did they go?
And while you are looking for that, just to say
that that intro, I never thought of it. I never
thought it through. It's just something I would
always do to introduce myself to people because
my full name is kind of difficult to remember
or pronounce. And so the first thing I would
tell people is like, hey, hello, and I would
shake their hand. My name is Prodecila, also
known as Prod. Yeah, it's a little bit tough
to pronounce for someone that is not where you're
at. So you're in Cyprus. Where is that? Would
you mind sharing a little bit about Cyprus for
someone that doesn't have an idea at all? So
I also have it here on the Google Earth, so I
can share as well the screen if you prefer. Okay.
So let's see it. Where is it? No, it's here.
So you are in Central America over there and
I'm zooming out. And now I am traveling to the
east, to the crossroads of three continents.
Here is Europe, here is Africa, here is Asia.
And if we zoom in here to the eastern Mediterranean
Sea, we find Cyprus. And I am, if we zoom into
Cyprus further, we see this large mountain range.
So this is where I live, somewhere here. Okay.
And where are you? Are you originally from Cyprus?
No, originally I am from Greece, which is that
country over here. And in Cyprus, there are Greek
Cypriot people and the Turkish Cypriot people.
So where I live, there are a lot of Greek Cypriots.
It's the Greek Cypriot parts. And why did you
end up in... It's a complex political situation,
basically. Oh, yeah? And why did you end up in
Cyprus? Mm -hmm. So I was basically not a good
student when I was growing up in Greece. And
I didn't care about going to a university there.
I wasn't paying attention. And eventually I was
disqualified. But I had to go to university because
the career plan I was originally pursuing, that
of becoming a football player, didn't pan out.
I had an injury, a serious injury, so I had to
quit. So I was like, oh my goodness, from football
player to scientist is quite the U -turn. So
I went to register for a private college and
there was a good option in Cyprus. So I was like,
okay, we'll go to Cyprus. And that's how I ended
up here originally. I did my studies in Cyprus
and I was working and studying. I was studying
European politics, economics and law. While I
was studying, I started my website, where I was
writing about the economic crisis, you may remember
the financial crisis post -2008. And I was writing
about that, specifically with a European focus.
And long story short, a member of the European
Parliament, so in Brussels, started reading my
blog, at some point contacted me, and eventually
I went to Brussels to work without even... having
first finished my degree. And so the last six
months of my degree, I had to do them via browsers,
via email correspondence. So I was working there.
So it was because of your blog post then, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was writing and
I knew all these things about the European Union.
So the politician thought that I would be a good
addition to his office to help there. And yeah,
that's how it went. So I went to Brussels and
then when I decided that I didn't like the world
of politics, I was like, I have to go somewhere
where there are mountains. So I decided to come
to Cyprus because I had visited the mountains
here and I was like, ah, this is very nice. So
yeah, someone in the comments, you probably didn't
see it. Roman said that he has visited. these
mountains. I'm not sure it's Cyprus or I would
assume he's talking about Cyprus. Roman, I don't
know where Roman is. He's another YouTuber as
well. I have had him on my channel too. Yeah.
And so what are you then? Like, because you do
philosophy. I really like your philosophy videos.
You know, I enjoy them because I'm just trying
to have a better life. I have a pretty wild life
in the past. So, you know, have changed and all
that, trying to stick to better values, we could
say. But what are you then? Are you a philosopher?
Are you a programmer? Are you a little bit of
everything? Do you mind sharing that with us?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think a little bit of everything
would be appropriate, though. If I had to say,
I would say philosopher. But I wouldn't really
cling on to the description. Because I could
just say, you know, I'm just a regular guy in
the mountains who has an opinion about stuff
and who occasionally writes programs and writes
articles on other issues. Because the thing is,
one general feature of our world is that you
sort of identify with the label you attach to
yourself. And so you say, I am a philosopher
or a programmer or whatever. And now you have
to sort of perform in a manner that is consistent
with whatever the expectations are for that label.
And so let's say if you are a philosopher, you
are expected to be reading books all day or have
a certain polite way of talking. I don't know
what. Whereas I don't want to have those expectations
bestowed upon me. I'm like, you know what? I'm
just my own person. And if a philosopher is an
easy way for us to communicate, that's fine.
But I am not committed to it. No. Yeah. And if
you say you're an Emacs maintainer, everyone
will be expecting for you to maintain Emacs packages
the whole time. And if they see you doing a philosophy
video, they'll be like, bro. What are you doing
with your life? Like, you should be doing Emacs,
right? Exactly, exactly. Okay. And you have a
YouTube channel, right? Is that where people
can find you? Like, what is the medium that you
use the most? Is it your blog post? Is it your
YouTube channel? Like, what is... The main source.
So the most, the most important, like the main
medium I have is my website. Okay. So protesila
.com. It's the platform that I have maintained
since 2011. It's how I got to the European Parliament,
actually. And I have been writing ever since.
There are over 1 ,500 articles there, many of
them long form. And I write on a number of issues.
On YouTube, I mostly do emacs and philosophy.
Sometimes I also talk about my life here. But
on my website, I will really write about all
sorts of other issues, including politics, as
well as comments on everyday issues, emails I
may respond to that are worth talking about in
public, as well as comments I may have on pieces
of art. And things of that more general nature.
The thing is, there isn't a audience per se for
all of these. So what I do is publish distinct
RSS feeds for each of them. RSS slash Atom feeds.
So anybody who is interested can follow whatever
they want. So the main thing is the website then.
And why did you decide to get started with YouTube?
When I started, I think it was 2016, I wanted
to do some videos on politics, on the topics
I was working on at the time, because fundamentally
I was living away from an English -speaking world.
I was living in the mountains of Cyprus, and
I wasn't practicing my English -speaking skills.
And I was searching for a pretext to do exactly
that. So I started publishing there, not that
frequently. I think I started publishing more
frequently circa 2018, maybe, where I did some
videos about Vim, T -Max, and the Linux -related
setup I had at the time. Again, in the interest
of practicing my English. And eventually I discovered
D -Max and then I kept doing videos from there.
Okay, okay. Now, you mentioned that you were
a football player, you were in politics. Do you
also do programming? Did you study programming
or? So growing up, I was basically the opposite
of a typical nerd. So I wasn't introduced to
any computer device, nothing. I never had any
experience with programming or mechanical engineering,
whatever, any kind of related field, nothing.
So I was just a kid playing football and doing
that sort of more sporty life. And at some point
I also discovered motorcycles and I was having
a lot of fun with that. But nothing related to
computers. Eventually, around 2012 or something,
I got my first laptop at work. I was in Brussels
at the time. And I started learning magical things
such as Alt -Tab and Ctrl -C, Ctrl -V. And I'm
like, wow, you can do that on the computer. This
is so amazing. It's so productive. And eventually
I discovered Linux. I think it was the summer
of 2016 when I first switched to Linux. And from
then on, I started writing very, very little
small programs and learning by doing. But I was
never introduced to programming in any formal
capacity. Oh, so you did it by yourself then?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at the time, I started
by writing shell scripts, which calling them
shell scripts is already giving them too much
credit because it would literally be... One shell
command after the other without any control flow.
Okay. And you got started with Linux then. What
are your thoughts on the two other operating
systems, Windows and macOS? So I used Windows
a little bit when I was in university. I was
using it at the labs there where I would have
to type like this my assignments. But I don't
have an opinion about Microsoft because I've
never used it at home. So I don't really know.
About the Mac, it's the laptop I had. I thought
it was a very good operating system. But I haven't
used it recently to be able to have a more informed
or a more attentive view of its features. At
the time, I had a positive impression. Okay.
Like if I were to use it now to give you a concrete
example, I would be interested to see, okay,
what is the developer experience like? Like how
is it to set up a package manager and get all
these Git repos that I need to work and set up
all these dependencies and so on and so forth,
build Emacs from source, et cetera. Okay. Yeah.
Linux and Mac is what people that... do development
use, right? It's one of those two. Some people
are forced to use Windows. I don't have too much
of experience with Windows, but I used Windows
in the past for a long time. I'm actually using
Windows at my current job right now. Unfortunately,
I don't like the operating system. I feel it
too clunky, you know, just to switch apps. I
don't know. I don't know. It's different. And
since it's not Unix based, you know, starting
from there, since I spent all of the day in the
terminal, we don't have a good start there with
Windows. So it's a little bit more difficult.
Yeah. But do you prefer, like between Mac and
Linux, do you have a preference? I cannot give
you an... educated opinion on Linux because I
only use Linux on servers, right? All of my different
servers, I run Debian on them. I don't have a
GUI there, right? So I just SSH into the servers
and I just manage stuff that way. So that is
awesome. That works extremely well for me. I
love Linux in that way, but I have not installed
it on a desktop computer and used it, you know,
day to day to see what benefits I would have,
what drawbacks. Of course, privacy is a huge
benefit and why a lot of people use it. So that's
in my plans. I want to install Linux and daily
drive it to have a better opinion about it because
I cannot say anything about it at this point.
What distribution do you use? What distro, Linux
distro? So right now I am on Debian, Debian stable.
On this computer, the desktop, before I switched
to Debian, I was on Arch Linux for about four
years. And before that, it was again Debian and
Arch. Those are the two distros I have used.
And what are your thoughts on Arch or why the
move to Debian? I think Arch is an excellent
distro. I don't get the people who say Arch breaks
all the time. Like, I don't understand how you
can break it. I haven't managed to do that. Of
course, if you are careless, you can break anything
for sure. But I mean, if you do the basic things
right, it's rock solid. I really like Arch. The
thing, though, is that if you don't have a use
case for getting the latest and greatest, you
are not really gaining anything from Arch. All
you are doing is you are just installing gigabytes
upon gigabytes of new updates, which change literally
nothing to your workflow. Okay. Whereas on Debian,
to give you an idea of what I need here, I have
Emacs, which is my main application, then some
peripheral applications like a web browser and
the image viewer and video player, that sort
of thing, for which I don't care what version
they are. My video player, I don't care. It just
works. The web browser just works. Unless there
is a very good reason to get a newer version
of something, I don't need it. And I haven't
had such a reason. Makes sense. I have been thinking
about that, which distro to use. Everyone tells
me Arch. Well, not everyone, but most people
tell me to use Arch. But I'm kind of on the same
boat as you. I care about stability and I care
about just if something works, I just hope it
to work, you know. for a long time. I don't want
to be updating stuff if I don't need to. So I
don't know. Maybe try and out -arch for the experience.
But if I'm going to use it as a daily driver,
Debian, I like Debian. I don't know. I do like
Debian. On the servers, I don't know how it is
in the desktop. People complain that the packages
are quite old. Do you have any issues with that?
Well, strictly speaking, that's true. Of course,
they are old, but that's not a problem in itself.
Like I use an old Firefox, but I load the page
just the same. So what exactly does a new Firefox
bring to the table? Of course, if you are really
interested in the updates that Mozilla releases
every four weeks or whatever, then yes, you need
an alternative. But if you just want to open
a website, then usually you are good with the
old. I have a question. The only thing that I
would care about probably is security updates.
