> LLMs have inspired a similar change in me

FWIW, the age of LLMs made me build a deeper, more intimate relationship with Emacs, because it's a Lisp REPL loop with a built-in editor, not the other way around. When you give an LLM a closed loop system where it can evaluate code in a live REPL and observe the results, it stops guessing and starts reasoning empirically.

LLM that I run inside Emacs can fully control the active Emacs instance. I can make it change virtually any aspect of it. To load-test things, I even made it play Tetris in Emacs. And not just simply run it, but to actually play it without losing. It was insane.

Also, Emacs is all about plain text - you can easily extract text from anything - from the browser, terminal, CLI apps, Slack, Jira, etc., and you can do that on your own terms - context can appear in a buffer, in your clipboard, become a file or series of API requests. That is really hard to beat.

I wonder what friction/maintenance he found with Tridactyl

For me the friction always comes when I try to use the internet without it

Does anyone else not understand what people mean when they refer to the "friction" supposedly inherent to these power user tools? Almost none of the configs/scripts/etc I use for my heavily-customized and terminal-heavy setup get changed for years at a time.

>LLMs have inspired a similar change in me: with a big change in how I work, I feel I can and should be more flexible with adopting new tech, which involving freeing myself of previous choices.

Oh, LLMs made you more passive and less desirous to have control over your computing environment? Who would ever see that coming.

I tried Elfeed2 immediately after the announcement, well, it's nowhere near the experience of elfeed in Emacs. Elfeed2 doesn't load content for most of my feeds, elfeed does. I also integrated elfeed-tube, which shows previews of videos and their transcripts, making it no-brainer to get a summary without watching the whole video.

When I still used Git, I used to have a minimized `magit-init.el` that essentially did:

    (setq user-emacs-directory (format "~/.emacs.d/magit/%s/" emacs-version))
    (setq custom-file (concat user-emacs-directory "custom.el"))
    (setq make-backup-files nil)
    (setq auto-save-default nil)
    (setq create-lockfiles nil)
    (setq inhibit-startup-screen t)
    (setq initial-scratch-message nil)

    (require 'magit)
    (defun setup-standalone-magit ()
      (magit-project-status)
      (delete-other-windows))
    (add-hook 'after-init-hook 'setup-standalone-magit)

    #!/bin/sh
    if [ "$(git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree)" = "true" ]; then
        exec emacs -nw -q --no-splash -l "/path/to/magit-init.el"
    fi

If you are on Linux/Gnome, try out Stage:

https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.aganzha.Stage

Lazygit is the closest thing I've seen; it's what I use on remote hosts when TRAMP-ing into Magit would be too painful.

https://github.com/altsem/gitu

Why? What makes Spacemacs so different/special that it requires some kind of distinct opinion that would be extremely valuable? Spacemacs is the same old Emacs with some out-of-the box customizations atop - there's nothing fundamentally different about it.

It's not AI psychosis, you're interpreting what he said to the extreme.

Anyone who has actual corporate team lead or management experience understand AI as effectively a junior dev who doesn't have great persistent memory. These devs using AI are reviewing, guiding, and validating the work given to them by AI just as they would from a junior dev.

The inverse of your statement is more apt; it's distressing to see people so angsty about AI usage. There are going to be skilless vibecoders and then there are going to be experienced devs (like OP) who figured out their AI workflow to multiply their productivity 2-5x.

What the future holds for AI model pricing-- that is a valid concern. But I don't think that's what you intended.

> It's deeply distressing to watch people fall into AI psychosis.

It's unclear what you're saying here... Yes, AI-induced psychosis is a real problem and the frontier labs' mitigations are ineffective, to put it mildly. But using AI as a coding tool doesn't have anything to do with psychosis.

I just wonder how jobs like that won't replace their employees. Seems too good to last. In a few years OpenAI will just sell $1,000 per month Human-free Agent Coding for businesses.

Saying they have psychosis is a rude exaggeration.

> Being smart, accomplished, or experienced is no defence.

Perhaps you're confusing "not using AI" with "not being dependent on AI", those are very different things.

The edge isn't from avoidance, it's from using AI as leverage on top of real skill. A strong developer + AI beats a strong developer alone, and massively beats a weak developer + AI. The edge doesn't come from avoiding a tool - it comes from being the kind of person who doesn't need it but uses it anyway. That's leverage. Refusing to use it is just leaving leverage on the table to make a philosophical point.

> After the bubble pops

People like Chris (who is enormously capable engineer) would just move onto different tools, different techniques and paradigms. That is the essence of being a software developer - many of us choose this path specifically because it forces you to learn something new, every single day. That is (I suspect) also another reason why Wellons decided to migrate away from Emacs - he just learned it so deeply, perhaps it's no longer giving him the satisfaction of learning. Which to be honest is hard to believe - Emacs is a boundless playground, there's always something new to learn there.

No. AI is a must for software development. It's non-negotiable. The productivity gains are too great. The era of 100% human-written code is over. People will still do it as an idle curiosity, for personal projects only they intend to use. But even those open source projects with significant user bases that forbid the use of AI (like, afaik, NetBSD) will be eclipsed by those that support it in terms of features, capability, and security. And the commercial world? Forget it. You cannot keep pace with your employer's expectations unless you learn to use these tools well. This is not up for debate. It's reality.

Plenty of accomplished devs are getting good results and accomplishing tasks with unheard-of speed using AI, so if you're still not, that's a PEBKAC. You are not using the tools correctly. Figure it out before you complain.