tushartyagi

I've been using Emacs as my editor for the last decade or so. I used it for general purpose editing for the first 6 years because I was doing C# development (Web/a bit of Xamarin) and VisualStudio (not code) was my daily driver.

For the last 4 years I've been using it full time as I changed technologies and moved to a Python/Vue shop. I initially used vanilla python-mode, then elpy, and now I'm currently using LSP for Python development. Everything is setup well, I just write code, commit using Magit, and create Github PRs using Magit/Forge. For major refactors, I do fall back on using PyCharm.

For Vue I just Web-mode because I haven't found LSP to provide me anything useful (maybe code jumping, but nothing else). Maybe it has better integration with TypeScript? I'm not too sure.

My emacs setup is pretty standardized with a dotfile. I use Projectile to jump between projects, and use Eyebrowse to assign each project its own window (I usually have anything from 2-5 open at a time). The pattern I've found useful is to have the same number assigned for Eyebrowse workspace and terminal, so `Alt+n` opens my nth project in terminal and in emacs.

For the features/tickets that I'm working on, I use an org file to note down my thoughts, subtasks, blockers, and also the status (TODO/DONE/IN-PROGRESS) etc. It's synced with my org's Google Drive, while the rest of my personal org files get synced to iCloud. Any topics for 1-1 with my peers/managers also get noted and synced.

There was a time in my previous job where I was using emails for discussions, and back then I had tight integration with Mu4e too. I've dabbled with Jira/Slack modes but they're not worth the hassle.

I'm the only one using Emacs in my org, and I feel fine doing it. Pairing works fine since the driver uses their editor of choice.

I think it's mostly about drinking too much Kool-Aid of owning my data.

But probably because ttrss's pretty nice with quite a few plugins, so I can mold it based on what interests me. For example, I am also self hosting wallabag, and there's a single key shortcut to export the stuff from ttrss over to wallabag. Then there's a plugin to pull the data from the source websites and change it using XPaths. I use that to pull down the entire content instead of a single paragraph summaries, and to pull down the actual comics that I'm reading instead of the descriptions that are being sent to the readers. (As an aside, I donate/fund the makers in whatever capacity I have so that it compensates with me not getting their ads).

Did you know that even Youtube, HN & Reddit host their updates via RSS feeds? I have Youtube feeds for some of the channels that I find interesting, so that I can watch the stuff whenever it becomes available. For some low volume subreddits, you can use that as well.

With elfeed running in Emacs, I had bound a single key to download the youtube video via youtube-dl into my archive folder. I miss that stuff with ttrss, but I guess there would be some plugin somewhere to do that.

And I find it equally interesting to think about what happened to Google Books project after half the world was entering text into captchas perhaps close to a decade? Is the project still going on?

I've started dipping my toes in Rust and Elixir. Rust because of the concepts like borrow checker, highly strict compiler, traits etc. Elixir because it is based on Erlang and is highly concurrent due to Actors, and overall a very clean language syntactically. Both of these are very different from the traditional OOP language that I'm using at work (C#).

Actually this is something I wanted to do last year but didn't get enough motivation/energy to actually pursue it. Now I've forced myself to actually do stuff with Rust for the first quarter of 2019 and have made some progress. If things go as per my timelines, I'll focus on Elixir & Rust in alternate quarters. I've found this to be much better than tackling both in parallel which I was doing last year.

As an aside, in the last month of 2018 I dabbled with Pharo/Smalltalk just to investigate its highly dynamic nature, improvement to dev productivity & how things really were supposed to work in real OOP. It was very impressive, especially considering we had something like in 80s & 90s.

This is really impressive. Thanks for posting it.

This website tells the truth when it says that following the deep work ritual is a pain. I've read the book and wholeheartedly agree with whatever Cal Newport says, but so far planning my day has been the most difficult thing to do, especially when I have to update it after the planning derails. I keep jumping between planning my on my computer using org-mode or planning it on paper. So far, nothing has stuck.

I'll give this website shot for some time.

I've tried a lot of different time slots and so far only two have worked for me:

1. Wake up 1.5hr earlier than my family. This gives me around 1.15hrs of solid focused time.

The downside is, of course, I have to sleep around 10 so the family time takes a hit. I have to leave early from office to compensate and if there's something that holds me back in office then there's a high chance this plan derails. I try my best to juggle work, self-time and family time and while it's not impossible, it sometimes becomes difficult. Last one week, for example, was such where I had a lot of issues at work, and fixing them and reaching home would mean I'll be back around 9.30PM and I had absolutely no interest in rising early.

2. Reach office an hour or so early and try to focus. I say try because there are things which are out of my control, especially the traffic. If there's bad traffic then reaching office and getting into a focused mode takes a lot of time.

Evenings I've tried working but this isn't consistent. Sometimes when the office is empty and most of my office work is done, I might get some time for focused work but this is pretty impossible to get. By the time I reach home, I have to swim through a lot of traffic so there's hardly any mental cycles left that I can spend on focused work.

Additionally, I would say that it works best when your focused time is same everyday. For me, that has been waking up early.

+1 for i3. I have a 13" laptop as my primary driver and using i3 is so much faster & convenient on such a small screen. Though I have made 2 changes to my workflow to get better out of it:

- I use i3 inside XFCE. This allows me to use the xfce launcher, status bar, tray icons and other goodies, e.g. adding external monitor pops open the display properties, volume bar is available anytime. All this saves me from binding buttons & doing other changes in my i3 config.

- Since Win+{1,2,...0} (buttons which change workspaces in i3) are now hardwired in my brain, I have arranged the icons on the taskbar of my Windows-10 machine to what I have in i3.

Win+1 is assigned to Emacs on i3, so that's the first icon on my windows taskbar.

Win+2 -> shell/git bash

Win+3 -> Thunar/Windows Explorer

Win+4 -> Firefox/Firefox

Win+7 -> Anki/Anki

This saves a lot of brain cycles, as my Windows workflow is also a bit like what I usually use on Debian.

Last week I try using EXWM but wasn't able to make it work as per my expectations, so switched back to i3, but EXWM is definitely a TODO on my list.

The problem with this is that the bootloader is now becoming more and more locked down and the consumers have to jump ever more hoops to unlock it.

Some years ago I had Samsung S2 where unlocking the bootloader was an offline activity. I don't remember how but doing that was quick and easy. Now I own a MotoG4 where unlocking means going to some website, entering my email address and then receiving unlock code in my email. If Motorola knows my email address, or can link the (supposedly unique) unlock code to my phone, what's stopping them from voiding my warranty?

I have a hunch that newer versions of some mainstream phones do not allow unlocking the bootloader, and this is going to become more and more common.