Let's say that there's a critical, you know,
security vulnerability. How does that work? Those
are delivered. Yeah, those are delivered in a
timely fashion. So basically on Debian, you can
enable so -called unattended upgrades or updates,
which basically are security patches. Awesome.
And you don't even need to do the upgrade manually.
It just happens. Okay. Do you use OBS for your
videos? Yeah. You install it from a repo or do
you use a flat pack? I'm not sure. I'm not sure,
to be honest, because I haven't done it in a
while. I would guess that it's the flat pack.
Flat pack. Okay. Yeah, I would guess so. And
yeah, good that you mentioned that. For a few
apps that you want them to be self -contained
and to be at the cutting edge, you just go with
FlatCook. Okay, so you do use some FlatPaks here
and there then? There is OBS, there is the Signal
Desktop client, I think, and maybe one more,
maybe the Telegram client, I think, and that's
it. Oh, okay, okay. Now, would you mind sharing
with us what the difference is? Because I get
them confused all the time. What's the difference
between open source and free software? Are they
the same thing? In some respects, they are the
same thing. In practical terms, from an end user
perspective, you get access to the code, you
have the liberty to modify it and to share it.
In a very practical sense, you cannot tell the
difference. Where the differences begin to emerge
is on matters of emphasis, rhetoric, and thus
ideology, you may say. So open source, the open
source movement, tries to be more, let's say,
business friendly. So they are like, hey, there
is like the MIT license, for example. It's a
permissive license. And what it basically means
is that, hey, dear Apple, let's say, here is
some source code. You can use it in your proprietary
software. You can use it on your phones, on your
computers. And all you need to do is say that,
hey, this package is also part of the packages
we share. So there they are just trying to accommodate
and to play nicely with... parts of the world
where software freedom is not a priority. Whereas
a free software package will be like, hey, here
is some source code. Here are the concomitant
freedoms you have for it. And here is your, meaning
you who will get the software, here is your commitment
to abide by the same rules. And so the free software
movement will tend to emphasize the freedom aspect
of it. So we have the freedom and you should
also preserve and respect that freedom. And you
will see that epitomized in the GNU General Public
License, for example, where they give you certain
liberties and they demand that if you modify
the software and share it, you share it under
the same terms. Okay, okay. And so Apple cannot
take, let's say, Emacs and package it together
with a proprietary Apple Emacs or whatever and
share it like that. Okay, so the goal is to keep
that software free and open source for the rest
of the time. Yes, that's exactly it. And part
of this is... The users of free software, because
of course it's not just code and program, it's
also the people, right? So the users of free
software will tend to speak more about these
virtues. So they won't just tell you, hey, open
source is better because you can fix the bugs,
because you can look at the source code, which
of course is true, you can do that. But they
will tell you that free software is better because
you are empowered. You use it in a way that makes
sense to you. There won't be some operator, like
a proprietary actor, who can arbitrarily change
the rules and now you have no freedom. Okay.
Okay, got it. And so depending on who you talk
to in the free software space, you will get this
impression that there is a political activism
component to their computing. Yeah, feels like
it sometimes. Yeah. Okay. And do you have any
thoughts on supporting open source? People that,
you know, do open source. What are your thoughts
on that? Like supporting open source maintainers,
basically. Do you have any thoughts or anything
you want to share about that? I think it's a
very good idea. And even if you approach this
from a free software perspective, it's consistent
with the principles of free software because
free software is not about price. It's about
liberty. So they say libre software, another
way of saying it. Or they use this phrase, free
as in speech, not free as in beer. But the point
is that we give you the liberty to use software
in a way that is liberating and empowers you.
But we can also sell together with that, let's
say, a support contract or what I do, some coaching
or whatever. Something that doesn't infringe
your freedoms, doesn't limit your freedoms, but
also provides a stream of income for the programmer.
Now, this is just... Yes, I would say I'm in
favor if there are arrangements for that, yes.
Okay. This is just my personal perception. I'm
not talking in your behalf or anything, but I
have the feeling, you know, that some people,
not all of them, some people in the open source
community think that... This is just a one -way
relationship. You as the maintainer has to give,
give, give, give, give because it's open source
and do not expect anything in return. So I don't
know. It's a tough and delicate topic to talk
about because open source maintainers, you know,
they have to eat. They have to live somewhere.
Most of them or some of them have families to
maintain. So they cannot dedicate themselves
to open source in full. They have to work for
a company to be able to, you know, live, basically.
So, I don't know, that's just my perception of
it, you know, that you as a manager have to give,
give, give, and not expect anything in return.
Yeah, I also have the same impression. It happens
a lot. And I think it is up to the maintainers
to a certain degree to educate their users to
try to foster a community. And I would say to
basically have a face because for as long as
you are a person behind a pseudonym, I don't
have a relationship with you. You might as well
be an AI bot these days. I don't know. I cannot
feel emotionally connected with you. So if you
tell me, hey, my kids are starving, I need money
to feed them, I don't feel anything. But if I
know you, like who you are, what you are doing,
and I see what kind of person you are, then yes,
I am more inclined to help. And I think people
will connect more with that human aspect of it.
Because otherwise I don't see a way of working
around this issue. Because we have these big
projects like Emacs. Emacs is a massive program
that has been around for half a century. And
it is, to me, it is a travesty that a program
like Emacs is underfunded and understaffed in
that regard. And you might say underappreciated
because, of course, if you are not paying...
If you are not helping the people who maintain
it, then maybe you are not showing your appreciation
enough. And of course, multiply that for everything
else that we use. Yeah. I guess most of the Emacs
maintainers have to work for a company. And in
some of the free time that they have, you know,
they can contribute it to Emacs because it's
a tool that they use, of course, and they love.
So they want Emacs to be better. But imagine
how... could be or any other open source project,
right? If it would get the love that it deserves,
right? If maintainers could say, okay, I'm not
going to work for a big company because I'm getting
what I need to support this tool. I don't know.
Could be a different, you know, way of operating
in the open source community. We wouldn't rely
too much on big companies because sometimes,
I don't know, Projects have to rely on support
from big corporations because they don't get
any other support. So it's tough, right? Yeah,
it is exactly that. And then, of course, you
get into this conundrum where in order to support
free software and freedom, let's focus on free
software, but it applies to open source, right?
In order to support free software, you have to
earn income potentially contributing to non -free
software. Which, of course, raises the question,
why not try to have both free software and a
living wage, some source of income that is viable?
Yeah. Okay. It's not easy, of course, but I think
it's worth trying. Yeah. But what is, I think,
important is to remove the stigma that exists
whenever some open -source free software maintainer
asks for money. I don't think that is a bad thing.
And I don't think it helps when we conflate freedom
of software with free stuff, gratis, like free
of charge. I don't think that helps anyone. Yeah.
And as a maintainer, I guess that you feel bad
asking for money when you should not. You know,
it's... I don't know. Yeah. People don't approach
it like to open like, hey, I need money. Can
you please just support? No, it's like, hey,
they don't even mention it to avoid getting in
trouble because people get offended if you, you
know, ask for support. Yeah, it's exactly that,
because there will be backlash from users and
then you as a maintainer have an incentive to
remain silent. so that you don't have to deal
with trouble. And then, of course, that's not
a good situation. It's a lose -lose situation.
Yeah, I agree. Now, I want to get to know Emacs
a little bit better, you know, because I want
to hear your thoughts on another tool to start
with. Have you used NeoVim or just Vim? What
are your thoughts on those two? I was using Vim,
and then at around maybe 2018, NeoVim came along,
or at least came into my radar, and I used it
for a while. It seemed good, but I couldn't see
the upside of it at the time. So I never used
NeoVim in earnest. To me, it felt like, okay,
Vim, but maybe the future of Vim because it will
be maintained. But at the time, it was still
basically the same as Vim. Looking now at the
ecosystem, what I understand as an outsider is
that basically NeoVim took the source code of
Vim and infused it with the spirit of Emacs.
And what I mean by this is that basically they
were like, how can we use this platform? How
can we use this editor as a computing platform
so that we can eventually have a more integrated
setup where we do more and more things inside
of Vim? And you know, of course, what you can
do with it, but the idea is to have something
that you control more and more, and it's not
just a generic text editor. Yeah, you can now
view images in U of M. That's something that
only Emacs could do, right? We don't have variable
heading sizes like in Emacs, right? I don't know
if you've heard of him, but there is a terminal
creator named COVID. He created the Kitty terminal.
He's working on a variable fund size protocol.
So that could come to near him as well in the
future. But you haven't used it, right? You just
switched to Emacs and stay there. And are you
staying in Emacs for the rest of your journey?
I don't know. It's really comfortable here. For
me, basically, if I were to switch away from
Emacs, it would effectively be to another Emacs.
And what I mean by this is not Emacs, the name
of the program, but Emacs, the paradigm of computing.
And Emacs, qua paradigm of computing, is this
idea of... integrating more and more parts of
your workflow into a setup that is consistent.
So you will program it with one programming language.
Whatever applies in one part of your setup will
apply to other parts, such as your theme, your
fonts, whatever custom functions you have written
to manipulate text, all that. And eventually
you get a more integrated computing environment.
Okay. So if there is a better Emacs in that regard
than GNU Emacs, yeah, I'm on for it. Why not?
Okay. Like an integrated environment, something
that allows you to do basically everything, right?
Even if it's not everything, literally, it should
give you the tools to extend it in a way that
is seamless, in a way that... you extend it as
if there is no real distinction between the core
and the extensions. Because that's basically
the spirit, the paradigm of GNU Emacs and of
other Emacs in the past, which is like, there
is a distinction between core and packages, which
is just conventional. Like in terms of code,
it's the same. Okay. So if you have that kind
of seamlessness, I'm all for it. Basically, what
I'm saying is, don't give me a tool with a limited
API and say, hey, here is your extensible editor.
No, that's not extensible, my friend. That's
not what we have in life. Okay, okay. Now, there's
different ways to work in Emacs, right? I come
from Neovim, and the way that I'm used to working
in Neovim is with space. I do... I don't know,
there's SpaceMax, I think, in Emacs, right? SpaceMax,
there's Doom Emacs, there's the traditional way
of doing things. I don't know much about Emacs,
so I just want to ask you, right? I think that
the traditional way is with control, and people
complain that using control a lot hurts your
hands and all that. So as a person that doesn't
know about Emacs at all, What would you recommend
someone? Because most of my audience is in Neovim.
I guess, I'm not sure, but I would assume most
of them are in Neovim or are interested in Neovim.
Pretty rare, you know, just a few of them are
in Emacs probably. But as a Neovim user that
is used to doing space for keymaps, right? What
would you recommend or what would you say is
a good start? So to avoid friction, right? Because
if it's different from what you're used to, it's
like, man, I'm not going to get used to this.
