miniblog.

Sometimes programming tools are so good that you miss them when using other languages. I see these mentioned the most frequently: * IntelliJ (for Java) * Slime+Emacs (for Common Lisp) * Pharo (for Smalltalk) I'm struck that they all have bespoke UIs.

One interesting design choice in Emacs that I haven't seen in other editors: reserved shortcuts. An Emacs extension shouldn't use F5 through F12, or Ctrl-c LETTER. This lets users configure their own shortcuts. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Key-Bindings.html Does it exist elsewhere? I miss it in VS Code, where e.g. all the Fn keys are already assigned.

Today I learnt that Emacs 28 shipped a context-menu-mode! https://oylenshpeegul.gitlab.io/blog/posts/20230129/ This seems quintessentially Emacs: deeply hackable, but building UI features in an order very different to the mainstream.