EMACS turns 50

Well, congratulations are in order! For a 50 year old and continuously developed piece of software, Emacs has never been in better shape, and there is still nothing like it anywhere out there (in combination of character, scope and popularity).

These days my only fear is that as computing gets more and more restricted, Emacs (along with other FLOSS) will just be outlawed one way or another, or constricted to be less useful. If it weren't for that fear, I'd confidently say it will survive for another 50 years!

About a decade ago, core Emacs maintainers were getting a bit worried that most new folks are not willing to touch the C core, making it silently rot away. But then, out of nowhere, we got native comp, json parser, tree sitter, canvas patch. It is truly a multi a generational project at this point.

And since this comment is all over the place, I'm gonna pitch RUNE. I really really hope it becomes the one to cut that ol' multi-threading tree Gordian knot.

One of the great things Emacs carries with it from its AI lab origins, that's rare these days, is the insane level of hackability that comes with Lisp software. Software built in Lisp is often designed to be extensively modified by the user to suit their tastes. This means it's well-documented, inspectable, its primitives can be used in further abstractions, and provides plenty of hooks where behaviour can be inserted. Part of it is also the "orthodox UI paradigm" (best described by Bezroukov1) which is a very powerful way to design user interaction.

These properties are rare! The only other software I've used with the same level of hackability is StumpWM, a much younger Common Lisp project.

Users who haven't tried this way of growing/evolving their own software and customising their workflows also have a hard time understanding what it's like, because it's so alien to how software is otherwise used. Well worth experiencing at some point, even if you don't end up using Emacs day-to-day.