I'm going back to what I had. Well, of course,
if you add the qualifier, the condition to avoid
friction, then of course the answer is you have
to use something as close to NeoVim as possible,
which would limit you to Doom, Emacs, and Friends,
basically. So it would be... a flavor of Emacs
that incorporates a Vim emulation layer. We call
it evil mode. And then does things in the way
you have described. So space would be a prefix
key map, and then everything is nested under
that. And otherwise you have the familiar Vim
keys to move around and to manipulate text. If,
however, you take a broader view, which is...
what can a Neovim user learn from Emacs? Not
necessarily to stick with Emacs, but to bring
it back to Neovim so that you can broaden the
Neovim experience. I would say, give Emacs a
fair try. Like, try it for a month. Of course,
provided you have that option, right? I'm not
saying, hey, abandon your job, forget about your
productivity, and now go and become an Emacs
monk for a month. That's what will happen. I'm
not saying that. Yeah, but... assuming you have
the option, like give it a full month, like try
Emacs for a full month and try to think in terms
of Emacs, like try to start from scratch or with
a very basic config and then see, okay, how does
Emacs do the equivalent of what Vim does? And
then try to learn the Emacs ways. And then I
think you will start appreciating what Emacs
has to offer. Whether you stick with Emacs or
not ultimately doesn't matter because it will
give you a different perspective, which I think
then you can bring back to me a bit. But just
to say on the point of the control and all that,
it is true, though this is also true if you use
a regular keyboard with Vim keys, because depending
on how you are typing, you might still be twisting
your pinky to hit the shift or tab. or depending
where you put the escape key, if it's on the
caps lock or up in the corner, you may still
be doing awkward motions with your fingers and
your hands. So if you really care about ergonomics,
I think the solution is not Vim keys per se.
It's a proper keyboard setup, which might also
have Vim keys on top. But you really have to
think in terms of a custom keyboard or something
along those lines. And would you recommend someone...
I believe you use a custom keyboard, no? Me?
Yeah, I believe you have a custom keyboard. Like,
you don't use a regular keyboard. I have one
of these. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Lit ones, yep.
Yeah. Yeah, and would you recommend someone then
starting with traditional Emacs, like Control
or... Tryout Distro, or just use it the default
way, like... I would say use it, like, as I said,
if you want no friction, et cetera, you use Doom
Emacs, Space Max. There is now Kickstart Emacs
or Kick Emacs, I forget. From that experience,
if you use one of those, do you lose on Emacs?
Like, do you miss something? What are your thoughts
there? Potentially, yes. Not because they are
not Emacs, not because they obfuscate things.
But because you have that sense of familiarity,
which doesn't inspire in you an ethos of looking
around. It doesn't inspire in you that search
that you would otherwise have to do. You're like,
okay, this is like Vim. I've been using this
the whole time. I don't need to look up anything.
So I don't think it will help you learn anything
that is Emacs specific in that regard. But otherwise,
of course, it's still Emacs. If you go and you
look into the source code, you will be looking
at the list code. If you modify it, you will
have to write some Emacs list code and so on.
So it's still the Emacs, fully fledged Emacs,
but because of the different expectations you
bring with you, I think those will inhibit you
if your goal is to explore Emacs. Okay. Did you
remap your control key or something? How do you
use it? Or you have it at the default place?
So when I was using a regular keyboard, I was
using control on the caps lock. But I would say
I don't think this is actually good advice. Like
it is in the sense that you can hit control with
your left pinky and then let's say N and P with
your right hand, right? But if you are doing
anything like control X, control C. Like, imagine
a QWERTY layout, right? Control, X controls.
I don't think it's a good idea to use the same
hand for both. Like, in terms of ergonomics,
you would need to use the opposite modifier key,
so the control on your right -hand side, and
activate whatever is on your left -hand side.
So, yes, remap control to caps lock, but remember
that... pressing and holding two keys with one
hand is not a good idea for ergonomics. So you
have control in both hands, right? Okay. Have
you heard about Home Rule mods? Yes, yes. I tried.
So, of course, I'm also on a custom keyboard
now. What keyboard is it? So this is the Iris
keyboard from Kibio. Kib .io. Revision 8, I think.
Can you show it? I haven't seen it. How many
keys does it have? It's fewer than yours, but
not... Wait, where are we here? It's 42 keys?
46, I think, maybe. Yeah, I have to count. Okay,
okay, okay. Something like that, yeah. I could
go for fewer, but I was playing it safe. So I
was like, let's have an extra column. Let's have
an extra row just to be sure. Yeah, I'm just
using 40 keys because this one has 80 keys. It's
called the Glove 80, has 80 keys. But now I found
a keyboard mapper that I can use in macOS and
Linux. It's called Canada. So I'm just using
40 keys on my MacBook keyboard, only 40 keys
and on the Glove 80. So I want to switch to a
42 key. And have you found any candidates or
not yet? The corn, that's one that I want to
try. That one has 42 keys, right? 42 keys. I
believe there are a couple of variations of that.
I think there is one with six columns and one
with five, or maybe I am conflating it with another
one. Yeah, I don't know too much about mechanical
keyboards, to be honest. But there's a guy in
my Discord that tells me all the time to go with
the... There is, I think it's called, but that
one has like 34 keys, 36. And I would miss the
rows that you get on the sides, right? For the
pinky, like where tab in caps lock is in shift,
because I'm using shift now, you know, the dedicated
shift key. So I don't think I could go lower
than 40 because I would need to rearrange a lot
of stuff. Yeah, the thing is, because you mentioned
home row mods, the thing is that you have to
basically have all your modifiers on the home
row. The fewer the keys, the more you have to...
Yeah, and there's a delay. I had shift in the
modifier in the home row. I had it there, but
I couldn't stand the delay because there's a
small delay that you have to get used to with
home row mods. And I couldn't get used to it
with shift because I use shift too often. So
I just moved it back to... And what are your
thoughts on homeroom mods? You already mentioned
it. The delay annoys me to no end. I cannot stand
it. And also the fact that unless you are really
precise, you have false positives. Like I would
frequently activate a control when I didn't mean
to or not activate it when I wanted to. That
sort of thing. So with this keyboard... I am
relying on the thumb cluster, so where that red
key is at the bottom. So with the thumb cluster
and then everything is there, basically. Okay,
yeah. I set my timeout for the modifier keys,
the control, alt, and the other one for macOS
to 300 milliseconds. The delay is higher because
usually people use 200, right? So the delay is
higher, but I... I have less false positives,
but I have to wait longer. So I have to get used
to it. I don't get fully used to it, but I'm
getting there, I think. Yeah, the thing is, like,
because you mentioned it now, if you are using
Vim keys, chances are you don't do a lot of editing
that involves control art and the command key.
So I guess you can tolerate that delay. But of
course, shift, as you said, yeah, that would
be annoying. But in Emacs, you cannot stand that
delay in control, I would assume, right? Because
you use the modifiers a lot there. Yeah, exactly.
So, yeah, it's a compromise. Like you have to
really set your priorities. And for me, the priorities
are typing rather than having fewer keys. Yeah.
I have six thumb keys on this keyboard, you know,
but I... I'm just using two. And let me explain
why. Because on my laptop keyboard, right? When
you're on the laptop keyboard, your thumb can
only reach two modifiers, right? Because you
cannot reach the other two. They would be like
too far away. Like it's unnatural. So I'm using
just two. So on my keyboard, I'm just using two
thumb keys. One of them is space on each side
and the same modifier. one modifier on each side,
which is backspace and enter, right? The same
thing on my laptop keyboard. So I don't want
to add more modifiers because I want the experience
to be the same on the external keyboard and on
the laptop keyboard, right? So they're exactly
the same. Because, of course, on the laptop,
you have the longer space bar. Yeah. I don't
think it makes sense. If they would make it shorter,
you could have access to those modifiers, right?
So spacebar here, one modifier, and the other
set of modifiers. At least I think it would be
better. Yeah, glass and split in the spacebar,
that would be very good. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Now,
so try the traditional Emacs, then it's a recommendation
that you have. I also noticed that you use...
light theme and we live in a dark theme world.
Why is that? To be a contrarian. No, no, no,
this is not the real answer. The reason is that
I am in a well -lit space here. And if I use
a dark theme, basically it will harm my eyes.
So I use a light theme during the day and a dark
theme when it's darker. So I also develop a lot
of themes, by the way, for Emacs. And I have
equal numbers of light and dark themes. So I
don't know how many, but more than 20. Would
you mind just showing the theme that you use
or your favorite themes? Is that... Yeah, sure,
sure. Let me... One second, where are we? So
do you see my screen? Let's see. Yep, I see it
now. Okay, okay. So let me show you what I have
here. So this is my light theme. This is the
Modus Operandi theme. What we are looking at
here on the right -hand side is the man page
output, which I use to lower my screen resolution.
So we can dismiss that for now. And what we see
here is an org buffer. And we see the headings
with varying font sizes that you already mentioned.
And maybe I can go and show some code. It doesn't
really matter what it is, but let's see here.
Do we have a D -fun? Yeah, this is some code
as well. The idea with this theme is that it
is designed for high contrast. Maximum legibility.
And the contrast, concretely, is a minimum of
7 to 1. And that's what we see over here. I can
switch to another theme. This is a variation
of it. By the way, let me enable line numbers
and you see this. So this is a variation of the
same theme. It has... A light earth colored background.
And let me now switch to the dark ones. So there
are also what you see here, Tritanopia and Deuteranopia.
These are for color blindness. I want to demo
these now. Let me switch to a dark theme. This
is the regular dark theme. Same idea, high contrast.
And again, 7 to 1, the minimum contrast ratio.
And this one is a variation of it, which has
a more dark blue sky kind of vibe to it. But
as I said, during the day, it's this one over
here, Modus Operandi. I have plenty of other
themes, more colorful ones. So I can go and show
you if you want. It's here. Of course, let me
show you some. I won't show you the entire collection.
But here is some pink one. Let me do some green
one like this. Let's do some yellow witch one
like this. And their dark counterparts. So as
I said, there are lots of them here. So let's
do this, for example, for a dark one. Let's do
the... Actually, this would be good, yeah. Another
dark one. And lots of, lots of different styles.
So yeah, I develop all these. And the idea with
them is to be legible. Let me switch back to
my light theme for now. So the idea for them
is to be legible. The module themes, what you
are seeing here, they are also built into Emux.
So starting with version 28. So I heard, People
recommending those themes a lot. Modus, Operandi,
and Modus, what is it, Vivendi, you said, right?
Correct, correct, correct. So Operandi is the
light one, Vivendi is the dark one. And just
to say, through the spirit of Emacs, they are
highly customizable, like a lot. Oh, okay, okay.
What would you like to show us about Emacs? Like
someone just starting, right? What would you...
I have a question for you. I have a question
before that. In one of your videos, I noticed
that you said that you take your notes in plain
text and only revert to org when necessary. So
would you mind explaining a little bit on the
reasoning behind that? So the idea is the following.
When you are taking notes, it's very easy to
distract yourself with matters of styling, with
matters of markup. And this happens when you
write, where you're like, ah, this should be
bold. Let me make this slanted text. There should
be a code block here. I don't like the bullet
list to be with dashes. Maybe I should have the
plus sign. All these kinds of considerations,
which of course are useful when you are writing
something that you will publish. But when you
just want to write text, you shouldn't have that
consideration. Like you should remove basically
the temptation, the potential of destruction.
So I'm like, you know what, I will just use plain
text. And if I need, then of course I can go
with org mode or markdown or whatever. So if
I have an idea, I write it down. I don't care
about bolding. I don't care about inline code.
