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Protesilaos
Personal blog · protesilaos.comprogrammingwriting
Protesilaos is a personal blog at protesilaos.com about programming and writing. Since 2018, 66 different Hacker News readers have linked it 86 times, most often “Denote – Simple Emacs Zettelkasten (by Prot)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Often recommended · 20 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Prot's Emacs site for the Modus themes, praised as accessible and readable, and for guides, his literate dotemacs config, Denote and his videos on Emacs.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /emacs/modus-themes10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2021-12-09
- Denote – Simple Emacs Zettelkasten (by Prot)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-07-12
- Moral lessons from free software and GNU Emacs5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-04-17
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-11-07
- GNU Emacs Configuration3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-12-21
- Emacs: A Basic and Capable Configuration3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-11-28
- Emacs Lisp Elements2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-04-12
- Emacs and the Unix Philosophy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-09-28
- Why Emacs is “my favourite Emacs package”2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-10-21
- I no longer maintain my Emacs projects on Sourcehut2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-03-08
What Hacker News says?
I'm a real fan of Modus Themes[0]. They are only officially for emacs, but I've seen some ports for other programs (like vim). All the colors are very specifically chosen for contrast and accessibility. It's my favorite light theme out there. I do wish the dark theme background wasn't pure black. Both of these themes now ship with emacs 28, which is a nice bonus. 0. https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes
Comment linking /emacs/modus-themes
on “Dracula Theme – A dark theme for many different apps”Submitted Emacs Lisp Elements as a story · 353 points
HN discussionIf this is a theme thread then the Modus themes by Protesilaos are the best emacs themes for me by far. https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes
Comment linking /emacs/modus-themes
on “Dracula Theme – A dark theme for many different apps”Submitted I won an award from the FSF for my contributions to Emacs as a story · 335 points
HN discussionI use Emacs because it's the superior tool for editing ~/.emacs.d/init.el[1]. For me, it's just fun. I like writing lisp. I like how Emacs by default presents you with a *scratch* buffer meant to be used for trying out customizations and extensions to the editor. I like how I can modify almost any behavior of the editor to suit my own idiosyncrasies. I like the extremely high quality of the community[2][3][4]. I lik…
Comment linking /emacs/dotemacs
on “Emfy: Emacs for You – Quickly set up vanilla Emacs for editing”Submitted I no longer maintain my Emacs projects on Sourcehut as a story · 168 points
HN discussionLooks nice as a simple zero-dep setup. That said, I would recommend one of the modus themes[0] as an alternative when Emacs 28 comes out, since they're built in to that version. They're amazingly thorough and accessible. [0] https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes
Comment linking /emacs/modus-themes
on “Emfy: Emacs for You – Quickly set up vanilla Emacs for editing”Submitted Moral lessons from free software and GNU Emacs as a story · 155 points
HN discussionI also prefer light colour schemes. Didn't use to, I used dark themes (like gruvbox) for a while, until I learned the value of not having my monitors blast my eyes with 100% brightness. Solarised actually helped me go from dark to light themes as the yellowish background and lower contrast were easier on my eyes than white and high contrast. Even since I learned to turn down my monitor brightness so that white on my…
Comment linking /emacs/modus-themes
on “Solarized”Submitted Denote – Simple Emacs Zettelkasten (by Prot) as a story · 92 points
HN discussionAgain, I started with solarized but moved onto other themes. I think it was one of the first themes that was implemented almost everywhere. It was nice to have my browser, IDE, window manager etc all themed up the same way. I also appreciate the work he went into to set the color scheme up. I feel the same spirit with the Modus themes[1] for emacs [1] https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes
Comment linking /emacs/modus-themes
on “Solarized”Submitted Emacs: A Basic and Capable Configuration as a story · 79 points
HN discussionAnyone interested in readability and accessibility should look at the ‘modus-themes’ (emacs) by Protesilaos Stavrou [1]. They’re highly accessible and highly readable themes, with complete and thorough documentation and commentary on the design choices. His website should also serve as a benchmark for readability. [1]: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes
Comment linking /emacs/modus-themes
on “Please Stop Using Grey Text”Submitted Re: Why Host Emacs Packages on GitHub? (Microsoft vs Freedom) as a story · 63 points
HN discussionI've got my terminal set up to use a colour scheme based on Prot's Modus Operandi ( https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes ) theme for Emacs. I can read the output of ` dmesg ' and ` ls / ' without problems, so it's good enough for me.
Comment linking /emacs/modus-themes
on “Terminal colours are tricky”Submitted Fables on Systems as a story · 10 points
HN discussionHe also accepts donations https://protesilaos.com/donations/
Comment linking /donations/
on “Emacs Lisp Elements”Submitted Emacs: My New Doric Themes as a story · 6 points
HN discussionMy Emacs wouldn’t be the same without Prots modus themes[1], which I found to be a great foundation to build my own theme on top of. I am grateful for all the work he did for the Emacs community. I also enjoy watching his videos where he talks about various philosophical topics from a very clear, pragmatic and down-to-earth perspective. My impression is that he is a really kind and humble person and that he lives by…
Comment linking /emacs/modus-themes
on “Emacs Lisp Elements”Submitted Re: Loneliness and Meaningful Work as a story · 6 points
HN discussionHe also offers 20EUR/hr eMacs coaching. For those jumping in or graduating to a new level. https://protesilaos.com/coach/
Comment linking /coach/
on “Emacs Lisp Elements”Submitted Emacs: Two New Standard Themes as a story · 6 points
HN discussionProtesilaos Stavros has a lot of good content on Emacs and does nice deep dives on configuring both built-in and package-provided features. https://protesilaos.com/ Also available in video form on YouTube. I think he's a great resource for coming to modern emacs.
Comment linking /
on “What's new in Emacs 31.1”Submitted GNU Emacs Configuration as a story · 5 points
HN discussionAll of Prot's packages[1] are really nicely designed imho. [1]: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/
Comment linking /emacs/
on “What's new in Emacs 31.1”Submitted Simple notes for Emacs with an efficient file-naming scheme as a story · 5 points
HN discussionScreenshots are here: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes-pictures/
Comment linking /emacs/modus-themes-pictures/
on “I won an award from the FSF for my contributions to Emacs”Submitted What keeps you coming back to Emacs? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionFollowing the theme, this is my favourite colorscheme, what I found to be most readable after all those years: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes
Comment linking /emacs/modus-themes
on “Nord – An Arctic, north-bluish color palette”Submitted Emacs: Spacious-Padding Version 0.9.0 as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
