Top all-time · #1795
Vivek Haldar
Personal blog · blog.vivekhaldar.comprogrammingwriting
Vivek Haldar writes Tumblr, a personal blog at blog.vivekhaldar.com about programming and writing. Since 2011, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 230 times, most often “The Levels of Emacs Proficiency”. The last post was in 2020, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (20) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Vivek Haldar's posts on Emacs and treating the shell as editable text, a summary of deliberate-practice research, and code size as a measure of complexity.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- Called a nice summary of the deliberate practice paper; one commenter says a Smeed's law post overhauled their beliefs.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 20 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Levels of Emacs Proficiency5 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2011-03-21
- Size is the best predictor of code quality5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2011-09-26
- How Unix Won3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-05-04
- The Cognitive Style of Unix3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-04-16
- GUI vs CLI: Operation vs Expression3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-08-15
- Tldr summary: deliberate practice for expert performance2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-03-15
- How to debate2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-02-21
- The Levels of Emacs Proficiency2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-12-04
- Why technologists want to secede2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-05-18
- Computation in the wild2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-01-19
What Hacker News says?
Productivity is for peasants. https://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/42828214104/productivity-i...
Comment linking /post/42828214104/productivity-isnt
on “Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible”Submitted Stallman's Dystopia as a story · 347 points
HN discussion> By default you can manipulate the data to your heart’s content. http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3996068979/the-levels-of-em...
Comment linking /post/3996068979/the-levels-of-emacs-proficiency
on “Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983”Submitted The Cognitive Style of Unix as a story · 239 points
HN discussionI think you may be missing most interesting point of article which is about the cognitive limits of enhancing skill through deliberate practice. There was an academic paper a few years back "The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance" ( a nice summary here - http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3881908748/tldr-summary-the... ). The paper breaks down 3 types of activity: work, play and delib…
Comment linking /post/3881908748/tldr-summary-the-role-of-deliberate-practice-in-the
on “Four Hours of Concentration”Submitted Size is the best predictor of code quality (2011) as a story · 232 points
HN discussion> is so buttersmooth and no other setup has given me such an seamless interoperability between an editor and an OS . . . This is the most underrated killer feature. You've just described what it feels like to be an emacs user. It's all just text[0]. [0] - https://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3996068979/the-levels-of-e...
Comment linking /post/3996068979/the-levels-of-emacs-proficiency
on “A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming”Submitted Size is the best predictor of code quality as a story · 225 points
HN discussion> This is the main reason I keep using Emacs for my everyday use. This might be my number two reason. I learned Emacs in 2000. Meanwhile, I've not had to learn, over and over again, all those other editors and IDE's. To be sure, I've honed my Emacs skills, installed and learned new tools in it (hello flycheck, elpy, SLIME, org-mode, TRAMP, CEDET), and just generally get on with whatever I'm working on ATM. My number…
Comment linking /post/3996068979/the-levels-of-emacs-proficiency
on “Why Emacs: Redux”Submitted Productivity Porn as a story · 142 points
HN discussionA week ago I would react differently to this article. But I just had my belief system overhauled by reading http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/10126017769/smeeds-law-for-... .