I don't care about anything. Just putting the
thoughts out there. That's the main goal. And
if you need to publish it, then you can, I don't
know, copy it into an org file or something and,
you know, certify it basically, right? Correct,
correct. And then you can publish it. Makes sense.
And this is generally something which is, of
course, true in a more general sense. Like, there
are these whizzy wigs, what you see is what you
get, editors, where you modify, where you rather
create the text and also modify its appearance.
And then there is the other school of thought,
which is you have to decouple the appearance
from the contents. For example, LaTeX or these
other publishing systems that we have. Org Mode,
of course, is one of these. Where it's like there
is a lightweight markup, but you don't worry
about the layout of the page. That's something
else. So I think in that line of thinking is
also what I am doing, which is forget about the
styles, forget about the presentation, focus
on the text, get the ideas out there, elucidate
your thoughts in a manner that is clear. And
then you will have time to tinker with the stuff.
Okay. What are your thoughts on orc mode and
markdown? Sorry, give me a second. Let me open
the door to the puppies. One second. So let me
just do that. They will go out. They want to
have their free time. Yeah, yeah. It's their
time of the day where we normally go out there
to play. So yeah, there they are. So they are
here. Okay. Yeah, sorry for that. Yeah, sorry
about that. Yeah, no worries. So what are your
thoughts on org, org mode and markdown? Like,
do you use markdown at times? Or once you go
to org mode, you see markdown as what is that
basic and useless format? So my website is built
with the Jekyll, the static site generator. And
this is because I made the technology decision
in 2016, long before I discovered Emacs. Jekyll
uses Markdown, and for me Markdown is perfectly
fine. Maybe if you want to do something really
fancy, it falls short of what Org Mode can do.
But to me, it's a tool, it works, it gets the
job done, and I have no problem with it. Org
Mode is like Markdown. in the sense that you
still have a lightweight markup, plain text and
all that. But the main difference is that it
has that Emacs Lisp layer on top with all the
extra functionality. So it's not really the markup,
it's what you can do with it. So with org mode,
you can do more things that you wouldn't have
in a generic markdown editor. And these things
include the evaluation of code blocks and you
can get the results and you can actually feed
the results of one code block to another. So
you have like a literate program, as they call
it. You can take your document and you can export
a section of it into HTML or many, many other
formats. And you can use org mode to do your
agenda and you can use org mode to link. to other
documents or buffers. So really org mode is what
if we have Markdown and then we organize our
entire life using Markdown. That's basically
the idea. So it's just not the format of the
file itself, but it's all the other capabilities
that you get that you just mentioned. Yeah, like
in principle, like if someone is committed, you
could have... the entire feature set of work
in Markdown. Because then the difference between
the two is the markup, like what constitutes
a code, inline code, and what is a block quote,
and what is this and what is that, right? So
if it is a hash for the heading or an asterisk,
that sort of thing. The real value is all the
commands, all the interactivity on top of the
markup. I see. Okay. Yeah. I also use Markdown
into my blog posts. I use Jekyll. I use another,
yeah, it's a different Jekyll theme, but yeah.
And I use NeoVim for that. The cool thing about
NeoVim nowadays is that you can view images so
I can paste images, you know, from my clipboard
into NeoVim. I can convert them to AVIF. That's
the format I use for images, or I could convert
them to, I don't know, another image format.
So in NeoVim, I paste it and I can preview it,
you know, which is cool. Yeah, I mean, it is
cool because now I remember my old days of using
Vim where for that, you would have to exit your
editor, go someplace else and then come back
and you're like, why? Yeah, it breaks your flow
completely, you know. And people think that viewing
images in NeoVim is not useful. But if you have
a blog post, I think it is useful, right? Because
you want to see that you have the right image,
you know? And just to say a general comment on
this, on this specific point, but I think a more
general as well, which is like, what do you mean
it's not useful? So something that is meant to
be done on the computer, why is it not useful?
The real question is, how can I do my computing
in a way that I control? like inside of my favorite
computing environment, like in your case, Neobim,
right? So how can I do what people do on the
computer in a decent way, in an integrated fashion?
Yeah. So let's not have it the other way around,
because I think what people do is like, well,
in the past, our programs were limited. Therefore,
it's good to be limited. And I'm like, no, no,
no. Our programs were limited for... technical
slash hardware limitations, not as a matter of
principle. If we don't have the technical limitations,
then let's not impose further constraints on
ourselves. Yeah. I don't know. There's purists,
I would say, you know, and people that don't
like that NeoVim is capable of viewing images
because it's like, oh, so you're just building
Emacs in NeoVim now. So that is, you know, I
don't know. I don't know what's going on. Well,
it is. But the thing is, if you are a purist,
why are you using Neogen? Why aren't you using
the Ed editor? If you are a real purist, why
are you here? I mean, seriously. Because here
is the thing. You cannot get to choose how far
the principle goes. Because if you submit to
the authority of the view that, our editor has
to be extensible, then you cannot just draw an
arbitrary line and say, oh, we got, I don't know,
Lua, but let's stop here. We don't want images
now. Why? Yeah, that's too far. Yeah. Complete
sense makes complete sense. And I 100 % agree.
I try to extend it as much as possible. You know,
like, let's say that I need to create a GitHub
repo. I don't want to go into my browser and
create a repo. No, I just... from NeoVim. I have
a key map, you know, create a repo. It's going
to ask me, do you want it to be private? Do you
want it to be public? I want it to be private.
And I create the repo because it breaks my flow.
If I have to go to the browser, you know, I don't
even remember what I was doing to begin with.
So I just like staying in NeoVim in a sense.
I think it's trying to, at least for me, you
know, emulate Emacs without knowing because I
want it to be. really integrated. You know, I
want it to be the main thing. I spend most of
my day in Neovim between different instances,
working on different projects. And if I need
to go out, of course, to the browser or something
else, it's fine, you know, but that's what I
spend my day mostly on, you know. Yeah, and I
think this is very nice because Of course, somebody
will say, but how trivial is it to go and create
a repo? But it's not specifically about that.
It's about the approach where, okay, I don't
want just to create a repo. I have this custom
command which creates a repo and also updates
my About Me page on my website to list my new
project, for example. And all that can be done
because it's the same environment I just wrote
the code for. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Be
prepared to think outside the box. Once you have
the option of drawing linkages between different
parts of your computer, well, everything will
be interconnected. So now you can work with it.
I think people lack imagination sometimes. Yeah.
Now I have a script that allows me to set my
color scheme, right? I created it for macOS.
So if I set my color scheme... I have some custom
colors, so it applies it in NeoVim on my Mac
OS bar on the top. Let me show you that real
quick. I'm not going to... Yes, yes, yes. And
let me switch to... Yeah, I see your screen,
yes. Yeah, but if you notice, this doesn't look
like Mac OS because there's this bar on the top,
right? This little bar. There's Mac OS, but here's
this bar. So when I... apply a configuration,
a color scheme. So I just bring them up like
this with the Fuzzy Finder script, right? So
it applies it in NeoVim, the bar at the top,
the Btop application, everywhere, basically,
right? Because I want it to be integrated. So
I'm extending my configuration to macOS and it
has its limitations, but you can do... Quite
a few things, actually. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that's beautiful. And yeah, for me, that's
also the idea. That's also the appeal of it.
And by the way, I have a similar script for anything
outside. Oh, yeah. For anything outside. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's that idea. And I think
there is the other thing, which is that... A
more general, again, thing, which is the computer
is fundamentally a tool which, at its best, should
allow us to express what we have in our head
and to put it out there. And when we have the
option of an interface that can empower us to
do that, that interface should be tailored to
our way of working and not we to its. Exactly.
Limitations or whatever. Exactly. Okay. Now,
sorry, we took a turn there. So we were in the
demo. Okay. So what would you like to show us
about Emacs? Yes. So let me show you some general
things. So I have, of course, this is not my
actual agenda, but what you see right here is
my org agenda. It's a custom agenda view. where
I have configured the headings that make sense
to me. So at the top, I will have tasks that
are important, which I need to do, but they don't
have a date to be done. Tasks that I should have
done, but for whatever reason, I missed the deadline.
So they will appear here. Today's agenda, where
you will see things like this, by the way, I
will update it. So you will see things like this,
a meeting with you. And then I will have coaching
and whatever. By the way, this is not real, right?
So I just made it up. And then my meetings for
the coming days and the upcoming deadlines. And
this is how I start my day, basically. I take
a look at my agenda and depending on what I have
to do, I will organize my day accordingly. So
I will start my day in the morning. And I will
see, okay, let's see, free time in the morning.
Therefore, I can do some other things rather
than stay to the computer. I have my email in
Emacs. And you can see, by the way, do you see
my mouse? Yep, I see it. At the bottom right
corner. This is a package of mine that shows
counters of messages. I use a program called
NotMuch. And these are filters. You can actually
click on these. This is a package of mine. I
won't click on it now. I will just use my keyboard.
So this is my home buffer for not much. And again,
you can see the same filters here. I will type
a key. Now I won't go to my actual unread messages
because it's private. I will go to packages,
which is public stuff. It's on GitHub. Okay.
So I will go there and I will see a message.
For example, I am reading my email. Of course,
I can reply to those emails from here. But suppose
that this is your message. Like you emailed me
and you're like, hey, Prot, let's set a meeting.
And I'm like, okay, cool. So let me do that.
I will do the org capture command. And here I
have the templates that I have defined. So for
now, let's imagine it's a coaching meeting. So
I can do this, okay? Or let's say, okay, we can
do tasks. It doesn't matter. But let's do a task,
task to do. So you will see that it is asking
me here for the title of the task. And here there
is a template with relevant data already. And
I will see meet with, let's say, person. Doesn't
matter who, okay? And let's say this is about
Emacs, okay? And look what it produced. It produced
the part that I added plus all the relevant metadata
I want to have, including a link to the original
email. So I can file this or at this point, I
can set a date of when I wanted to do it. So
let's say I will do it today at 21 hours. Okay.
So I have that. Let's go back to our... Actually,
let me mark it as unread because then I will
forget to check it back. Let's go back to my
agenda and you will see it's right here. Okay.
I was going to ask you, how does it do with conflicting
events? So you get another line with the same
time, right? Yes. So we have there something
at seven. Let's do it seven. You get exactly
that. In principle, you could define something
to inhibit you from doing that. But I don't do
it because anyway, I would consult my agenda
before giving an idea of when to meet. So in
practice, I wouldn't just recklessly put it on
a date like this. I would check and then I would
be like, okay, let's meet at 21 hours, for example.
Another little thing, but you can see it here.
It's an abbreviation I have to generate a Jitsi
link like this. So when I have a meeting, I will
just send that link. And the nice thing here,
just to say, you are in the agenda. You can open
the heading. You see the information. You go,
you see the email, and you have all the context
there. So for me, this is very good. It helps
me a lot with my productivity. I never lose.
any context and I can always find what I need.
And this is what I use org the most for. Another
thing I use org a lot, let me do it with my .emacs,
but it applies to all the manuals I write, okay?
