Re: [emacs-humanities] Why Emacs-humanities?

[Göktuğ Kayaalp]

Hey,

big thanks to Paul for creating this and to Prot for taking on
responsibility as a co-moderator!  This is a great idea and a most
welcome one.

Continuing with the theme of introductions, I’m a grad student in
linguistics that’s been using Emacs continuously since (I guess) about
2015, when I was an undergrad studying italianistics, tho I’ve used it
on and off before that for various extents of time, since 2012.  I do
all my notes, assignments, writing, and agenda using Org mode, feeds
with Elfeed, mail with Rmail, occasional gopher/gemini browsing with
Elpher, and until recently, reading with PDF-tools (tho I’ve been using
Okular for a long while lately).  And of course all sorts of scripting
and config-editing and programming along with all that.

I’ve a background as a homely hacker that did try to get into industry
but then was lured into humanities thanks to some facts of life and some
happenings.  Emacs has first been an acquaintance, then a friend, then a
lifelong companion for me throughout that adventure.  Eventually I’ve
settled with linguistics as my area of research, and Emacs is helping
with every aspect of it.  I’m a humble MA student just about to start
his thesis works in the coming month, and I’m happy to know that Emacs
will be there to help me.  I want to do a lot of experimental studies
throughout my career, so Org mode and Babel in particular is
increasingly more important in my life.

What’s below is a bit personal, tho I think where I’m at makes more
sense if I tell where I come from.  And frankly, remembering this story
makes me mellowly happy, so there’s that. ‘C-s Skip fluff RET’, if you
wish.

I had an unorthodox entry to computing. Back in early ’00s, I was
admitted to a top private K12 school as a 5th grader with scholarship.
They were shocked I didn’t have a computer to ‘help with my homeworks’,
so they gifted me one.  I was one of that annoying kids that would
fiddle with every gadget should it get its hands on a screwdriver, so
soon enough I was dissassembling and reassembling the whole thing.  It
had Windows 98 on it, tho soon I was going through Win95, WinNT, Win XP,
and eventually GNU/Linux (my first was a SuSE Linux 7 or 8 install from
a CD a local PC parts/repairs shop lent me).  Early in that process I
also somehow discovered programming and downloaded DevC++.  I recall
writing a CLI calculator using its manuals (which included a C
tutorial), putting it on a 3.5" floppy disk, and taking it to my
informatics teacher, much to his disinterest.

This carried on for a while but a couple years later I broke the
computer beyond repair and didn’t have one for a while.  Then,
completing my K12 mid 2012, I had recently got a laptop. My grades were
below average so no good uni for me.  I decided I was going to become a
programmer.  Worked at it day and night for a year and a half, and
eventually managed to get a job as a Python / JS dev (tho the JS part
was a sour surprise).  At the same time I had started taking courses on
STEM topics to prep for doing CS in uni.  But concurrently (and slowly)
I was developping and interest in philosophy and literature, which soon
took over, and after one month of work, thanks to some lies the employee
has told me and this shift in interest, I resigned, and a few months
later, I was studying Italianistics.  I don’t know how it came to that,
I literally hadn’t had a slice of pizza before that point, let alone
anything to do with actual Italian culture.  IIRC what I was thinking
was: I’ll do Italianistics, then go to Portugal, study Portuguese
language and literature («I’m a _huge_ Saramago fan» is an
understatement, and I love Pessoa and Gonçalo M. Tavares), and
eventually come back to Turkey to found the first ever Portuguese
Studies department in some university (a hugely underappreciated subject
in Turkish academia).

This was around mid 2014, and I was thinking of tooling.  I wanted low
tech stuff.  Computers were distracting (spoiler, they still are :-P).
So I got myself an A5 clipboard and a cheap ass fountain pen, plus a
pocket-sized weekly planner.  Used this for more than two semesters but
my pile of paper and notebooks was becoming too big to manage and too
precious to lose, so I decided I need a way to digitise my notes, my
writing, and my planning.  Old friend Emacs and Org mode to the rescue.
I was barely using any computers for months.  That February or summer I
sat down and transcribed /everything/, literally everything I had into
Org mode files.  One of those files, Reading.org for my reading notes,
survives to this day, still heavily used for every paper or book I read.
Put it all under CVS, with Emacs on top of Arch or FreeBSD (continuing
the low tech theme).  I’d still mainly operate using pen and paper, but
stuff would be transcribed.  But inevitably I was getting sucked back
into computing, so over the following years everything was digital first
and digital only, with Emacs as my... I don’t want to say it like that,
but indeed, my Lisp Machine to do it all.  I did hold on to doing
pen&paper agenda until last summer (a heavily personalised bullet
journalling like thingy), but now that’s in Org mode too (I’ve finally
came up with a setup that doesn’t get in my way).

Today, I still use Emacs as a grad student in linguistics because it’s
of immense help.  I can efficiently follow large RSS feeds like local
news and LinguistList, customising elfeed to categorise and navigate
stuff nicely.  I can do Email nicely with Rmail [1]: simple,
personalised and effective.  I can do assignments and other word
processing neatly, with related scripting and planning, using Org mode.
I can easily write little programs and scripts to make my life wee bit
easier.  I can make a complex interactive agenda simple.  I can have git
in a much more palatable form (yes, my CVS lunacy didn’t last longer
than a couple years).  I write in multiple Latin scripts regularly,
which Quail makes a joyful task [2]. And the best of it all, when stuff
doesn’t work the way I want it to, I can make everything work my way
with a touch of Elisp.  And to cap it all, all my configuration [3] and
data are _mine_ and they are not going _anywhere_.  Nobody will suddenly
ask me $30/mo for it, there’s nothing to go bankrupt and take my data
and productivity away, and nobody digit-ogling me all day.  In all these
regards, Emacs is *as good as pen&paper*.  And IMHO that’s a high bar to
clear, and a huge complement, when million and billion dollar companies
produce products far inferior to good old pen and paper.

[1] https://cadadr.dreamwidth.org/828.html
[2] https://github.com/cadadr/elisp/blob/devel/gk-unilat.el
[3] https://github.com/cadadr/configuration

[ Skip fluff ]

I wish you all a beautiful healthy new year.  Let’s have some great fun
on this new beautiful place for one of the most unique niches of Emacs
among all it’s peers!



All the best,

    -Göktuğ.

-- 
İ. Göktuğ Kayaalp / @cadadr / <https://www.gkayaalp.com/>
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