Tags / tools

Have you tried using the GNOME Software? This thing: Do you use it? Are you even using GNOME? Oh, sorry, I think should point this out, it’s kinda important - I’m asking the developers of GNOME Software. Because, apparently, they don’t. OK, let’s start this post over.

I’m feeling ranty this week for some reason. Today will be no different and I’ll post another rant on the software world but not about programming. Instead, I want to tip into the consumer application world, and shit on the current state of music players on GNU/Linux specifically, although the situation is as bad as on other platforms IMO.

Recently I’ve stumbled upon a video about Kakoune, a code editor: Idiot user tries to use Kakoune (for notes? Also Helix?). Funnily enough, I was mentioned in this video, which was a surprise, and made me laugh for quite a while: Let’s go back to the official plugins page.

In the previous post I’ve described how to define a simple protocol, upgrade the stock Fennel REPL with it, and create a simple client that works with this setup. And at the end, I mentioned that I was working on a proper client implementation and a more robust protocol as part of the fennel-mode package.

When it comes to software I prefer things that are simple and small, even though I’m using Emacs. This is mainly the reason why my favorite languages are Clojure and Fennel. However, it doesn’t end on programming languages themselves, I like small tools in general.

Today’s topic will again be about text editing software (one of my favorite topics actually). However, instead of discussing text editors themselves, I’ll share my opinion on such things as editor-hopping. What is editor-hopping? It’s, well, when you change text editors every day/week/month/year.

Modern text editors usually operate in one instance. When I select some advanced text editor as my preferred editor in the system, I expect this to happen: I click on some files in the file manager; If there’s no editor instance opened, a new instance opens with the file ready to edit; If there is an instance of an editor opened somewhere, a file is being opened in it, and the editor is brought to me via some focus event.

While working on my previous post I was mainly using Emacs, because it has the best support for Lisp languages. It has great integration with the REPL, can run a server for my application in the background, and so on. And actually, I use this a lot while working on this blog - I run hugo process in the background to see how my page is looking.

As software engineers, and programmers, we mostly work with text, so obviously we’re all using some sort of a text-related program. Editing and navigating text is a huge part of our daily job, so a good text editor is like a good set of tools for blacksmiths.