So I have technical manuals, but here I will
just do it with my emacs configuration. So let's
do some tests. test for the demo. I made the
change. And what I want to do now is export this
to HTML. And this, of course, is a massive document
right here. And by the way, let me tell you,
because you were asking people how large is the
Remax configuration. So if you see the bottom
of my screen, it's 18 ,000 lines plus. Oh, man.
But this is pros on code. It's not just code,
okay? Oh, okay, okay, okay. So it's the literate
config that they keep talking about. It's the
literate thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So here
I have the HTML output of it. And you will see
I have this thing where I jump to a bookmark,
if you see. I did it before already. And it will
jump to a web page, sorry, to a file anywhere
on my file system. that I have already specified.
So I go there, I update. This is my website.
And from here, I will go to Magit. This is our
Git client. And from here, you can... Actually,
I won't demonstrate Magit now. It's very powerful.
But the point is that you can stage the file
and you can write a commit message such as update
.emacs. Okay, like this, and commit, and now
you are ready to merge. Sorry, ready to push.
Okay. I won't do that now, actually, so let me
do a hard reset on origin. We are back to where
we were. Can you merge as well in Magit, or you
have to go to the GitHub website? You can merge
as well, so you can handle your issues and pull
requests and everything. But because me, I don't
receive that many, and I have my email as well
for the issues coming from GitHub, I haven't
bothered to set that up for Magit. But there
are people who do it. It's called Forge. The
package is Forge. Oh, so it's in addition to
Magit or however. Okay. Yeah, and the interface
is the same, what you see here. It's just an
extra package where you provide your authentication,
that sort of thing. I have a question for you,
Prat. Yes. How do you get notifications in Emacs?
Let's say that you get an email, right? I send
you an email. How do you know that I sent you
an email? This counter, actually, you saw it
already. If you see the video, there was 13 here
and it changed to 14. So the way this works is
that if we go again to my .emacs, and another
thing that you will see me doing now is I will
jump to a specific heading. I forgot how I call
my package indicator. Okay. So you see I was
on line one and I'm now on line 10 ,000 plus.
I jumped directly to a heading. And basically...
I have this over here, which is a timer, specifically
three minutes. Every three minutes, I get an
update on those counters and I see the number.
Okay. I could, if I wanted, I could have something
involving a desktop notification. And let me
do something for you just to see. For example,
it can be Emacs. Don't worry about what I am
doing right now, but you will get the idea. The
test is here for you to see. Do you see the notification
on the bottom right of my screen? Yep, I see
it. So I could definitely do something like this,
but because there are days where I receive lots
of emails and those are distracting, those notifications,
I generally don't like it. I prepare the more
subtle interface of the indicator. And I would
say there are times where even the indicator
is not useful to me because I really want to
focus. So I will comment out the... Sorry, I
will disable the indicator. So the minor mode
that it provides. Oh, okay. So you want no distractions
at times, right? You can just disable it. Yeah,
like this. And you see there is nothing here
now. Okay. And, of course, you can go back and
enable it again. This is what I mainly do with
Emacs. Let me go to some of my packages for you
to see over here. This is one of my bigger packages.
Again. I will visit the file and then I will
jump to a heading. Let's say I will go to a macro
here, one of the macros we have, and I want to
see what we are doing. Maybe I want to make some
modifications. And of course, now I don't have
something concrete to do. But let's say that
this should be flipped and I will do something
like this, for example. And I can go around and
make my edits as usual. There are people who
use a lot of packages for so -called structural
editing. So to move around between the parentheses,
like I do here, if you see. Me personally, I
use what is built into Emacs, which are some
basic commands. And I am okay with them, if you
see how I am moving. There are people who are
really into Lisp and who really want to have
all their parentheses balanced. Me, I always
have an eye for them and I don't need the package
to do that. Like there are packages where you
insert one parentheses and it will insert the
closing parentheses. And they will always keep
it balanced and indented correctly. For me, that's
not really important. They auto -format. Let's
say that you don't indent something correctly,
you can have a package that automatically indents
it correctly for you, right? Correct, correct.
And it will be really aggressive in that regard.
But me, I can be messy at times. For example,
let's say that I'm writing my, let's say, test.
for a prompt okay so i am doing a prompt and
i am about to write here sorry completing read
i am about to write here what i want to be prompted
for and it's one two three and then i remember
that i forgot to have the history actually if
you see the bottom of my screen you see a yellow
color Do you see it? It says hist. So I'm like,
oh my goodness, I forgot the hist. So I will
just do something like this. And then I will
come back here without closing the parentheses.
Look at that. And I will be like, okay, the hist
is here. And let me come back here. So this is
a bit chaotic. And if you are having a package
that balances parentheses automatically, you
will break everything. So for me, I am okay with
having things unbalanced, like here. Technically,
this is unbalanced. This is broken. But for me,
maybe I have it like that because I plan to do
something and I know and I remember that I need
to write something here and then I can come back
here and do whatever, you know, and add more
things. Yeah, because otherwise it's going to
auto -format it to the way that I think it should
be auto -formatted. And it's just going to be,
yeah, you have to fight the formatter, right?
The thing is, if you think the way the formatter
expects, basically you are flying. It's really
fast and everything follows where you are. And
in your wake, all the parentheses close behind
you. But for me, that doesn't work. I think in
a way that is not how those packages are designed.
Okay, makes sense. Okay. Just to say another
little thing, here you will see there is a node.
So I have a small command to collect all those
in a buffer and see what I need to do with them.
Okay. That's a little thing. And from here, I
can just go and read whatever I am interested
in like this. I have it here in a buffer because
I need it to be persistent. But I could also
have it in the mini buffer, meaning this interface
that we see here. I could have it here as well.
But I prefer to have it here because it's persistent.
Okay. I have something kind of similar to that.
Let me just quickly show you. Yes, please. So
if we look at my screen. Yes, yes. So, well.
My headings in Neovim are a little bit different
because I like headings a lot. So just let me
quickly show that to you. I'm going to switch
to another project that is in my notes. Yeah,
that's in my notes. That's in this test markdown
file. So I can fold headings level one and level
two, right? So this is level one. All of these
are level two with another key map. L, I think
this is, I cannot see the letter, but this, it's
level one, two, and three, right? So I use that
a lot. So to navigate headings, I'm not sure
if it's a default in Emacs or if it works exactly
the same way. Yeah, I would say it's exactly
the same for markdown, for org mode, and also
for any buffer you want. Oh, for any buffer.
Okay, now. Let me show you something else, something
that I came up with as well. Just to say, of
course, what I said there, depending on what
buffer, you may have to do a little bit of work.
Oh, okay. Okay. Look at this. I have been completing
some tasks here. This is not built into Neovim,
something that I built with Lua, right? So in
the interview, if I do here, Alt X is just going
to mark this. Alt X. And it's going to move it
to this completed tasks section and add the date
and time automatically. Right. I don't know.
I like using this for this type of thing, you
know, for interviews because I need to be marking
stuff. I don't need to have it here anymore.
Right. I just need to get rid of it. So I just
move it, move it here. I'm sorry. Let's jump
back to your screen. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So back
to my screen. And of course, what you have there
with the timestamp, I think that's really good.
And we have it, if I go to the tasks, we can
have it in a lot of ways here. But let's say
I actually let me go to the agenda. Because from
there, let's say I met with Alexandros and explained
how to be great. So I will mark it as done. And
you can optionally have all these extra metadata
here where it says that from that specific heading
keyword you have, you change it to this one at
that time. And yeah, you can have that. But what
you have there, I also like, which is to also
file them under a different heading. Of course,
you can do that here with configuration, but
it's not the default. Okay. Whereas this one
is largely default. Oh, yeah. A lot of stuff
is built into Emacs already. That's the thing,
you know, because I talked to another guy. He
was a huge NeoVim user. His name is Dina, you
know. He is a writer, actually a professional
writer. He was in NeoVim and he switched to Emacs.
And he was in NeoVim Conf, you know. He had spoken
in like three different NeoVim Conf. one of those
conferences. Now he's on Emacs and I don't think
he's looking back because he says that for writers,
org mode is heaven for him, at least. I'm curious
also, because you mentioned writers, did you
cover the key bindings? What do you mean? Like
Emacs versus Vim key bindings, like for writers.
Was there any discussion about that? No. Because
of course it came from Vim. Did you keep using
Vim keys? Oh, yeah. I think, I'm not exactly
sure. We did cover that in the video somewhere.
I think he's using evil mode. I think. Not sure.
Not sure. Okay, okay, okay. Just curious, just
curious. I don't have an opinion about it. Yeah.
Yeah, I think he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very good,
very good. So this is basically what I do. One
other thing I didn't show you is that right now
I am using a single Emacs frame. The other, what
you see above those tabs, come from the window
manager. But what you see here is a single Emacs
frame. What I normally do is when I switch to
a project, this is the project prompt interface.
For example, earlier I moved to denote, but I
moved in a way that I actually don't normally
do. What I normally do is I select a project
like this. And let's go to another one just to
see. It opens a new Emacs frame. You can see
above, the tab above, it says denote org. Maybe
it's too small of a text, but yeah, that's it.
And this is a package of mine which limits the
buffers. So buffers are the files you have open,
basically. what you have open in memory of Emacs.
It limits the buffers only to those in the given
frame, as well as some other global buffers,
so -called. And the reason I do this is because
if I go back here, you will see I have a lot
of buffers here now. So over the course of, let's
say, a couple of hours, I will accumulate easily
200 buffers. And for me... I want those buffers
to be organized by project, basically. So if
I go, for example, to the Modus themes, I don't
want to see anything else. I just want to see
everything related to Modu. So this is the idea
here. So is it another Emacs instance? Is it
something else? It's another Emacs frame. So
it's the same instance. So if I really want,
I get all the buffers. And you can see them over
there. You see? So I have them all. But it's
just a way for me to limit them by frame. So
in Emacs, we have the concept of the frame, which
is... Let me change the split a little bit to
this. Maybe we can close Google Earth now and
we don't care about it. So we can close this
as well. So what you see here, let me just have
it like this. So what you see here is three Emacs
frames. And maybe it's easy for you to see. It's
like Emacs sessions. Sort of. Kind of. Think
of them more like... Let's say the tabs you have
in TMAX. Is it called sessions? I forgot to know.
Maybe it's sessions, yes. Yeah, the sessions
are the ones that you cannot see, right? Sessions
are just like out there. Yeah, I'm trying to
think what is the right... No, the easiest way
to think of it is that it is one EMAX thread.
It's one EMAX process running. But it's many
windows, like the equivalent of windows on the
Mac with the buttons above where you can click
to close them and maximize them. So there are
many such windows. And the idea is that you can
move them to different workspaces. For example...
I will put those on workspaces four and three.
You can see the bottom of my screen, maybe. I
don't know how large the text is. I see it. Here,
four and three. But they are all the same, right?
So if I, for example, switch to a dark theme,
which I will do now, okay? And I will go to the
other Emacs frames. They are all using my dark
theme because it's the same Emacs. If I increase
the font size, let's say, okay? And that's another
package of mine, by the way. I will go here again.
font size bigger because it's the same emacs
so it's the same emacs but it's many windows
and the idea is that you can move them around
and then if you want you can augment to them
with what i have here a package of mine to only
show buffers pertinent to the given frame what
you would call a window in mac Oh, interesting.
