Emacs: here I go again

"Emacs" stands for "Editor MACroS" and I have been using it on-and-off since the early 1990s. I had detours to Windows-editorss (like Sublime and Code) and IDEs (like Eclipse) but I always return to Emacs.

I like that Emacs has everything but the kitchen sink. It is pretty complete out of the box and it has tons of packages available in repositories like MELPA.

I like that the Emacs keychords are in my muscle memory.

I also like the tinkering that it allows. But that is also its/my pitfall: I can spend hours/days/weeks tinkering without ever doing anything really productive.

So, every couple of years or so, my .emacs has become overly complex, so I tend to go look for a pre-packaged setup like Prelude Emacs, which bundles a consistent set of pre-configured packages and settings. This greatly simplifies my .emacs and frees me from maintaining it.

But then, after again a couple of years, I find that the whole pre-packaged deal restricts my right to self-determination. And I decide to start my own .emacs from scratch. Which is where I am at now:

• I found that many of the Prelude goodies are bundled in crux (by the same author) and used the whole Prelude-setup to cherry-pick what works for me.
• I am going to use Emacs customization whereever possible, to minimize my manual .emacs hacking.

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