Comment linking /post/10126017769/smeeds-law-for-programming
on “How can C Programs be so Reliable?”Submitted GUI vs CLI: Operation vs Expression as a story · 129 points
HN discussionhttp://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3996068979/the-levels-of-em... "It was all just text. Why did you need another application for it? Why should only the shell prompt be editable? Why can’t I move my cursor up a few lines to where the last command spewed out its results? All these problems simply disappear when your shell (or shells) simply becomes another Emacs buffer, upon which all of the text manipulation power of…
Comment linking /post/3996068979/the-levels-of-emacs-proficiency
on “Unix as IDE”Submitted What is life like for PhDs in computer science who go into industry? as a story · 122 points
HN discussionGitLab is 30k+ lines of Ruby code http://gitlab-org.gitlab.io/gitlab-ce/coverage-ruby/#_AllFil... We're not missing static typing as far as I know. We still are able to ship a lot of changes every month. I'm not sure if it is our structure (idiomatic Rails), test coverage (over 85%), something else, or maybe we should miss it but don't realize it. One disadvantage is that static typing causes more lines of code than…
Comment linking /post/10669678292/size-is-the-best-predictor-of-code-quality
on “How many lines of code is Candy Japan?”Submitted Computer Science PhD trends as a story · 108 points
HN discussion> we don't think size in raw lines of code is the most important metric in the code I've read this claim from FB before (Pete Hunt I think). It's not possible to overstate my disagreement. I guess if you want to say, 'people in general can't program, but they can plumb things together, and once they learn the conventions the boilerplate becomes transparent', I wouldn't argue. But you haven't said it, and it's not a…
Comment linking /post/10669678292/size-is-the-best-predictor-of-code-quality
on “A response to “An experienced JavaScript dev’s account of learning React””Submitted Tldr summary: deliberate practice for expert performance as a story · 84 points
HN discussionBe warned, you can get sucked in very easily :) Pretty soon, you're using org-mode to manage your life, then you hook up an XMPP client, start using Magit or Egg, have a shell open, and eventually it's your only app open, full screened: http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3996068979/the-levels-of-em... http://my.opera.com/mulander/blog/2009/02/17/how-emacs-keeps...
Comment linking /post/3996068979/the-levels-of-emacs-proficiency
on “How to Learn Emacs: A Hand-drawn One-pager for Beginners”Submitted OOP = FP? as a story · 71 points
HN discussionTotally agreed, but dosage is just one dimension of marijuana that is generally misunderstood. The other 2 dimensions are consumption form and cannabis strain - combining these 3 dimensions results in very different mental states. However, the laymen looks at marijuana effects and thinks "high", "stoned", or some other mental state that is equivalent to their college experiences or perhaps a drug addict. Consuming m…
Comment linking /post/3881908748/tldr-summary-the-role-of-deliberate-practice-in-the
on “I take illegal drugs for inspiration”Submitted How bugs per line of code is similar to traffic deaths per car as a story · 44 points
HN discussion> I might have to finally try it if so many people are claiming life-changing effects! Org, much like emacs, is like catnip to a certain minded type of individual. This might stem from both being written in lisp ( http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html ). Both are infinitely malleable to your needs, yet surprisingly effective out of the box for their intended use cases; the tweaking only comes late…
Comment linking /post/3996068979/the-levels-of-emacs-proficiency
on “Worg, the Org-Mode Community”Submitted T-shirts are currency as a story · 41 points
HN discussionWithout going into too much detail Please do go into detail. What is some of this "quite a lot" of knowledge that sheds light on the questions at hand? It would be great to have new references. "code size" is an awful metric This has come up on HN before and the evidence does not support what you're saying. The gold standard in recent work [1] found that more complicated metrics have no value beyond simple program l…
Comment linking /post/10669678292/size-is-the-best-predictor-of-code-quality
on “Callbacks are Pretty Okay”Submitted Why you would want to program at fifty (or any other age) as a story · 41 points
HN discussionI was half expecting you to realize that you answered your own question before you asked it (why do you implore novices to try out the command-line?). But what the hey, I'll throw out some links that go better into why Emacs is still a very viable contender for your editor of choice. Steve Yegge wrote a classic programming read "Tour De Babel"[1], which has a bit on Emacs under the Lisp section. He also wrote "Effec…
Comment linking /post/3996068979/the-levels-of-emacs-proficiency
on “Master Emacs in one year”Submitted The laziness of synchronous work as a story · 37 points
HN discussion> > Make the OS your task management system > Can anyone who is more familiar with orgmode describe how it might play this role? Emacs, full screen ( https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/FullScreen ), auto-starting org-mode, and do everything you can in it ( http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3996068979/the-levels-of-em... ). It helps if you already use Emacs, such as writing software in it.
Comment linking /post/3996068979/the-levels-of-emacs-proficiency
on “The Search for the Perfect To-do List”Submitted English is heavily left-handed as a story · 35 points
HN discussion