The way that I do that, if I just switch to my
screen, is with Tmux. Yes, yes. And I noticed
in one of your videos that you were aware of
Tmux in the past, right? So that's one of the
questions that I have for you as well. But this
is my daily note, which is a Tmux session. So
if I type a shortcut in my keyboard, right? Let
me type a shortcut here. Three keys. It switches
to... my .files latest CMUX session, right? Which
is just that repo. But if I do hyper -tr, that
switches to my daily note, it creates it, right?
If I don't have a daily note, it creates it and
it creates a CMUX session for it. So that's quite
handy for stuff like this. Or if I want to jump
to my notes, another key map, it's another repo,
right? This Obsidian one, you can see it at the...
At the very top. So I use TMAX for that, but
on each TMAX session, I'm running a different
NeoVim instance with its own buffers. But if
I change the color scheme, I still need to quit
NeoVim on each one of them and reopen it, you
know, because the settings are not going to be
applied. So I like what you just demoed right
now. You just change it in one place and it's
just going, since it's a single Emacs instance,
I assume, right? Yeah, yeah. It's one instance.
So it's like you just have many views to the
same place, let's say. Awesome. Okay. That's
the idea. And for me, that's very useful. Like
what you showed with T -Max is nice because you
also combine it with the power of recreating
something you have saved. You can do that in
Emacs as well. There are packages for it. Like
how I showed with the bookmarks. Imagine that
a bookmark is actually arbitrary Emacs Lisp data
and you can do anything with it. You can recreate
a buffer, you can recreate a frame, you can recreate
a frame with all of its buffers and so on and
so forth. So it's just a matter of if you want
to go down that path. So that which you showed
where you recreate, you re -instantiate something,
I think that's very nice. What I personally like
with the different frames of one Emacs instance
is the fact that I can put them in different
workspaces like this. Because let's say, for
example, I am here, okay? And I now want to have
Firefox on the side here. Because let's say I
want to view something, okay? It doesn't really
matter now. I don't have actually something to
view, but let's imagine that I am doing this.
Let's say, so suppose I am looking at something
here. Okay. I need to reference it. And then
I need to work with my image over here specifically
for this project. Right. And then let's say I
want to go back to my other project, which is
here. I don't want to have to mess around with
this. It has to stay the way it is. And then
when I am done, I go back to this one and I continue
where I left it off. Yeah, you have your environment
set there. Okay, makes sense. Yeah, this is the
idea. This is the flexibility of the many frames.
Not to say that you cannot do it differently.
Of course, you can organize it differently. The
point is, for me, is to have the option of potentially
having different projects running in parallel.
And me switching from one to the other without
losing context. Yeah, man, what you showed right
now about organizing your life in the work mode
is beautiful, you know, because I cannot do that
in UAM. If I want to come up with a system like
that, it would take me way too long, you know,
and I don't know if there's a solution already,
you know, but this is built into Emacs, right?
That's the thing. This is... Like, I'm sure you
can do it. Like, if you think about it, the way
you have it there, you have headings with timestamps
associated with them. So you could, in principle,
have headings. Let's imagine you have a meeting.
Actually, let me go. So these are my, yeah, let's
imagine. So you have a meeting with Thatch. And
you could have a timestamp associated with it.
I don't know. Let's have something like this,
right? So you could have something like that
in your markdown file. So you would have your
function read through the headings from top to
bottom, potentially filtering by something or
by the presence of a timestamp or whatnot. You
collect that into a list. Then you go in another
buffer and you print those using some conditions
like you start the timestamps and that kind of
work. But I wouldn't have the integration with
the calendars and with the email. That's the
nice thing. Then I wouldn't have to figure out
how to do email calendar. So it's... Yeah, yeah,
yeah. That's exactly where... emacs and here
in this case org mode gives you a lot of power
exactly because of that extra work that has gone
into it and you have like think of it this way
the more you have the greater the value of each
of them because now the more potential they have
to integrate with each other yeah like to give
you an idea because we mentioned the calendar
and earlier you asked me about nodes so let me
do mx calendar Okay, so here is the calendar.
You can, and I have it here, you can run a function
to do something with that calendar on that day.
For example, here, let me see, do I have it?
New or existing, you see here, denote a journal.
So I can go to the calendar here. Let's say I
want to create a journal entry for... What even
is the date today? It's already the 31st. So
let's say yesterday I wanted to write something.
I go here. Here is my new journal entry for this
date. And this one is plain text for the reasons
we covered earlier. But of course, I could have
it in org mode. And this is my journal. Okay.
And if I go back to the journal, actually look
at that. Day 30 is marked. because of some tweaks
I have where my journal entries will be highlighted
for the given day. Before our video, I made some
changes so that you wouldn't see the private
parts, but you get the idea, right? Yep, yep.
And just to say, so imagine I killed that buffer,
so I just have the thing here. You go here and
you open your journal entry for that day. Yeah.
And again, this is the point of integration.
Like, of course, at one level, this is just a
calendar. At another level, I am reading data
from here and I am doing stuff with it. So it's
not just to view the dates, but actually do something
with them, which is what you want, right? Because
when I open my calendar in the macOS application,
I can create events, you know, but it's pretty
limited. And I don't like it, you know, if I'm
honest with you, I'm in need of it most of the
day. And when I go to the calendar application,
it just feels very disconnected, right? So I
cannot use my... my keyboard motions and all
that stuff. It's different. So I think Emacs
excels at that specifically. Yeah. Yeah. And
it's, again, I think it's mostly the spirit of
Emacs, right? It's not so much Emacs, the program,
because if you can do that again in NeoBeam,
why wouldn't you want it? Like, why wouldn't
you want to have a calendar interface, which
allows you to create events such as meetings,
but also allows you to create journal entries,
for example, and anything else you could imagine,
like in principle. Yeah. I have a question for
you about Lisp. So what is it to begin with?
Is it a formal programming language or what is
Lisp? Yeah, so it's a fully fledged programming
language. So Lisp, generally speaking, is one
of the oldest programming languages. In Emacs,
what we use though is Emacs Lisp. It's a flavor
of Lisp, as they say. So it's a flavor of Lisp
specifically for Emacs, basically. But it's a
fully -fledged programming language. You can
do anything you imagine with it. So what I do
in Lua, I could do in Lisp. Basically. Probably,
yes. Whether it would be efficient or not, that's
another thing. Actually, yesterday, I was talking
to somebody who has to write code that compiles
to Lua. Eventually, it has to be efficient and
portable and all that stuff. And what he does
is he uses this Lisp flavor, this Lisp dialect
called Fennel, which is, you know... parentheses
all over the place, but eventually becomes Lua.
So when you cannot have Lisp, you figure a way
to bring it into the fold. I had a call with
one of the NeoVim core maintainers. His name
is Greg. Actually, I have a call with him tomorrow.
Yeah, he uses that Fennel. He doesn't like Lua
at all. So he uses Fennel and NeoVim. Yeah, and
actually that's one of the big things of the
Clojure programming language, for example, which
is like, well, the whole world uses Java and
JavaScript, but wouldn't it be nice if they had
more parentheses? So it stands Clojure. Now,
one thing that I heard in the conversation that
I had, the NeoVim versus Emacs video is, Something
that both of the Emacs representatives, we could
say that way, brought up is single threading
and that there are some issues around that. Would
you mind just elaborating about that? I don't
understand how it works and all that. So can
you clarify any of that? There is a technical
understanding of single threading. which I think,
strictly speaking, Emacs is not single -threaded.
But I don't have the expertise to elaborate on
that. But from what I understand by reading the
mailing lists, is that it's not that it is Emacs
not being capable of running things async. Rather,
you have to think in terms of the model of Emacs,
which is one global state. And now, how do you
do async operations? while having a global state.
So it's mostly a matter of paradigm rather than
inherent constraints. In practice, of course,
from a user's perspective, it means that if you
run some kind of a long process that blocks Emacs,
then yes, you cannot run other things in parallel.
I would say, at least in my case, this is not
common. Like, it's very rare that this happens.
But depending on how you use Emacs, you may be
in a situation where indeed you have a process
that blocks Emacs and now you cannot use Emacs
for anything else. You have to wait for that
process to continue. And I would say, yes, in
that regard, it's not a nice user experience.
Okay. But I would say... Because it's easy to
hear this and be like, okay, so basically we
cannot use Emacs. It's useless. I would say that
this is not the ordinary use case. I would say
that you won't be sitting at your screen, sitting
at your computer, watching the screen, waiting
for Emacs to do stuff. It is responsive. You
do stuff. And depending on what you do, you might
have an issue where you have to wait. Okay. Do
you have any issues with that at any times? To
me, no. One use case where you would encounter
that issue really quickly is if you were to use
Emacs as a window manager. There is this package
exwm. So if you have a single Emacs process and
you want that process to drive your window management
operations and also run all your Emacs, then
yes, of course, I can see how that will be a
problem. Because now imagine... some app blocks
Emacs and now everything is blocked because,
of course, it's all managed by one. But then,
I don't think you gain that much by having Emacs
as your window manager. So I would say, yes,
sure, but you can avoid that problem. Okay, so
just use a dedicated window manager then, right?
And of course, yes, use a dedicated window manager.
And of course, You can still drive it from Emacs
because you can have all the scripts in Emacs
and you can call them directly. But yeah, that's
another discussion. Okay, awesome. Thanks for
sharing that. You're welcome. I want to ask you
a few more questions. If you have time, how much
time do you have left? Do you have to... I have
plenty of time, yeah. If the dogs rebel, you
will hear them. Oh, it's fine. That's complete.
Let me close the door, actually, because the
puppies got inside. So let me close the door
and I am here. And we come in. So, yes, I'm here.
Okay. Now, talking about other topics, not only
tech -related stuff, in some of your videos,
you know, I noticed that you mentioned alcohol,
that you don't do alcohol anymore. So I just
wanted to ask you, because that's what you hear
everywhere nowadays. You know, if I watch a movie
on Netflix and a series, I see drugs being recommended
everywhere, like marijuana. That's very common.
And I used to do it a lot in the past. I don't
do anymore. So what are your thoughts on alcohol
and overall substance abuse? So, of course, you
mentioned the word abuse. And I would say anything
that you abuse, like literally anything, you
could take water. If you abuse it, then, of course,
it's harmful. So, obviously, anything you do
to an exaggerated degree will be harmful. If
you use it moderately, if you use it without
overdoing it, then I am not against it. I'm not
against alcohol and I am not against what is
known as drugs in this case for marijuana. And
I would even include psychedelics. I don't think
they are drugs, but I would include them as well.
Like if you use them moderately, if you know
what you are doing, sure. But if you abuse them,
then... Of course, you will be at the receiving
end of harm, and that's not nice. Concretely,
though, alcohol, the problem with alcohol in
particular, at least in my part of the world,
is that it is the conduit to socialization. Like,
you go to a gathering, any gathering, it could
be a wedding or... a baptism or any kind of event.
Same here. What are you going to do? There's
already wine and beer and whiskey and all the
things. And if you don't drink, then everybody
looks at you as if you are some kind of an alien.
