I hope org-mode gets more popular outside of Emacs. I know all the words already about how org-mode is great because of Emacs, but the way you can do plaintext outlining, with great support for TODO's, in org-mode is fantastic. It retains a lot of readability, and that isn't Emacs specific: there are things that make org-mode great as-is!
A small todo application for mobile that uses org-mode as the database doesn't need to parse fancy org-babel stuff, except maybe that org-mode itself can be hard to parse.
Personally I'm hopeful that org-mode gets some more love outside of Emacs, so here's a list of interesting org-mode projects that aren't pandoc or Emacs related:
All metaphors break down at a certain point, but power tools and generative AI/LLMs being compared feels like somebody is romanticizing the art of programming a bit too much.
Copyright law, education, just the sheer scale of things changing because of LLMs are some things off the top of my head why "power tools vs carpentry" is a bad analogy.
When it comes to the comparison with other languages like Zig, Rust and Go, I disagree. I think it's because it hits its """new weird thing""" budget really quickly with Abilities and code in a database.
The Share project is open source, in contrast to GitHub, which is also popular despite having forms of locked-inness in practice as well.
I'm saying this not to negate the vibes you feel, but I'd rather people try it out and maybe see how their favorite language could benefit from different design decisions.
I disagree with the author, but I also get the impression that their view of notes is fundamentally different than mine so there's that.
I like the way LogSeq implemented daily notes, UX wise. It's an infinite scrolling page where you can add and edit dailies, so I end up "doomscrolling" my daily notes and re-reading them a lot more often than in other apps.
I'm sure that there can be some very interesting discussions about code-in-database and interop with tooling!
> I’m just not sure I understand why the database needs to be the compiler.
I'm not entirely sure if these two are tightly bound. For example `ucm` uses a SQLite database, but Share(their Github equivalent) uses PostgreSQL afaik.
I believe a previous iteration used Git as the backing store but they didn't go through with it. I'm not sure about this tho.
This is a good point, and deserves a lot more discussion about it.
I personally don't mind that my code is somewhere else than in a text file, because as it now I have to ductape a huge array of tools to make it to production in languages like TypeScript and Elixir(languages we use at $WORK). I don't want to deal with that anymore than I need to.
I hope modern languages get to the level of swiftness like Unison, but until then I'm really happy with Unison, because code-in-database is only one of the several aspects I like about it(no dependency conflicts being another huge part of it!).
Unison does things very differently, and it might not be everybody's cup of tea. But I do hope that popular languages take the good bits and help programmers do less chores and more fun stuff.
> I often feel modern languages get this wrong by “including” too many “batteries” instead of specifying and documenting their build / dependency semantics clearly
Do you have some examples? Nix somewhat aims to solve this, but it has its own drawbacks.
A lot of people these days _expect_ a battery included environment: package manager, build tooling, linting, formatting, a language server, documentation generators. Unison solves a lot of these in one go because of the way it handles code, I think that's elegant and worth exploring.
The tooling is surprisingly good for such a "young" language. I've had experience with other budding languages, like Nim, Zig, ReasonML throughout the years(not comparing these languages, just their tooling, they have tradeoffs), and Unison is slick. But expectations should probably be managed, it's not IntelliJ or VS Studio.
I'd describe the tooling as "zen like". When I sit down on weekends to write some Unison, I'll pop up my editor in a left tab, and on the right there's ucm. Since the LSP is included in the codebase manager, I didn't have to setup much. The LSP works good, could use some more code actions to control ucm though.
I'll write some code, throw in a `> ` eval expression to quickly mimic a REPL. I'll see the evaluation on the right.
Eventually I'll switch to the right side and add my pieces. or write a `test>` and expression, which I can add as well to my codebase. Push my changes, create a branch, or switch project also happens.
Maybe I'm not sure what the name was of a piece of code? Or I'd like to be able to search based on function signature. Both can be done in the right tab(ucm) with the command `find`.
Documentation is first class, I can browse the doc comments attached to variables/functions/types, I can link other terms(pieces of code) in those docs and they are discoverable as well, as soon as you add it to your codebase.
I believe a big part of why this is all possible, is that when your code is stored like this, it makes tooling around it a lot less complex. No need make ad-hoc parsers, compilation caches, syntax checkers. I'm no tooling expert, but for example making a visual editor based on the terms in your codebase sounds a lot easier than making a visual editor for TypeScript, the mental gymnastics is a lot less.
The developer experience in Unison(and Unison Cloud) has been wonderful for me. I try to write as much in it as possible, for hobby projects or side projects for friends and family.
Abilities(what Unison calls algebraic effects) are really ergonomic too use in practice, the learning curve is a lot lower than a IO monad datatype, and it reads just like Python when putting it to practice!
Code-in-a-database means I don't have to fumble with long compilation times and Git, it brings joy to just hacking on to something in the weekend, because I just get to write code.
The article mentions its drawbacks, and they are real, especially FFI imo. The Unison team mentioned they are planning to include FFI, and it's going to be interesting to see what gets compromised.
But no other language (currently) hits this sweet spot of abstractions(not too little not too much) with an enjoyable DX, for me.
Using meow:https://github.com/meow-edit/meow I actually got keybindings in Emacs that are helix-like, so I use helix for certain projects and Emacs for others.
> Furthermore, the idea that plugins could've been in Rust or Rust through WASM meant that I'd have an editor which was completely hackable in the least annoying way possible. Every time I have to learn one of these tool-specific languages I end up breathing a heavy sigh, spending a lot of time relearning things or working around weird quirks, and then ultimately giving up after writing the most basic version of what I want to do.
I very much understand this. However I'd argue using Scheme is a great tradeoff. Because in the end programming is about tradeoffs.
Scheme will not overcomplicate plugins for the maintainers, and as a write you have to learn a tiny DSL for configuring your editor.
As we speak, I'm trying to write a plugin for Zed, and as awesome all the niceties about Zed is, plugins are not easy, and frankly speaking, I feel like I wasted my time with all this nonsense about WASM, while in Helix the same plugin (language support) was really, really simple, even as somebody who knew nothing about Rust or Scheme.
I absolutely don't mind the plugin system being a Scheme. It's a plugin for a text editor, and Steel(https://github.com/mattwparas/steel) seems to be a lot less of a maintenance burden than WASM plugins(besides that I find the WASM tooling to be extremely complex).
But besides all that, Helix learned be that I don't need fancy plugins or endless finicking with config files and toolchains. Using a combination of other tools, like yazi and lazygit, helps me not only inside my editor but outside of it as well. And Kakoune does this even better. In that regard it has been a real eye-opener and refreshing. The downside is, it's hard to go back to other editors!
This, plus abilities[1](what Unison calls algebraic effects), make Unison such a joy to work with, it's a very pleasant experience. You can get straight to the business logic.
I also hope it catches on, but Unison right now really gives a pleasant experience.
A small todo application for mobile that uses org-mode as the database doesn't need to parse fancy org-babel stuff, except maybe that org-mode itself can be hard to parse.
Personally I'm hopeful that org-mode gets some more love outside of Emacs, so here's a list of interesting org-mode projects that aren't pandoc or Emacs related:
- https://github.com/RWejlgaard/org - https://nvim-orgmode.github.io/ - https://github.com/haxscramper/haxorg - github.com/cnglen/windancer - https://braintool.org/