Incredible contributor in both technical and organizational ways. And nice as hell too.

There are a remarkable number of people attending our Emacs meetup who are under 30. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself.

I used https://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython-notebook at one employer and it works quite well for Jupyter. Of course Org is great but if your coworkers are unfamiliar it's probably a non-starter.

Re: the C code, Emacs will happily let you ignore your own config settings. Just turn off anything labeled "electric" and nothing will happen automatically. And don't press tab, that will reindent the current line.

You definitely needed to be on evil-mode or a framework (like Doom) based on it. The key bindings with ctl, alt, etc. are the least important part of Emacs but sadly, the part everyone thinks of first...

At the time I was thinking that if I had to change something as fundamental as the key bindings to get it to work, it was maybe not the right tool for me, as these base bindings were probably a key part of the whole Emacs philosophy that I would then completely miss-out on..

But if you say that they are the least import part of Emacs, I might revisit it when I have the time. Thank you for the tip.

This really captures the power of Emacs for people with Lisp skills. For coders with strong habits of high-level thinking it's a real force multiplier. Why shouldn't we apply the same analysis and effort to our productivity tools we do to our "output"?

It is probably easier to write correct concurrent code now, thanks to the new features he mentions. However, as always plenty of rope is provided, and the old programs are still valid (and have the same semantics). I couldn't say how it compares to Rust, but "better now" seems pretty accurate.

Presumbly it is the American ones (such as myself) being referred to - separated from their relatives by more than a century and a half https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans

Exactly. For some reason, colonies preserve the cultures that settled them, while their homeland counterparts continue to change. The Scotch-Irish of 300 years ago, who still live in the US today, are profoundly different from the modern Scotch-Irish -- and for some reason have never adapted to an environment of peace and security.

(Possibly because the US is less peaceful and secure... but part of that is perception, and/or a product of people expecting it to be.)

Git submodules work pretty great for this IMO. Rather than incorporate a snapshot of the source, pick a commit hash. Still frozen at a point in time, but you get to move which one you're using (or point to your own fork!) whenever you like.

I certainly like Jetbrains, but is it a "unicorn"? I doubt it has a billion dollar valuation - not least because it is a private company.