I'm like, what are you doing there? Are you some
kind of a monk? Like, what is going on? Like,
you should be drinking as well. So, of course,
there is a lot of peer pressure. If you feel
that pressure, then of course, either you submit
to it or you don't socialize. So either way,
it's not a good deal for you. If, however, you
approach this the way I do, which is to make
it clear that you are not judgmental, that you
are not trying to be a prick and trying to criticize
people for their choices. I think that it's totally
okay. Like I go to places and people are like,
hey, Prat, have a drink. Here is some wine. And
I'm like, no, thank you. I used to drink, but
it harmed me. I had issues and I quit. And basically
my policy is zero alcohol from now on. People
will be okay with that. But if you go there and
you are apologetic about it and you're like,
hey, I'm really sorry, my friend, but I just
started not drinking and I don't mean to be offensive
and please don't take it the wrong way, but I
don't want. Then the other person will be like,
oh, no, no, don't be shy. Here is some wine.
Just one. Just one. Yeah, exactly. One. What
can it do? Look, it's just this. And then, of
course, they give you half a bottle. So there
is that. If you can be resolute in your commitment
to it, I think there is no problem with it. But
always try to avoid not appearing, coming off
as condescending or judgmental. Yeah. About other
substances, though, if I may say. The thing with
other substances is that, of course, if you are
responsible and you know what you are doing,
it's fine. But then the question is, will you
be responsible and will you be able to control
yourself when you are in a situation with people
and like you are having some marijuana and then
somebody suggests, yeah, here, have some cocaine,
like just a little bit, right? And then... you
are like, well, why not? We are just having fun.
It's a good day here. So why not? And then, of
course, you go down the slippery slope because
if you think in terms of why not, then, of course,
why not another, what do you call it, a line?
And the third and the fourth, and then why not
heroin and so on? So in principle, yes, if you
control yourself, good. But in practice, it depends
on who you are doing it with. Yeah. And... I
guess your type of personality as well, because
I know myself. I did it for many years, like
10 years I did alcohol. It started with alcohol,
you know. I didn't control it. It just got out
of control quite fast, you know. And I did it
first one day a week, then two days a week. Then
I was doing it like four days a week, you know.
And then I added other things into the mix, you
know. I added marijuana. Given my personality,
like it's really addictive personality, I would
say. It didn't happen once. It happened twice.
Then it happened daily. And then it started happening
more than once a day, you know, smoking. And
I didn't know depression. I hadn't known depression
before that. But when I abused it, I got really
depressed, you know. But I did it too much. And
it affects, of course, your brain, definitely.
And it took me a long time. Then I did other
stuff as well. Along the way, I did other stuff.
Cocaine, I did crystal. Man, it was... Yeah,
crystal. But I don't know. I found a way to go
out. It was not because of me, my wife. A lot
of stuff happened. But I stopped, took me like
a year or no, like six months, maybe a long time
because I was too intoxicated by so much stuff.
Took me quite some time to see the life, you
know, in colors again. And when I stopped, it
was hard. Everything was gray. I was really upset
all the time, was really depressed. So I don't
recommend that anymore. Based on my experience,
you know, that's what I can talk. Yeah. Yeah,
yeah, of course, of course. And I would say yours,
even though you were not in control, sounds like
a story with a good ending, right? A good resolution
to it. Of course, there are people who basically
never get out of it. Like you go down that vicious
cycle and from alcohol to marijuana to crystal,
etc., etc. And you don't find somebody such as
your wife to help you and eventually to bring
you back out of it. And me personally, I have
friends who died. who died young, like I was
18 and I have a friend who died. And others who
went mad, like literally. And I'm like, yeah,
why? Why would you do that to yourself? Like,
why would we have abuse to the point of self
-destruction? And the thing is, of course you
destroy yourself. And you may say, it's my life,
it's my body, I do whatever I want to it, right?
At the surface level, that's true. But at another
level, it's not just your body and then whatever
you do to it, because, of course, you have to
consider the consequences of your actions. Like,
if you are, let's say, crazy, somebody will be
taking care of you. Maybe it's your parents,
and now your parents are elderly, and they can
barely take care of themselves, and now they
have to take care of you. Is that a nice thing
for them? Or it's your brother, or your friends,
or you are... Because you are not in control
of yourself, you are abusing others in your community.
Maybe you're abusing your girlfriend or whatever.
Is that nice? So, of course, I would say that
we have to also be mindful of that aspect of
it as well. Yeah, definitely. There's something
else that I wanted to ask you as well. What are
your thoughts on, do you believe in like a supreme
being or something? I don't know if you want
to touch on that or not at all. I'm not happy,
yeah, for sure. Look, one of the things of doing
philosophy is that in principle, you discuss
every topic, you entertain every idea seriously.
Entertaining ideas doesn't mean that you adopt
them, though. Like, we can discuss anything you
imagine, like from the most basic thing to the
most far -fetched conspiracy theory, whatever,
right? It doesn't mean that I will agree with
what I am saying, but for the sake of the discussion,
for me to understand it, I will entertain the
thought. And I am saying this, and I have to
be careful to be clear that I do not adopt the
view. I just entertain it for the sake of the
discussion, for clarity. Anyway, to the point
here, I would say that even if a supreme being
doesn't exist, I think it is helpful to think
that it does, to operate as if it does exist.
And the reason I am saying this is because, like,
fundamentally, you cannot prove that a supreme
being exists, and more importantly, that the
specific version of the supreme being that you
believe in exists exactly in the way you believe
it to exist. Because, and I give one example
here. If the Christians are correct, of course,
which of the Christians, like which denomination
of the Christians, right? But let's say if the
Christians are correct, then of course all the
others are wrong. They cannot all be correct.
But of course, if the Muslims are correct, then
the Christians are all wrong. So what I'm saying
is that maybe we cannot resolve this tension.
We cannot say, okay, who is right? What I am
saying, though, is that it is helpful to think
that there exists a supreme being because you
have something to think of as your highest standard
in life. So if your supreme being or if, let's
say, your highest standard in life is, let's
say, somebody like Jesus, and you're like, okay,
I have to have this kind of behavior in my life,
and that's the standard. I think now you have
a tutelary figure to guide your actions. Whereas
if you don't have a tutelary figure, if you are
like, well, it's all math and the world is all
math, then you don't have something to guide
your action. Of course, you could be a good person,
but you could just as well be a serial killer.
It's all math at the end of the day, right? It's
all the same. Whereas if you have the notion
of some supreme good, I think that informs and
ultimately underpins what you are doing. And
if you are consistent, or rather, if you are
inconsistent, you know that you are inconsistent.
Like, you know that you are deviating from the
path that you declare to believe in, that you
would want to commit to. And so you have... the
northern star, the fixed point in the sky that
resets you and guides you. So there is that.
Now, whether it actually exists or not, I don't
think that really matters. Like, if it exists,
not believing in it doesn't change anything.
Like, if I say gravity doesn't exist, well, it
still exists. But if I say gravity exists, again,
that doesn't matter because gravity won't change
because I believed in it. What matters is how
do I deal with my life? How do I deal with my
surroundings? How do I deal with the people around
me, with my environment more broadly? And so
that's why I think it is helpful to have the
load star, let's say, the northern star, the
fixed point in the sky, this supreme good, this
ideal, supreme being, however you want to call
it. I used to think very differently. I used
to be an agnostic, as people tend to call it
nowadays, right? Agnostic or atheist. Those are
the two, like, fashion, I don't know, terms,
whatever they are. But given my, you know, condition
in the past, what I mentioned, you know, alcohol,
drugs and all that stuff, I was completely lost,
you know? Someday... A guy jumped into a bus
with a little book, you know. I'm in Guatemala
and here Christianity is the predominant religion,
right? Everything is Christian stuff. But one
day, I'm not into Christianity. I was, you know,
born and raised that way, you know, as a Christian.
But it just didn't click with me. But one day
someone got into a bus and had a little book
from India. It's called the Bhagavad Gita. I
don't know how to. say it correctly. And my wife
bought it because she had heard about the book.
It was a pocket version, a really small book,
you know, because the original is quite big,
right? She bought it, she started reading it
and she was like, man, there is something in
this book that I'm connecting to and it's explaining
a lot of stuff and it happened 5 ,000 years ago
and I was like, whatever, right? I didn't pay
attention and she, changed a little bit. And
I was like, curious. And I was like, let me read
it. I know you're just talking BS. I'll read
it. See what you're talking about. I used to
smoke a lot and drink and all that. I started
reading it and it changed. I don't know. Something
changed in me. And I haven't done alcohol, drugs.
I'm not saying that is the cure, you know, because
I'm just saying what happened to me personally,
you know. I cannot explain it. I don't know if
that is the definition of a supreme being, but
it did help me personally. And I'm really thankful
for that, you know. So now I view life in a different
way. I'm not as close as I used to be because
I owe a lot, you know, to that book and to the
culture itself, because that is the one that
clicked with me specifically, right? And I even
became a vegetarian, you know? And just to put
a little bit of context, nobody here in Guatemala,
well, a small portion of the population know
about Krishna and all that, you know, all that
stuff. It's really rare, you know, that someone
talks about Krishna and all that stuff here where
I'm at, because everyone is Jesus and Christian
stuff and all that. I respect it as long as it
makes them better people, you know, everyone
can believe on what they want. But I just wanted
to share that, you know, I don't know. And I
think you're the right qualifier, as long as
it makes them better people, right? And I want
to ask you something about your case, but just
to comment on this, because, of course, if you
have a supreme being which justifies your viciousness,
whether it is to go and to colonize other lands
and to enslave people and brutalize everyone,
and you say, oh, it's God's will. No, my friend,
sorry, but I don't agree with that. Me neither.
So, of course, if it's... Something that inspires
you to do good. But I want to ask you about your
case. Can you think of something that inspired
you in particular there? Or was it the general,
let's say, vibe of it, which was like, well,
there is some depth here. These are not just
people who don't have control of their life.
They just... suffer as it were purposely like
what helped me change like okay so like by reading
there like did you find let's say some scene
or some character or some statement which was
like this is deep you know yeah the way that
is written it's so authoritative is that the
right way to pronounce it because have you heard
have you heard about that book the Bhagavad Gita?
I have heard it and I mean to read it, but I
haven't. Okay. Okay. So I guess that what caught
me is the authoritative way that Krishna speaks
to Arjuna, right? Arjuna is me, right? Because
Arjuna didn't want to fight because he had to
kill all his, the band on the other side, right?
Man, it's a crazy story, but he didn't want to
fight. So the way that Krishna talks to him is
what got me. Not the battle, because the Bhagavad
Gita is just a section of a bigger book called
Mahabharata. I also read that one. Yeah, I love
the story, man. They had a brother. It's called
Radeya, but they didn't know it was their brother.
They had to kill him. Man, I love that book.
But the way that Krishna speaks to Arjuna, I
just felt that it was speaking to me and it applied
to my life, you know, and it explained a lot
of stuff, you know, that this body is not our
body. It's just something material. What matters
is the essence, the soul, right? And you don't
have to care about the outcome, you know, just
do the things that you have to do. So I don't
know. And the wisdom, I don't know. I cannot
explain it, but I felt it too. you know, decisive
to authoritative, however that's pronounced.
