Why I’m not using Emacs anymore

For a long time, but I don’t want to quantify the amount of time wasted on this. I spent time on the mornings, trying to optimize/tune, expand my emacs.d/init.el, then I discovered org-babel-tangle that allowed me to expand this file using org mode. I configured fonts, colors, frame size and position, custom keybindings, color themes that change during day and night, oh I don’t want to get started with orgmode; my blog was first in orgmode then I moved to markdown.

An Emacs init.el will never be complete, there will be always a way to spend thirty minutes optimizing a task that will never be executed again, testing the new completion framework, the new color theme, re-organizing your init.el, and in the event that your init.el works as you intended, then let’s change the keyboard layout and learn a new editing mode like xah-fly-keys or meow, just because I can. The problem is not Emacs, is myself, but Emacs helps, giving me always enough rope to hang myself.

Now I just want to write, with the least amount of friction whatsoever and spend time in real problems. The programmable/scriptable editor is just a trap for tinkerers that will suck your time searching for the holy grail of the perfect configuration. I don’t despise Emacs, I just fear it, as I know the moment I start using it again, I will start crafting a custom configuration even if distributions like Doom Emacs exist that already provide everything you need, I know I’ll still start crafting my own init.el.

Today I’m using vim, even if this is another scriptable editor, vimscript syntax put me off to even attempt anything on that front. I’m moving towards nvi with just a minimal .nexrc file, and external tools like tmux, fzf and ripgrep seems to be enough for me today.