And it just, the instructions went right into
me. And, you know, I don't know. I don't know.
And I think, yeah, of course, there is the salient
point that we say, which is what is being talked
about, right? What is being said. But there is
also the way it is said. Like exactly when it
is spoken with authority. And I think maybe it
also speaks to our culture nowadays, which I
think you have in Guatemala as well, like we
have here, which is a culture where everybody
is disconnected from everybody else. We are connected
in internet terms, but as individuals, we're
kind of lost. And I think part of this is that
we don't have authorities. around us. Like you
may have some authority in the sense that there
is somebody online that you respect, but you
don't interact with that person every day. It's
not like a role model that is living and breathing
next to you and you can see and you can emulate
and you can learn from and you can feel that
this person has your back. Yeah. So maybe there
is that part as well, because I see this a lot
and I also saw it with myself where it's like,
What's the point? I don't have a point of reference.
My only reference is some ancient book. Yeah,
and that had to do a lot as well. The people
that were selling those books, they had a small
temple here in Guatemala. They were just selling
the books. They just call it, you know, giving
service or service, something like that. And
I went, my wife and I went to that temple just
to see what it was about, right? And I found
completely different people to what I had found
here. They say something in the church and they
do something differently. In that small temple,
they did what they said. And that to me was priceless.
And I was like, so you can live by the things
that you preach. And I really admire that. And
that had to do a lot as well. If I would have
gone into the temple, and people there would
have been hypocritical, it wouldn't have been
the same, I think. I'm not sure. I think it has
to do as well. It has to do. It definitely has
to do because it's something that I see as well.
And exactly what you said is how I feel about
the specific denomination of Christianity here,
which is that they will preach forgiveness, for
example. And I'm like, well. The salient point
I agree with, but I don't see you being exactly
consistent with what you are saying. Like you
don't forgive anybody. Like things happened 30
years ago. You still hold on to that grudge.
You should be forgiving people. You say that
people should be forgiving people. You are not
doing it. What am I supposed to believe? Like
you are not convincing. And which is exactly
that. Like when you see people being the embodiment
of their values. There comes a point where you
don't even need to hear what the values are because
you see them. When you see somebody who is disciplined,
you don't need to ask them, hey, are you disciplined?
Because you see it. They will show up at the
right time. They will do things the right way.
They will not mess around. They will always be
professional about it. They will always be a
model citizen, as it were. That sort of thing.
This you see. You don't need to be... something
on your chest and saying, you know, oh, look
how disciplined I am. You know, I am very good.
And I would actually say, like, as a rule of
thumb, people who are really loud and vociferous
about their qualities and their values and who
they are and what they do, usually they are compensating.
They are not actually what they claim to be.
They are much less. But I would say it's a rule
of thumb, not to say that it's 100 % true, but...
It's a good starting point. Yeah, I agree. Completely
agree with that for sure. Definitely. Yeah. I
like that conversation. Really, really appreciate
the philosophy aspect of it. You know, I like
that about your videos, you know, and what are
your thoughts on material stuff? Because I watched
the video in which you were like moving your
mountain, right? You were working to, you know,
making a mountain and all that stuff. Of course,
this could also be described in more abstract
terms about our being and stuff. But very concretely,
I think, because even if we have a spirit, right,
like what you mentioned earlier, we still have
a body. And part of what the body has is a lot
of energy to do stuff. And we can describe this
as the capacity to do damage or the capacity
to break stuff. And if you never channel that
capacity, if you don't have an outlet for that,
that is benign, like if you don't go and exercise,
if you don't go and explore the world, if you
don't go and do some manual labor, I think all
that pent -up energy will eventually be expressed
in a way that is harmful. So for me, working
with the land or going for a walk or anyhow doing
physical stuff involving the body is important
also in the sense of being calm and peaceful.
Like it contributes to my stability as a person.
And of course it has all the benefits of being
physically fit and your heart rate is good and
you get sunshine so you have vitamin D or whatever.
All these... Of course, there are things we know
about which are benign, but also this idea, because
I don't know if you have ever interacted with
dogs, but it's something you see with dogs, for
example. If they don't go for a walk, like my
puppies here, if they don't go for a walk, they
are agitated. They are like, like they are really
stressed. And if you keep them there, eventually
they become aggressive and they become more or
less dangerous. But, and yes, true to the point.
But if you give them the outlet, they are calm.
Like the tired dog is the good dog. The tired
man is the good man by extension. Yeah, good,
good point. Makes sense. What are your thoughts
on material things? Like, you know, we live in
a material world right now and everything is
belongings, you know. I'm a materialist. I must
admit, I love Apple stuff, a computer, the phone.
There are tools that help me do my stuff. That's
what allows me to record these videos and all
that stuff. Microphone, keyboard, monitor, watch.
What are your thoughts on material stuff? I think
materials have to be separated in two categories.
So one is your belongings. which is the tools
you need to do your work, the place you have
to live, that sort of thing. And then two would
be property beyond that. And for me, I would
say belongings, yes, you should have all your
belongings. Like you shouldn't be in a state
of precarity, in a state where a little tweak
in the world and you are finished, you are homeless.
Like you shouldn't be in that situation. So your
belongings should be secure. You should have
all the things to do to live decently. But beyond
that, if you tell me, hey, I'm a materialist,
therefore I claim all this mountain for myself
and I will enslave everybody here and blah, blah,
blah. Then I'm like, yeah, this kind of material.
No, I don't agree with that. But the belongings,
yes, for sure. Okay, okay. So for me, it's that.
You could call it greed, but I don't think that's
the right word. I would say it's mostly a matter
of what is sustainable for you and for others.
If everybody wants to claim the mountain, then
eventually the only option is conflict. It's
war. Like, if you want the mountain and I want
the mountain, well, someone has to die. So that's
not really sustainable for everyone. Makes sense.
Okay. Let me, let me, if you have another topic,
let me open the door to the puppy. Yeah, it's
fine. I have a few more questions. Yep. Yeah,
so let me open the door to the puppy and give
me a second. Give me a second to also do something
there for the other dog. Go ahead. Because, of
course, they will be active now. So, yeah, I
prepared everything. Oh, okay. Okay. I just have
a few other questions. And going back to your,
going back to technical stuff. One second, one
second, because the puppies are not going outside.
Let me take them out. Okay, okay, okay. And by
the way, I don't know. Oh, you have it there.
Yeah, one second. I leave them here. Yes, please.
So I'm back. Okay. Now, your thoughts on what
everyone is talking about lately. AI. Do you
use AI? Are you in favor? What are your thoughts
on it? I'm not against. Let's start with that.
I see it as a tool, and as with every tool, it
has use cases which are good and use cases which
are bad. Like, think of a hammer for a second.
A hammer is a tool that if you hold the wrong
way, so if you hold it very close to where the
metal is, you know, you will harm yourself. So
is it because the tool is bad? No, it's because
you are doing it wrong. And the same is true
for AI. If you use it the wrong way, you will...
farm yourself, maybe not literally, but you will
be doing something not good, not useful. If,
however, you use the tool in a way that augments
what you are capable of, then sure, yes. Like
I have seen people who use AI, like coding assistants,
to refactor code in a way that is quick and efficient.
And I'm like, yeah, this is a compelling use
case. That's very good. And then I have seen
people who use it to ask about issues that the
AI has no business knowing about, and then the
AI will eventually hallucinate, and then I don't
know who is benefiting from that, like nobody.
Okay. So you use it as a tool, depending on how
you use it, right? Yeah. It's a tool, use it
for what it's meant to do, and it's good. But
as with everything, don't assume that you have
the, The panacea, as we say, which is the one
thing that cures everything. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
What layout do you use on your keyboard, by the
way? Is it QWERTY? So it's QWERTY, yes. I tried
the Cold Mac for a little while, but it was severely
harming my productivity and I really needed to
get stuff done. Maybe I will revisit that topic
at some point because I understand the value
of an alternative keyboard layout. Okay, okay.
The final question that I have here is what is
the best way to support you monetarily? Like,
do you have any recurring options like a patron
or something where people can just have a recurring
option? Okay. One -time donations are good. You
know, you're not going to say no to a one -time
donation, but you don't eat once a month, right?
You don't give food to your animals once a month.
So I think recurring options are just a nicer
way. That's just my personal opinion, right?
So what is the best way to support you? So what
I normally do is I tell people that we could
do coaching. So if they want to support me, they
can give me some money for coaching, but get
something in return. That's the idea. Like we
could do anything about Emacs or just a discussion
like this one. It could be like that. But if
they don't care about coaching and they still
want to give me money, of course, there is the
one -time donations. Otherwise, for a recurring
option, they would have to go to GitHub or Libera
Pay. and do it via those platforms. I haven't
checked Patreon. Like, in principle, I'm not
against it. I just haven't had the time to look
at the various options. Okay. So in GitHub, if
someone wants to set up a recurring donation,
they can do it there in GitHub, right? Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah. There are people who
do that already, though usually it's tied to
coaching. Like, we will meet, let's say, every
Monday, and then they are like, okay, let me
set up GitHub for that. And then we also meet
every Monday. But really it's for them to do
the donation and then they get something in return.
Awesome. Okay, awesome. Now, anything you want
to talk about or anything before we wrap it up?
Is there anything you would like to discuss?
Yeah, yeah. Because we covered Emacs as well
as general life issues, I would say that here
there is an element, a thread that runs through
everything. And I think it is the idea of being
considerate, being mindful of what it is you
are doing, what it is you are doing with your
computer, what it is you are doing with your
life. And I think the kind of person who wants
to control their computer So to use Emacs or
NeoVim in a way that makes sense to them, I think
it's the same mindset that then applies to life.
Like you want to control your computer, but you
don't want to control your life. That would make
no sense. You see what I'm saying? So I would
say that eventually what happens is that this
kind of integrated view we have of the computer,
we eventually have it for our life. And then
we think of... Like, okay, what do I eat? How
do I behave? Where do I live? What my consumption
is like? How can I be an example to be followed?
How can I embody the values that I aspire to
have? Or how can I, how can anyhow I embody what
I claim? That sort of thing. And I think basically
it's integration. Being holistic in that regard,
all -encompassing. Okay, amazing. Okay, I'm going
to leave a link to your YouTube channel, also
to your website, right? In the video description.
I just wanted to thank you for your time, Prat.
I love your videos. You're welcome. Yeah, appreciate
all of that knowledge. Just wanted to say thanks.
Thank you very much. Thank you. And just to say,
well done with everything you do and keep doing
it. And I have watched a few videos and I already
downloaded more to watch. There is that. Very
interesting. We have to do a round two, NeoVim
versus Emacs. And it would be nice if you could
join as an Emacs. In principle, count me in,
of course. depending on the hours and all that.
But in principle, yes. Awesome. All right, Prat.
Thank you very much. Hope you have a great rest
of your day. Take care. Take care. Goodbye. Goodbye.
Bye. Notice how I was able to jump to this DMACC
session here. And the reason you're here is because
I want to thank the different YouTube members.
You should be able to see their names listed
here. The first CEO that joined Web2 .3. webto3
.com we have three executive producers and the
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